Toward the end of the day, we asked Ryan Sook if he had any dinner plans, and he invited us to join him and a couple of his self-publishing friends, Alex Sheikman and Norm Felchle. As the con was wrapping up for the day, and I was over visiting with him and Ryan, Mick Gray asked what we were up to for dinner, and Ryan invited him along as well.

Elizabeth and I talked with Ryan about coming down to his home in Cambria and spending some time with him. His wife had offered when we saw them at Wondercon, and it sounded like fun. We didn’t realize he had a four hour drive to get home, and told him we’d reciprocate, and let him stay with us for the next Wonder- or Super-Con. He said he may just take us up on it. That would be a fun slumber party.

We just walked across the street for dinner, because we thought that would be quick and convenient. The restaurant said to seat ourselves, so we picked out a table in back and waited. No one came to bring us menus or water or see how we were doing. It didn’t bother us too much, because we were enjoying ourselves visiting. But then a couple other tables filled, and the waitress went to each of them and gave them menus, but was still ignoring us.

Finally we caught her attention when she was taking the other tables’ orders, so she brought enough menus for half of us, and took our drink orders. I ordered water.

A little later, she brought our drinks, but didn’t bring water for anyone, including me, who’d ordered it. To her credit, she realized it, and said in front of everyone that she’d bring my water. She was gone for awhile, again, and when we finally saw her, she returned to take our order, but forgot my water again. Again she said she’d bring it, and again she disappeared. Finally she brought my water, and that was the last we saw of her for awhile, except when she was checking on the other tables, but she never made eye contact with us, and probably would have pretended she didn’t see or hear us if we stood on the table shouting and kicking our drinks at her.

So we continued to visit, and enough time has passed that we’re watching the other tables getting their food. She doesn’t even check on us. We just don’t see her again.

We had probably gotten there sometime before 6:30 (the con had ended at 6:00, so that’s a conservative estimate). Finally eight o’clock rolls around, we’ve finished our drinks an hour ago, and still no word. She was still helping the other tables, and Elizabeth overheard our waitress tell them that the kitchen was now closed for the night.

Finally, she came around to us, and informed us there had been a situation in the kitchen, and she was terribly sorry, but it would be a bit before we got our food. How long? She didn’t want to specify, but we wouldn’t let her go until we pinned her down, at least to an hourly estimate. Finally she guessed, fifteen minutes? She asks if she could bring us more drinks, or maybe some bread. And we’re thinking, is there some reason you didn’t do either of those things an hour and a half ago?

Meanwhile, Ryan Sook needs to make a four hour drive home, so he gets up and says his goodbyes with an empty stomach. On his way out, he tells the waitress to please cancel his order.

A round of drinks and bread comes, and eventually our food too. Of course they bring Ryan’s meal, but to her credit, the waitress realizes this, and she tells us they won’t charge us. We finish and wait awhile longer for our bill. We don’t see the waitress again. When we finally got a random employee’s attention sweeping, we are told that the cook cut himself, but was too afraid to let anyone know. He tried to hide it from everyone, but finally he lost enough blood, he decided he had to go the hospital. For some reason he decided to do this by leaving and not telling anyone. When the kitchen staff realized what happened (who knows how much later), they had to close the kitchen down to get it cleaned and sanitary again. It’s a hell of a story, anyways.

We asked three people for the bill, and each one said they would make sure we got it, and then disappear. When the bill finally came, it of course still had Ryan’s meal on it, but we decided it’s worth our time to just pay for it, if it will only save us from having to wait for who-the-fuck-knows how much longer for a new bill. We walked out of the restaurant at 9pm, ready to set the goddamn place and all its staff on fire.

Getting to visit with the guys a little

Because we were there so long waiting to eat, we got some good visits in. I asked Ryan if he was still choosing not to go exclusive with any one company, and he told me he felt it was just smarter, not to get locked down. He said he’s been feeling like he’s just doing the same thing over and over, with superhero comics, and he’s losing interest in it. He said he wants to write his own stories, but he he’s having difficulty convincing editors to give him a chance. He mentioned a few of his story ideas, and I think they sound like fun. Of course, I have a bias for noir-type elements, and his stories would fall into those worlds. That was what caught my eye about his work when I first became aware of him. How his worlds were so shadow-filled, and dark.

Ryan and Mick were saying that at every convention, they only make one request, and that is that they don’t be placed near the porn stars. And they are still put over by the porn stars together, most every convention. (So if you can’t ever find them, now you know where to look.) This weekend, they said they were right by this woman who would offer willing men to use what she called her “hot seat.” I believe they would pay her, and then she would invite them to come back behind her table, and she and her john would both kind of squat down, so we couldn’t see exactly what was going on, and they’d be down there for a little while, and then when they finished whatever secret things they were doing, the guy would come back out again. “The hot seat.” I’m beginning to think I need to come up with a gimmick like that…

We discussed our personal “arch-nemeses” in the convention circuit. What’s hardest for a lot of us is the sketchers. The guys who make money drawing sketches of Wolverine or the Hulk or Spawn. What’s frustrating is that they’re so successful at it. It riles me to think how much more money they’re making than I could ever hope to make at a convention. I’ve got books! I published them! I’ve gotten paid to do professional work! My self-published work is a professional product! Why, o why?! It’s clearly just jealosy.

We were sitting across from a sketcher this week, who was always strutting around and talking really loud, so that we could hear any interesting thing he had to say. And he looked pretty busy the whole convention. And he had usually three or more people swarming around him non-stop, often a whole gaggle of them at his table.

He strutted over once to introduce himself, and looked over my books and accidentally dropped one. He picked it up and apologized, then strutted back to his booth.

Mick said, once he came to a convention at this very convention center, and as he pulled his car into the parking garage, his engine caught fire. He leapt out in stark fear and confusion, and one of his personal “arch-nemeses” happened to be right there. This “arch-nemesis” acted cool and fast. He took action into his own hands, disregarding his own safety, grabbed Mick’s fire extinguisher from Mick’s inexperienced, panicked hands, and put the fire out like a pro, saving Mick’s car, which seriously could have exploded or been totaled by the fire damage. Mick laughed, and said he had to admit that his antagonism stemmed from him saving Mick and making him not feel like a man.

Lots of good laughs.

Originally, I was just planning on going down to this convention and having some fun. Not getting a table or trying to sell books. Just going down and flipping through some back-issue bins and relaxing, like ol’ times. This has been a historically fairly small convention. I remember one year it was held in what looked like a gym. People had told me that one year felt like a hotel convention, just in a tiny room somewhere. So I wasn’t expecting much.

But as it got closer, we learned Adam Hughes was going to be there, and we thought it would be a good chance to see him and Allison again, and hopefully spend some time with them, after our nice visits at the Orlando Con.

Then Eduardo Risso was listed. And then we learned Sergio Aragones would be there, and Thomas Yeates. And our friends Ryan Sook and Mick Gray. Then Charles Vess and Arthur Adams and Travis Charest were listed. And then all of a sudden, it said Bill Sienkiewicz was coming out. I was getting steadily more impressed by the guest list. All these people I was either looking forward to trying to get pin-ups from, or who had done pin-ups. Also, it was announced to be a two-day convention. So it was shaping up to be a potentially very decent con.

Elizabeth finally said, if we’re going down there to see all these people anyways, it would be worth it to pay for the table, just so she would have a place to sit down. She’s now up to six months pregnant, after all.

So a couple weeks before the convention I sent in my table fee, and we were official.

Visiting the convention website, I noticed that Eduardo Risso was no longer listed. I assumed this meant he wasn’t coming after all. But even without him…what a list.

