OCTOBER 27-28, 2006

I’d never been there, but I heard that the convention center, where the con would be, was a major, BIG place, so that made me hopeful that the convention would be an impressive size.  When we arrived there, it took some time to figure out where the comic convention was.  We couldn’t find any signs saying “Stumptown” or “this way,” or anything like that.  I didn’t see anything to point out there was a comics convention here at all.  It turned out that there was a convention center sign flashing all the events going on at the con, and if you waited about three minutes, you would get through the full rotation and see the comic con listed.   

I jumped out at the main entrance, dragging my suitcases full of books, and poked around.  Wandering the halls, it took some exploring, and finally I asked a security guard, who told me what elevator to take, and what halls to go down.  I don’t know that I could have found it again.

The room of the con was pretty small, relative to some of the cons I’ve done.  It was a tiny room tucked away.  But we were located basically right at the front door, which seemed like a pretty great location. 

All the comic shops up this way seemed really indie-friendly.  One shop, Cosmic Monkey, glanced at my table, and it turns out they had ordered every one of my books over the last couple years, but didn’t realize that one person (me) had put all the different titles out, and that seemed to delight them.  That was a nice feeling.  Not only that a store was out there somewhere, ordering my stuff, but that they seemed to be enjoying it.

At Dan Cooney’s recommendation, I spoke with and got business cards from all the shops that I could find there.  One shop kept eyeing my stuff, and said one day he was going to have to pick something up for the shop.  I told him I’d give him a discount if he was ordering for his shop.  Stores get a fifty percent discount from Diamond distributors, so I give the same to shops, if they approach me at conventions.  The next day he came over, and he said, “I’ll take this one book.  Fifty percent off, right?”  And I’m thinking, Well, that’s what I said, but when someone says they’re going to order stuff for their shop, they usually get eight or ten books.  I was kind of speechless, and I just said, Okay.  So THEN, he says, “So do you just want store credit?”  I was flabbergasted.  I told him, “No, if it’s just one book, I’ll just take the cash.”  So THEN he says, “Can I write you a check?”  And we’re talking about FIVE DOLLARS here, for ONE BOOK “for his store” (and if he only buys one, it makes me sarcastically wonder if he’s just going to take it home and read it for himself) and I’m wondering if I should just tell him to forget the whole goddamn thing, because this feels like such bullshit.  But I took his check, and thought to myself: He’s in this same pathetic, frustrating industry I’m in, and can use a deal as well as I can.  And if I’m getting one book out there into new people’s hands, that’s all that really matters, and if it’s a store owner, he might like it and decide he’d like to pick up more for some of his clientele, so what the hell is my problem anyways?  Sometimes I need to chill out. 

Fantagraphics, Oni, Top Shelf and Darkhorse were all at this con.  It surprised me how many companies were there, but all these companies except Top Shelf are “local” (within a few hours), so it makes sense.  I wanted to discuss possibilities of working for some of these companies, so I walked by Darkhorse and Top Shelf and Fantagraphics, but didn’t see anyone I knew to talk to. 

At Oni, I spoke with Randall, who I make a point to visit with every con, and who’s always really friendly.  I told him I hadn’t spoken with him about it for a while, and just wanted to mention that I was tired of losing money self-publishing every issue I did, and what could I do to try and get work from them.  I told him I already suspected they had plenty of writers, and that I was willing to draw.  He said that was the case, and that, in fact, they were always in need of artists for all their stories.  I was surprised at this statement, because it suggested to me I might be able to land work after all. 

He asked if I wanted to draw in my Kirby style, and I explained that I’m happy to draw in all kinds of styles, and that for me, that’s half the fun of it, coming up with styles that work for a given story.  I told him my favorite style to work in is noir, but with retro, thick-brushed linework.  He then said that they actually have a couple noir projects coming up, and he’d send me a sample of the scripts to take a look at.  I couldn’t believe it.  Wouldn’t that be great to do a crime book for Oni!

I told him I knew I had kind of snuck through the back door, landing work through them with Sam Kieth’s Ojo project.  (Sam hired me to do the work, and Sam paid me out of his paycheck, so all my dealings were with Sam, not Oni).  Randall laughed and said he’s heard that the comics industry is likened to a castle, because no one can ever get through the walls, even though everyone’s trying.  And then someone will find some crack to slip through, and soon as he’s in, the industry seals up that crack too, and it’s that much harder for everyone else on the outside.  He nailed it. 

While we were there, we watched Scott McCloud walk in, and start wandering around.  My friend Dan told me that Scott had announced he was touring, so he put all his stuff in storage, and decided to go see all fifty states.  I assume something brought him up this way, and he decided to pop into the convention while he was here.  I said a quick hello, and reminded him I was the guy doing the Kirby-style giant monsters (I find you have to remind people who you are, or they won’t remember.  In fact, even if you remind them, there’s a good chance they won’t remember) and let him know he’s inspired me to do a web comic of my own.  He’s always real friendly and polite, but I get the feeling he isn’t particularly excited to hear what a complete stranger (me) is up to – and why should he?

While I was sitting around, I saw Eric Reynolds walk into the con, who I’ve been getting to know better because he’s usually manning the Fantagraphics booths.  I called him over to my table, and he said he’d received a copy of Dr. DeBunko I’d sent him, but hadn’t had a chance to read it.  I asked about the possibility of getting work at Fantagraphics.  I told him I assumed Fantagraphics doesn’t hook artists and writers together, and basically is looking for people’s creations, ready to go.  He said exactly.  I said something derogatory about my Doris Danger stories.  Something along the lines of “I know you weren’t interested in them” or “I know it wasn’t good enough for your company.”  He sweetly emphasized that my stories are good, he just didn’t think they would fit in with the Fantagraphics line.  I mentioned Dr. DeBunko, and he again said, He just didn’t think Gary (Groth) usually went for the parody stuff.  This was a good insight, but once again I  was surprised by a person’s perspective of my work.  It had never crossed my mind that I’m just a “parody” guy.  Sure, Doris Danger parodies the Kirby style, Dick Hammer parodies Micky Spillane’s hardboiled novels.  But all this time I thought I was invigorating my parodies with so much depth and intellectual stimulation that they were surpassing mere parody.  But not, apparently, in the eyes of Fantagraphics.  And a lot of other people who look at my work, it turns out.  That’s good to be aware of how people perceive what I’m doing. 

