Diary of a Struggling Comics Artist

2/26/06

Elizabeth and I found out we’re having a boy. We’re going to name him Oscar Francis Wisnia. Everyone had been telling E and I that they predicted it was going to be a girl. A woman who does the “scientific” (sure-proof) “dangling needle on thread over belly.” A woman who claims she always knows when someone in a room is pregnant or going to die, and who had visions it would be a girl, then later said, maybe I’m going to have second thoughts about that, and so when it was born could argue she was right either way. My mom, who had a dream. People who told us if the heart beats faster it’s a girl. People who told us if you don’t have morning sickness it’s a girl.

The more people said we’d have a girl, the more I realized I wanted a boy. But you don’t want to go out and say it, because then it sounds like you don’t want your baby, and of course I’d be happy with whatever I had. But boy did I start getting excited to see the ultrasound. See little Oscar’s feet, legs, arms, profile. Boy was it exciting realizing we knew it was a boy, and now we had a name.

Elizabeth is due mid-August, and the date of the San Diego Con, she will be eight and a half months pregnant. We were sweating whether or not she’d be able to make it this year, but the doctor says it should be okay. I don’t know how I’d do a convention without her. It’s such a relief.

We forgot to register for a hotel until two days after the day they became available. Naturally, everything was sold out. But this week we learned that we were able to get a room at the Hyatt, which is only a couple blocks away. It will be the closest we’ve ever been to the convention, and this is the year to do it. Poor Elizabeth will be huge this year.

This year we got a pretty sizeable tax refund. We should be saving up for a house, and saving to have a baby. But E and I discussed it and decided, I better get all the pin-ups I can now, while I have the money. Yesterday I pulled out all my business cards I’ve amassed over the years. I actually called Larry Lieber on the phone. He doesn’t have an email, and I’ve sent him my comics, but never heard back from him, over the last year and a half or so. So I called.

He answered, Hello?

Yes, is this Larry?

Who is this? Almost defensive. Irritated?

My name is Chris Wisnia. I met Larry at a New York Comics Convention a couple years ago. I draw giant monster stories. He remembered me, and his attitutude became much kinder. He said I’d caught him at kind of a difficult time. According to his description, he’s amassed so much stuff over the years, that his apartment has become a path to his bed. I think he was trying to get his taxes ready to file, and he needed his calculator from his drawer, and he has so much stuff, that he couldn’t get to the drawer to open it, so he was trying to delicately move the piles of things in front of the drawer. He told me I might be the last person to speak from him, and I’ll read in the news that he was buried alive by all this stuff he has, when it toppled on top of him.

He’s so funny and friendly, he just got talking. I asked if he’d gotten the comics I sent him, and he said, Please stop sending him comics. He just doesn’t have the time to read them. He said it was nothing personal. He also gets the New Yorker, and he hasn’t read it for years, even though he keeps renewing his subscription. He keeps thinking some day he’ll have the time. So he begged me not to send him comics, because he would never read them (not to mention the space they would take up).

I asked him again which Marvel characters he had told me he named. He said he came up with Tony Stark, Donald Blake, and Henry Pym, and he took great care trying to come up with those names. He said Stan didn’t really care what their names were. Stan named the hero names, and wrote the basic plots, but didn’t care what Larry did with the scripts beyond that.

His favorite story was about naming Thor’s Uru hammer. He said he wanted a short, three syllable name, because he felt bad for the poor letterers, who had so much to write. Later, but long ago, Roy Thomas had approached him, with a copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology, and asked him where he’d gotten the name. Larry admitted he’d made it up, and Roy was furious, and immediately had it changed back to the actual name of the hammer, Mjolnir. But when the San Diego Con had Larry flown out in 2004, he was on a panel, and a woman told him that actually, in Norse, Uru means powerful or mighty or something like that, so the word he made up turned out to actually be applicable! Bizarre.

Before I hung up, I told him I knew how busy he was, but asked him if he might ever have time to draw a pin-up of a giant monster for me. He shouted, No! Absolutely not! I’ll never draw a giant monster. I told him I’d pay him handsomely. He said, No! I don’t want your money! I don’t want to draw a giant monster. I don’t draw Western pictures any more either. He said he’d like to draw a comic some day, but a nice one without superheroes and monsters. He also said he’s always wanted to write a novel, but he’s just never had the time.

We parted, and he said he probably wouldn’t come out to a convention again. I told him if we make our way to the East Coast, I hope he would join us for dinner, and he said that would be much easier for his busy schedule. I really enjoyed visiting with him.

* * *

Last week, I drew my first commissioned piece, a giant monster sketch, similar to Fantastic Four #1’s cover, for Andrew Gregory. Then I inked copies of the three pencil pin-ups Al Feldstein gave me, because I just wanted to do some inking, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to ink a living legend. It was a lot of fun.

I thought I would be done with them and begin Doris Danger stories all last week. I wound up having things to do all week (trying to email people, having the baby’s ultrasound, going out to my local comics shop to sell two grocery bags full of comics, then going back a couple days later for their 50% off sale. And also my Dad was down for the ultrasound by chance, so he spent the night, and we got to have some time together). Before I knew it the week was over and I hadn’t done any drawing.

2/15/06

Getting up my confidence, having set up a second commission for a pin-up from my favorite artist Mike Allred, and getting an amazing “check back in a few months” from my other favorite artist, Mike Mignola, I began trying to get in touch with Sam Kieth for more of the same. He was tough to track down. I called a few times at his office and left messages. I called his home and left a message. I had sent him a package with the Doris Danger book, in addition to some things he’d picked up down in San Diego and asked me to send him, so that he wouldn’t have to carry it around at the con.

He finally called me back and I missed the call. I realized later that he’s easiest to reach at his office at the exact same hours I can’t be reached because I’m teaching guitar lessons. He left a very sweet message about enjoying the monster book I’d sent him, and the format. He said it wasn’t just the Dick Ayers inks that he enjoyed, but felt I had a good thing going. He didn’t know if I had made an intentional reference, but it reminded him of the Marvel Treasury Editions of the 1970’s. He said all the great pin-ups reproduced better than he expected at such a huge size.

