Is there a Steve Jobs in the (comics industry) house?

Heidi MacDonald's The Beat had a post today which linked to Hervé St. Louis' piece where he tried to find a "Steve Jobs" type in the comics industry:

Steve Jobs, the founder and somewhat CEO of Apple is regarded in the American technology industry as a bright mind and someone that although may not spearhead the new trends, unleashes them with style upon the masses. His input in the computing industry has made Apple Computer the darling of many and the one to beat of many challengers. In the comic book industry, is there anyone that has the same profile and profound influence that Steve Jobs has in the technology industries? Is there someone that continuously challenges every other industry player in the comic book industry, coming up with new products and new ways of being more relevant for readers, collectors and shareholders?

His list consisted of Todd McFarlane, Jim Shooter, Jesse Garza (of Viper Comics), Chris Ryall (IDW), Joe Quesada, Steve Geppi (Diamond, Gemstone), Mike Richardson (Dark Horse), and Joe Nozemack (Oni Press).

My initial thoughts:

• Todd McFarlane might have deserved to be on that list 10-15 years ago but nobody cares about him anymore unless he goes back to drawing.
• Jim Shooter is too into superheroes and any Steve Jobs that "rescues" comics is going to have to bring something more to the table than one more shared superhero universe.
• Joe Quesada could be the guy but that might be like asking Bill Gates to be Steve Jobs since Quesada's working for "the man" and making lots of dough- though, eventually he'll get deposed and then maybe it could happen.
• Steve Geppi is barely holding on and I've always had problem with the guys who owns the distribution monopoly also being a publisher- and he couldn't even keep publishing Disney comics which he loves so what would make anyone think he could start something new and make it work?
• Mike Richardson is busy trying to sell properties in Hollywood as IDW takes over his market share. Also, he has zero cult of personality.
• Joe Nozemack- someone from Oni? I guess I forget they even existed anymore. They do seem to have a cult audience but not one big enough to do much but barely sustain the company.
• Jesse Garza- In order for Viper Comics to be copied maybe I'd have to actually see one in the store which I'm not sure has ever happened to me- if the list needed an underdog how about Chris Staros who went from making a self-published zine to publishing Alan Freaking Moore and who's company was way ahead of the curve on the OGN thing.
• Chris Ryall from IDW is the best on that list since they seem to have come nowhere to a major player in 5 years without relying on any one gimmick, making it possible to ride out any fads. Once again though I don't see a crowded room full of people gasping at his every movement.

At first I was going to post that in the comments but I hadn't posted anything here in a while and figured this would make a good blog entry. Then I couldn't stop myself from saying something so this is what I posted in Heidi's comment section:

Mark Waid (Boom Studios) and Chris Staros (Top Shelf Productions) should have made that sort of a list. Rantz Hosely (editor of Tori Amos' Comic Book Tattoo from Image) is a creator, editor and now inventor of the Longbox project so I’d suggest him since any ‘Steve Jobs for comics’ is likely going to bring some new technical innovation that leads to new distribution channels (or improved ones, anyway). As much as I’d hate to do it, that Platinum Comics guy (Scott Rosenberg) should have been there too though I don’t think he deserves it, he should at least be in the conversation. I think I’d also have put Joey Manley (webcomicsnation.com) on there even if it’s been way too long since the new ComicSpace was announced without much to show for it- WCN and the rest of his sites likely get tons of hits and he’s often trying to find the leading edge and innovate new ways of getting comics out to more people. Scott Kurtz (PVP, webomics.com) should probably have been included.

I’d also keep at eye out for some of the people blogging or podcasting about comics as some of them may very soon branch into other avenues (I’d already be interested to see if any creators notice a podcast effect and which ones can bring measurable sales increases).

Now, that I think about it more- what about Jim Lee?

I imagine I'm still leaving off 5-10 quality names because I'm a nobody in the industry who doesn't know who some of the players behind the scenes are. I know there's a few top level editors who've had a had in the successes of various companies who have potential to be power players in the field- I just don't know who they are or can't remember their names. Also, reading St. Louis' intro paragraph I assume he's talking someone who CAN BE a Steve Jobs type in the future, not who might have been in the past and maybe I'm mis-reading that. Anyway, I thought it was interesting in a way and figured I'd share my thoughts here since The Beat's comment section often seems to get derailed and good points ignored (which seems to be a problem everywhere I go to discuss comics. Which is why I think it's funny when people wonder why comics never live up their potential- maybe it's because you get ignored unless people know who you are and think you can give them work in the industry).

