Money Does Not Buy Loyalty
I‘ve been on both sides of it - I have done work for less than I was worth, and I have paid people more than they were worth, and in both circumstances I have learned the hard way: money does not buy loyalty. In both scenarios, what the other party learns is that they can take advantage of me. I’ve worked for a reduced rate thinking I was creating an opportunity for something bigger, not realizing that working for a reduced rate has flagged me as someone not worth their time, to the people who hold the keys to the opportunity i thought I was seeking. And when I’m the one paying people, I’ve learned that no amount of money can inspire people to Rise to challenges, they will always choose their own comfort or convenience. A very hard lesson came when I realized that I had a picture in my head of the group I was working with as a band, a group of people ready to walk through hell together to reach the top. But the reason the group came apart is because as soon as it got to a point where they had to put some skin in the game, they would sooner not get paid any more than have to give up something of their own. Like that Horror movie I produced - the dude would rather get nothing from me ever again, even if it might be more in the long run, than give up a little bit now for a potential huge payoff down the line. This is the sort of thing I talk about when I say “I wish I was meaner”. I Love collaboration and I love creating opportunities for people, but it often seems like life would be less stressful if I was more ruthless about seizing all opportunity for myself to the greatest degree possible. I would have less stress in my life had I never offered to create a film based on someone else’s I.P. Even then, I would have less stress right now if I had insisted on being the writer/director and had the creator of the I.P. Onboard as a consultant. That’s why my whole strategy for the next ten years is about the projects I want to make. I can’t give other people their dream until my dream is locked and secure - that’s the foundation without which the whole thing collapses. So ten years and five movies for me, and after that I can shift focus to a producer role and applying my creativity to bring up other talent.
YouTube success as Easy as 4, 3, 2, 1
4 million subscribers.
3 billion views.
2 million dollars.
1 incredible journey.
The Lawyer who sued LuLaRoe has my Pen!
Watching that LuLaRoe documentary with the wife last night and noticed that the lawyer in the final episode has my pen! I buy this pen in multiples, leave them everywhere I might be. At my studio, the only hard and fast rule is that no one but me is allowed to use this kind of pen.
Magic is Real, and sometimes it’s hard to Deal with
My whole philosophy has always been that Artists are real life superheroes. Their talent and creative vision are their superpowers, and the bad guys are everything that Life throws in the way of working on art. I’m working on a Dr. Strange video for my YouTube channel so naturally I’m thinking deeper about the aspects of this philosophy that you could call Magic, than usual. I’m thinking about how we do a dance with the universe in a constant push and pull of working towards what we want VS letting go and accepting what we need. I’m going through a lot in my business that would have made me nervous and fearful in the past but today I feel more confident than ever. I’ve done this long enough, and enough times, that I can rest easy knowing that I have the data to prove that bigger and better blessings than I’ve experienced to date are on their way to me. If we can let go and trust that we are attracting what we want to us, the Universe will create new paths and blast open walls for us. Right now I’m in a mode of stripping everything down to see what’s necessary, what’s working, and what’s dead weight. A Ten Year plan to make five Movies is an order so large that I can see the universe moving things around and arranging circumstances in real time, to accommodate it for me. It’s a majestic and Beautiful sight.
My Movie Homework
Yesterday I had a meeting about the Feature Film project that comes after The Snyder Cut: The Movie. I’m not ready to say too much about that project at this stage but I will share the list of movies we came up with as research for the one we’re starting to develoP:
Die Hard
The Blair Witch Project
Panic Room
Money Monster
Paranormal Activity
The Breakfast Club
Reservoir Dogs
What do all of these movies have in common? What’s the thread that runs through them all? One day you’ll see when we screen it for you...
My Spidey Photo Op Experience not at Avengers Campus
I know on the outside I seem fine. But on the inside I'm a kid throwing a full blown, sprawled on the floor tantrum over the fact that anyone besides me has been to #AvengersCampus at Disneyland. My wife and I became enthusiasts of disney parks in anticipation of Walt Disney World's 50th anniversary - we wanted to be experts by the time Star Wars Land opened and the anniversary celebration was happening. I was already crestfallen enough to have missed the opening of Star Wars Land because of the timing of my daughter's arrival. Our first trip to a Disney Park with my daughter Isabel was supposed to be for the opening of Avengers Campus at california adventure park last summer. We had 5 nights booked at the disneyland hotel. Day one of the trip would have been disneyland with family. Day 2 would have been me by myself going to opening day of Avengers Campus. Then we'd have two more days to do parks as a family with little Izzy only 9 months old. That trip obviously didn't happen so here's me sitting beside Spider-Man in the disney springs uniqlo store in Florida instead of sitting beside Spider-Man at the Spider-Man photo op at Avengers Campus....