I called back immediately, as soon as I had a break, but my next student showed up and we were cut short. I called him later that night, left a message, called the next day, didn’t leave a message, and finally got hold of him the next next day.

Once again he was very complimentary about my monster book. We talked about his new Batman book, and he wondered if tis sales wee hurt by his Scratch series. According to him, Scratch was so unsuccessful critically and with sales, that when this new project was billed as a Batman book by Maxx “and Scratch” writer/artist Sam Kieth, people didn’t bother to order it. He couldn’t believe that DC billed it this way, when Scratch didn’t do very well.

He mentioned Mad Magazine had contacted him about doing work for them.  It took him aback, because he had thought Mad usually hired specifically comedy, cartoonist types of artists.  Sam comically described it as if Mad didn’t deign to waste their time on low-brow comics artists.  So Sam said so to them, and instead of telling him, No, Sam, we wouldn’t do that, they said, Yeah, usually that’s what we do, but if you want to send a sample…

Sam told me about a sample he was asked to send to a music magazine, which they didn’t like, so they asked him to redo it. He redid it, and they still didn’t like it, so they didn’t accept it, and they didn’t pay him, and he couldn’t believe that he’d wasted all this time, a couple days worth of work, when he could have been working on all these other projects he always feels behind deadline with.

Sam seemed to be in one of his moods.  He asked, Don’t you get sick of drawing? I knew what he meant.  Comics are a never ending chore, and you just have to plug through seemingly endlessly, drawing whatever images will tell the story.  That means you’ll have to find a dozen ways to draw the same face, and try to keep it interesting.  You’ll have to come up with a bunch of interior room designs.  Things will come up, that you’ll just have to draw, that you’re maybe not interested in drawing, but you have to just keep plugging through, because until you draw it, you’ll just keep feeling irritated about having to draw it.  And once you’re finally done, you know you’ll just have to go back the next day for more of the same.  There’s no end to getting the drawing done.

So in answer to his question, Do you ever get sick of drawing?  I told him, actually, I can’t wait to do more drawing. I’m always excited about it, and itching to get my next story going.  But I didn’t tell him, if it was my only job, and I was doing it forty or more hours a week, I would certainly get sickeningly tired of it.

He said, Yeah, it’s different if you’re doing your own projects, instead of Batman books or whatever for someone else. I said, Yeah, I did someone else’s book once – meaning Sam’s Ojo.  And honestly, I didn’t enjoy drawing it as much as drawing my own projects. 

I used that as a segueway to tell him I was still serious about working with him any time he wanted. Sam said, Okay, if we do a book, we have to not use the toothbrush spraying technique anywhere. He’s done it all this time, and he’s tired of doing it now, and he thinks it doesn’t look as good anymore, now that it’s been done. No toothbrush.  I didn’t get the impression he’s considering doing another project with me.

We got to talking about working in different styles. I mentioned Romance and War. Sam pointed out that both these genres are long-dead genres in comics, and that superheroes are pretty much all that exists now, except that Manga is beginning to push out the superheroes, thanks to an increase in female readers who couldn’t give a shit about muscleiy men beating each other up. I pointed out, Fantagraphics is doing romance comics. Their Eros line. Sam didn’t catch the joke at first. Namely, that the Eros line is pornography. “Romance.”

I told Sam I’d really like a new pin-up from him of a giant monster, and he just kind of casually said all right, like of course he would do another. He joked, That’s it! I’ll tell Mad Magazine, I’m not going to do a sample for you! I’ve got better things to do! I’m going to draw a giant monster for Chris Wisnia’s monster book!

I told him I was serious, and he said, okay, I’ll draw you an Easter Island monster. He shared that one of his earliest comics experiences was reading one of Kirby’s Easter Island monster stories. Until reading it, he never imagined those giant heads could have bodies buried beneath them, and could climb out of the earth. He was taken by Kirby’s blocky, powerful style. He said comics art should either contain that strength, or the weirdness of Ditko. He said I’d have to write somewhere about his reasons for drawing an Easter Island monster, and I warned him I’m planning to do a blog. I fantasized about him doing a whole monster story for me, but was too chicken to ask.

2/11/06

For the last three months, I haven’t been able to jump into comics work, because I’ve either been putting together the Doris Danger trade, trying to get my taxes together for the IRS, putting together the Lump trade, or writing my memoirs in preparation of my “Diary” blog. This weekend, Elizabeth is out of town, so I made a personal goal to finish the Lump trade, and that meant drawing the four-page Epilogue.

I go in streaks like this, for some reason. I’ll be really productive, and get a ton of artwork done, and then all of a sudden (probably because I get burned out or feel uninspired) I can’t get any work done. And that’s when I do other stuff (like the above-mentioned projects), until I’m just itching to draw again, and then I pound out a ton of work again. And it just goes in cycles like this. It felt GREAT to be drawing again today.

I can’t wait to have the Lump trade behind me, so I can jump into some Doris Danger pages. I’m looking forward to drawing some giant monster splashes.

I mentioned last entry contacting Mike Allred and Mike Mignola. I want to give an idea of the kind of non-drawing work I find myself doing. Here’s a list of emails I sent out this week.

First of all, there are a few guys I try to write every month or so, because I’d love to get pin-ups from them, and at one point or another they’ve said they might be interested. These are the guys who sometimes write back, and sometimes don’t. This is my list of really-wants. Brian Bolland, Michael Kaluta, Tim Bradstreet, Mike Ploog. Tim has written me regularly, Michael has written on occasion, Brian has written me once saying he’d get back to me about his schedule, and Mike has never written me back. Other really-wants I periodically bother, but who have either said they’re too busy, or they aren’t interested, are John Romita Sr., Seth, Mike Zeck, and Joe Kubert.

Next, I wrote Mart Nodell’s son, who’d said at the Orlando MegaCon that he’d see if he couldn’t dig me up a monster drawing Mart has done in the past that he would let me publish.

I wrote Al Feldstein and Howard Chaykin, and sent them the photo we took together at Orlando. I sent Al copies of his pin-ups too, although it took me four tries to find a format that didn’t get bounced back, that he could see on his computer.

I emailed Adam Hughes and Mick Gray, just to say hi after seeing them at the last cons, and letting them know how much fun I had with them. I just realized I forgot to email Ryan Sook. Whenever we get back from cons, I try and send a quick hello to artists.