We got to the convention and set up. We learned early on that morning that Bill Sienkiewicz and Charles Vess had cancelled. No surprise with Bill, because a couple of times, we’d gone to conventions that he was supposed to appear but did not. Then it was listed Travis Charest would only appear Sunday (which he did not). The guest list became more and more sparse as the hours passed.

When I came in, Ryan Sook called out my name, so we said a quick hello before going over and setting up our table. The last time I’d seen him, he told me about his secret next project, which would be with Howard Chaykin. He said it’s okay for him to announce now that this project is Iron Man, and it will be a six-issue telling of his origin.

After setting up, I went straight over to Adam Hughes, because I had this foolish idea that maybe I’d be early enough to get on his list for convention sketches, and he’d have time and be willing to do a sketch for me of a giant monster, that I could include in my comic. By the time I got there, maybe a half hour into the convention, they had already closed their sketch line for the whole weekend. Man, he’s in demand. I saw someone who said he had gotten to the con at 5:30 in the morning, and waited at the door, just to make sure he got a sketch from Adam. So I was out of luck. However, I got to say a quick hello to him and Allison. He was already drawing away. I think it’s difficult for him to visit and draw, and Allison tended to keep the visiting going. I asked if they’d be able to have dinner, but they were having dinner with the convention runners. Strike. Strike. Strike. Ah well.

The convention started pretty slow, so I popped over and said hello to Ryan Sook and Mick Gray, who always sit together. I told Ryan I enjoyed how sparse his artwork was for X-Factor, and how much the colorist contributed. He said his colorist is actually a painter, and that he hadn’t consciously tried to be sparse. I flipped through his original art pages that he’d brought and realized, yeah, maybe he’s not any more sparse than he has been in previous projects. We’ve spoken in the past about how he doesn’t want to sign an exclusive contract with any one company, and he said he’s still happy that way.

I went and said hello to Sergio Aragones, who seemed to recognize me when I walked up, and even said, “Hi Chris.” I was impressed he remembered my name. I reminded him I was interested in a monster pin-up, and he asked to see my book again, to refresh his memory. When he saw it, he remembered it. We talked about the commission. I offered him a price, and he said, Oh no, absolutely not, that’s way too low. So I upped it, and he said, No, no, that wouldn’t nearly cover it. And we talked a little longer, with me asking him to give him a price and I’d see what I could do, and when I left he said he’d think about it, and come by my table later. At our last meeting at Wondercon, I’d left pretty hopefully, but after this talk, I felt less hopeful.  But we’d have plenty more interactions before the weekend was over.

I didn’t really sell any of the mini-comics that took a few weeks to throw together, that I made special for this con, and put aside everything else on my schedule for. The Doris Danger book continued to be the big seller, even though I’ve been selling it at Bay Area Cons already. It fascinates me that each con there are all these new people coming, even though all these conventions are in the same area, maybe fifteen minutes apart.

A table down from us, there were these guys who said they’d printed up these Kinkos sketchbooks and sold them at a different con for ten bucks each, and made five hundred bucks. They’d never had any published work, but I that sure wasn’t stopping them from doing so considerably better than me at conventions. I only make half that at each con if I’m lucky, at my best cons. What am I doing wrong?  Do I need to just abandon my dreams of making comics, and just do commission work for hire?  Why can’t I get this business thing down?

A guy across from us was doing sketch commissions, and he seemed busy the entire weekend, as opposed to us, who sat around selling nothing, visiting with no one.

Overall it was a decent first day. We were close to making the table back (It was a pretty damn cheap table), and that was really our only expense, besides some food and some gas. We felt confident we’d break even by the end of the convention.

As it closed, I peeked over at Ryan’s, and realized Adam Hughes was over there visiting with him. They hadn’t met, it turned out, but were both familiar with and admirers of each others’ work. Ryan was saying Marvel wanted him to do more covers, but he doesn’t really like that kind of work. He never knows what the story is going to be, and doesn’t like trying to come up with vague, anthemic poses for the same character over and over again. Adam was saying he was a little nervous about getting into sequential narrative again (he’s been telling us he’s got a top-secret new project coming soon, and that it will be comics stories and not the covers he’s been doing all this time). To get his mind geared up for it, he said he pulled out a notebook one day, and just started practicing drawing little scenes, to get his chops and frame of mind back for that kind of work. It was interesting to hear them talk, since they both felt comfortable in different arenas.

Wow!  One Hundred Diary Entries!

That’s right, a hundred diary entries! Can you believe it, fans? Who would have thought we, here at Salt Peter Press, could have made a hundred posts about self-publishing comics, without going bankrupt and giving up on self-publishing first! Give us a round of applause!

Here’s to another successful five or ten more posts, at least!

-Rob Oder, Editor-in-Chief, Tabloia Weekly Magazine!

* * *

I decided I wanted to have something new to sell at Super-Con, because this is my third Bay Area convention in four months. I’ve been toying with doing some mini-comics ever since APE-Con in April, and I decided that this would be a perfect, quick and easy project to put together.

I scoured all my notes of Dr. DeBunko story ideas, and found three that I thought were funny enough to use as my stories. I developed and completed the scripts, which were already basically completed in plot/sketch format. What can I say? They’re one joke, leading to a conclusion, so once you get the idea, they’re pretty easy to execute.

I picked one out, and drew it as a regular two page Dr. DeBunko comic story. But I drew each page with six, identically sized panels on each page. I put four of these panels on each side of an 8 ½” x 11” piece of paper. Then I cut them in half and folded them, and voila! Instant twelve-page mini-comic! Each mini-comic page was one panel of the regular comic. Now, however, the panels (pages) are a little larger than they would be in a comic book, just because of the size of dividing an 8 ½” x 11” piece of paper in quarters.

So not only do I have a completed mini-comic, but then it’s also two pages of Dr. DeBunko comic, which I can include later in a Dr. DeBunko collection. If I do three of these, that’s six pages toward the next Dr. DeBunko comic. So from a marketability standpoint, it generates re-useable stories, which will have a new format (and therefore a fresher and exciting variation) for each use. Right? Right?

But what a nightmare it turned out to be, trying to print these myself.

I had hoped to make three of these, but it became evident I would only get two done before the con. One was two pages (twelve panels), and one was three (eighteen panels). With five weekdays to spare, I had the art finished and scanned, and it took me the rest of the week to get them print-ready, printed, cut, stapled, and folded.

I had to size the scans for a comic-sized full page (6.625”x10.25”) for my later use, then resize the images to fit four panels on 8 ½” x 11”.

Then I had to dizzyingly make sure each panel was on the right page, so that when they were cut and folded, they would still be in order. That took a lot longer than I thought. I cut two pieces of paper in half, folded them in half, and made a sixteen page “comic” with these. This would account for an extra four pages of text, which I always account for in my comics. I numbered each page and left them otherwise blank. When I took it apart to see how the numbers were lain out, I had a guide for which pages to lay out where.

I found that even with this ingenious, masterful, fool-proof guide, I would still screw it up here and there while I was laying things out, and then have to fix it. The way I found out was that I would lay it out, then print it, cut it and fold it, proof-read it, and then realize it was still all screwed up. I would have pages in the wrong order. I would have the same page more than once. I would be missing a page, and not be able to figure out which page was missing.

In addition, some things just didn’t look as good as I had visualized them, once I saw them on the new pages, side by side with whatever page they were on. So I would have to make artistic decisions to change a couple things once I printed out and reprinted my mock-copies. Or one image would be too high and not line up with the other, and I’d have to tweak it until it lined up. Sometimes I’d have to do a few tries before I got it right.