New Instagram Strategy, New me.
Hi, I’m Sean. Allow me to re-introduce myself… I’m the creator of The Sean Ward Show on YouTube. If you check out the channel on YouTube, you’ll see wall to wall Marvel & DC parody videos. This weekend I carried out a huge shake up of my social media and my personal brand. Up to now, @the.sean.ward.show was my show account and @seanward was my personal & behind the scenes account. But it just kept feeling like the two accounts split focus and no one looking at either account gets a true sense of what I’m about.
Fun Fact: The Reason we don’t have @theseanwardshow is because the intern who first ran the account got that username, then forgot both the Password and What email she used to sign up for it. I ain’t Hatin’, I’m just statin’!
so here’s the newness: @seanward has been locked and is now a private account for friends & family, it’s probably mostly going to be pictures of me and my daughter. And @the.sean.ward.show will be the home of all of my content - not just superhero parody videos, but my comics, music, fashion, lifestyle, and philosophies on business & art. I’ve even changed up my main website from seanward.net to theseanwardshow.com. The Sean Ward Show, going all the way back to my street art comic book release parties, was always about an approach to life, living like you’re the main character of an epic story that people tune in week after week to keep up with.
Thank you for following me. Streamlining my Instagram is just one aspect of a big series of changes happening in my world. I’ll talk more in upcoming posts about the huge projects I’m taking on with my team and my company, the mission we’re going on to make a movie, and new features coming to The Sean Ward Show on YouTube and beyond in the coming weeks and months……
Sean Ward is a Movie Director
It’s after Midnight as I’m writing this. I’m blogging a lot more these days because there’s so much in my head, I just want to get it all out. One thought I’ve been having lately is about how I’ve spent many years trying to make a go at a bunch of different things from art to comics to music to TV. And it was all supposed to culminate in my movie.
The Movie is the new task, the new obsession
And now that I’m dedicated to Making my Movies, I don’t even want to think about trying to make a comic book or release an album. I want to write the next screenplay, get it storyboarded, get it to my team, and get working on the next one. It’s True what they say about how you have to choose one thing and be the master of it. In my case, the one thing I was mastering was to live a life that will inspire great movies. Or at least Movies that are fun to make… :)
The other reason I’m doing so much writing is because I remember how much I got out of Spike Lee’s Production Journals. After he completed a film he would Publish his production journals. I had the ones for Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X. They were so inspiring to me for how they demystified the process of making movies and make me feel like it was possible. I did my final 12th grade film arts class project on Spike Lee, for that matter.
So I flatter myself to think that one day when my movie is complete, my writings during the process of making the movie will inspire some young filmmaker somewhere and that person will go make their movie, and publish their journal, and on it goes. . . . . . .
How to Lose a Fortune Putting other People’s dreams before your own
I’ve gotta admit, I'm having a hard time. Everybody is stressed to the max after over a year of pandemic lockdowns but life had already put my wife and I through several ringers leading into that.
In August of 2019, my little baby daughter Isabel was born. When she was 6 weeks old, she received an extremely specialized surgery for a rare liver condition that affects one in 20,000 births. I thought I would be gone from my YouTube show for 2 weeks, and left the team I was working with at that time in charge of making videos without me (such is the trust I thought we had). Between blood tests, a spinal tap, the discovery of my daughter's condition, and getting the surgery done, I was gone for 6 weeks. When I returned, the vibe had completely changed. I found out later that members of our cast had been in a group chat on Facebook when someone influential said our videos were cringy, and nothing was the same after that. Every little note of direction or feedback on a script kept turning into little snipy fights. the atmosphere on set grew tense and stressful. It got to the point where the cast said they didn’t want to do it any more, but would carry on and treat it like a job. i brought in some new crew members to help behind the scenes (my dear sister was doing everything behind the camera herself) and besides the fight that it turned into about not giving the cast advance notice, one of those new people wrote to me privately to ask if he had done something wrong because the old cast was treating him and everyone so miserably.