Higher benchmarks make for better comics? BS!

Dirk Deppey links to the newest Dirk Manning column at Newsarama saying Diamond's new higher benchmarks will make for better comics. Sorry, but I've got to call bullshit on that one.

I spent a couple hours yesterday combing through the dollar bins at a local comic shop. The amount of sheer crap produced by the Big 2 and the "mid-majors" is astounding. And people want to beat up on the little guys who at least have excuses for being bad- it's pretty damn hard to put out a great comic when you're doing it yourself in your spare time. The Big 2 and their little siblings have produced so much drek over the years that now sit in dusty longboxes begging for someone to buy them for a dollar or even a quarter... and no one is buying. Those longboxes aren't filled with half as many issues of self-published and small press books as they are with endless issues of some 52, numerous X-Men mini-series and spin-offs, Image imprint franchises nobody has cared about since the early 90s, or the last Big 2 crossover after which "nothing would be the same." How many issues of that "Lost Teen Titans" book did I run across yesterday? Dozens, perhaps. How many issues of long-forgotten Iron Fist or Dr. Strange mini-series did I find? Too many to count. And people expect me to think Diamond's benchmark is going to eliminate the crap?

"After all – let’s be frank, people – Previews has agreed to distribute a lot of sub-par comics for a long time... and now... those days are over."

If only this were actually true...

How to make it in comics?

Five helpful suggestions on how to make it in the comic book business:

1. Blatantly imitate someone successful- why struggle to find your own voice when stealing from others is called an homage? The industry was built on stolen intellectual property so why bother inventing anything new? Comics people are all about trying to relive their childhood so anything new will just be mocked, feared, resented and hated so don't even try.
   
2. Photo reference all your art -make sure you use only porn actresses faking orgasms for the women no matter how inappropriate to character's emotion or age. Just light box some lines over the top of some blurred out photos and you have a comic!
   
3. Pick on someone more famous than you to create a flame war. Isn't this why the Internet was invented?
   
4. Make friends with people who are already successful -even if you suck people will hear your successful buddies singing your praises and assume you have talent even if you don't. No one will find out the truth until you're already famous by which time they'll be kissing your ass (following rule #4) trying to build their own career (unless they decide to follow rule #3 but your legion of ass kissing fans should provide an adequate defense). It's like a pyramid scheme for cartoonists!
5. Supply editors with sex/drugs/shallow praise/free drinks -bribery seems to not only be welcomed, but expected. Comics people tend to be drunks, perverts and degenerate gamblers so this is probably your best bet for success.
   

These handy tips seem to have worked well for others. Why not give them a try? Let us know if they work for you...

What I hate about comics

I usually try to follow comics industry news but lately I've checked out. First, it's football season and then in case you didn't hear we had a little election. So, I've spent a lot of time reading about the NFL and the GOP. For a while I was hitting the comics shop on a regular basis but quit when I realized I wasn't buying anything I really wanted.

But really what's got me down reading about comics is that lately there's some things making me sort of angry about comics. Let me vent....

I hate the fact that some big link blogs seem to always pick up on every doodle from certain artists while completely ignoring others. I saw a link today on a well-trafficked site which featured an artists new avatar which was simply a photo turned into a vector drawing (not even by the artist!) which can now be done with one click in Illustrator.

I hate that all it takes to be a "comics industry advocate" is be a female comics reader with a LiveJournal account and sexual trauma they're willing to share in public. It's a little too easy to beat up on comics for being sexist but most of the outrages offered aren't even that outrageous compared to those in the real world and so it's hard for me to take them seriously. When given a chance to be outraged between a rape of a very minor comics character or that real rape victims are charged for the evidence collection kits police use to find their attacker, I think one just seems silly. Especially when much more popular forms of entertainment are even worse in their sexism. I see it as a cheap way to fame and way to insulate one's views from criticism.