On the second day, in walked Matt Wagner.  He had told me he wouldn’t make this con, because he’d be going to a different convention the same weekend.  I was surprised and excited to see him.  I shouted his name and called him over, and of course since he hadn’t wound up going to the other convention, he popped in here, to see what was going on.  I asked him, if we come up again some time, if he’ll have dinner with us.  He said, “Oh yeah, of course!” and shrugged as if to say, You don’t even need to ask.

I think one of my favorite visits with an artist was Tom Orzechowski, a letter who’s been in the industry for years.  I actually met him at Wondercon earlier this year.  He was walking by and actually got a laugh mid walk from my Doris Danger treasury.  He stopped to flip through it and visit.  He had said then that he never had the opportunity to letter the King. 

Now, at Stumptown, I asked him if he was still lettering, and he said he is, but he does it all on computer now.  I asked what made him decide to make the switch.  He said the comics companies told him, “If you want to keep working for us, you’ll buy this lettering program, and you’ll learn to use it.”  So he was forced.  I asked how he likes computer lettering.  He said it’s just different, and he enjoys different aspects about each.  He pointed out, if you give a bunch of people the same font, you can give a few pages to a few guys each, and get a full book lettered in a few hours.  If different guys all hand-letter the same pages, the book won’t be consistent.  That’s quite an advantage over hand lettering, if you’re on a deadline and in a pinch.  Never really thought about that kind of stuff.

He said he tried lettering something by hand recently, and he just doesn’t have the chops any more.  I really enjoyed hearing about the professional lettering industry from him.  Goodbye (sniff), hand-made letters! 

I was kicking myself all weekend, because I forgot to bring copies of the Lump trade paperback.  I don’t know how I could have blown that, because it’s my newest book, and if I’d just sold a few of those, I think I could have done much better at the con.  As it was, I made back my inexpensive table costs, but didn’t make back my inexpensive flight up.  Everyone at the con agreed the weekend was kind of quiet.  One of my poor friends there told me he only sold two trade paperbacks the whole weekend – both on the second day.  That second day must have been hell, but that FIRST day must have REALLY been hell.

The guy who ran the con sent out a really nice letter after, pointing out all these weaknesses of the con, and said he’d try and do even better next year.

I still thoroughly enjoyed myself.  The con had a great indie vibe, and I had a lot of nice interactions, and just maybe I’ll hit this con again.

October27-28, 2006

I wanted to try and do a couple more conventions after San Diego, before the end of the year. For one thing, I’ve got these three books coming out (Dr. DeBunko, Doris Army Battles and Doris in Outer Space), and I wanted a con to shop them. But also, knowing this year is theoretically the year I have to start making a profit, and going to conventions and meeting and hopefully gaining new fans and spreading word seems like it should be the best grass-roots way to build up sales.

It states in the tax guidelines for the IRS that a business must make a profit three out of five years, and I claimed huge losses in 2004 and 2005. This means I have to make a profit this year, and for the next couple after that. I hoped I would get a another nice royalty check for Ojo, like I did in 2005. It had sold so well last year, I got a surprise check that was so ENORMOUS, I fell out of my seat when I opened it. This year I figured, well, sales will of course slow down, but maybe it will still sell a few copies. The royalties came in, and they turned out to be about one five-HUNDREDTH of what I got last year. That is a SERIOUS drop in sales.

So opening the envelope for that royalty check didn’t leave me much hope of making a profit this year. The last two years, my Ojo money made up like two thirds or more of my income. With that gone, I felt pretty hopeless, but thought maybe if I put as many books out as I could, one of them would finally do all right. So I threw together the three issues for Oct-Nov-Dec release, but all of them sold as pathetic as my books usually do, and that was the end of my hopes for a profit this year.

I assumed my only remaining hope was to get out there to a couple more conventions, and pitch pitch pitch. I voiced this to my friend, Dan Cooney, who self-publishes a comic called Valentine. We talked about some possibilities for going out to cons together before 2007 rolled in, and he suggested Stumptown in Portland. It’s a small and newer con (this was its third year), and its emphasis was on indie comics publishers. That sounded like a wise choice for me for a con. Add to that I had relatives to stay with, so I didn’t need to get a hotel. Add to that, it was a five hour drive, but a drive nonetheless, which would save on airfare. And I was sold when I saw Mike Allred listed as a featured guest.

After discussing it, Elizabeth decided it would be best if she stayed home with Oscar, because we’d tried a five-hour-drive vacation, and it was pretty rough with our little newborn. So the plan was for me to drive up with Dan.

Plans changed, after the con was booked, when we learned Elizabeth had to go down to Los Angeles for business. We decided I should take time off from work, and go down with her, and watch Oscar while she was in her meetings. Once her meetings were done, I flew straight from L.A. up to Portland. No extra money spent there, because I would have had to have flown back home anyways, and Dan kindly picked up and drove all my boxes of books up with him, in his car, and then I drove back home with him.

Before leaving for the trip, I learned Mike Allred wouldn’t make it to the con. I had emailed him, saying, “If I come up to the con, would you have time to have dinner or breakfast one day?” He replied it was a possibility, but only if he didn’t have to cancel, since he was working on his Madman film. Of course, he wound up having to cancel. Shucks!

I also emailed Matt Wagner to see if he’d be there. He said he was most likely going to be flown out to a con in Texas, I believe.

Even though I wouldn’t be able to hob-nob with my friends, I was ready and hopeful that this would be a good con for me.