The real confusion for me is why these people who were getting well paid, and who I thought were my friends, would be taking part in giving me more stress instead of helping take stress away in the delicate situation I was in with my Daughter. For better and for worse, I couldn't take the additional stress and my attempt at getting the situation under control resulted in that Squad banding together to quit the show, unfriend and block me on everything, and make a public spectacle on social media about it. On their way out the door, I told them that I hope this can all blow over and we can make videos Together again one day. I told them that they still have a home at my studio and can use it for any of their personal projects any time. You can confirm with my production manager - I even planned to send them a big Christmas bonus to make sure they know I'm thinking of them and there's no hard feelings. Even if they thought I handled my return to work after my daughter's birth and surgery poorly, after all we had been through together, I’d have hoped for a little grace and patience, and I remain shocked at the degree to which they seemed to be making a special point of ending on bad terms.
So when I see them calling me out by name and making a big public spectacle of the whole thing on facebook, I can only imagine how many people are messaging them to ask what happened, and hearing whatever version of the story they’re telling that makes me look like a Jerk. But I'm not one to reply to that sort of thing, I just kept working. And the channel kept doing great with new cast members and the return of Guests the audience hadn't seen in a while.
But then Months go by, and someone tells me that they heard from someone else who heard third hand that the reason that clique quit my show was because I owed them money and wouldn't pay them. Then from someone else, that I got back from the Birth of my daughter and expected everyone to work for free. I don't know whether that came from the actual people involved or it’s Haters talking shit, but either way - that broke my heart. I was accustomed to paying people well, giving out generous cash bonuses when videos performed, and taking people on trips all over the United States for Comic cons. I’d been blessed by the success of my YouTube channel, and I enjoyed Sharing my blessings. That thing about the money really hurt my feelings. I've been keeping this bottled up and when I've asked people close to me if I should make a statement about it, they've been wishy-washy on the idea. I feel like I run the risk of creating more drama instead of settling anything. But there's also a level on which I have to stand up for myself, since the truth has yet to be uttered. It would be one thing to go back and forth about it after the truth is already out there but the truth has not yet been spoken.
Because it's not just about what they got paid or the trips, the cash bonuses, or even the fact that multiple members of that team still have equipment of mine they haven't returned. It's the Monumental scale of the irony to which the inverse is True.
This is a team of people who, after a big day at comic-con, would play a game of sitting in a circle in the hotel room with Friends and collaborators, and everybody goes around to say their Favorite thing about each person in the circle. We were a really, really tight group. Lee Howard in particular, My head writer and one of my lead cast members, called me his brother. This person was my closest collaborator and one of my very best friends. I guess I've seen too many movies because I thought Lee and I had a relationship like Bob Gaudio and Frankie Valli in Jersey boys - that we had been through so much together in art and business that our Bond was stronger than the need for a formal agreement. That was my mistake in pitching him on turning his “Quiet Room Bears” horror art project into a film series. He had the vague notion of one day turning it into movies, had ideas for a backstory and mythology, but there wasn't a story or script in place when I offered to finance a Film to take advantage of a Dilapidated building as a filming Location before being demolished.
I offered to put up $5,000 to make a Hollywood quality short film as a proof of concept that we could use to make a full length feature film. I feel incredibly stupid now but at the time I said that $5,000 is an amount I'm okay to gamble with, so we will make the film, hire people with more industry experience than us, and learn everything we can. Then we’d formalize an agreement and business structure based on the newfound knowledge of industry norms we’d acquired.
What I learned during the course of making that film was the truth about "Good, Fast, Cheap: you can only have two". I kept choosing good & fast, and the film ended up costing over $15,000 plus thousands more in terms of my company resources - locations, computers, etc. to say nothing of my time and expertise. Lee and I were the only ones on the production not getting paid. We hired the right people and paid them... If not well, then definitely more than what would be the norm on an indie project at this scale. and the film looked totally slick! it was a home run success in terms of the concept and the gore effects. Everyone who talks about it says it’s Amazing.
We raised over $3000 on indiegogo for "finishing funds" that were supposed to offset the overspending on the film. Even then, I was happy to invest the money because I so believed in this guy's brand. In fact, when we finally had that meeting to create the business structure we said we were going to create, We met at a coffee shop near his place and we agreed on the following (people have asked me why I didn’t get it in writing and I feel so naive and stupid - I thought forming the corporation *was* getting it in writing):
we would Form a new corporation, Quiet Room Bears Inc. He would own the brand personally and keep doing his indie art hustle as he always had, but give this new company the exclusive license for merchandising, film, media, etc.