I don’t know why, but I decided to just print these mini-comics at home on my home printer. I figured the quality would be better than making Kinkos copies of them. I now suspect it wouldn’t make much difference, except in the amount of frustration, horrendous cost, and time I could have saved.

Once the prep-work was finished, and I felt confident with my mock-ups, I printed page one. I’d bought some fancy paper for the interiors, and fancier thicker stock for the covers. I made fifteen copies. I had wanted to make 50 copies, but the printer would only do fifteen at a time. Thank God, because I never could have hoped to have gotten fifty of these things finished.

I loaded these pages back into the printer, making sure that page two wouldn’t just print on top of page one, with a blank page on back. Then I did the same with pages three and four, etc.

I got it almost all right. But as I got more tired or more impatient I would inevitably screw something up. I would inevitably print two pages on one side. Or print page two upside down. And then all the work, and all the paper, and all the ink, and all the time, was wasted, and I’d have to reprint both sides again fifteen times.

On top of my human errors, the printer had these funny little quirks. Goddamn fucking piece of shit, they were funny little quirks. One cute little quirk was how it would occasionally leave line-streaks through random images. Also, I was burning through the ink cartridges so fast, if I wasn’t careful the ink would run out, and print an image that looked awful with its lightened streaky “almost-out-of-ink”-printing.

On top of this, for some reason, every few pages or so, the printer would pull two pages through at once, and then print the last page onto the back of a wrong page, thereby ruining both pages. Or it would pull a little of one page and the rest of another page through, and print half the image on each sheet, ruining all of them. And of course this seemed like it only happened when I’d already printed the backs of these pages, doubling the “redo” load, having to reprint two for the price of one.

I bought a special comic-book stapler that’s long enough it can put staples in the center of the pages, over four inches in. I also bought a paper cutter. So while some pages printed, I started cutting the others. When I had enough, I would organize the pages so they were in the right order, and not backwards or upside down.

I ended up getting twenty of each of the two books printed, and that burned through three black-and-white cartridges and one color.

Once everything was printed, I started stapling. I knew I’d better re-check each comic, one by one, to make sure I hadn’t accidentally screwed any of them up. I had the foresight to do this before I stapled them, because I didn’t trust that I could have organized all the pages properly. Sure enough, I managed to screw maybe a quarter of these up without having realized it.

I also forgot to print the backs of ten of the covers. This I didn’t notice until they had been cut, and until I’d stapled the first one.

At first I tried to come up with ways to unstaple, reprint half pages in the printer, and re-staple, but I realized how chintzy it looked, not to mention I had to do new “half-page” layouts to print, and the printer would jam trying to feed half-pages into it, or the half-pages would get stuck deep inside the printer and I couldn’t get them out. Finally I just started over again, rather than tearing my printer out of the wall and hurling it through my glass window into the street.

So as easy as that, I had everything finished and packed and ready to go to the con around 1am, after five days of JUST trying to get the stuff printed. God damn…Whew…pant pant…

And I just know every self-publisher of mini-comics has had to go through all this exact same stuff…

 

Just the same, I enjoyed the process, and plan to do I think about four more (hopefully before San Diego). For the next batch, however, I’ll just run them to Kinko’s.

 

Finding myself feeling frustrated this month. I think it kicked off when I had a disappointing phone call with the Frazettas.

I had been given Frank Frazetta’s phone number by Frank Frazetta Jr. (which was pretty exciting and scary). I was told to speak with Mrs. Frazetta. I called her and told her I’d been given her number by her son, and had he told her about my situation? No, he hadn’t. I suddenly felt so spellbound and confused, I didn’t know what to say, or where to start.

I began to ask about commissions, and she said he wasn’t doing commissions. I started to ask about letting me pay for publishing rights of one of her husband’s previously drawn monster drawings. I began to describe my book, and all the names who had given me pin-ups so far. She asked what company I was with. I told her I was a self-publisher, and told her about my book with Sam Kieth for Oni. She said she wasn’t interested, and that I had interrupted their dinner. And that was my call with the Legendary Frank Frazetta! Oh how humiliating and embarassing. Good work, Chrissy!

* * *

I sent out a mailer, and was given lots of GREAT advice by a noted comics store owner, who really knows the business. It’s so overwhelming, because there’s just so much to do, and I don’t really want to do all this business work. I just want to draw. I just want to write.

So the advice was sobering and frustrating. It made evident all these things I feel like I’m doing wrong, or not doing. Even though it was all good, important advice. I feel like I want to just have someone be able to do it all for me, but whenever I try and go out to conventions, or send out emails to publishers, no one is interested in me as a commodity.

Here’s the advice he gave.

Come up with a concise catch-phrase to describe my book. Always list the book title, size, format, price, and item number. Make advertising tools available to stores at my website, such as flyers, posters, etc. Work with my distributor to offer deals to stores, such as, “If you buy so many of these, I’ll give you one of these.” And basically be relentless and work my ass off about forcing the project out there onto people.

He is the man who gave me an in to what I call the comics secret society. It’s actually called the Comic Book Industry Alliance, or CBIA. It’s a website for comics industry professionals only, including a lot of stores, and I can post when I release books, or have promotions or whatever. So I posted a blurb about my upcoming Lump trade paperback, and no one commented on it, so I posted my previously published Doris Danger monster book, and a couple people commented on it, but no one tried to order it. One person recommended I be careful about offering too good a deal, because then stores will just order through me, and my distributor’s orders will come down and not make the minimums, and then I’ll screw myself out of having a distributor. Too true, except… As it is, my orders suck enough at Diamond that they have a perfectly good right to dump me already. And to slap me while I’m down, no one bothered to take me up on the good deal I had offered anyways.

I just don’t know how to get my books out there in people’s hands. I feel like I try, and no one’s interested. And why should they be? I’m an unknown, and there are so many great, great artists out there doing professional books for big companies, that people actually hear about and are interested in. Am I doomed to just keep trying, and no one will ever be interested, or is there honestly an audience out there that’s just itching to find me, but just hasn’t found me yet?

I’ve been trying to get my humongous Doris Danger treasury distributed for bookstores. I sent a copy and a cover letter to my distributor, at his request, and he said he’d forward it to their bookstore representative. He said it would probably take a few weeks to get word back. After a month I checked in, and my distributor said no word yet, but he wasn’t expecting anything, in part because the bigger format is a tougher sell to bookstores. I replied by saying, “Man, this is a tough industry. There are sixteen big-industry names attached to that book, and you’re telling me bookstores still don’t think they can sell it.” He wrote again to say bookstores are looking for content and a hook. So I read the email a few times. And I’m feeling negative and thinking. Content: there are FIFTEEN PIN-UPS by THE GREATEST ARTISTS IN COMICS, and stories INKED BY THE GUY WHO INKED THE ORIGINAL GIANT MONSTER GENRE FORTY YEARS AGO. Hook? Drawings of giant monsters by MIKE MIGNOLA, SAM KIETH, LOS BROS HERNANDEZ, TONY MILLIONAIRE, GENE COLAN, JOHN SEVERIN, MIKE ALLRED, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, RYAN SOOK, STEVE RUDE… And besides, it’s KIRBY-STYLE GIANT MONSTERS! It’s like, is he saying my books just don’t have any content, and I need to come up with something decent for my subject matter?! He’s my representative. Shouldn’t he appreciate what I’m doing?

And of course, that’s not what he’s saying. But DAMN…

Add to this that I got the order numbers for my Lump Trade Paperback, and they were very low. A piddly 142 sales. It makes me feel like I must personally know every one of those people who ordered it, those numbers are so low.