Sorry for the delay in posts, fans, going through some heavy-duty IRS audit fun! And will we have some amazing and informative diary posts about it, as this hell has dragged through to our one year anniversary since our initial summons last April!

Plan to resume weekly posts next week, with THURSDAY as the new official “DIARY OF A STRUGGLING COMICS ARTIST” DAY.

If you’ve been enjoying this blog, it would be a tremendous help if you might download a bunch of my comics, COMPLETELY FREE TO YOU, at [link deleted]

Any time you download just one of my books, an advertiser PAYS ME. So at last you can SUPPORT A STRUGGLING COMICS ARTIST at no cost to you, and get some free comics too!

[link deleted] is a comprehensive online bookstore. You can download everything from classic literature, art books, fiction, cookbooks, travel, games, biographies, everything. I even found Jack Kirby, Wally Wood, and Frank Frazetta comics. It really is a fantastic resource for everyone involved.

Don’t take my word for it, check it out at [link deleted].

Thanks for your support,

Chris Wisnia, Struggling Comics Creator!
www.chriswisniaarts.com

[note 3/24/10: We no longer support this online comics site! Feel free to buy some shwag at our MERCHANDISE PAGE instead … not absolutely free, but at COVER PRICE PLUS SHIPPING! – Rob! Editor-in-Chief!]

October 24, 2006

Elizabeth, my wife, works for the state, and due to her work, she needs to travel to various California cities, about once a month.  Since we just had a baby in August, and she’s only recently back from maternity leave, she was hoping she wouldn’t have to travel for a while, but it turned out she was needed for a meeting in Long Beach.  We didn’t want the baby away from her for a three day trip, because he’s still breast-feeding.  But we didn’t want her taking the baby to her business meetings.  So we finally decided I would take a little time off work, and go down with her, and watch our little Oscar while she was working.

When we decided that’s what we wanted to do, I emailed Joshua Dysert, who I knew lived in L.A.  I said we’d love to hook up with him, if he had any time available.  I had met him at Wondercon this year, and thought he was a cool guy, and enjoyed visiting with him.  We had an even nicer time with him in San Diego, when we got to hang out with him at a bar.

He wrote us back that he’d love to see us, but that he lived in Venice Beach, which was about forty-five minutes away from our hotel, and he didn’t have a car.  We had a rental, and told him we’d call when we got down there and hook up with him one way or another.

What we ended up doing was going to his house and hanging out for about an hour, and then driving him back to our hotel, where we had made dinner plans with some other friends, and then driving him back home.  It was totally worth the drive, being able to spend so much time with him.  We had a real great time.

His place is amazing.  You can see the beach from his place.  I was surprised to hear him say he didn’t surf or do any ocean sports.  He’s been here for four years, and likes to go for walks at night on the beach.  He finds it relaxing.

He said we came to see him on a good day, because he had just gotten some work finished on a deadline, and had some free time.  I found out, upon inquiry, that he only writes comics, and doesn’t have another job.  He said he hasn’t had another job for five years, but that there were a few times, when he was so poor, (he says this with his huge laugh) that he was starting to seriously consider sucking cock for pay.

The reason Elizabeth and I love Joshua is that he can be so foul, but the way he says it is so interesting or pretty or hilarious.  When I first met him, he had told me, “When you’re sucking the devil’s cock, at least he pays on time,” referring to working for big companies, instead of self-publishing.  When Elizabeth and I had our son Oscar, he wrote to me to say hello to the host who feeds the parasite (in other words, my wife).   He should be a writer.

I of course used this time with him trying to talk about comics as much as I could.  I asked about his career, getting into comics.  He said he had just wanted to be a writer, and imagined journalism, but was contacted by an artist who wanted someone to write him a comic he could draw.  This was ten years ago.  He wrote the most mainstream story he could think of, with the intention of getting it to Image Comics and selling lots of copies.  It turned out, this book, Violent Messiahs, which got a new artist by the time it went to print, was a phenomenal success, and nothing he’s done since has sold anywhere near as well.  He toured all over the country, and in Europe, and had lines of people waiting to sign his book in Germany.

He showed me one of his older comics, and said he’s been working on using less text, so that there’s plenty of room for his artists’ work to really show.  Looking over the pages, I didn’t think he had much text at all.  And it made me a little ashamed of just how much text I’m always packing into my pages.  It’s like I don’t care about the art at all.  I just care about the words, and I stuff those panels with them.  I could afford to learn about writing more sparsely from him.

I confessed to him that I’ve never read one of his comics, and that the only one of his I own is the issue of Swamp Thing that Richard Corben did.

So he did some small press stuff here and there, and finally landed a DC job on The Demon.  He said whenever he felt really pleased with a book, it didn’t do well financially or critically.  This one, he said he wrote in a scene where a bunch of men are basically coming on a girl’s face (yow!).  I forget what he said the name was for this kind of “party,” but he tried to sneak the use of the word into the comic.  And supposedly, the higher-ups looked up this word on the internet, and sites came up, and they clicked on the sites and these sick perverse porn images leapt onto their screens, and they shreiked, “Holy shit!  Oh God! OH GOD!” and completely freaked out, and completely edited the art, once the story had been finished.  And Joshua said that the finished product was actually even more creepy than if all these guys were coming in a girl’s face, because it was a bunch of naked old men in a circle, and they erased the girl out of the scene.  Joshua was convinced he would never be allowed to work for DC again after that, but he said Karen Berger really loves his work over at Vertigo, even though his books keep getting cancelled from lack of sales.  He also said he’s mellowed out since then with his subject matter.

He said that at one point, he just couldn’t find any work, and he was getting stretched so thin, he realized he couldn’t make the dream work, and had literally started putting applications in at coffee shops, when out of the blue he suddenly got comics work.  And it’s slowly built since then, and at San Diego this year, he actually got flooded with so many offers for work, he wound up having to turn some work down.  That must be such a great feeling.  He told me about all his secret, as-yet-unannounced books he’s got in the work (he’s doing a post-World War II Hellboy story for Mike Mignola, an Avril Lavigne comic — ??! — and a secret Vertigo project in Africa), and it made me start asking about his process, because it sounded to me like he does extremely careful research, and has a lot of interest in current events around the world.