I hate the endless cliques that seem to form where it seems that anything that falls outside of a very narrow parameter is seen as being without merit. I like a lot of different styles, genres, artists and I generally just look for what's good without paying attention to whether it's cool enough for the art comix snobs or if it has enough Star Wars reference for the super spandex fan boys.

I hate that there are more great comics now than ever but you can't find them anywhere outside of a few metro area without ordering on-line. I live within an hour of at least 6 comic shops and most don't carry more than 1 or 2 titles each from Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly or Top Shelf and never carry stuff from Alternative, Buenaventura or other boutique publishers. Yet they seem willing to buy numbers of unsold comics from the Big 2.

I hate that some news sites seem to think it's new when an artist is having a fund drive in order to buy a new XBox or pay for their colonoscopy. I'm all in favor of charity but it doesn't seem to be applied evenly. Also, I'm practically a socialist but even I understand that private health insurance is available and if you are low income there may be programs like Medicaid that are available. Let's keep the charity for the people who need it.

I hate that many popular comics figures aren't even all that good. Mediocre work is championed because someone lives in New York and has lots of important friends they go drinking with on weekends. While there will always be the gadflies and socialites in any scene, comics seems overwhelmed by networkers who are famous (in comics, anyway) for being famous and haven't really done work of any significance. As long as you have the right friends you can get your foot in the door. This opens the door to many bad artists feeling their work would be more popular were it not for a conspiracy against them. Things would be better if comics were a meritocracy. Being a fun guy to hang with after a convention at the bar should get you friends, not a contract worth 6 figures.

I hate that monthly, serialized comics don't do a good job of giving you value for your money, a self-contained story that can be read on a one-off basis or even a recap so people who can't remember every little detail from something they read a month ago or don't buy every single issue can get up to speed. If comics people can't figure out to make a distinct unit of entertainment them maybe the monthly comic should just die already.

I hate that most comic artists can't draw ears to save their lives. Even the great manga artists seem to not understand the very simple structure of the human ear. Some things are hard to draw but ears are not. I know not everyone is aces with anatomy but most artists don't even try to draw ears correctly.

These are some of the things bugging me about comics lately. I know I can't change them and bitching about them will only get me accused of being jealous I'm not more successful than I am but I still had to do it anyway. I know my attitude is bad but sometimes somebody needs to give the comics industry a kick in the pants.

Web comics are the answer

In my last post, I talked about how I believed the comics industry, especially the mainstream "Big 2" publisher, should embrace the anthology as a means to deliver the monthly, serialized "floppy" comic book. Because of changing economics and industry dynamics I think the anthology is a way for the larger publishers to go back to their roots and return to the successful formula that launched their greatest creations, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and countless others.

Now I want to talk about how I think the smaller companies and independent creators need to take a harder look at web comics as their model to replace what used to be the means for unknown or underground voices to enter the comic book industry, the black and white indy comic. Although, I would also like to see more indy anthologies (and there area and have been a a lot- Mome, 24/7, Flight, Comic Book Tattoo, Drawn & Quarterly, etc.) but the problem in today's market is that distribution has devolved into a nearly mainstream-only delivery system in the majority of most direct market comics shops. Retailers, forced to place their bets on what they will sell and not get stuck having to keep (or if they do what might have a shelf life) are betting on Coke and Pepsi's big names and not stocking very deep into the distributor catalog.

In fact, in an average 6 months I shop at at least four area comic shops. A fifth I used to go to but gave up on. In the aftermath of the 90s these shops all slowly cut back on their ordering of alternative comics, even as that part of the industry developed superstars like Los Bros. Hernandez, Adrian Tomine, Chris Ware, Chester Brown, etc. When retailers got stuck with the bill for thousands of unsold "hot" properties, they counter-intuitively dumped the stuff that appealed to aesthetic or literary interests and firmly entrenched themselves into the fanboy collector market by placing even more chips in the basket of the Big 2.

And so I have over the years found it harder and harder to find interesting alternative work. Stores that used to get an issue of The Comics Journal, Acme Novelty Library, or Optic Nerve might now just order a couple extra copies of Punisher War Journal or Catwoman. Because of the deeper discounts from the publishers who have signed exclusive deals with Diamond, retailers have gone with the products with greater profit margin and a "reliable" customer base- the every Wednesday crowd.