Keep in mind, this is the first comic story I wrote and completed, and I really think it’s such a hell of a good story. It’s got everything I like to see in a story: lots of shadows, private detectives, mad scientists, creepiness, disturbing images and ideas, mad scientists, a barn full of bodies, mystery, pseudo-intellectual post-modernism. I was very proud of the story’s construction and subject matter. And producing this story is so important to me. And it got nothing.

My wife tries to force me to look on the bright side, and she points out that even though the numbers were smaller, the more expensive cover price made me more money than four of my five Tabloias. But on the other hand, that book cost me $4831.75 to print and get mailed to me. I made back $806.70 from those pathetic 142 sales. So my most personal, most personally important comic was my worst financial hellhole yet, with an utter, instant loss of $4000. That’s a lot of money. I’ve been told by other self-publishers that you lose money on the comics you print, but you can make your money back with the trades. So I’ve managed to make MINUS FOUR THOUSAND on the books that you’re supposed to make your money back!

Believe it or not, I still felt pretty proud that I made that 800 bucks…

* * *

If I settle down and take a deep breath, I’m forced to acknowledge that this month hasn’t been all frustrations. When I stop dwelling on all the failed marketing and poor sales I’m doing.

I went to a wedding, and Sam Kieth was there as well, so Elizabeth and I got to spend some time with Sam. This was a real rare treat, because Sam pretty much never comes out for anything, or lets us see him. He told us about his Batman Joker project, and how that’s going to be followed by a Batman Lobo series. He said that’s it for the Batman stuff though, presumably because Batman Joker hasn’t been selling well. Of course, whenever Sam tells you about anything, he makes it sound like nothing is ever going right.

He talked about working on the next story in the Ojo series, “My Inner Bimbo.” This is the book he had originally asked me to do, before I got bumped over to Ojo. He said he’s tried to explain it to people, and they don’t get it. They think it’s a porn book, or they think it’s a gay porn book. He keeps trying to tell them, No, it’s not that, you’ve got to read it, and then it will make sense.

I bugged Sam, because he wouldn’t let me take a picture of him at San Diego, and I think he felt guilty about it. So I pointed out that he was dressed up now, and could we do a picture. And he agreed this time. We snapped some fun photos, and before I knew it, Sam and his wife had to leave.

I told Elizabeth after, Sam is one of those people, I could spend a whole lot of time with him, and afterwards, still not feel like I’ve spent enough time with him. I was disappointed, when he left, that he had to go.

I wrote Steranko recently. I keep emailing him on occasion, not because I expect to ever hear from him, but just so I can say I tried. And lo and behold, I check my messages, and Steranko has emailed me. So I timidly, carefully brace myself to check it, half expecting his usual playful insults and meanness, and instead he’s the friendliest I’ve ever heard from him. He wrote as if we were ol’ buddies. I think, Who is this, who got onto Steranko’s computer and replied to his emails? But I know it’s him, because the wit is dry and sharp and sarcastic as ever.

He said he’s really busy, because he just landed a job doing Batman and Superman covers. Wow, that’s quite a gig. He says maybe in a few months! Maybe in a few months? Wow! I write him back to let him know I’ll be at San Diego, and that E and I are having a baby. He writes a second letter! He’s still in his friendly mood, congratulates us on our little one on the way, and visits as if maybe he’ll be doing a pin-up for me! What the hell…Amazing.

I’ve decided to pound out some mini-comics of Dr. DeBunko, and I want them ready for Super-Con May 20-21. I had hoped to get three finished, but I’m barely going to have two ready. Just the same, I think it will be nice to have some new merchandise for my third convention in the Bay Area since February.

I’m really enjoying doing these mini-comics. I think the format looks real sharp. It’s one panel per page, 5 ½” x 4 ¼”. I like that they’re so much cheaper than actual comics, they’re smaller and quicker and easier to read, but they’re still twelve or twenty pages. I’m curious to see if anyone buys them and likes them, and kind of excited about doing more of them.

I realize the limitations of Dr. DeBunko at this point, if I don’t ever get into some characterization. The stories are so formulaic. At some point I’ll have to try some new things (of which I have plenty in mind, incidentally). But screw it, I’m enjoying them as they are for now. I just don’t know how long I can sustain it before people get bored of the formula.

I’m going to try to get three actual comics out in stores by the end of the year. I want to do two sixteen page Doris Danger comics, and a 32-page collection of all the Dr. DeBunko mini-comics and stories from Tabloia. I fear the Dr. DeBunko formula might wear thin if people try to read a full issue of his adventures. It makes me wonder if I might need to include a bonus origin story, or day in the life, or something to make the character less one-dimensional. But I don’t want to think about this kind of thing right now.

I assume Diamond would agree to distribute these three books (two sixteen-page Doris Dangers and a Dr. DeBunko 32-page collection), especially if I publish all three on a monthly schedule. But of course I could be out of luck with that as well. It makes me wonder if I should just screw the self-publishing and do a bunch of minis for a while, since I’m enjoying them so much anyways, and they’re not such an enormous financial loss.

Got a reply letter from Frank Frazetta’s son, right before we left for APE. He said, before he forwarded my email to his father, he wanted to know how much I expected to spend. He also said his father would keep the art.

I explained as best I could that I’m a starving self-publisher, and keeping the art is one of my only benefits, in losing so much money, every issue I put out. I made an offer to publish and keep the art. It was the best offer I could afford. I told him, if it’s not enough for his time and talents, I certainly understand. I asked, if that’s the case, for them to tell me what his going rate is to buy rights to publish a piece, and then I’ll have to decide if that price is worth it to me, to not have anything in hand afterward, except the knowledge and the ego that I was able to print a Frazetta in one of my books. How much money is that ego worth to me? I don’t yet know…

After replying to him, I felt a sudden wild hair itching, and sent an email out to Steranko, once again offering a payment for a pin-up, but asking, the same way I asked the Frazettas, if there’s a way I could keep the artwork.

It’s now been a few days, and we’re back from APE-Con, and I haven’t yet heard from either of these two legends. I don’t expect to hear from Steranko, and I only vaguely hope to hear back from the Frazettas. I fear if I hear from either of them, I’ll just have to find out I can’t afford to get anything from them.

Today, Monday after the con, was a day of unpacking and emailing.This is the way it is after every convention.I have to reorganize and put away all the books I brought and didn’t sell.I have to go through all the business cards I came home with, and try and remember who all of them are, because I took poor notes during the frantic, crazy con.Usually they’re all people who came up to my table, and they want me to use their printing services, or their button-making services, or pay them to let them design a toy from my characters, or use some other service they offer, or spend money to be advertised in their book or magazine or fanzine, or check out their website.I have to go through all the comics that other people gave me.I flip through them all but usually throw them all away. I make a special effort, if I befriended someone, to really read through their work.There just isn’t the time to go through all this stuff, and there are so many things I actually WANT to read, that I bought with my own money, and that I haven’t had time to get to.It’s frustrating, and it’s sad, and I do the same thing and give my stuff to everyone and hope everyone will look at it and fall in love, and most likely everyone just does what I do and if I’m lucky flips through it, but still throws it out too.

I always try to send out emails to everyone I see at the con, and make sure they know what a nice time I had with them. I emailed JH Williams III, Mario Hernandez, and James from Isotope Comics.

Then I realized I had better call John Severin, if I’m going to put out a War monster book. His wife answered, and was quite sweet. For the previous pin-up, I had always only spoken with her. I said I was such a fan, and enjoyed his first pin-up so much, I just thought I’d see if he might be willing to do a second one for me, this time with a war theme. I told her about the other war pin-ups artists I had so far: Dick Ayers, Sam Glanzman, and Russ Heath. She said he was just mailing off a project today, so he would have time to do something new. What timing! Then she said, hold on a minute, John just came home, she’ll put him on the line. She did.