I'd increase my total cash investment to $20,000 and put the difference in the new company's account for his use so he wouldn't have to go out of pocket doing the Indie Art Hustle while marketing the film.
he would be the majority shareholder, 60/40 split in his favor.
And then we would get to work releasing our short film and take it straight to the Horror Movie production company who was my neighbor at the studio to rope them into development of the feature film.
Except that when I called Lee to congratulate him and have him sign the papers, that was the first I got of any indication at all that he was unhappy. Like I said, we were a super-tight unit until that moment. He said he wasn't sure and he wanted more time to think about it. Week by week he was still coming into my studio to work on my YouTube show, and every week I'd ask him about our unfinished business. the crowdfunding campaign was successful, people were excited to see the film, we had to get it out. But he just kept saying he needed to think about it, while continuing to collect a paycheque to work on my YouTube show. It seemed to me that he was having cold feet, or a classic case of fear of success, imposter syndrome, something like that. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and figured we could successfully launch the thing the following summer for the next Comic-Con season. The topic faded into the background until I realized that a full year had gone by. It didn't make sense to me why this person would even be okay with leaving the film unreleased for that long. And this all overlaps with the period of time in which my wife became pregnant so my focus was shifting to my family. And I don't mean to be immodest but this was also a period when my YouTube channel was experiencing its most explosive growth so my mind was on other things and I figured we would put the film out when he was ready.
I didn't totally clue in until after Lee and the rest of that main cast had exited my show together, that it had been over a year since we last talked about the film. We had missed another entire year’s worth of Comic Cons and opportunities to get eyes on the film and the brand. This was all a terrific mess by this point so I talked to the Firm of the guy who wrote the textbook that Law students use when they are studying entertainment law in Canada. He’s the one who told me that, with nothing in writing between me and the other person, I owned the film outright as the one who paid for it, and that the other party would have a hard time in court arguing that it was an unauthorized use of his trademark when it's got his name on it as writer and director.
So when I reached out to Lee to ask what he wanted to do about the film, his best idea was basically that he take the film for free, do the business that was my idea in the first place, and pay me back what I spent on it over time as he markets it. Suffice it to say that a person who would leave a film he wrote and directed on a Hard Drive, unreleased for over a year, until I'm the one who has to bring it up. . . I don’t think that person has the wherewithal to market the film successfully enough to ever pay me back. He’s not open to me participating in the success of any future films in the series, so that’s where things are left right now.
At the end of the day, I trusted and cared about somebody so much that I went through walls and invested a small fortune trying to give him his dream - only for him to block the release of our film, slowly antagonize me, and block me on all social media - All while I'm still reeling from my newborn daughter being born with a life threatening illness. I see other people who worked on the film have unfriended me as well so I know I’m a topic of conversation in certain circles. . . If anyone’s got any additional context that helps explain how I'm the bad guy of this story, I'd love to hear it. It would go a long way towards me trying to figure out how to work through the last 2 years sitting with this, basically alone in the dark, wondering how it happened.
The other people involved in this story... it’s not as exciting. With them it’s more about just being confused and disappointed in their role in all of this. Makenzie, I thought we were really close. I’ve got many projects that were written with her participation in mind that now aren’t going anywhere. Emily i had no relationship with before Makenzie brought her to be in a video - she simply fell ass backwards into a good thing. Violet was Lee’s girlfriend so she wasn’t going to do anything with me that didn’t involve him. In fact, as a last hail mary attempt to get the situation sorted out, I asked her if she would come have a one on one meeting with me. Her answer was that “it’s not worth it” to go all the way to see me without having Lee drive her. And since I knew by then that Lee needed to be fired for what he was doing to me with the film, I figured I already had my answer about whether she would be willing to continue working for me if I fired her boyfriend.
If you actually read all of this then thank you for hearing me out. Watch for updates on the movies that I'll make over the next 10 years now that my time is freed from being the producer of Quiet Room Bears movies.
what I learned from getting Fired as a NXNE Blogger
This just came up in my Facebook Memories - Do you remember Bite TV? I learned some Hard lessons writing for them. Bite TV was a specialty cable TV channel in Canada back in the day. They started out as a TV channel that let people upload their own content to their website, and the best of what was uploaded would be put on TV. Then they got bought and turned into a comedy channel airing re-runs of classic sitcoms. Along with their rebranding as a comedy channel they launched a blog. Through connections in the social media world, I got to be a writer for the blog, earning $10 per post. At that rate I thought I could make it up in volume to pay a modest rent and move back to Toronto. They had a little “top 5 posts” ticker in the sidebar - I frequently had all five. My whole thing was to become a personality on the blog and then crossover to TV and do a show on the channel.