This got him talking about all his projects in general, and I was surprised when he told me he doesn’t feel he’s ever written in his own “style.”  He said his style is “Waiting for Godot.”  He said his style is Bergman.

He said he used self-publishing as a way of paying his dues to get his foot in the door.  He said he doesn’t know of anyone who has made it in self-publishing, except as a means to break into the industry, and land a paying job at a major company.

He said his first book was written knowing what comics and topics were hot at the time, and trying to gear it toward that.  He geared it specifically toward Image and what books they were publishing, so that Image would pick it up, and it would be a success.  And I guess he’s had this sort of “agenda” for every book he’s written, where it’s written to serve a needs or tastes of whatever editor or company he’s writing for.  So for example, I assume he goes to editors with his resume, and he pitches his ideas, and they tell him, “We need a writer to tell this kind of story, or this particular character,” and he just molds his writing to fit whatever is needed of him.  To get the job done, or at least to convince the editors that the job can be done well.  I had the impression this is how he’s gotten the jobs he’s gotten.  He said he would tell editors he would tell a story in four issues, and then once he was in, he’d stretch it out to eight.  But DC is smarter about that, and keeps a closer eye on him throughout the process.

I told him that I have a decent day job, and I have been thinking lately that I might just continue to do what I want to write and draw, and just accept that this decision may mean not getting the higher paying mainstream work.  And he agreed that if I can afford to do that and it’s what I want to do, and I can live with knowing that self-publishing may not make me much money, then that works perfectly well.  But I think it’s great the decisions he’s made, even though they’re different than what I’ve been thinking, and how bright he is that he can pull it all off, and how successful he’s been at it.

I want to make sure it doesn’t sound like I think he’s “sold out.”  He’s making sure the work he does is marketable and what the big companies are looking for, but meanwhile he’s still enjoying each project, doing research and trying different things.  He said he pitches ideas if he comes up with something he thinks it would be fun to learn about, and uses that as an excuse to expand his education.  If the editors buy the idea, then all of a sudden, he has to research all this stuff he maybe doesn’t even know anything about, and go figure out how to make these story ideas work, and live, and be real.  So when I say he hasn’t ever written in “his style,” all that means is he’s creative and daring about pushing himself and trying anything.

After our visit this time around, Elizabeth said that spending time with Josh is like watching a really good film, because he’s so intelligent and entertaining.

October 2006

Another thing I’ve been working on that has prevented me from doing actual drawing is getting a new book ready for the printer, every month for three months in a row.  I had “Dr. DeBunko: Debunker of the Supernatural,” “Doris Danger Greatest All Out Army Battles,” and “Doris Danger in Outer Space” all come out back to back, October November December.  And that feels like such a never-ending process.  I scan the first issue, size and clean it up in Photoshop, and send it to the printer.  And before the proof is sent back, I’m scanning, sizing and cleaning up the next issue, or compiling the letters page, or trying to come up with an introduction for the title page.  In the past, I would deal with step one, and then progress to step two, and then worry about step three.  Now, I’m on step three with book one, while worrying about step two with book two, and nervous to begin step one with book three.  I’m looking forward to being done with these three books, and not having a deadline to get an issue out, and just drawing again.  I never expected that my love of writing and drawing would lead to months of computer-pre-production and promo work, and months of not drawing and writing as a result.

I understand that in this industry, visibility means a lot.  If an artist can put a book out every month, then they will be on the comic shops’ shelves every month, and are more likely to get a readership just out of monthly bullying on the shelves, so to speak. 

But Jesus, it feels like such a full-time job just to do the post-production.  It seems like such a full-time job just to do the promotion.  Just to get the books ready for the printer.  Just to do the website.  Just to do the blog.  And people make full time work just out of comics writing, just out of penciling, just out of inking, just out of lettering.  So here I’m trying to do five or six full-time jobs, as a comics creator.  And meanwhile, I need a job by day that will pay the bills, until I can get these other full-time jobs to start turning a profit.  How has anyone managed to produce a body of work, when it’s six full time jobs to put out a monthly comic?

 

DICK HAMMER: THE DAILIES

The last thing I’ve been working on that has prevented me from doing actual drawing is actually feeling pretty great.  It’s a necessary and exciting part of the creative process, and it’s also probably my very favorite part of it.  And that is the creation of a new project.  I’m gearing up to begin publishing a web comic.  I’ve been plotting a very complicated “Dick Hammer: Conservative Republican” story, which I am going to call, “Dick Hammer: The Dailies” and reference Dick Tracy newspaper strips.  I was heavily influenced by a film noir called “Somewhere in the Night.” 

It’s been invigorating devising a new script, because this is the first major script I’ve written for years.  I’ve done a few smaller stories (five pages) here and there, primarily Doris Danger scripts, but those little five pagers just aren’t the same as a major project like this, so it’s been a lot of fun.  This is my most ambitious project I’ve sat and conceived since the Lump (not including Limbo Café – which I worked on earlier this year, but it had already been for the most part scripted, and that’s why it doesn’t count).  And even though it’s more parody-styled in nature than the Lump, it’s going to be just as confounding and full of mysteries.  Just less gory and creepy, and more film noir.

And hopefully before November, I’ll be able to start actually drawing for a change, maybe another twenty pages of Doris Danger for a new tabloid-sized collection, and also beginning the art for my web comic.

I had been wanting to update the website for over a year, since Wayne Jones had moved onto other projects, at the completion of Tabloia, back in the summer of 2005.  After a few false starts, my brother-in-law and web designer, Micah Brenner, said he would help me get the website set up, and he basically did everything. 

I didn’t know the first thing about any of that stuff.  But I was able to do a lot of prep-work for this major update.  I wrote a ton of text, and sent dozens of emails to Micah, with attachments and detailed instructions of what I was looking for.  And I grouped photos and drawings together and emailed them to Micah.  And page by page, we began adding a ton of stuff to the website, including this very blog you’re reading right now.