I said, wow, it’s such an honor to talk to you on the phone, Mr. Severin. And he laughed. He said the only problem is that he has no idea what kind of uniforms the military is wearing right now. I explained that he didn’t have to do a current military piece. That he could do any kind of war scene he wanted. He perked up and said, oh, how about a cavalry piece. Wow! That would be great! Then he asked about the monster. I explained that was up to him, and he could do any kind of monster he wanted, or if he preferred, just draw a hand reaching down, or a foot stomping, or a shadow. He said, I see, and you know how sometimes you just think you can hear people thinking it over? So Severin completes my collection of war pin-ups for this new issue, since I’ve repeatedly bugged Joe Kubert, and he’s consistently said that he’s not interested.

John put his wife back on the phone to discuss what he would charge. He said she’s in charge of determining that. I was building up in my head a way to tell her I lost money on all my issues, and is there any way he might be able to work a little less expensively on this new project. I reminded her what I’d paid them the first time, and before I said anything else, she said, right, so maybe this time we could go more expensive. I think I literally gasped out loud, and then made my same explanation just to try to get his original price again. I can’t wait to see a civil war piece by John Severin with a giant monster in it!

I tried calling George Tuska for the second time, and again no answer.Then, since I was in the pin-up getting mode, I sent emails out to Gilbert Hernandez and Tony Millionaire, to see if they might let me commission another pin-up from them.Felt like a pretty productive day, even though I didn’t get any drawing done.

I received in the mail an envelope from the Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award. When you get an envelope like that, you’re ready to call your parents and friends and tell them you’re an award winner. The letter inside was an application to apply. After getting over my rush that I was this year’s Promising Newcomer, and then realizing I wasn’t, I was flattered that they would send me a letter. It made me wonder if someone asked them that I be made aware. More likely, they got the vendor list from APE or last year’s San Diego Con, and sent bulk mailings. But I can dream, can’t I, that maybe someone tipped them off that I do decent comics. I put a package together and sent it to them with hope in my heart.

While trying to find the email of Joe at Flying Colors Comics, I found on his website a links page to “Friends of Lulu.” Of all the links listed, it was maybe the only organization I wasn’t familiar with, so I looked it up, and immediately donated to them. Its goal is to get female readers into comics, and to support women who create them. Now I can boldly claim that I’m a Friend of Lulu, as well as a card-carrying Skeptic. Supposedly, Lulu will send me a card too, and then I can boldly claim I’m a card-carrying Friend of Lulu.

I sat down with a pen and piece of paper. I wrote down the numbers one to sixteen in a column, and then I wrote Cover, Inside Cover, Back Cover, Inside Back Cover below the numbers. And then I began charting out how many pages I need to put together before I’m done with “Doris Danger’s Greatest All-Out War Battles.” I’ve got a four page story done, and now, a complete roster, five pages, worth of pin-ups. Dick Ayers, a two-page Russ Heath spread, Sam Glanzman, and John Severin. I really wish I could have convinced Joe Kubert, but he was clearly not interested from the start. I’ve come to accept it now, at least.

So that’s nine pages out of twenty (sixteen pages plus covers) completed. One page will be letters, and one page will be introductions. I’m quickly realizing I won’t be able to fit nearly as much as I thought in. But on the other hand, I barely have any pages left to draw! This is going to be great!

I called George Tuska again this evening, and Dorothy, his wife, informed me George was working on the piece. She asked, Now how much was I paying? I told her I was calling to see what he was charging! She said there were some great pictures in the book (I’d sent them a copy), and George loved projects like this. That’s really rewarding to hear from one of the industry’s legends.

April 9, 2006

After seeing the mini-comic awards, I began fantasizing about doing a mini-comic of my own. That would be a great excuse to pop out some Dr. DeBunko or Dick Hammer: Conservative Republican Private Investigator stories. And they would be relatively quick to produce. And then I could always print a dozen or so, sign and number them, and take them to cons. They’d be cheap and easy. And later, I could always republish the stories in a trade, once I’ve built up enough of them. Hm. Hmmmm…

I envision just taking a normal six-panel comic page, and making each of the panels one page for the mini-comic. The mini-comic could be twelve or twenty-four panels (pages), and it would only be as much work as a two- or four-page comic. I should be able to pop those out in no time.

At the con, Dan, the owner of my local comic shop, Bizarro World, popped by, and I talked about trying to figure out a format for my next Giant Monster book. When I originally conceived it, I’d tried to figure out a way I could print a few issues of stories, and then collect them in another treasury edition. But the only practical way would be to do sixteen-page comics. I didn’t want the commitment of doing 32- or even 24-page comics. That’s a real project, and too much work. But back when I was giving all this some thought, the problem I’d had with a sixteen-page book is that four or five pages would be artist pin-ups, and that only leaves eleven pages. I’ve used a format of five or six pages for each Doris Danger story, so that means there’s only room for two stories. Who the hell wants to only read two Doris Danger stories? It doesn’t make any sense to read two. You need at least three, otherwise you don’t get the joke (The joke being that each story ends with a cliff-hanger and begins with no mention of the previous cliff-hanger). And even worse, I would want to draw a few pages of splashes myself, and there wouldn’t be any room for these.

Alternatively, if I did three stories, there’s no room for any pin-ups. So originally I just decided, screw it, I’ll go straight to the treasury edition, and even though I really want to do issues first, I won’t.

Until I talked to Dan this weekend. Then I realized, I could still do four pages of splashes, and five pages of pin-ups, and that would leave an only minorly lengthened seven page story! It’s perfect! I guess I just didn’t do the math before, so I was resistant to it. But at the con, I realized, as long as the additional pages are nonsensical, non-consecutive events, it will work just fine. I could throw in all my side characters. The Republican scientist who was double-duped by the Army. The man who claims he became a monster. The monster-hating Christians. The redneck vigilantes. The old man who seems to know so much about the government’s mysterious giant monster activities… It’s the perfect format, actually!

So the only thing left to figure out is how cheaply I could get these printed. If I have to do a cover price higher than $2.50, no one is going to want to spend it on a weensy-little sixteen page comic, with only one seven page story. As it is, I’ll have to do everything I can to keep the price at $2, I think. Crank ‘em out on shitty newsprint or something. But for me it would be worth it.

So this is how the bulk of the day went by. With me scheming ways I can work on projects that get the most bang for the effort. Things I can package, and then repackage in different formats, and sell and re-sell.

I saw Al Gordon walk by, and called his name. He came over and I made him look at the giant monster book. He seemed to be really studying the art, and enjoyed the pin-ups. He asked, so you swiped all the Kirby art, and Dick Ayers inked them. I said, Right. Al started to tell me that he has a friend who buys a stack of comics at every convention, and sometimes they’ll get together over a couple beers, and they’ll go through the stack and try to figure out the inkers. I asked if his friend was Mario Hernandez (it was). Mario had told me Al could look at panels and tell the difference between inkers, just from looking at the rocks in the panel. Al said that the old comics, especially the romance comics, the work was put out by a bullpen, and you got the feeling these artists would get bored of the books they were working on, and swap. So often, different artists were mixed in page to page, panel to panel, and sometimes one artist would do a figure, and another the background, or things like that.

I asked him who he thought inked Fantastic Four #1. He said he thought it was the same person who did #1 and #2. I don’t know who that is, and don’t remember who he named. I said, supposedly that’s the big mystery. He shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t a mystery to him.