I emailed MegaCon to see if they could help me get in touch with George Tuska, who I really, really would have liked to have met in Orlando this year. They were so helpful, and said they forwarded my info on to him. That’s all I can do, I guess. I hope he’s doing all right.

And I emailed Simon Bisley, who I’ve been emailing since San Diego this year, and have yet to hear back from him. At San Diego, I paid him for a pin-up that I have yet to receive, and I’ve been writing pretty regularly to check the status. This time, I wrote, “Simon, I can’t believe I wrote you and told you Elizabeth and I are having a baby, and you haven’t written to congratulate us. I hoped for sure THAT at least would get a reply.” But it didn’t, and my pointing out that it didn’t hasn’t gotten a reply either.

Lastly, I emailed Dove McHargue, who sat across from us at MegaCon, and who said he’s found a publisher who is working on a revival of Twilight Zone, that will take a bunch of the original television scripts, and a number of the original scripts that were never made into shows, and make comics of them. God, I’d love to be a part of that project.

I hoped to use my usual method, and get the editor’s email, and send them a list of my accolades (co-artist of Sam Kieth’s Ojo, books going for $15 at Mile High, etc). But I didn’t get the chance. I heard back from Dove today, and he told me he spoke to the editor, and they have all their artists for the first batch of books. I knew I would have to act fast, and that there was a good possibility there wouldn’t be any opportunities. Even if there were opportunities, you never know if you’ll land the work. What a disappointment. I would have LOVED to have been on board a project like that. You win some, you lose some.

I was on the fence as to whether I should do a Doris Danger trade or a trade of the Lump first. The Lump is kind of my most precious story. It was the first, serious, large, real project I’d conceived and finished, and I am quite proud of the story.

I had always intended to follow my Tabloia comics with a trade paperback of “The Lump,” if for no other reason, because it was the only major “story” in the Tabloia comics. Way back on February 9^th, 2005, following the cancellation of Tabloia, I had emailed my Diamond representative (my distributor) about the future of Tabloia. I told him I intended to do a color trade paperback of the Lump, and then possibly following it up with a one-issue adventure of either Doris Danger or Dick Hammer.

He wrote back that any new project must be submitted for review, but that given my track history, they wouldn’t need to see full copies of the next issues in the series. He said he’d be hesitant to do stories of the characters in Tabloia, given my sales numbers. (Ouch…) He said I should lean toward one-shots, if I take characters from Tabloia, and promote it without referring to Tabloia, to make it fresh. (Double ouch…)

So this advice was in my head, as I finished Tabloia and prepared for the next project, the Lump Trade. I thought I could whip out a reprint book like this relatively quickly and with a minimum of work. It would also buy me some time while I continued pumping out pages for whatever the next project might be.

But then, down at San Diego that year I heard about Marvel doing a Halloween-release of Kirby’s monsters, and decided I should instead quickly put a package together with what little I had to collect of my Kirby-style Doris Danger stories. That set the Lump trade back a few months. While I was making the deadlines to get the Doris Danger humongous treasury to the printer, I was also submitting “The Lump TP” cover images and descriptions for inclusion in Diamond’s catalog, to be published in a few months.

I don’t even remember considering doing the Lump trade in color, so I must have scrapped the idea pretty quickly. First of all, the time it would take me to color a comic would set it back a year. Second of all, at that time, I didn’t have the computer knowledge of how to color it, so I would have had to have hired someone, or tried to get a friend or desperate aspiring comics guy to do it. If I relied on someone else, who knows how reliable they would be, or what kind of timeline they would be on. Not to mention the immense additional cost it would be to have it printed. Would that cost generate the additional sales? Just maybe. Especially since so many publishers have popped up overseas who have begun charging the same for printing a color comic as it costs to do black-and-white books here in America or Canada. But at any rate, it was something I lost interest in trying very early on.

I contacted my friend Damon Thompson, who had done all the great covers for all the Tabloia comics. I told him, I had originally planned for there to be six issues of Tabloia, and since there were only five, might he consider doing a new cover for the Lump trade? I told him I wanted a lot of dismembered hands. Maybe like a stack or row of them or something. He said he actually thought it would be fun. That made me relieved that he would do another cover. When he sent it to me, I thought it was his best one yet!

March 30, 2005, I again wrote to my Diamond representative. I asked for permission to post “The Lump” trade paperback in July’s Previews catalogue, which would ship in September. I billed the book as black-and-white, 104 pages, for $12.95. He said for that high a cover price, I should consider throwing in some additional pages, to give my (few) fans a reason to order the trade. And so I started re-thinking, or alter-thinking, about this “additional pages” business. I had time to think about it, because I was throwing together the Doris Danger trade, and that bought me a few months.

The original “Lump” story was scripted to run 72 pages, and once I began drawing it, I stretched it out to about 90. I remember I had estimated the 104 page business, because I figured that would give me a dozen pages for whatever else I felt like adding.

I knew I wanted to add the original covers and back covers of the Tabloia comics, because they all portrayed the Lump storyline. But just like that, ten more pages were accounted for. So then I began visualizing other things that might be fun to include as well.

In every issue of Tabloia, I had a title page with a silly small print warning, and three little text features: 1. a letter of introduction from my imaginary editor, Rob Oder, 2. “Fun Sanitation Tips from the Sultan of Sanitation, Dr. “Cleanie” Santini, and 3. “Surprising Sex Science Facts from Professor Pardi!” I enjoyed all these enough that I thought, why don’t I throw those into the trade as well. So that was another five pages added, and I had written text pieces for the sixth-and-never-published-issue, so I thought I would throw that in too.

I thought it would be fun to include some of my “secret texts” from the website. Every issue, we would post a “secret text” for that issue, black text on a black background. If you knew where it was and highlighted it with your mouse, the text would “magically appear, for extra-special, super-dedicated fans!” I thought some of these texts were really funny, and they deserved to be read by people, so I decided some of those would go in too.

And then I decided to include a bunch of my old layout and character sketches.

And then I was asked by Smallzone Distributors in the UK to write a four-page horror story, and I had an idea in my head that I thought would work nicely.