OH my God, this is taking me back. This is almost making me emotional, remembering back to the period when I was doing a Daily Vlog project and living in my Auntie’s basement. I pitched the blog editor on doing a series of videos for my daily vlog that would get cross-posted to the Bite TV blog, like ‘Bite TV presents Sean Ward as NXNE’. She gave me the go-ahead and I applied for media credentials as a Bite TV blogger. I posted the above photo to my social media and almost immediately got a frantic email from this editor demanding that I take down my post, and basically telling me that I had crossed a line by applying for media credentials in the name of one of the conference’s headline sponsors (Bite tv’s sister channel Aux was that sponsor). I forwarded her the email where we talked through this content strategy. The next day I got an email from her boss, a woman I had never interacted with before, telling me that my credentials have been revoked and that I don’t have authorization to use that badge. But I already had the badge, and I was in the middle of my daily vlog project and nothing was going to interfere with that, so of course I wore the badge and completed my 4-video project.
I Kind of figured that they would come around and see how a man with the Hustle to get the badge and create the videos could be a tremendous asset to them. The following mOnday I got another email from the editor’s boss telling me that my services on the blog were no longer needed.
Womp Womp.
it was all very corporate and dry, I thought that they wanted to do something brash and attention-getting. I thought I could be the Hunter S. Thompson to their Rolling Stone Magazine. They were always on about how “We Want Controversy” - in Fact some time I’ll tell you about the post I wrote that I knew would get a certain person to throw a shit fit online, that a lot of people still hate me for all these years later.
I started out doing those blog posts for Bite TV, knowing that I was giving them a tremendously discounted rate. I thought I was building good will that would pay off when I had shown what I could do and made the move to the TV channel. Come to find out later that the guy who makes the creative decisions for the TV channel was the same guy who hosted the channel’s flagship show, and he didn’t like me very much. I realized from my whole experience getting fired as a Bite TV blogger that when you do give a client a discount rate, you’re not building a bank of Good will. On the contrary, you’re telling them that your product is low-value. And that there is no accounting for the factors that go into the decisions other people make that have nothing to do with Merit, talent, or how long you’ve been delivering the goods on the blog.
Getting Fired as the Bite TV NXNE blogger is when I realized that I needed to give 100% to my own creative content.
Now let me see if I can find those old Vlogs from NXNE that year. . .
Ah yes! Here’s The Video from the conference that set them off:
And here’s one from The Concert Series. Oh, when 1000 views was a high end milestone!
How it All Fits Together
I’m basically finished with rushing to make videos for the sake of having a video out. There are so many more steps I need to take to make my dreams of directing Feature Films come true that I literally don’t have time to make anything that doesn’t directly help get my first feature film made.
With that in mind, here are The Videos we are working on right now for the Sean Ward Show on YouTube:
Wandavision VS Harry Potter
A fight/stunt video about us defending the studio from from a rival crew
Spider-Man VS Many-Spiders-Man
Spider-Verse Music Video
Here’s how it all fits into a bigger whole:
it’s a plan for 3 Movies. The first is a 40-minute animated film about Zack Snyder and the making of Justice League & Suicide Squad. That’s to get the experience writing and directing something at that length and level of detail to take into my first live action Feature Film - That’s going to be the one about Me & My Friends, and My YouTube channel - Making a video and the madcap insanity it turns into. And that’s to get the experience directing a feature that I can take to the real Project that’s the point of all of this - a movie about Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the early days of Marvel Comics, but Like it’s GoodFellas.
After that, I’ll have proven myself, cemented my auteur status, and I’ll be Part of the discussion for jobs like directing Ant Man 4 or Spider-Man 7.
All of the videos in my production pipeline for The Sean Ward Show on youTube are there to help develop or learn something for the feature film. Wanda VS Harry is about getting our CGI up to snuff. The stunt video is about getting the experience and building the rapport with the Action Design team who’s helping us on the movie. Spider-Man VS Many-Spiders-Man is about introducing a series of original characters who we have big plans for later.
it’s all very exciting and I can’t wait to have more to show you!
In the meantime, follow the progress of my animated film “The Snyder Cut: The Movie” every week on my live stream.