At one point, some guy was wandering by, and he slowed down as he passed my table, and came to a stop, and just kept staring at my prints of giant monsters. He kept staring, which I always take to be a good sign, because it means they’re interested by them. I said, Do you like the old Kirby-style giant monsters? He smiled and kept quiet, and after a pause, finally said, You spelled impenetrable wrong! And he thought he was so clever. He just stood there and smiled, and I didn’t say anything and waited for him to go away. What can you say at that point?

As the day was almost over, Mario Hernandez came by, and I broached getting another pin-up from him. He said he was going to ask, but he thought I had started working on a different book now. I told him that had been the plan, and I’d gotten in about thirty pages with something else, but decided to go back to the monsters. Mario said he’d totally do another monster, and he got kind of quiet about things after that. But I realized he was brainstorming in his head for monster ideas, and finally he said, Okay, I think I’ve got an idea for another monster. I told him I wanted to contact Gilbert too, but that Jaime was too expensive. He laughed.

I got talking with Mario about professional wrestling. He said he remembers matches like Pedro Morales unmasking some masked guy on live tv, back when he was a kid. Things like that used to be such a big deal. Talk about the ultimate humiliation for a masked wrestler. The ultimate e-MASK-ulation.

He said he used to study the wrestling interviews, before the matches. Each wrestler had a different technique for their interview. Hulk Hogan would stand quietly, and listen to his interviewer, maybe with his hands folded in front of him, like he really was concentrating, and interested in the intellectual discussion the interviewer was giving. Then all of a sudden he’d explode and shout, in his booming low, gravel voice, “WELL YOU KNOW MEAN GENE HULKAMANIA IS RUNNING WILD!” And just get shouting.

And then he pointed out how Rowdy Roddy Piper would shout so fast and hysterically and have so much to say, he would keep shouting while he breathed out or in.

I saw Dan Vado, who I knew was the head of Slave Labor Graphics, walk by. I ran out from behind my table with a Doris Danger book. I got his attention, and startled him a little. I told him he had given me a very nice portfolio review back when I was just getting started, and I really appreciated that. He looked over the book and seemed impressed. I name-dropped having done a book with Sam Kieth, and he seemed impressed by that. I wonder if people are really impressed, or if they just think I’m an asshole to be name-dropping all the time, and give the response they think will best alleviate my aggression?

When the con was just about finished, I had Elizabeth go to a few of the stores who had booths, and see if anyone would buy some Doris Danger books. She sold twenty copies between three shops. One of the sales was as a result of James at Isotope (whose party we’d been at last night) stopping by OUR booth and saying he wanted to pick some up. He was a lot of fun to visit with. He was the one who, back at Wondercon, had jokingly started calling my Tabloia book, “To BLOW ya.” I had sent an email to him about this a couple months ago, and when he popped by the table, he apologized, and said my email had been in his Spam filter all this time, and he had just found the email.

Overall, we made back our table, and that’s really all we can expect. Some embarrassments with Matt Groening and Chris Staros, but on the other hand, it was a LOT of fun visiting with Jim Williams and Mario Hernandez. I’m really fond of them both, and little things like that make the con feel damn fun.

APE-Con April 8, 2006

Saturday night of APE-Con. The store, Isotope, was having a party to announce the winner of its mini-comic award, and JH Williams III had said he was planning to show up there. He came in around ten pm, and came right over with us, and he hung out and we visited for an hour or so.

We got talking about music. It sounds like he listens to a lot of music, all the time. A wide variety too. He said his genre of choice is gothic, and he recommended the band, HIM (“His Infernal Majesty”). He said everyone he’s made listen to the band at first thinks they’re okay, but then it grows on them, and next thing, they think they’re the greatest band ever. I think, these tend to be the best bands. When they do something that rubs you funny, but you realize you can’t get them out of your head, and you’re thinking about them all the time, and you have to keep listening to them and try to figure them out, and before you know it you’re starting to understand what they are and what they’re doing, and then you realize they’re quite good, actually. This was my experience with my favorite band ever, the Pixies.

I told Jim that even though it had been over a year since he’d done a monster pin-up for me, I was planning to not include it when I release my next new issue, and then put him in the NEXT one. I explained that the next book was going to be “Greatest Army Battles,” and so naturally I’d have to wait until “Outer Space Adventures” to include his pin-up. He laughed that clearly I was just waiting for his career to hit its pinnacle, so that I could cash in the most with publishing his piece.

Someone at the party asked what his next project is, and he said it’s still unofficial, but it better become official soon, because he’s already done nine pages. He was offered Detective Comics, DC’s shining star of comics. He said that Dan Didio, who’s in charge of DC Comics, came to him during a DC dinner party during Wondercon, and took him aside and said, You know I love your art, right? If you want Batman, he’s yours. Quite high praise. Batman is the character that sustains DC. He’s their biggest draw and money-maker, so offering it to Jim was a very big deal, in his oppinion.

He brought up that he hadn’t originally planned to go to Wondercon a couple months ago, but then last minute, ended up showing up. Now, he told me why. Grant Morrison had made a special guest appearance at Wondercon, and Grant asked Jim if he could come out so that they could discuss his ideas for the second installment of Seven Soldiers. Also, Grant had a creator-owned project that he wanted to do with Jim. So that’s why Jim came to Wondercon.

Jim said he knew Grant would be at Wondercon, but he didn’t know where, except at the Isotope party. At the time, he was having difficulties with Desolation Jones, and was feeling frustrated. Then he went to the Isotope party, and people were coming up to him, saying how excited they were that he was doing a creator-owned project with Grant. And he and Grant hadn’t even worked this out yet. Then Grant announced the same thing at the following day’s panel discussions.

So between this, and being offered Batman, Jim’s mood turned right around. He said it’s proof that metaphysics is real. He was having a rough time, and the universe answered.

Jim talked about working on the Batman pages. He said that the monthly Batman books have a look and style for the art, and he wasn’t interested in contributing to more of this formula. If he’s going on a Batman book, he’s going to push boundaries. He said he submitted pages to his editor, and he tried a technique for an action scene. His editor told him he had been staring at the page for an hour, and at first he didn’t think he liked what Jim had done, but after an hour he changed his mind and decided it was REALLY cool. And that’s exactly how Jim wants it. Like what he considers to be the best music. For people to feel a little uncomfortable with what he’s doing, or not understand it, but for it to affect you, and you need to keep looking at it and thinking about it and studying it, and when you’re through you realize it’s pretty fuckin’ awesome.

He said he’s made a list of writers he would like to work with, and he’s been able to slowly go through and cross these great names off his list, one at a time.

He said he began inking his own work after Promethea. He said Mick Gray is a machine with linework. His lines are really amazingly accurate and geometrical and precise. Also, he’s really fast. Jim admitted he isn’t as precise as Mick, but he’s shown his own inkings to a number of people whose judgements he respects, and they’ve given positive feedback that encouraged him he’s doing well. When he showed Arthur Adams, Arthur just said, It looks good, and you should ink all your stuff from now on. Now that Jim has begun inking himself, he says he can’t see letting an inker do the work anymore.

We talked about how a sloppy line can have an energy, even with its inaccuracies. I told him about a carpenter I knew, who carves furniture by hand. His skills are such that he could cut a perfect circle, but when he does furniture, he purposely makes them imperfect, because otherwise people don’t realize he actually did them by hand. People assume, if it’s too perfect, that it must be machine-cut, and people pay for imperfections when they buy “hand-made.” Art is similar, where sometimes you bare all the imperfections and mistakes, and it looks better than the perfect lines. The trick is to be able to do both, and make an artistic decision when it’s appropriate to use which.