It was a dream I’d had, that really freaked me out, about being able to see a glimpse of something in the mirror, but not be able to tell what it was. And then, I finally saw it, and it made me desolate with foreordained fate. The mirror was showing me glimpses of my own life in the future. The mirror had fragmented its reflection in time. I was catching glimpses of how I was going to die. I woke up gushing tears. I thought it would make a good story now, with characters from the Lump, and sent it off to the UK for publication. Naturally, that had to be included in the Lump trade.

So I just about had my package together, and now it was bulked up to an idiotic 160. This was in part, because you should do your comics in multiples of 16 pages – or at least eight. So I would say, okay, 104 isn’t enough. Next step is 120. And then I’d find I had 121 pages I wanted to include. So I’d try and come up with 136. And while brainstorming to get 136 pages, I’d come up with 137, and so on, until I was up to that idiotic 160. And so, at the last minute, again to bulk up the pages, I decided I wanted to write an epilogue to the Lump. It would be three pages, plus a title page.

Pretty quickly, I’d come up with an idea for a sequel to “The Lump,” but now it was looking like it might never see print. So I decided, well screw that, I’m going to presage the sequel by hyping it in an epilogue. Because you never know if something is going to sell, right? I could be hopeful that even though Tabloia wasn’t successful, maybe people would enjoy the Lump trade. And if they enjoyed it enough, I wanted to hype that I was more than happy to do a sequel to it. Not to mention, I think the epilogue tied everything together interestingly. It was in character with the rest of the story.

So with all these additional features (seventy idiotic pages worth!) I ended up having a lot of prep-work and editing to do, to make all this printable and neat and orderly for the trade. It involved cropping, spacing, playing with layouts and sizes, and A LOT of text. Not to mention I’d have to draw a brand new four pages!

2/11/06

At WonderCon, I had approached Thomas Yeates, and actually purchased a second pin-up from him. Part of my logic with this was my overwhelming guilt for I singling him out in the collected Doris Danger treasury that contained his first pin-up. The title page discussed how to make the comic “appropriate for all ages,” and I joked at great length and in obsessive detail about all the creative ways the reader could edit Thomas’s gorgeous pin-up (containing a nude) so that the book would still be “all ages friendly.” But rather than just be upfront with him what I did, and then apologize, I wanted to get another pin-up from him. He did this gorgeous jungle piece, so now I wanted him to do a jousting, knights of the round table type thing.

I’d been thinking about re-approaching a couple other artists, who I’d already gotten pin-ups from. John Severin was the first who got my juices flowing. I thought he did such a great Western pin-up, but he’s also known for his war comics. Wouldn’t that be fun to re-commission him for a war pin-up with a monster in it? And then I thought, well, since I can’t afford to keep paying Dick Ayers to ink the stories, maybe I could get a few pin-ups from him. I could get a Western pin-up, and then something else of his choice. Make him special, by including multiple pin-ups by him.

So I was on this kick of artists who do different genres, and having them do different genres of monster pin-ups.

This sparked my imagination of other artists from the first volume who I’d love to get second pin-ups from. Of course I’ve always fantasized about asking Gilbert Hernandez to do a full five-page story for me. Then I pictured Tony Millionaire doing an intricate architecturally involved giant monster, since he does gorgeous architectural line drawings.

And this brings us to this week. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. I realized, Shit! If I’m going to ask other people for pin-ups, ask your favorites. What do you have to lose? They’ll just say no, and I can move on, knowing at least I asked.

I immediately sent emails to Mike Mignola and Mike Allred. I’ve been calling Sam Kieth as well, but haven’t heard from him yet. Mike and Mike got back to me immediately, and shocked me.

Mignola said no way… … he’s way too busy… and he can’t believe my boldness… but he REALLY wants to do another! Check with him in a few months! Fuck me! What a fucking thrill!

I had hoped to see Mike Allred at Wondercon, but we didn’t hook up. His wife Laura had seen Mario Hernandez sitting at my table, so I was able to give Mike a copy of my oversize treasury through her, with his previous pin-up in it. He was real sweet emailing a reply. He said what a great format it was, and that he thought the book was great. So I felt hopeful about a response from him regarding another pin-up.

Allred writes back the next day, saying I caught him in a good mood. He wrote, quote: “Too much fun to pass up. The format is swell and the company is super cool.” Bless you, Mike Allred! He’s says he’s currently working on a Madman monster story, so he’s in the right frame of mind.

Hot damn! DAMN! Here I am, just throwing out maverick invites, because I’m an invading, annoying little punk with no boundaries, assuming these guys will simply not bother to write back at all, and what happens? I learn a valuable lesson. Be audacious, rude, and brash, because it PAYS OFF!

Editor’s note: I only moderately, jokingly believe in this. Don’t be rude to your idols, fans! Use tact and common sense! Otherwise, people will just think you’re an asshole, and word will spread in this tiny community!

Early 2006

Here is what’s been going through my head with doing the comics self-publishing for the last month or so.

After WonderCon and enjoying a book with more pages and a higher cover price, I’ve been reluctantly thinking I may just have to stop doing single comics issues, and occasionally disappear from the comics scene every now and then for a year or so until I pump out bigger projects. But then have these nice, bigger, expensive books that will sell fewer copies but make better money with the higher cover prices. I’m resistant to this, because I love comics, and I don’t really enjoy trade paperbacks. I don’t like feeling like I’m cracking their spine whenever I read them. I don’t like the heavier feel that you can’t just roll up in your pocket, and then throw out when you’ve had your way with them. They feel more precious, and less like a flimsy piece of meaningless junk. It’s just not a medium I appreciate and love like comics.

However. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

So I’ve been trying to get myself resolved to the concept of putting out graphic novels. And that means, instead of three 48 page issues of “Limbo Cafe,” or seven 24-pagers, it will be another 200 or so pages all at once, and most likely a year or so before it sees print if I’m realistic. That means disappearing from the industry until I can get all that work completed.