Sean Ward drawing time lapse
This is a time lapse video of the creation of a whole bunch of the art from How I Got 1 Million Subscribers on YouTube - the first episode of The Sean Ward Electric Comics Freak-Out!
This drawing time lapse includes most of the drawing of myself - you can even see me work out my cartoon likeness for this episode! Watch the video and read the whole story here!
Win $100 Amazon Gift Card in my latest video
You made it! Here is your chance to WIN $100 AMAZON GIFT CARD!
Here’s how to enter:
Watch the latest video on The Sean Ward Show - Click Here for the Video!
Subscribe to The Sean Ward Show “What’s The Word?” Email Newsletter - See Below!
Send an email to production@theseanwardshow.com with I WANT TO WIN $100 GIFT CARD in the subject line. Include your mailing address and we’ll send you a pack of stickers and collectibles!
The Last email I Ever Sent
*** This is an email that I just sent to my old mailing list that I hadn’t written to since I lost my last version of my website, before I had any success on YouTube…
This is the part of the story where I am the army guy who has discovered and taken an enemy base, radioing headquarters hoping like hell someone gets the signal.
At the end of this message, you'll get a lifetime subscription to my new SWS art magazine and collectibles.
If you're reading this, you're not just subscribed to an old newsletter I haven't maintained in a while - it means you're one of the people who supported me and rooted for me way back in the day when I was still running on faith, hoping to make something happen as an artist, cartoonist, and filmmaker one day.
My superhero videos have been the fulfilment of a long list of childhood dreams in the comic con world. But the people closest to me have never stopped asking to see something more personal.
2020 brought a lot of challenges - I had really big plans for the type of videos I was going to make. We were working on huge special effects collab videos we were going to make in L.A. and I was already talking to 2 comic cons about shooting footage at the 2020 edition of their event to include in an Oceans 11-style caper that takes place at a comic con based on my real life experiences.
All of that went on hold and the year turned into a lot of sudden starts and stops, figuring out on the fly what we could make with no movies to parody, no comic cons to record at, and the streets closed so we couldn't do flash mobs.
But that's also an opportunity - if all of that is called off, what else can I do? What else do I want to do? If I have to start from scratch and make all new plans, then literally anything is possible.
As all of this is swirling around in my life, friends I haven't heard from in a while are reaching out randomly, and my day to day experience is filling up with coincidences and cosmic signposts, I'm feeling like I felt back when I was working at a call center, feeling like I needed to take swift, decisive, bold action in the direction of my dreams. Time has gone by and if these things I always said were going to happen are going to happen, I need to get to work on it right now.
The dream was always that I was building towards an autobiographical feature film that mixes live action and animation, and the narrative shifts between the two worlds and it's this epic expression of the nature of creativity and how we're all writing our own story. Every video I make for the last while is run through the filter of "what does this do for us, how does this help us make the movie?"
And with that in mind, a little secret insight into my thought process just for you people in this group who have known me since back in the day when I was hustling in the streets to get my career started, I'm excited to announce the return of The Sean Ward Electric Comics Freak-Out.
HOW I GOT MY FIRST 1 MILLION VIEWS ON YOUTUBE is the first 'issue' of a new concept of comics, animation, and video that I haven't even revealed yet is an update and reboot of The Sean Ward Electric Comics Freak-Out. You can watch the video AND read the story on my brand new website - theseanwardshow.com
I've been on this rollercoaster ride of a journey on Youtube for years. It's been so long that I don't know if anyone is going to see this update that I'm pouring my heart into.
But if you're out there, if you're the OG supporter reading this, then I want to make it special for you as we enter the next phase of The Sean Ward Show.
You appreciated my art back when no one else did so I'm going to give you a lifetime subscription to my Sean Wardian physical membership perks for free, for life. This includes my seasonal "The Sean Ward Show - The Works" art magazine featuring art from new videos, works in progress, sketchbook pages no one was supposed to see, and more. It arrives with an assortment of stickers and collectibles. I can't give you the exclusive digital content but you can get those by joining my Patreon at any tier.
Here's how to claim your free everything forever:
Subscribe to the new newsletter - The Sean Ward "What's the Word?" Email Newsletter
Send an email to production@theseanwardshow.com with your mailing address, tell them you’re from the original “What’s the Word?” newsletter so we know where to send your stuff.
Get ready to receive the first issue of my new VIP art magazine and the first two stickers in a new collectible series…
Here is me Making a New Post
I’m making a new post! Apparently! Hey let’s copy this text a few times. Type more just to fill up the space. Here’s me typing a lot of stuff…
Hey Look! There’s my band! For No reason at all!