I asked Jim’s technique, and he said he begins by inking with a pen. Then he fills in his blacks with a brush. From there, he studies the weights of the lines, and if something needs a bit more of a push, then he re-inks the pen lines with the brush, to thicken them accordingly.

What surprised me is that he said he’s stopped penciling. He begins his work with the pen, and works his way out. That’s gotta take some mental visualization to pull that off. I’m sure others have done it, but the only one I can think of is Sean Phillips for his Hellblazers. Jim said he has to be careful with panned out shots, because the tendency is to make heads too big in relation to their bodies. He said he has to ink inside where he thinks the lines should be, and that usually insures the proportions will turn out okay.

Hearing about all the successes Jim’s been having lately, I asked how long he’s been in comics. He said fourteen years. Yet again, here’s a very talented artist, who doesn’t just appear in comics, and everyone sees his talent and gives him jobs. He’s the same as everyone, where he’s had to work and work, and struggle, and finally after maybe ten or twelve years he started landing the good books. He said, the days of an overnight sensation, someone who puts out one book and becomes a superstar, ended after Arthur Adams.

I felt like Jim and I really connected at this party, and I look forward to spending more time with him.

Day One, Continued Yet again April 8, 2006

Later in the day, I hear Daniel Clowes has been signing down at the Fantagraphics booth, so I run down to try and bug him for the third year in a row. While I’m waiting in his line, I see Matt Groening, just milling around. Amazing! What’s he doing here? He doesn’t live around here. He and Bongo Comics don’t come to APE. I thought I would never find or see him! I thought I’d never hunt him down. And he’s just hanging out here, by the Fantagraphics booth.

I walk up and get his attention, and he says hello, shakes my hand. I say I’m surprised to see him here, and doesn’t he live in Oregon, or Washington? No, L.A., he says, and starts to turn away. I ask if I can show him something, and he kind of reticently turns back, with an unsure, Okay…

I show him the book, and he’s like, Really?Wow, this is amazing.This is great, and he flips through it.I’m trying to make the pitch, and before he gets to the pin-ups, he begins to close the book and hand it back.I say, And did you see there are pin-ups by Mike Mignola, Sam Kieth, the Hernandez Brothers?And now I fatally realize he’s losing interest fast.He continues to say, Wow, that’s great.It’s really good, but he just doesn’t have the emotion behind his words that he had in the start, and he’s trying to get away now.I’ve run out of time.I’ve lost him.I do ask if he ever has time for commissions of this sort, and now he’s walking away.No, he’s really got way too much on his plate.He hands the book back, and I tell him he could keep it if he would like it, but he replies that he’ll just buy a copy at his local store.I realize later that means that he doesn’t want one, and that he isn’t planning to buy a copy, but it was a polite way to handle the situation.I thank him and get back in line for Daniel Clowes.

I’ve fantasized about getting a pin-up from Matt Groening for a long time.The first time I met him, and showed him copies of my Dick Ayers-inked monster stories (at San Diego), he seemed to think they were really impressive.Now I begin to wonder if he’s just really polite, and when people show him things, this is his way of being supportive.It certainly makes you feel good.

Matt did a Madman pin-up for Mike Allred, and he did a gorgeous cover for DC’s Bizarro World book, which was full of indie artists doing DC superhero stories. So I naively hoped he might be willing to do something like this. At least, now, I know he’s not interested, and I can stop fantasizing about it. That was my best shot. My monster book is the best I can do, to show people what I’m up to. If they’re not interested after seeing that, I’ve got nothing else.

Except, of course, that I’m still going to try to pursue a pin-up from Bill Morrison. And you never know. Maybe if I’m the nicest guy Bill’s ever met, he could put a good word in for me to Matt. Ah, how the brain never stops scheming, even after it’s defeated.

Daniel Clowes acted like he remembered my stuff, the moment I said I’m the guy who does the Kirby-style monsters. He flipped through the book, and said, with a slightly tickled, slightly dumbfounded tone, that it has to be the most eccentric project he’s ever seen. I reminded him I’d love to get a pin-up from him, and he laughed that he’d be sure to put it on the top of his list. His sarcasm wasn’t so caustic that I felt humiliated. He said Fantagraphics forwards any of his emails, and I could contact him through them. He said they write him every day. So I told him, oh, okay, I see, if that’s what you want, then I WILL write everyday. He laughed again, and we parted with him telling me to write him at least every four hours.

We spotted Mario Hernandez, and shouted out his name, and he came over with his daughter, and as usual, hung out for a nice long while. I asked if he would be sitting at the Fantagraphics booth this weekend, and he said probably not. He offered to do it, but Fantagraphics said, I assume kind of unenthusiastically, that they’d be happy to make space, but it wasn’t necessary. We asked if he would be at San Diego, and he said maybe not this year. I told him I hadn’t sent my monster book to his brothers, and he said he was planning to give them copies when he saw them. He said he’s had the book by his bed, and his daughter is starting to notice it and ask him, What’s this? So he showed her, but she hasn’t seen the original Kirby stuff yet. So voila, I pull out the stack of Kirby books I had brought, and she starts flipping through them, and laughing at the names of the monsters, and their tag lines. She really liked, “The thing from nowhere.” I’ve got to admit, it’s a good one.

Mario had emailed me almost a year ago about a secret project Gilbert was working on, and it was going to be a superhero book. And I was really excited about this at the time, and anxious to see it, so I asked Mario about the status. He said Gilbert has been really busy, because he’s doing a new Palomar book. But what’s interesting is that Jaime did a story for Gilbert’s superhero book, and he got so into it, that he’s put aside all his other work. Love and Rockets is like three months behind schedule, and Jaime can’t stop working on these superhero stories he’s been doing. God, I can’t WAIT to see what comes of this.

Mario noticed my Lump trade is on the way, and he seemed like he thought that was cool. I’ve always felt intimidated by the cool indie guys. Like my borderline-mainstream work isn’t as valid. I told him I’m kind of ashamed that I enjoy the private detective horror stuff, and he thought it was nonsense to feel that way. He said, you gotta do what you love. He didn’t care. He just loves comics. He’s flipping through the Doris Danger book while he’s telling me this, and he tells me he thinks Steve Rude’s pin-up is amazing.

Day One, Continued, April 8 2006

Even though I assumed I wouldn’t make any money and would just be sitting around, I was kind of excited about coming to this convention. I was kind of excited about talking to publishers this week, since I had my humongous Doris Danger book to show them. Also, Larry at AIT-Planet Lar had emailed me that he read all the books I sent him, and wanted to talk to me about them at the con. Even though it was a sort of cryptic, mysterious message, of course it got my hopes up. I took the early morning while it was slow, and tried to pop by his booth. I met Larry, and he was very friendly, and seemed to like the book. I showed him a packet of newer material, and he took his time looking through all of it. He was positive. He said he liked the tabloid format, and said you could really tell how excited I was about the project, that the stories exuded that energy and fun.

I went by Fantagraphics and couldn’t find Gary Groth, who had been listed at the website to appear. As the weekend went on, I continually checked back, never asked where he was, and never saw him.

Back at my table, up walks JH Williams III, who I didn’t even know was coming to the con. He brought over a friend, and talked about my books to him, as though he was familiar with them and they were actually good books. He said how great the giant Doris book is, how he really liked the format. His friend noticed my flyer for the upcoming Lump trade, and Jim said, Yeah, that’s out in Previews now. It will be in stores in June. I’m impressed! I feel like I must be a real artist, if Jim Williams is bragging about and knows all the release dates of my books.

While we’re talking, along walks Chris Staros. “Chris!” I shout. He comes over and is very polite and friendly, and says hi to Elizabeth as if they’ve met (but I’m not sure if they have). I ask if he received my monster book in the mail, and he says he has, and the first thing he wanted to do was take it home and color in all the pages.