I thought, everyone does blogs.  Kids do blogs.  So maybe I can get this finished and ready to start posting by myself.  Micah helped me with a couple questions I had and directed me to a free blog hosting site, and next thing I knew the blog was set up.

When I began posting this blog, I was anxious to post as much of it, as fast as I could, and try to get caught up to my current self-publishing travails.  I’d been writing all the back-log history of my self-publishing for about ten months, as Word documents.  So posting it, chronologically, as fast as I could, meant cutting and pasting, proof-reading and making sure I hadn’t skipped anything (which it turns out I did here and there, which means going back and actually altering posted blogs as I go), and trying to make sure my timeline is as accurate as possible.  And then it means spending some time with the formatting, because I’m having this weird problem.  Every time a quote or apostrophe gets pasted into the blog posting page, I get some weird martian symbols instead.  I asked Micah about this, and he sent me some links, and the closest I could find was that perhaps there’s a font I could be using that would prevent this, which I have been unable to find.  So instead, I’m going in manually with a “find/replace” for all the quotes, and then all the apostrophes, and then there are a couple other ones, such as “…” and “—”.  And since I’ve been sometimes posting seven entries in one go, so all this has been taking a lot of time from my drawing.

As we slowly began getting one page, then another, of the revamped website posted, I was taking a lot of time proof-reading, and making sure everything posted okay.  Because this was a lot of back-and-forth work between Micah and I, I eventually thought maybe it would be easier on him, if I could start doing these minor text changes, corrections, or additions, as needed, by myself.  So I asked my former helper in business affairs, Wayne Jones, for some tips and pointers, and he was way too kind and helpful in that regard.  And then I began making the anal corrections on my own, and not bothering Micah with that.

 

And part of all this set up involved me looking generally through all the wacky codes.  And as I spent more and more time with them, looking them over, I started getting a vague sense of what a few of them might mean.

 

On some of the more simply lain-out pages, I began trying my hand at making bigger changes, such as adding stores to my list of indie shops.  This meant understanding how to post links to their stores’ websites, making paragraphs vs. just skipping to the next line, bolding or titling words, things like that.  And then I started trying to size, upload, and post images.

I don’t have any programs for the actual layouts, so I just did my changes by looking at the codes that were already established on each page, comparing it to how the page looked, posted on my website, and then adding the “<li>”s and “<ur>”s and the like, to mimic whatever came before on that same page.  And these simplistic alterations usually led to me posting something wrong, and me spending more time trying to figure out what I did wrong, and usually getting it fixed eventually, though not always knowing how I fixed it.

I posted the big list of indie-friendly comics shops in the “friends of Tabloia” link, in large part thanks to my fellow indie-friend, Dan Cooney, who’d been developing this huge mailing list.  I posted photos of me with all my comics idols.  That page gave me a little trouble, though.  When I was done, some but not all the images were centered.  After doing all I could but not fixing some of the problems, I finally had to have Micah look it over and tweak a couple things. 

But now, I was getting so confident and cocky, I started thinking I could do other stuff as well.  And I went to work and spent a few hours, and by the time I was done, I had fucked up a bunch of pages and couldn’t even figure out how to fix any of it, and so poor Micah had to go in, and he found all this other stuff I’d fucked up that I wasn’t even aware of, costing him, I’m sure, plenty of time and frustration, cleaning up all the bullshit I had unnecessarily heaped on him.  What a good helper I am, taking care of these small changes, to save him time.

So finally, after I believe about a year, I’m getting close to having all the cool stuff I wanted at my website basically all set up. 

The idea with this blog was initially that I had a lot of fun stories that I wanted to share.  A lot of what I thought would be amusing anecdotes, that I hoped others would also find enjoyable.  And as I wrote, I started thinking about including my creative process.  And soon, I just started jotting down anything that came to mind, so long as it involved my love of comics, or my production of them, or attempts at getting into this industry.

And of course, another incentive was, I looked at it as a potential marketing gimmick, to get more people to my website.  It was another attempt at diversifying my product to attract new potential enjoyers of my work.  With all the name dropping I could do in this blog, I hoped it would generate links at search engines, and spread more of the word about ME.  It would sell me as a product, so that if people bought other products by me, it would help them feel more invested and personally involved.

I had tried so many ventures at this point – publishing comics, publishing trade paperbacks, publishing big comics, publishing little comics, going to conventions, doing book signings, placing advertisements, sending out promo posters, doing web bulletins and mailings and personal emails, going to stores and introducing myself – but nothing seemed to help my work catch on.  So I looked at the blog as yet another marketing tool, yet another idea to throw at the wall in the hope it might stick.  If you trying throwing enough things hard enough…

There were a few initial sparks that got the juices flowing for this project.  When my wife and I had gone to the Bristol Con in 2005, my wife had sent an email to friends, when we returned, about our trip.  She mentioned some of the professional connections we had made, and the fun we’d had, such as hanging out with Simon Bisley.  There were particular stories such as this that we would share periodically, and so of course this got me thinking about doing some documentation of my own.

Elizabeth’s summation of cons to her friends inspired me to write a sort of diary-style recap of our trip to the Baltimore Con, back in September 2005.  I hand wrote a few pages about that convention, while on the airplane, flying back from the trip.  She sent another email out about this trip, and I compared my notes with hers.

But the idea of documenting my comics career (or lack of), and publicly posting it as a blog for all to see (and hopefully enjoy, and make me a BLOGGING STAR!) hit me like a brick while at Orlando’s Mega-Con, the night I had dinner with Al Feldstein.  We had set up the dinner, and we went back to our hotel to drop our stuff off, and I was so excited, I called two of my friends to tell them I was in Orlando and having dinner with Al Feldstein, in the moments before we stepped back out to eat.  I was so excited, I was beside myself. 

