<\/p>\n
I was on the fence as to whether I should do a Doris Danger trade or a trade of the Lump first. <\/span>The Lump is kind of my most precious story. <\/span>It was the first, serious, large, real project I\u2019d conceived and finished, and I am quite proud of the story.<\/p>\n I had always intended to follow my Tabloia comics with a trade paperback of \u201cThe Lump,\u201d if for no other reason, because it was the only major \u201cstory\u201d in the Tabloia comics. <\/span>Way back on February 9th<\/sup>, 2005, following the cancellation of Tabloia, I had emailed my Diamond representative (my distributor) about the future of Tabloia. <\/span>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. <\/p>\n He wrote back that any new project must be submitted for review, but that given my track history, they wouldn\u2019t need to see full copies of the next issues in the series. <\/span>He said he\u2019d be hesitant to do stories of the characters in Tabloia, given my sales numbers. (Ouch\u2026) <\/span>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\u2026)<\/p>\n So this advice was in my head, as I finished Tabloia and prepared for the next project, the Lump Trade. <\/span>I thought I could whip out a reprint book like this relatively quickly and with a minimum of work. <\/span>It would also buy me some time while I continued pumping out pages for whatever the next project might be. <\/p>\n But then, down at San Diego that year I heard about Marvel doing a Halloween-release of Kirby\u2019s 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. <\/span>That set the Lump trade back a few months. <\/span>While I was making the deadlines to get the Doris Danger humongous treasury to the printer, I was also submitting \u201cThe Lump TP\u201d cover images and descriptions for inclusion in Diamond\u2019s catalog, to be published in a few months.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t even remember considering doing the Lump trade in color, so I must have scrapped the idea pretty quickly. <\/span>First of all, the time it would take me to color a comic would set it back a year. <\/span>Second of all, at that time, I didn\u2019t 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. <\/span>If I relied on someone else, who knows how reliable they would be, or what kind of timeline they would be on. <\/span>Not to mention the immense additional cost it would be to have it printed. <\/span>Would that cost generate the additional sales? <\/span>Just maybe. <\/span>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. <\/span>But at any rate, it was something I lost interest in trying very early on. <\/p>\n I contacted my friend Damon Thompson, who had done all the great covers for all the Tabloia comics. <\/span>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? <\/span>I told him I wanted a lot of dismembered hands. <\/span>Maybe like a stack or row of them or something. <\/span>He said he actually thought it would be fun. <\/span>That made me relieved that he would do another cover. <\/span>When he sent it to me, I thought it was his best one yet!<\/p>\n March 30, 2005, I again wrote to my Diamond representative. <\/span>I asked for permission to post \u201cThe Lump\u201d trade paperback in July\u2019s Previews catalogue, which would ship in September. <\/span>I billed the book as black-and-white, 104 pages, for $12.95. <\/span>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. <\/span>And so I started re-thinking, or alter-thinking, about this \u201cadditional pages\u201d business. <\/span>I had time to think about it, because I was throwing together the Doris Danger trade, and that bought me a few months. <\/p>\n The original \u201cLump\u201d story was scripted to run 72 pages, and once I began drawing it, I stretched it out to about 90. <\/span>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.<\/p>\n I knew I wanted to add the original covers and back covers of the Tabloia comics, because they all portrayed the Lump storyline. <\/span>But just like that, ten more pages were accounted for. <\/span>So then I began visualizing other things that might be fun to include as well. <\/p>\n 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. \u201cFun Sanitation Tips from the Sultan of Sanitation, Dr. \u201cCleanie\u201d Santini, and 3. \u201cSurprising Sex Science Facts from Professor Pardi!\u201d <\/span>I enjoyed all these enough that I thought, why don\u2019t I throw those into the trade as well. <\/span>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.<\/p>\n I thought it would be fun to include some of my \u201csecret texts\u201d from the website. <\/span>Every issue, we would post a \u201csecret text\u201d for that issue, black text on a black background. <\/span>If you knew where it was and highlighted it with your mouse, the text would \u201cmagically appear, for extra-special, super-dedicated fans!\u201d <\/span>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. <\/p>\n And then I decided to include a bunch of my old layout and character sketches.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n It was a dream I\u2019d 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. <\/span>And then, I finally saw it, and it made me desolate with foreordained fate. <\/span>The mirror was showing me glimpses of my own life in the future. <\/span>The mirror had fragmented its reflection in time. <\/span>I was catching glimpses of how I was going to die. <\/span>I woke up gushing tears. <\/span>I thought it would make a good story now, with characters from the Lump, and sent it off to the UK for publication. <\/span>Naturally, that had to be included in the Lump trade.<\/p>\n So I just about had my package together, and now it was bulked up to an idiotic 160. <\/span>This was in part, because you should do your comics in multiples of 16 pages – or at least eight. <\/span>So I would say, okay, 104 isn\u2019t enough. <\/span>Next step is 120. <\/span>And then I\u2019d find I had 121 pages I wanted to include. <\/span>So I\u2019d try and come up with 136. <\/span>And while brainstorming to get 136 pages, I\u2019d come up with 137, and so on, until I was up to that idiotic 160. <\/span>And so, at the last minute, again to bulk up the pages, I decided I wanted to write an epilogue to the Lump. <\/span>It would be three pages, plus a title page. <\/p>\n Pretty quickly, I\u2019d come up with an idea for a sequel to \u201cThe Lump,\u201d but now it was looking like it might never see print. <\/span>So I decided, well screw that, I\u2019m going to presage the sequel by hyping it in an epilogue. <\/span>Because you never know if something is going to sell, right? <\/span>I could be hopeful that even though Tabloia wasn\u2019t successful, maybe people would enjoy the Lump trade. <\/span>And if they enjoyed it enough, I wanted to hype that I was more than happy to do a sequel to it. <\/span>Not to mention, I think the epilogue tied everything together interestingly. <\/span>It was in character with the rest of the story.<\/p>\n 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. <\/span>It involved cropping, spacing, playing with layouts and sizes, and A LOT of text. <\/span>Not to mention I\u2019d have to draw a brand new four pages!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019d conceived and finished, and I am quite proud of the story. I had always intended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary-of-a-struggling-comics-artist"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"woocommerce_thumbnail":false,"woocommerce_single":false,"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"cwisnia","author_link":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/archives\/author\/cwisnia"},"uagb_comment_info":2808,"uagb_excerpt":"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\u2019d conceived and finished, and I am quite proud of the story. I had always intended…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}