Coming home from Orlando’s MegaCon, I had so much damn fun showing professionals my monster book, and so many other self-publishers seemed to really enjoy and appreciate it, I began feeling like, maybe I should screw this Limbo Cafe project – for now – and just put out another monster book. You figure, I could do a forty-eight pager this time (as opposed to the 56 pages of the previous one), and get a dozen pin-ups, which I think I’ve already got, and which subtracts from the amount of pages I have to draw myself. Then I’m putting out an expensive book with less work needed to get it out. I’m staying on the market with more frequency, since there’s less work for me to actually do. And everyone seems to enjoy the monster book anyways, and most likely they won’t be particularly into Limbo Cafe, since it’s a “serious” comic, with no pin-ups of giant monsters in it at all.

So then I started thinking, well maybe I should go back to my original monster book plan. I’ll release three 24-page issues, then collect them into the second volume giant-sized monster book. Or maybe I could even make them cheap 16-page issues.

But I know I’m dreaming. First of all, no one would want to pay more than $2 for a sixteen page comic, and they’d probably cost me over a dollar to print. That means if I distribute them to shops, I can only lose money, every issue I sell.

Second, sixteen pages only leaves enough room for two and half Doris stories (since I make the stories five pages each), if I’m going to include pin-ups and a letters page, etc etc. And let’s face it. Doris Danger stories aren’t really that good. Who the hell would want just two of them in a book? Somehow, they read funny if you only get one, or if you see three of them in a row. But two stories, that have nothing to do with each other? People would just think it’s weird.

Sigh…So I guess it’s a second volume, giant-sized, 48-page Doris Danger. I can still use my original titles: Doris Danger in Outer Space! Doris Danger’s Greatest Army Battles! Doris Danger’s Secret Origins (if I wind up doing a fourth volume)! Doris Danger in Exotic Locations!

ORLDANDO MEGA-CON, February 24-26th, 2006

The exciting, funnest part of the weekend for me was my experience with Al Feldstein. I assumed he would only have occasional scheduled signings, for an hour here and an hour there, and that would be it. I was surprised to see he didn’t have mobs of fans five people deep all around him. No lines. No nothin’. He had a premium, spacious booth, right by the entrance, and was just sitting there all weekend.

I introduced myself and showed him my humongous treasury and asked him about commissions. He gave the same reply I’d gotten from his representative who mans his website: He’s only doing landscape paintings, which he frames up really nice and charges thousands of dollars for. I pressed by asking about pen-and-ink commissions. He said he hasn’t done comics work in fifty years. I had known all this coming into the conversation, and didn’t expect any other answer. I was just excited to have some time to speak with him, so I visited some more. He talked about living through the McCarthy hearings, but feeling our current political climate is worse, because now the politicians are trying to change the constitution. I made one last inquiry before leaving, about if he might have time to do a sketch since it was kind of quiet today. He said, so how much do you pay all these other guys? He suggested a price which I found very fair, considering he was giving me permission to publish it. He told me he’d need paper.

WOW! I was surprised and ecstatic! I ran back to the artists alley, and timidly asked my neighbor there for some paper. Rushed it back to Al. When I checked back later, he had drawn a great pencil sketch of “RIP, EC,” with a corpse coming out of a grave. I went back to Elizabeth, beaming. I said, you know, I’m going to ask him for another. I went back, and he said, What like a space ship, maybe? I thought that was great.

I went back to my table and told Elizabeth it was perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and maybe he wouldn’t be interested, but I felt like I was hitting it off with him, and I was considering actually asking Al to dinner. Not long afterwards, he walked by (on the way to the bathroom. My most effective way of meeting people at cons, it seems!) I stopped him, introduced him to Elizabeth, and asked if he’d like to join us for dinner, and he agreed!

When we met him at his booth at the end of the day, he had started my second sketch, and it looked just like an EC sci-fi cover, with a planetary landscape, a spaceship, and some astronauts. But no giant monster. I asked him about it, and he said, “No, no giant monsters. He asked if I knew what they used to call monsters in the EC Comics. BEMs. Bug-eyed monsters. He’d already gotten the composition lain out, so my sketch wouldn’t have any BEMs.

That night, there was a party at a local comics shop. We decided to check it out, because it had food, and then maybe go to dinner after, if we still needed to eat.

We walked in, and Al spotted some EC reprints on the shelves, and picked them up and flipped through them, and showed Elizabeth some of his covers. We visited with the owners of the store, who rushed up and introduced themselves. He talked about back when these classic comics were being published, the post office would give shipping discounts if books met a certain set of rules, including a limited number of ads, and a guaranteed two pages of text, which explained the two-page text stories in each issue. He was making fun of them. He didn’t care much about them, because he knew no one would read them anyways, so he said they were all garbage, just for obligatorily written by who-knows-who for the discount.

He talked about not seeing any royalties for his EC books, because on the back of each page, acceptance of his paycheck meant giving all rights for the art, as well as the art itself, to the publisher. But he said for him, the money he initially made on the book was worth more than the fortune in royalties the publisher later got, because it allowed him to pay his rent. He spoke a little about getting called to make a statement for the McCarthy hearings, I assume because his works were “causing the delinquency of minors.”

We went to the back of the shop and sat down. I asked him about why he quit drawing and did all the writing, and if he missed doing the art when he switched over. He said he did. He said originally, he was one of the few writers in the EC stable who wrote his own stories, and Bill Gaines liked what he had been doing. So Gaines asked if Al could write other artists’ stories. Al told him he couldn’t afford to, because writers got a lesser pay than the artists. He needed some of the artist pay to supplement, so Gaines said he’d give him editorial duties as well. Bill also said he’d help him come up with stories.

Apparently Bill had a weight problem, so he took diet pills to try and lose the weight. These pills back then had these weird sleeplessness side-effects, and kept Gaines up all night, so he would be up all night pacing and reading, and “getting inspiration” (stealing?) from other novels, coming up with these bizarre stories, and writing and writing, all night. And then he and Al would use all these ideas and write all the EC stories.

Al said he didn’t create MAD Magazine, but that he edited it for fifty years. He said he created Tales from the Crypt.

He said he enjoyed us asking him about his career and talking about his history, even though he’d given plenty of interviews, and all the info he was sharing with us was in plenty of books. He’s trying to get an autobiography coffee table book, with lots of samples of his art. He’s had some trouble getting permission to reprint the art. One deal was that he could only use the art if he agrees to let them have rights to edit anything he may have to say. He said he wasn’t interested in a deal like this. Supposedly this is the agreement Krigstein made to have his coffee table book released by Fantagraphics.