And right there, in the hotel, I was telling my wife, I really should start writing all this great fun stuff down that we’re doing.  All the crazy and interesting experiences we’ve had.  And she said she thought I should.  And one of the friends I called that night said I should.  And that trip I began typing all the experiences that came to mind into my computer.

I consulted my “appearances” list at my website, and then created multiple documents, each one titled for the particular convention.  “Orlando 2006.”  “Baltimore 2005.”  “Wondercon 2006.”  “Wondercon 2005.”  “Wondercons before I began publishing comics.”  “San Diego 2005, 2004, my first in 2001.”  And memories would just flood me, and I would be clicking from document to document, furiously typing to get all the memories down into one or the other as I was remembering them.  When I wasn’t with my laptop, I’d be jotting down notes of events that would suddenly come to me.

I went through Elizabeth’s letters to friends, to see if they didn’t jog memories I’d forgotten to put down.  I went through photos we’d taken at different conventions, and those photos brought back memories.  “Oh yeah, we were with this person on THIS year’s Wondercon.  For some reason I had thought it was the year before that.”  Or I would go online and research a particular con on a particular year, to see who the featured artists were, to make sure it was 2003 and not 2004, for example, when I’d had an exchange with that person.  I expect some of my reminiscences aren’t wholly accurate, year by year – I was writing back experiences from ten years ago sometimes.  And certainly it’s important to use a flair of theatricality, drama, exaggeration, or whatever as you go, to keep the stories interesting.

So I guess the genesis of this blog was about bragging to more friends, in a way.  About all the fantastic luminaries in the industry I’ve met, and the interactions I’ve had with them, fun, humorous, and even embarassing.  So as I say, I started typing entries into my computer that evening of our dinner with Al Feldstein, February 25, 2006.

I entered the mad compilations of experiences at hotels, on airplanes, at my day job when there was a break, at night before bed, during the day before work.  Whenever I could fit some time in, or whenever reminiscences came to me.  This was about eight insane typing months. 

I finally began publishing them a couple months before posting my Dick Hammer web comic (which was in December of 2006).   So you can see I’m just trying as much as I can to diversify, diversify, diversify.  C’mon, stuff I’m throwing to the wall, doesn’t anything want to stick?

October 16, 2006 

When I finally did the finishing touches on the final page of my second Doris Danger 16-page adventure, I realized it had been a month since I’d sat down to draw.  Every page I draw, I try to write the date on it, any day I spend time working on it.  (Sometimes I’m lazy about it, but I do my best).  So all my pages have a row of dates written on them, showing when I worked on that particular page, and therefore it historicizes each page, and gives me an idea how many days each page took me.   Of course, “how many days” can be misleading, because I might get two or three pages done if it’s a Saturday, for example, and if nothing else is going on.  Whereas, I might not get any work done on a Monday through Thursday.

But like I say, it gives me a rough idea.  And sure enough, the latest page I had worked on had a month gap from the next time I sat down to write a new date on it.  I hadn’t worked on any other pages, so that was a month I didn’t do any drawing. 

But I was pretty busy that whole time.

Of course, first of all, I had my son, who I call a two-hands baby, because you need to hold him with both hands and keep him in a continual up-and-down motion, if you don’t want him to cry.  You do this until he gets exhausted and falls asleep, and then you put him down, and either he wakes immediately up and you start over again, or he stays asleep and you have maybe an hour to try and get other things done. 

For over a week, the reason I didn’t get any drawing done is that I got hold of some cheap, relatively simple-to-operate, but really powerful music recording equipment (Cubase), and I’ve started recording songs I’ve been performing in my band for years, that we never went into a studio to record.  My band, Weird Harold, has been around for I think eleven years now, and we’ve only got finished recordings of five songs.  Early on, maybe ten years ago, we did a three song demo.  Twice, we said we were going to record an album.  One of those times, we started five songs and finished two, and then our bassist moved to L.A.  The second time, we started recording seven songs, and our bassist had a baby and three full time jobs, and he didn’t have free time any more, and we lost him as our bassist.  So now, as Weird Harold is down to a guitar-drums duo, and our interest is fading fast, I’m sensing my mortality and wanting to record a part of my history, and get these songs recorded, even if it’s cheap, home-made studio versions.

I was feeling pretty disappointed that I spent so much money and time sending out preview Xerox copies of my Dr. DeBunko book, and it didn’t generate any additional sales.  I didn’t think it generated any additional press, but as time goes on, I see more reviews popping up here and there, so I’m thinking I will do it all again, but I’ll wait for the bigger, important projects. 

The big score was the podcast at Skepticality.com of my Dr. DeBunko comic, thanks in whole to Lene Taylor at ireadcomics.  I believe it got about an extra thousand visitors to my website, and I made about a dozen orders of my books, which wound up getting me a little shy of $300 extra cash.  At first glimpse, I think, wow, that’s pretty great.  But then I think this.  That’s only a dozen people who made all those orders.  Under the most unrealistic assumptions, where all of them realized my work is the most fantastic they’ve ever seen, and all of them decided they’ll just order whatever I write from now on, even though they’re all skeptics and were only interested because my character is Dr. DeBunko: Debunker of the supernatural…  And even if they all kept informed of all my next projects and made sure to rush down to their local shop and order the current book – assuming all that happened, which it obviously won’t – my next book’s distributor numbers will go up by twelve, which will make it a whopping 230 instead of 218, and the comic will still be cancelled, because those numbers are so pathetic they’re eight hundred dollars under the benchmark I’m required to maintain.

On top of this, the sales in question cost me probably a hundred fifty or so to print them, and then I offer free shipping at my website, and that probably eats up close to another fifty or so bucks.  And then there’s the packing materials I sent it all in, the fees Paypal charges, which are a higher percentage for tiny little $4 books bought one at a time.  And then there’s the literally hours of my time it took to get the orders sorted, collected, securely packed and wrapped, addressed, sealed, and then driven over to the post office.  Add in the line of the post office.  So it makes me wonder, How can this be worth all this?  How!!? 