What is The Sean Ward Show?
The Sean Ward Show isn’t just the #1 YouTube channel for superhero fan cosplay comedy. It’s videos, comics, and music.
The videos are the segments of the imaginary TV show. The Comics are the animation break. And I’m my own musical guest for the big performance.
You can watch the videos every week on The Sean Ward Show YouTube channel.
The Comics are Cosplay Comics, and Sean Ward’s Super Party.
Cosplay Comics is based on the stuff that happens during the making of our YouTube videos. New episodes Sunday and Wednesday on Webtoon, and on The Sean Ward Show Instagram.
Sean Ward’s Super Party is my psychedelic epic, with new episodes every Friday on Webtoon.
Check out my music - just put my name into Spotify or Apple Music, and watch for new releases coming as soon as we can start shooting some dope videos.
To the Realness of the Feelness!
A Blog Post in Two Parts
Part One
In a previous entry (last October), I was mentioning an Einstein Documentary that I wanted to see. Well I rented some movies last week and finally got to see it. It was called Einstein Revealed and it was a DVD of a documentary that aired on the PBS show Nova. It was awesome. They kept using a little computer generated Einstein caricature in these cool animated segments that explain the different points in his Theory of Relativity. The best thing about it was how it was the story of his life, with how he came up with the Theory tied into what was happening.
I also saw Mean Girls and Dirty. Mean Girls was the bomb. Those teen movies always have a moral at the end and I like when stories have a moral at the end. But Dirty was the bomb. It was an Ol' dirty Bastard concert video with a 40-minute documentary in the bonus features. It was great to see the footage of him in the studio recording his last album, but it was also a little sad knowing that he would die in the studio very soon after the footage was shot. But I love Ol' Dirty and it was such a treat to see him work. Now here's an off the cuff poem about the weather.
It's Cold Outside, Where is my hat?
Finally lost my holiday fat
Lock the door, won't go outside
Don't have no sled for me to ride!
The people at the haunted beach
don't see this cold that's in our reach.
The monsters keep the bathers warm.
That is, until the Sunday storm!
Shoutout to my homegirl NyceOne who I haven't seen in ages and ages but is looking GOOD in the pictures from a recent performance I just saw!
Part Two
The blog entry for January 14 has sparked some debate on the Toronto Comic Jam Message Board. Here was my addition further clarifying my position. Keep in mind it is not meant to disrespect any cartoonists or their work, but to illustrate a point about the attitude of today's comic book audience.
Basically, it breaks down like this: we're supposed to believe that we're having this new golden age, but it's been two, three, four years or more and STILL no one gives a shit. OK, some writer at the Nantucket Town Crier got his write up of Jimmy Corrigan published. But so what? I read that issue of the Comics Journal too, homey.
We've been sold for years on the idea that the proliferation of superhero material has been the chief obstacle in the way of real and true artistes being able to make a living creating comic books. According to the rationale held by the seeming majority of those who care, if the mass public didn't equate the medium with superheroes, they would be better prepared to receive more mature and complex works. With all the attention paid to Chris Ware, Craig Thompson, Seth, Joe Matt, Chester Brown, Adrian Tomine, art spiegelman, Dan Clowes, Robert Crumb, and Joe Sacco (that's the complete list, isn't it?) in the straight press in recent years, haven't we had enough time to gauge what would happen if the spotlight were to fall upon these artists' works?
Years have gone by and the thinking still holds that if it weren't for those damn superheroes, this comic book (ahem, 'graphic novel') thing would be huge. As we slowly lose that excuse as the monthly pamphlet comic book market dies a slooooooooooooow death, we have Manga being assigned the role of the Villain in this melodrama, but I am suggesting that a culture has evolved in which the rule of Competitive Consumption has come to dominate the thinking. I don't think that as many people like Jimmy Corrigan as much as they like the geek-chic hipster cache. If every fourteen year old girl in every suburb of America bought a copy tomorrow, and put pictures of Chris Ware on their bedroom walls, would the same writers who praised Jimmy Corrigan the last few years breathe a sigh of relief that at last the Hillary Duff audience has demonstrated some taste, or would those writers suddenly denouce Jimmy Corrigan? My bet is on the latter.