While he’s visiting with Elizabeth, who’s telling him we’ve got a baby coming, I ask Jim if he’s met Chris, and I realize they haven’t met. I find this interesting, because Jim was the one who had told me I should try Top Shelf, that he thought my stuff would be good at their company. He’d also told me about Alan Moore trying to get his “Lost Girls” published through them.

I introduce Chris, and Chris says, of course he knows who Jim is, as if he’s very aware of Jim and his work. And Jim says he had been meaning to speak with Chris, because he has a project in mind, that’s pretty out there, that he thinks would be a good book for Top Shelf. Right before my eyes, I’m watching deals in motion.

Jim said he’s going to start working on Detective Comics. What that means is he’s going to be doing Batman, the book that makes DC what it is. Chris made some cracks about how, well, Jim should keep applying himself in the industry, and maybe with hard work he could eventually work his way up and make a name for himself. He suggested Jim submit something to the Xeric Grant. Very funny, considering Jim’s last books have been with Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, and now Batman.

Chris mentions the Lost Girls book, because it’s getting ready to be released. I talk with Chris about how I heard he could get in some trouble due to the controversial (hard-core porn) nature, and that it’s very bold to publish something you know could upset a lot of people. He said he’s going to try to send it out to a lot of big, important books and reviewers and magazines, like Playboy, and try to get some support behind the book, so that when it comes out, battle lines will be drawn, so to speak, and he’ll have that on his side. He said maybe he’ll be publishing it from behind bars.

At some point along the way, I get distracted by other people coming up to the table, and after returning and a pause, I gesture to my books and say to Chris, I don’t know if you would ever consider publishing something like this. And Chris says, No, I’ve honestly seen nothing like it. It’s an amazing book. And I say, Wow, thank you, and he makes some other hugely complimentary statements, and I say, Thank you. And then he says, yeah, what Alan Moore did…and continues talking about Lost Girls. So finally I realize, when he heard me say “consider publishing something like this,” he was still talking about Lost Girls, the whole time, and not my book. And I’m frantically back-tracking in my mind, wondering if he realized I thought he was talking about my book. I follow the conversation from there, and make sure I’m talking about Alan Moore’s book, and if he realized I thought we were talking about my stuff, he was flawless about politely covering it up. How humiliating…

While things were really hopping at our table, Larry popped by with (I assumed) his business colleague, and asked me to give his friend my pitch about my book. And I idiotically gestured, This is the greatest book ever! And no one laughed, and I wondered what the hell I was thinking to say that. So I went through my pitch, and he politely flipped through the pages and nodded with a pleasant not-quite-smile, but didn’t seem particularly interested or impressed. And I felt my enthusiasm for my book getting sapped out of me, and wondering if I had just blown my big chance to get my book under someone’s publishing banner. Because it was so busy at the table, the two of them kind of discreetly disappeared.

I learned the next day that this gentleman was Larry’s lawyer, and this lawyer also represented Mike Mignola, Darrick Robertson, and others. It sounds like he’s an important man to have met. 

This is the first con I brought my laptop, and am writing at the con, when things are slow, to make sure I keep updated as to what things happen.

I came to the con feeling, this was basically my worst con last year for sales, and it basically felt like a waste of time being there. This year I brought a laptop, I brought a stack of Kirby monster reprints from the ‘70s, I brought paper and a ruler and pencils and pens in case I wanted to start drawing. I figured, if I just sat and drew or wrote for the entire two days, at least I’d get something done.

The first few hours were totally dead. Shockingly dead. No one was anywhere on the floor, and I’m not just talking the upper area tucked in back (where I was, for the second year in a row) that no one can see. I’m talking not even the lower level had any foot traffic.

TALKING TO INDIE ARTISTS

I spent a fair amount of time walking around and saying hello to all the indie artists I’m meeting and seeing at all the cons. Each convention, we befriend a few more people, who we sit by or near. And now I’m realizing I have so many people to go say hi to. It’s a lot of work. But I think it’s important to keep in touch and see how they’re doing and what they’re up to. A lot of them pop by the table and ask if I have anything new. Like they want to keep buying my stuff. It’s very rewarding knowing I’m beginning to build a fan-base of admirers, at least amongst the industry. Even though I still don’t sell many books, and there are just a few of these people out there. Even so, it helps me to fantasize that I’m a minor superstar of indie-books.

One person said they enjoy all the text I put in my comics. This is something I’ve often struggled with, because obviously I put way too much text in all my books. And I think it gets worse every issue.

Have you seen the Crumb documentary, where his brother drew comics as a kid, and each comic he did had more and more text, until finally there were just little tiny heads in the bottom corners of each panel, and eventually the drawings just disappeared? That’s my fear.

I have a friend who says my writing style reminds him of Ted Kosinski. I ramble and ramble and fill pages and pages with undecipherable nonsense.

On the one hand I feel like I could use an editor, but on the other, I kind of sickly enjoy putting so much text. I work and fret over every sentence, and realize it’s way too much, but want to say every little thing I squeeze in.

So at the con, this person who said he liked my text, he said it reminds him of Dave Simm’s Cerebus comic. I found that similarity interesting, because during my formative years, I loved Cerebus, and read all the text he included. At some point, in college, when I slowed down reading comics, I still enjoyed Cerebus and wanted to keep reading through them, but I knew what a commitment it would be, trying to get through all his text. Each issue would take me way too long to finish. I didn’t even necessarily agree with whatever he had to say. But for me, there was something about getting all the additional insights into his work. And perhaps more importantly, I really enjoyed how it helped me to know who this person was who was making this comic.

I told myself I could just not read all his text, but I couldn’t get myself to do that. I always feel like I have to read through something, and ingest all of it. I find I have to finish a novel I’ve started, even if I don’t enjoy it. I can’t turn a shitty movie off. It’s a perverse, maybe slightly neurotic (autistic?) problem I have. So isn’t it interesting that my love/hate of these kinds of text pages would develop and mutate in my own comics. And isn’t it interesting that someone is nurturing that sick habit of mine, and encouraging me to continue.

Someone asked about commissioning me to draw a monster again. I told him I’d recently done one for $100, and he said he’d pay me at least $125. Uh oh…Two requests for commissions in two conventions. Does this mean my rates are going to have to go up now?

It makes me think I should start bringing original art to conventions to sell.

This weekend, one self-publisher I see and say hi to all the time came over and actually looked at my stuff for the first time. I don’t think he realized that I have such a roster of pin-up artists. He looked dumbfounded flipping through my book. And then he realized I’d done a book with Sam Kieth. He got real quiet about it. Then he kind of timidly asked if I might ever do a pin-up for his book, and I told him I’m just so busy trying to do all my own projects right now, I just don’t have time. I feel sad, using the same excuses I’ve heard everyone say to me. Now I understand how they feel, and it’s nothing personal, but there just isn’t enough time in the days to get things done you’re passionate to be working on. Now I’m that guy who people are starting to ask. It’s flattering, but a little scary.

In addition to this newly-developing phenomenon (or perhaps it’s all a related phenomenon), a few artists once again asked if they could draw me a pin-up, and if I would publish it in my book. What I am learning to tell them, whether it’s polite enough or not, is that there are only so many pages in my books, and I have so many stories to tell, and I just don’t really have the room to publish pin-ups of anyone but my idols and people who personally influenced me. But I am doing a links page at my website, and I’d love if they would contribute something I could post there. And I would love it, and I’m loving it every time I got one in my emails. I think it’s gonna be a really cool links page.