We had a nice dinner back at the hotel, where once again we saw Allison, Adam, and Howard. As we left I asked Al again about a BEM in the sketch. He said, “I already told you there’s no room for it in the picture. Pretend the BEM is behind you.” I felt like maybe I was beginning to irritate him, but my book’s theme is giant monsters, so why wasn’t he putting a giant monster in the sketch?

Next morning, at breakfast, we saw Allison and Adam, Nick Cardy, who said he was still thinking about an idea for the monster pin-up, and Sal Buscema, who I thought was so sweet and friendly.

Al delivered a gorgeous sci-fi pin-up. He asked if I wanted it personalized, and I said, “Well, I was thinking about what you said last night. Could you have a voice bubble for one of the guys, saying, “Behind you! A BEM!” “ He turned away and kind of shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Too corny?” I asked. “Yeah.” He said, “You really want a BEM, huh? All right, get me another piece of paper.”

Al told me he never does convention sketches, but added with a twinkle in his eye that he was finding them so lucrative that he couldn’t pass them up. He even told other people that I was basically responsible for his charging so much for pin-ups. But I said then and I’ll say it now: He deserves it. He’s arguably (in my opinion) one of maybe three of the most important historical figures in the history of comics still living from that era. He deserves it.

Elizabeth picked up this third pin-up from his table. When she came back, she said, “Honey, I think you’re going to like this.” She brought it face down. I flipped it over. What a BEM! Gorgeous. I went back to Al and told him this last one made me speechless. They were all gorgeous. He said I didn’t have to pay for this one if I didn’t want to. He said it was for Elizabeth and the baby. I told him I had money in my pocket. “Well, all right, give me the money!” he laughed. He deserved it. Gorgeous!

We shared another cab with Adam and Allison on the second night. I asked Adam how he got into comics. He said he made up his mind he would give comics a try, and if he didn’t get into the industry within three years, he would learn a trade. It was a New Year’s Resolution, and he found work within three days! It’s pretty rare you hear a success story like that. But his talent is pretty rare, too.

Overall, we ended up doing all right sales-wise at this con. The first day was REALLY slow, and I had thought it was going to be our worst convention, to be beat out only by my pathetic bookstore signings. But it wound up in the higher level. I’m telling you, having ten dollar books really makes a difference.

But even if it had been a complete flop with sales, the con was SO great. Getting pin-ups from Sal Buscema and Nick Cardy, and THREE from Al Feldstein! Sharing a cab with Adam Hughes! HAVING DINNER with AL FELDSTEIN! What a FUCKING great trip!

The moment we walked into the convention, we had bumped into Martin Nodell. It was great to see him again. He had a long row of stitches going up about a half-inch or so from his brow, and another scab closer to the center of his forehead and higher. He’d fallen out of bed, poor guy. His son Spencer said this may be Martin’s last convention, because he’s ninety years old, and it’s getting harder to get him out to big shows like this. It’s a lot of work.

I asked Spencer if Martin is doing any drawings or sketches any more, because I’d sure love to be able to include him for a pin-up in my comic. He said maybe we could dig up something old and give me permission to reproduce it. Similar to Irwin Hasen, Solomon Grundy got brought up. Spencer said we could take an image and maybe touch it up, and retitle it “Swamp Monster” or something. I think that would be really great, to include a classic Martin Nodell monster image.

Elizabeth, as usual, gave me time to walk around and try to talk with everyone. Adam Hughes wasn’t there yet, and wouldn’t arrive until the end of the first day. I couldn’t find George Tuska. I later learned he had to cancel his appearance at the con, because he cut his foot, and then got a staff infection. I was really disappointed knowing I wouldn’t have this opportunity to meet him, since he was one of the great excitements for me, coming to this con.

I decided to just poke up to George Perez, Sal Buscema, and Dick Giordano, all of whom had long lines. George Perez was signing tons of books. One guy brought like ten or twenty copies each of maybe five items. We’re talking fifty or a hundred signatures. And since it was a bunch of copies of the same items, it was obvious they weren’t for his personal collection. He even said they were all for ebay. I think if I were famous, and someone brought a stack like that to me, I would just tell them, look, you’re asking me for a free signature, and you’re gonna make out on all that. I’ll sign one of each of those, but you’re just taking advantage.

When I asked him about a pin-up, George said he was under exclusive contract. He was making a ton of great-looking convention sketches. Next up, Sal said to talk to his manager, which I did, and managed to get set up for a pin-up commission. Both Sal and his manager were very sweet, and very supportive of the fact I’m self-publishing.

I gave half my pitch to Dick Giordano, who seemed to be listening, but concentrating on a sketch he was doing, and not looking up at me. Then the woman sitting with him told me he was hard of hearing, and couldn’t hear me at all. So I embarrassedly went around to his other side and gave the pitch again, and got his contact info.

I was able to get a sketch of a giant monster from Nick Cardy, which I don’t feel I deserved. He said, “Are you a fan of my work?” And I told him, I’m not familiar with what you’ve done. How embarrassing. I felt so ashamed. He listed some of his books, including Teen Titans and the hundreds of covers he’d done, and handed me a book full of all his work, and then I realized I actually WAS familiar with his work, I just didn’t know the name to go with it. I showed him my treasury, and he flipped through it, and I was impressed that he knew so many of the artists, old and new. This was someone from the seventies era who kept up to date on his artists.

When I asked him about the pin-up, he said to come back later, to give him time to think about it. I came back, and he said he was busy, and there were sketches ahead of me that he had to do. Come back later. When I came back again, he was gone.

We bumped into him at breakfast the next day. He said, I’m still thinking about that pin-up. At the convention he said how the scariest things are things you can’t really see, except maybe a hint of it creeping out from the darkness or something, and asked me if something like that would be all right. Absolutely. I checked in later, and there were other pin-ups ahead of mine, but he was still thinking about it. He finally whipped out a beauty on Sunday, the final day. I was shocked how similar it was to Ojo.

I have mixed feelings about using convention sketches as pin-ups in my book, because of course the artists don’t necessarily use their best tools, and the conditions aren’t great for drawing, and most likely they’re pounding out a lot of sketches, and not necessarily able to put in the time and quality they might do working in their comfortable, usual working areas with all their comfortable, usual tools. I hope the con sketches reproduce all right, and look nice in my book.