Everyone makes a big deal about that McSweeney's thing a little while ago. I went into my local booksellers fully intending to part with the 30-and-a-bit dollars that it cost. I picked it up, flipped through it, and put it right back on the shelf upon my discovery of the Joe Matt strip. A strip in which a guy has just tossed off for the tenth time that day into a T-shirt given to him ages ago by the same ex-girlfriend he's been whining about having blown it with in his comics for so many years that I've lost count is still just that, no matter how you want to commend the drawing, the pacing, or whatever Chris Ware thought Joe's appeal was when deciding to include him. I put the book down because anyone who would hold that up as an example of the best we have to offer is someone who has nothing to offer me intellectually or spiritually.
It's been a glorious few years as far as mainstream acceptance of comic books goes, but they still haven't been able to crack into the kind of audience we all seem to 'just know' is there. We've blamed the superheroes and we're blaming Manga now, but perhaps it's time to address the fact that the unshaven, semen-encrusted, despressed, cynical, unwashed, complaining, woe-is-me face is not the best one to show if one is to woo the damsel that is real success.
All I'm asking is this: I love comic books too, but where are the comic books for happy, snappy, stylish, life-of-the-party people? (Those who are also asking this question are encouraged to visit theseanwardshow.com/comics )
artform of the comic book
almost midnight
The artform of the comic book is in a garbage state. Many people with a vested interest in such matters would have you believe that we are currently experiencing "a new golden age" to quote several writers, but don't believe the hype. Corporate comic books think they're hot stuff right now because the emphasis in the creative process has shifted gradually from the penciller to the writer. The reality is that instead of corporate comics all coming off like they're created by people who read nothing but other corporate comic books, they now read like they're created by people who watch nothing but corporate movies based on or inspired by corporate comic books. Alternative comic books, that is to say comic books NOT published by an entity specializing in superhero material, were and are still created primarily by angry and/or dejected loners whose subject matter is, essentially, a celebration of having chosen to take part in a marginalized sub-culture that they talk themselves into believing the rest of society is either too stupid or low-brow to 'get'. Much of their activity is still carried out in reaction to the corporate stuff. They're happy enough that they've got their picture in the paper, but they can't figure out why despite the attention, still no one gives a damn.
The comic book landscape today is different than that of years previous, but different does not always mean better. Today, you would no longer be able to point at a teenage male with pimples, excess weight, and no girlfriend and point him out as an accurate representation of the comic book audience. You could at one point, but you can't now. If you wanted to be honest about the comic book reader of today, you would need to point at the grown man in his thirties, the skinny fellow who thinks that he's plenty cool, it's the rest of the world that's lame. He's the guy who spends the whole party yakking your ear off about what a bitch his ex-girlfriend is (they broke up three years ago) while all you wanted to do was pass him in the hall on your way to the fridge. Either way, might his martyr act regarding why he can't get laid, or his lament over why his life isn't what he wanted it to be, be just as much of a deterrent to a truly mainstream audience as years of convoluted superhero backstory were believed to be?
Today I paid a visit to one of Toronto's premier comic book shops. I went in fully expecting to part with some of my money, but absolutely nothing looked at all interesting. How many more Batman stories are there to tell? I've got fond memories of 80s cartoons too, but I already paid for them when I was eight or nine, thank you very much. Maybe it's not the books, maybe it's the scene. It's plenty disheartening to be greeted at the entrance by someone who has seen what I've been doing since the start but refuses to look up from her hands (or his computer, Mr. You-know-who-you-are) when I say hello. I felt something in me change today, looking around and thinking "I'm trying to be a part of THIS???" A decision was made today that will forever alter the course of this project and all of you who have been supportive these last few years are going to be knocked on your ass. 2005 will be a big year for Sean Ward Productions. Stay Tuned.
Boxing Day
twenty past ten at night
So for Boxing Day, I go up to Orfus Road to see what all the fuss is about (the fuss is about nothing, but that's not the point). I go into one of the stores and who should I find working there? Jason Chips from Crash, and the same young fellow who gave me my biggest ovation at the 4 for 4 party for my hip hop set. All of the stores along Orfus Road had huge sound systems pumping music and barker-style "step right up"s out to the street, and after a few minutes of "hey man!", I was asked if I would go on the mic and freestyle. I'm never one to turn down an opportunity to perform, so out goes my voice to the entire Orfus Road Boxing Day crowd, freestyling about how cold it is. I say good bye to everyone and walk down the street with "That's right, ladies and gentleman! One time only, exclusive Sean Ward live freestyle!" booming out behind me the whole walk up the street.