147. ANOTHER EMPIRE COMICS SIGNING
Welcome back, at last, fans! This is the first “Diary of a Struggling Comics Artist” post in twenty-three months, and are we excited to be up and running again!
Why, you ask, such a delay?! Chris was side-swiped by an evil agency of the government, around the time of that last post, and the resulting year-and-a-half-long legal battles utterly crushed and humiliated Chris’s desire to continue the blog, web comics, drawing, eating, or even bother ever making another page of comics ever again! But with therapy, a good shower, and a supportive fan-base (of six), we’re finally ready to attempt an albeit considerably “meagerer” go at this business of comics … AGAIN!
Of note here, in this blog, perusing the entry editorially, is the fact that Chris met and hung out with Landry Walker four years ago! A now “fellow SLG-published celebrity,” appearing at numerous “SLG” conventions this year, our own hack Chris has determined Landry to be a real “best friend”!
When I approached Chris to confirm this historic meeting of “SLG pals,” Chris confessed he didn’t remember Landry at all! Although he remembered the conversation vividly, he swore he thought it must have been someone else! Chris thought they first met at an SLG Comics Fest in September 2009!
It’s great to be back, fans, we’ll be seeing you,
Rob Oder, Editor-in-Chief!
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ANOTHER EMPIRE COMICS SIGNING
Sacramento, CA, December 16, 2006
Well, I keep thinking, now that my last of three rushed books have come out, and now I’ve got nothing to publish or look forward to, until the next big project, that I won’t have anything to write about in these diaries. But a couple things of interest just trickle in here and there.
I was surprised Ben at Empire Comics asked me to come out for another signing so quickly after his previous one, but I like to support the local shops if they ask me to. This one was billed as a horror signing. Daniel Brereton was listed to be there, but he didn’t make it.
Landry Walker (“Little Gloomy,” “Super Scary Monster Show,” “Tron,” and “Kid Gravity”), horror T.V. host Mr. Lobo, and Jen Feinberg & Todd Meister (“Little Scrowlie”) were there though.
The signing was pretty quiet, and I found myself visiting with all these folks.
I always have a nice time visiting with Jen and Todd, who drove up from the Bay Area (I felt bad for them, since the signing was so quiet), and who I met for the first time at a local A-1 Comics Small Press signing a couple years ago. They’re always really supportive of my work, and we talk about how they used to be in my shoes, before they got signed to Slave Labour. Todd told me he’d been shyly showing Dan Vado, head of Slave Labor, their comics for years. Finally one year he realized or heard that Dan enjoyed the book, and this time when he showed Dan the work, he added, We’d be interested in working with you. And Dan said, “Oh?” and began publishing their book.
Mr. Lobo was fun to visit with as well. He told me about a professional wrestling vampire movie, in which the vampires would punch and wrestle their victims. Sounds too good to actually watch, somehow. He joked, “It’s problematic combining these two elements – vampires and professional wrestling – because vampires are real.”
He told me about a comic he published a while ago about a boy who kept bombarding himself with radiation to become a superhero, and after suffering from excruciating ailments, such as his hair falling out, migraines, nausea, and impotency, he died. I guess I’m not doing the humor of this premise justice. He had me laughing really hard with this one.
Landry talked about how the comics industry is always complaining that no one is making any sales with their books. Landry has been getting published through Disney comics, which sell a million copies of each of their comics a month, and are in every supermarket around the nation. But ever since his Disney comics – creator-owned, by the way, he pointed out – people have treated him like he dropped off the face of the comics industry. “What have you been doing? We haven’t seen your work anywhere. What happened to you?” Well, I’m in every supermarket across the nation, every month, for one thing.
He pointed out that the Comics Journal complains that no one is reading comics and we as a medium need to find alternate means of distribution to get our art form into people’s hands. But the Journal doesn’t mention the million-a-month-every-month Disney comics. They also don’t acknowledge that Jhonen Vasquez took his comic “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac” to Hot Topic and got distribution completely separate from Diamond, and made a fortune off millions of teen punks, angsters, and otherwise-non-comics-reading kids. He also pointed out Manga, which is actually getting GIRLS reading comics, and which was perhaps the largest growing area for BOOK-stores (at this time), and I don’t mean just what comics are selling in bookstores, but that manga is the quickest selling BOOK in book stores. Landry pointed out what he saw as a hypocrisy to make excuses against or minimize the successes and so many really impressive readerships in the comics market, and suggested that some comics industry folk just want people to read THEIR books, and if THEIR books aren’t getting read, then “the industry” doesn’t have a good readership. I have to say, personally, I don’t think “the industry” has a good readership.
I ended up staying at this signing for a couple hours. Then I got antsy that I should be trying to get work of my own done, and went home to draw. Had a nice time though, as usual.
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