And of course, the answer is, if anyone out there hasn’t heard of me, and they pick up something I’ve done and enjoy just a little bit of it, it’s worth it.  Small steps.  A step at a time.

So all that took a lot of time this last month.  Besides that, I spent a lot of time trying to get my website together.  I did this before the podcast, because I knew a lot of people would visit the website, and I wanted to be ready.  When my first Tabloia comic came out in 2004, featuring Dr. DeBunko, and the Skeptics Society said they would include me in one of their mailers, I was not prepared.  I had an extra thousand hits to my website, and I had nothing to sell, and so I made no money, and everyone forgot about me by the time they got up from their computer, and wouldn’t have known how to order a comic from a comics shop anyways, because the distribution system is so different from what they (skeptics) would be used to.  I didn’t want that to happen this time, so I was trying to get as many fun and cool little items up at the site as possible, and I made sure there was as much as I could sell there as I had to sell.  I even listed my “convention-only” Dr. DeBunko mini-comics and Ojo and “Dead by Dawn’ comics, and 11”x17” giant-monster prints. 

I had two surprises.  The first was that someone ordered all five of my Doris Danger giant-monster prints.  The reason this surprised me is that I assumed everyone who bought stuff learned about me from the Skeptics podcast, and I didn’t imagine a skeptic would want Kirby-style pictures of giant monsters.

The second thing that surprised me was that no one bought a Dr. DeBunko t-shirt.  For some reason, I thought for sure that there would be a skeptic out there who would want to wear a t-shirt that says “Dr. DeBunko wants you to join the Skeptics Society.  Visit www.skeptic.com today!”  But no one did that.

October 5, 2006

 

Well, it had been over a year of sending emails and not getting any response.  And I didn’t have any other contact info.  And even if I did, he lives in England, which isn’t easy to pop over to.  So I was beginning to worry a bit, especially since he didn’t even show up at San Diego this year, and that’s basically my only chance ever to see him.  But finally, a year and a third later, I made contact with Simon Bisley, regarding the pin-up I paid him for, in advance, at San Diego Con 2005.

 

Over that year plus period, numerous emails I’d sent him remained unreplied.  I finally sent an email telling him we were going to have a baby, but no answer.  Then I wrote him to say it would be a boy, and we were naming him Oscar, but no answer.  I thought to myself, Well, those are the best I could do, to try and inspire him to write back.  If he doesn’t respond after that, maybe he isn’t going to write.  After we had Oscar, and after we had gone to San Diego and he wasn’t there, I finally sent another email, telling Simon about the birth of our boy, and how vividly and touchingly I remembered him talking about the love he had for his own kids, when we last saw him over dinner at San Diego 2005.  I gave a little description of what Elizabeth and I were up to, and what a handful Oscar was.  I mentioned it had been so long since I’d heard from him, and we’d love if he would contact us, and that we have a new address for him to send the pin-up when he’s finished.  Notice how subtly I slipped that in.

 

A few days later, I got a short email reply from him, saying to give him our phone number, and he’d call, because it’s easier than doing emails.  I immediately sent him our phone number, and when he didn’t call that weekend, I sent another email saying I was surprised, because I was so sure he would have called. 

 

That same week, my pin-up came in the mail from Luis Dominguez, so I was thinking of other comics artists.  That Thursday our phone rang, and I couldn’t understand who the person said it was, but I heard him say something about a pin-up.

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch who you said this is?”

 

“It’s Simon,” he said.

 

OH, SIMON!  Great to hear from you!  We visited for some time.  He said, as usual, how great he thinks we are, and that he was sorry he hadn’t gotten to the pin-up, but that he thought he’d have it done by the end of October (which gives him a few weeks yet).  He said he wanted to do a creature coming out of the sea, and attacking the docks or the city on the coast.

 

I told him I was sad to have missed him at San Diego, and he said he would have liked to have come.  But he didn’t say why he didn’t make it, even after I told him he’d been listed in the catalogue to appear at the Heavy Metal booth.  He asked if we would be coming to Bristol, and I said we thought it might be a little rough bringing our baby, but said if he’d like to put us up at his place, we would definitely come out.  He paused for a moment, and I thought it was an awkward silence, but then I realized he just didn’t understand what I said.  Simon and I have this consistent difficulty understanding each other, with our different accents.  He teases me about mine, and I tease him about his.  We’re always asking each other to repeat ourselves, or explain just what the hell we mean to each other.  Later in the conversation I had to tell him I couldn’t understand his accent, because we were both just talking and not understanding each other.  I suspect we’re always MOSTLY communicating with each other, but who knows what subtleties, or even essential little tidbits, we’re always missing.

 

He asked how my self-publishing was going, and I made my usual reply that I’m losing money every issue I put out, and I’m basically struggling just to try and get my work seen out there.  He sympathized, and said that all the artists he talks to are having trouble getting work right now.  That surprised me, because it seems like there’s so much interest in comics right now.  I assumed, even though I’m doing my usual struggling, that a lot of other comics artists are doing pretty well.

 

He joked that he made some good money a couple years ago, from some sap who paid him to do a pin-up.  Then he immediately said he was just kidding, and he’d do my pin-up.  But the real joke was that the amount of money he said he’d made from the sap was actually only half of what that sap had paid him, so I began to wonder just what quality of pin-up that sap will be getting.

 

It was a real nice visit, and he gave me his address and phone numbers, and he said he wasn’t real good with emails, but he’s got it figured out now.

 

He gave me a the phone number about three times, and each time it was different.  He’d say, This is my number.  No wait, what’s my number?  And then I would repeat what he told me, and he’d say, no, no, it’s this.  So I wrote down everything he said separately, just in the hopes that maybe one of them would be right, if I needed to ever try and reach him.  Each number even had different amounts of digits.  It was amazing.