At the end of the day on Friday, we bumped into Allison and Adam Hughes, who’d just gotten into town, and they suggested we share a cab back to the hotel. The hotel was about a ten-fifteen minute bus ride from the convention, and of course everyone at the con was waiting for the bus, and it showed up maybe every ten or so minutes, for some reason, so we piled into a cab together. Adam is real quiet, but he spoke a little when I mentioned that I was a bit worried about claiming such huge losses for my taxes this year, a second year in a row. He didn’t think I should worry about it. He felt I’m too small a fish, and in the worst case, they’d just ask for a little money back and some interest. He knew people who hadn’t been audited for eighteen years in comics.  Does everyone, including the IRS, just know that no one can make any money in this industry?

Next day at his table, I asked, since he’d had to drive six hours to the con, if he’d had an opportunity to take advantage of his driving time with audio books. Oh yeah, he replied. He listened to a Star Wars book on his way up. I told him how my first audio book experience was with Raymond Chandler, and I loved it so much, I’ve been doing the audio book thing ever since. That’s how I learned of Adam’s appreciation of crime novels, and that got us both talking for awhile. He said he recommended reading Chandler’s published diary, which would have depressing admissions of his alcohol problem, followed by lucid critiques of famous works of fiction. Adam asked if I’d read Charles Bukowski’s “Pulp,” which I had. It was Bukowski’s last novel, an odd parody of old crime novels. So this was my first nice conversation with Adam Hughes, where I felt like he felt comfortable visiting with me.

This was an interesting con. It was a three-day con, so I assumed it must be pretty big. I hadn’t had very good luck at Baltimore, getting myself a table in the cheapest area. But I had been told by a fellow self-publisher that MegaCon gets so much foot traffic, I would do fine in the cheap artists alley section, so that’s what we signed up for.

We got up at six am, had a two-hour layover in Chicago, and with the three hour time difference, it was nine pm that we got checked into our hotel. What a hell of a long-feeling day.

I saw Adam Hughes’ girlfriend, Allison checking in behind us, but didn’t say hi, because I assumed she wouldn’t remember some unknown, approached-her-once comics nerd. Elizabeth and I went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner, and just as we were seated, Allison came in. Since the restaurant was empty except for the three of us, we invited her to join us at our table, and she consented.

She told us Adam wasn’t there yet. He was supposed to fly in with her, but DC asked if he had any sketches lying around that they could use for a cover, and he said he did. Of course he didn’t, so rather than fly in, he stayed home to draw something for them, and he would drive in the next day. They lived in Atlanta, which I learned was about a six hour drive. We had a very nice dinner with Allison.

She told us that she’s real good with people one-on-one, but has a tough time with huge crowds. Adam, on the other hand, can say very interesting things when he’s in a panel discussion in front of a huge crowd. But when people come and tell them how much his work means to them, he doesn’t really know how to react. He has trouble with strangers one-on-one like that. She even said that his fans have told her they thought he was kind of a jerk. But he’s not at all, it’s just an uncomfortable situation for him. I visualized my first encounter with him. He was so frazzled, not real talkative, and I mistakenly assumed he was just stressed and seeming to just try and get people through the line. Again, which is justifiable, since he creates such enormous lines of fans.

Next morning, we saw Allison again, this time eating with Howard Chaykin. By the time we were finished eating, Allison had left, and Howard was reading. We must have caught his eye, because as we were leaving, he said good morning to us. That was our excuse to go visit, and he was really friendly and talkative. I told him we’d met in Baltimore and he’d looked at all the monster pin-ups in my comic, and he remembered, “That’s right!” Then I told him how he snubbed me at Wondercon. How I’d called him over to visit, and then he saw Ryan Sook and said he’d be right back. Before I got to the punchline he howled, “And I never came back!” and laughed out loud. He was very friendly with us the rest of the con, whenever we bumped into him.

We got to the convention and realized this would be another con with me tucked away against a back wall. But this time it was figurative instead of literal. Everyone around me was a “hack nobody,” who’d never done any professional comics work, who was just just trying to make their way, same as me. All of us losers were tucked away together in the back of the convention hall, where no one needed to feel bothered by us.

I always think to myself, how dare they put me amidst a bunch of people at the same struggling level as myself, when I’d prefer to be mixed in with superstars!

Most of these ones, I learned, as the convention went on, and as far as I could tell, didn’t even have any self-published work. Instead, they all had sketches of Wolverine or Hulk, or Female comics characters in the nude.

All the big name artists were at the entrance and into the center of the convention hall. I began to think maybe this is why I tended to do better at Wondercon, where the convention runners very kindly put celebrities and nobodies like me all mixed together. It gives me the chance to accidentally be noticed by people looking for something else. The set-up at this (and most other) convention, you can see what you’re getting into when you get near these aisles, so that they’re easy to avoid.

All these unpublished sketchers told me throughout the weekend how well they were doing, and how many sketches of Wolverine or Hulk they were selling, and making thirty bucks a pop or something. We saw guys selling seven cent Kinkos 8 ½” x 11″ black and white copies for $10 each. We saw people walking around with all this “art,” and said, “Oh, that’s very nice. Who drew it?” And the people who bought them didn’t even know or care who the artists were.

I wondered if Florida just wasn’t interested in the kind of work I was doing. I mentioned this odd phenomenon to Allison, and she said this is less of a comics convention, and more of an anime or gaming con. It’s a completely different crowd. This crowd sees one artist selling sketches for $100 or so, and they think, well that artist is selling his for $30, and I like the picture he drew of Wolverine, so to them it’s a deal. They could care less who draws it. They don’t understand about different artists. It was a really strange vibe. It felt like people just walked by us without even glancing at what I had, day after day. They weren’t interested in it. They were all there to dress like their favorite Manga character, not to buy comics.

This convention, I was approached by an artist who really liked my work, and asked if he could commission me to do a pin-up of a giant monster for his book. I looked at his comic, and got a kick out of the first page. The second page had a bizarre twist that I enjoyed, and the third page had such an odd sequence of events I really enjoyed it. His story is way out there, maybe more than I like. His art looks pretty good overall. I agreed to do a pin-up for the first time. Unless you count Caveman Robot, which I did for free, since they’re friends, and I enjoyed them and their character, Cavey. You can look for the comic, “She’s a Superfreak #2” by Andrew Gregory.