 

And then the same happened when he gave me his address.  He couldn’t remember the street, and then his address would have either four or five numbers in it.  What the hell…

 

So hopefully I’ll get a pin-up from him soon, and be able to publish it in my next humongous Doris Danger treasury, and everything will be okay.  My next Doris Danger book will most likely come out in time for San Diego 2007, which gives eight or so months.  Simon said he hopes it will be finished by the end of the month, but somehow I think it’s a better idea to just hope it appears within the next eight months.  And even that may be optimistic.  I think I’ll be the least upset if I just don’t plan to expect it until it’s in my hands.

Well I’ve heard from basically everyone I was waiting to hear from after San Diego, and it’s looking like everything is a no-go.  Image thinks the Doris Danger books are just not marketable enough, even though they enjoyed them.  AIT/Planet LAR thinks Limbo Cafe is too weird for them.  The movie studio I was talking with really enjoyed the Lump, but wasn’t expecting the tabloid twists I threw in at the end, and prefer to finance more straight-forward horror stories.  So once again, I’m back to self-publishing.  On the other hand, I’m building up contacts, so that each project I finish, I will have more people to send it to for potential future projects.

I got the orders for “Dr. DeBunko: The Short Stories,” and was disappointed to see them at 279, which is my – third? – lowest selling, lowest grossing title to date.  I had spent a lot of time trying to hype and promote it, so this was especially a disappointment.  It makes me wonder just how much the hype actually helps, since in this case, it appears not to have helped.  In my usual insecure, pessimistic fashion, I wonder if I shouldn’t just do whatever the hell I feel like, and if people buy it, great, and if they don’t, then at least I didn’t waste all that goddamn time trying to hype it.

Here are some things I did to try and hype the book.  I sent out emails to fans and shops on my spam list, and to editors and online comics organizations.  I sent 600 flyers to my distributor to get out to stores, which they never did anything with (because my new representative apparently didn’t know how to do what I asked him to do, so he just didn’t do it), despite all the time and money it cost me to produce them and get them to him. 

For the first time ever, and I’ve been told this is just what you have to do (see how I learn with experience), I sent advance copies of the full issue to a dozen interviewers and reviewers.  The only hype I know of which it received, as a result of this, was from my steady supporters at www.comixfan.com (Thanks a ton, guys!  I don’t know why you keep doing it).  They did an unprecedented interview AND sneak peek.  I felt excited and good about that, but then frustration ensued…

Their website allows viewers to include comments of their own, and before I had even been informed that the interview was up, a reader had publicly posted a comment, directly following my interview.  He flatly announced he would pass on my book, because of my overuse of the word “whacko,” which he determined was my synonym for “mentally disabled.”  He concluded that I must be a “real winner.”  Then at the bottom of his character-bashing announcement, he used the opportunity to invite readers to see a sneak-peek of his own upcoming comic.  Unbelievable…  Glad I could not only be the public demonstration of your ridicule and scorn, but also be used as a marketing opportunity for you, friend.

I guess I should be grateful that after two years of self-publishing, this was my first attack against my work or my character.  But I really took it personally, and was in a funk for the rest of the day.  I spent that time concocting a reply to his slam, in which I politely and defensively explained that I don’t really despise people with mental disorders.  He actually wrote back again that he accepted my apology, which is good, because if he had tried to escalate things, I would have had to have let him have the last word, rather than continue an idiotic dialogue on the defensive.  Interestingly, he even admitted he should check out the Skeptics Society, which I suspect may have been a part of his offensive reply to my interview.

What this has taught me is that my paranoid fear of saying things that will be either accidentally stupid, or taken out of context, misconstrued, or that will piss people off, is absolutely justified!  I had better be even more paranoid from here on out!

But other things are looking up.  While sending out hype for the Dr. DeBunko book, I have managed to wrangle up a new potential friend through comicon.com THE PULSE, who was kind enough to put together an interview on the subject of Dr. DeBunko and even a little hyping of the upcoming Doris Danger sixteen page comics.

Another ally that I’ve been in contact with for years, who is at last doing me another huge help in the marketing department is the Skeptic Society.  Their Skeptic Magazine’s official podcast, Skepticality, has asked me to participate in a podcast, and I’m both excited about it and worried that who the hell knows what crazy-assed stupid thing will come out of my mouth, when I’m trying to wow basically all the literati I wish most to impress and get in good graces with.  I’m breathing hard just thinking about it.

Doing books on a monthly schedule for three months in a row is a weird feeling.  I only just send out an announcement and start getting images printer-ready on the first book, and all of a sudden the second book’s announcement is due.  On top of that, I suddenly decided “Doris Danger Greatest Army Battles” just wasn’t quite working for me, and a month before it needs to go to the printer, I decided I need to completely redo three pages, followed by needing two new pages for the following month’s “Doris Danger in Outer Space.”  Five pages is usually nothing for me to complete over a two-month period, but now…I have a kid…

Having a kid is like this.  He screams and screams, so you hold him and rock him and shush him, and the next thing you know it’s time for bed and you haven’t been able to do anything else all day, except trying to keep him from crying all that time.  It feels like what little time I have to do something, I’m rushing to pound out just a few minutes of work, since I know that sleeping angel will be screaming again long before I’ve finished what I need to do.

Once again, Elizabeth, my wife and the mother of my child, is so supportive of my struggling comics career (I say struggling because despite working hard and trying everything I can think of, I remain unknown in the industry, and I’ve lost thousands of dollars every issue I’ve put out). She’s been willing to take our little Oscar and let me work, way more than I deserve.

I’m realizing, as soon as I get these last couple pages finished, I have no books necessarily planned.  I can theoretically start any project I want.  It’s kind of an exciting sensation to think about that, because I always enjoy the excitement of the new ideas more than the execution of the old ones.

Although I do feel like 1. I should do another twenty pages of Doris Danger stories, and then collect them in a second humongous treasury with the two upcoming issues, and 2. I might like to pound through Limbo Cafe and put that project behind me as well.

So most likely, that will be the game plan, just completing as much work as I can, as quickly as I can.