It’s a strange feeling, not being really any better than all these other self-publishers, but having them begin to give me attention, as if I am somebody, or heading in the right direction to someday become somebody. I hope it’s a good sign. I hope they don’t just think that since I’ve gotten all these pin-ups from all my own personal favorite artists, that I must be a somebody. Because I’m really just the same as them, struggling and wondering if any of this is worth it, and losing money every issue I put out, and feeling like, what the hell’s the use, if no one has even heard of me, or has any interest to stop by my table and buy my book.

Or, “More of Chris’s Gripes”

Funny (PATHETIC) story about us setting up this convention. I was online about a year and a half ago, and stumbled onto one of those “Winner! Call immediately to claim your free vacation!” prizes. It had a counter, clicking down my two minutes that I had left to call. It was a vacation package for four trips, including a stay in Orlando and a cruise out of Orlando. It would only cost $600, and the cruise would be an additional $600, to cover “port fees and taxes.” Elizabeth has always really wanted to travel, and this looked like a good cheap way to do it. Of course I saw right through their attempts to bill this as “winning a vacation,” and I knew the way they made their money was by people not ever taking their vacations. But they gave us a year and a half to claim the trips, and I saw two of these trips were in locations we could go to comic conventions, which made this package deal a business expense. Right before I hit the final stage, I realized it didn’t include air fare. But it still sounded like a good deal, and we’ve never done a cruise, so I signed up anyways.

Of course, we put things off for over a year, but we saw Megacon in Florida, and thought that would be nice to write off our plane tickets, and then do the Florida vacation and cruise in one shot. I set up the hotels and cruise. The travel company said we’d have to pay more for the cruise, because it was the busy season, even though they only asked for a month’s notice, and I booked three months in advance. Then we set up our convention table fees and flights.

I was really excited to see Michael Lark, our new friend from Baltimore, was listed for this Con. I hoped we would have time to hang out together. It turned out he had to cancel last minute. I found out a week before, and got a nice email from him, saying he’s really busy, but I’m first on his list of commissions.

I also couldn’t wait to meet George Tuska and Al Feldstein.I knew George must be getting on in his years, because I heard he’d been doing comics since the 1940’s, and I really wanted to see him.I suspected he didn’t get out to many conventions, although I noticed he was at MegaCon the year before.Naturally I hoped I might be able to get contact info from him, and set up a monster pin-up.

I didn’t know if Al Feldstein made it to many conventions. I hadn’t noticed his name very often. I had stumbled onto a website where he was doing commissions, but it stated in no vague terms that he was only doing commissions for painted re-creations of his EC covers. I actually contacted his representative, who it turned out was also representing Dick Ayers (which is how I stumbled onto his site). The representative had told me Al was not doing any pen and ink work. The paintings were all thousands of dollars, and I knew I couldn’t afford the cost, and reproductions would have copyrights that I certainly couldn’t publish in my own book. I assumed at the convention I might not have the opportunity to meet him. I assumed he would be a much-demanded legend, who didn’t come out much, so when he did, he would get swamped with hour-long lines that I couldn’t afford to wait in. I assumed I would be too intimidated to even mention a pin-up, since I’d already gotten an answer from the rep, and I didn’t want to pester him for the only two seconds I would get before I was hurried out of line for the next fan.

Back to the vacation package scheduling. We had been stressed about fitting this vacation package into our busy, and still-in-debt schedules. It was a relief to have two of the four vacations now taken care of. We received our official confirmation letter, which stated we would have to pick up our hotel vouchers at a “welcoming center.” Then they called and told us the cruise we had chosen had been chartered, and we couldn’t do it on that date after all. We could reschedule a cruise any time over the next six months. I told them I was coming from California. This was an expensive trip for us to come out. We couldn’t back out of this trip, because we had our plane tickets and a convention scheduled now, based on the confirmation that had originally told us. I told them, if this cruise doesn’t work, they should refund our money. She said she’d call back to see about other cruises during this week. Of course they weren’t available either. She said they could give my cruise money back, but there would be a service charge. I’d receive the check in a couple months.

Over the next few days, I waited to speak with her manager, who was coincidentally out of town. Now I wanted not just the cruise payment but the vacation package money back. I told her I understand her position, that we’re only canceling the cruise, and that if she wanted, we could still take the other vacations, but that I should receive back the cruise portion of the money. She lied, saying I paid for the vacations, and that the cruise was thrown in free. I called her on her lie, and she replied, “Oh, was it?” I asked about the “welcoming center,” and was finally able to get from her that it was at the location of a time-share presentation.

While waiting for her manager to “get back in town,” I called the Better Business Bureau and Seller of Travel. Sure enough, this company had twenty or thirty complaints in the year and a half since the company opened. I contacted my credit card, which thank God I had used to pay for the vacation. They said that it may not be easy to dispute the charges for this vacation package, because I had purchased it over a year ago. But I could try if they did not represent the product I paid for. I read all the fine print of all the brochures they gave me, and tried to rack my brain about this. I felt they may have had me with the cruise, because the small print stated they weren’t responsible for “acts of God,” or events beyond their control. I hoped the fact that they scheduled a charter meant it was within their control. But I realized my only hope was that I hadn’t been informed about the time-share presentation. I submitted my dispute to the credit card and sent a formal letter to the vacation people that I wanted all my money back. They immediately called and said they’d be happy to make sure I got my full money back for the cruise, and would extend my vacation package. I told them I’d wait to hear what my credit card company thought, and never heard from the vacation people again.

A couple weeks later, I got a letter in the mail from the credit card, saying the entire amount had been credited back. What a relief. But it said the travel people could dispute my dispute, and I’d better keep the money available for forty-five days. I called, and they said an amount this big, the company would definitely dispute. But they never did. What a relief.

Don’t sign up for these vacation packages, fans! Anytime you’ve “won” something, you’re gonna regret the hell they put you through. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I was SO lucky I came out unscathed, unlike so many of my damaged friends who have fallen prey to other schemes.