Now, I see where more and more indy comics creators have gone from publishing comics to making mini-comics. Higher paper costs and printing increases have helped this along. But once upon a time a tiny publisher or sole creator could expect to publish his book on a press, have Diamond carry it and see a fair amount of orders. Now these creators are forced to go to photocopier publishing or print-on-demand (POD) and hand-sell their creations, meaning if you don't live near these creators you have almost no chance of seeing their book. While some web sites have attempted mini-comic distribution on-line they were often plagued by poor site design and interface, a lack of preview art, little to no advertising, and perhaps in the early days a reluctance for consumers to engage in e-commerce (print fetishism may be an issue here- some of us still want to touch the merchandize- to "squeeze the Charmin" as it were), not to mention high shipping costs- unless you want to order a dozen mini-comics you may be paying as much for shipping as you are for the product you are ordering.

Meanwhile, we've seen a generation emerge that has been creating web comics for several years and already produced "superstars" that make a living at their work and are getting signed to book deals from major publishers. Sadly, most of the people embracing web comics seem to be humor-based strips often aimed at youth culture niches such as gamers of fantasy-based or furry-oriented. While it's nice to see these areas flourish there is a gaping hole where the traditional indy comics crowd and aspiring mainstream creators should be. While we've seen a start very recently with projects like The Chemistry Set, Transmission-X, and Act-i-vate, I still see a lot of newer creators dumping money into print without first establishing a desire for their product, something which can be created almost free by using the internet and web comics.

This lesson was one learned the hard way. Long gone is the time when creators could create the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon with a self-published black and white comic or the days where an R. Crumb could sell-sell his way from Zap #1 to a chateau in France. In fact, I'm not even sure it's still possible for a Dan Clowes to come up the way he did, starting with Llyod Llewelyn and then moving to Eightball, selling enough copies to at least keep going and progressing. I also think the fact that a lot of record stores used to carry indy comics was a boon to the industry, not only providing an alternate sales outlet by by having music fans get turned on to interesting artists that could provide cover art, helping further expand the reach of the artists and also help provide a more stable outcome. Alternative newspapers also serialized comics and bought illustration from comic artists which further made it possible to keep the young artists going and improving. A lot has changed...

Now, the best way for an artist to be seen is to put art on-line and hope it gets picked up by Boing Boing or some other outlet that bring eyeballs to a site and creates exposure for an artist. The upside is now you can be seen by millions, but the trade-off is that you are now not just competing against the artists in your city or region to get noticed but every artist in the world. While you can still make some money off print it seems harder than ye olden tyme days and I think that means artists have to be willing to make work available for free on-line- something which goes against the instincts of many people who value their creations and believe them to be of some worth. We live in a culture where people are supposed to be paid for their work, in fact that's sort of how capitalism works, yet we find ourselves in a time where there's billions of web sites with countless hours of free content available. Every artist has to compete against YouTube, MySpace, iTunes, and more.

It almost seems like some of us are doomed to have missed the boat of the black and white boom of the '80s or even the alternative comics explosion of the 90s, yet maybe aren't young enough or tech-saavy enough to take advantage of the changes of the Aughts. I can see a whole generation of younger people almost intuitively understanding the world they live in, while this thirty-something is caught between the rock of a withering print industry and the hard place of a constantly-evolving world of tech which seems to move every time I think I've grabbed it. But I still see others who haven't seem to have caught on. It amazes me how many comic book message boards I go to where some unknown author is looking for an artist for their 12-part mini-series to be printed ye olde fashioned way.

Print is still viable if you an art comix creator who wants to silk screen covers and hand sell at conventions which is great if you live on the East or West Coast and your goal to is to get printed in Kramer's Ergot. Print is still viable if you're looking to break in at Marvel or DC. But if you're one of those other people who wants to work in the middle- in that grey area between precious (sometimes pretentious) art comix and the commerical (sometimes exploitative) superhero industry, I think you're only chance of making a go of it is to put your comics on the web and try to build an audience to eventually sell books, prints and other merchandise to in order to be repaid for your work. The audience for that work is poorly served by the current state of the industry. Not that I think web comics are the perfect solution, but they are the best one we have right now.

One last note about the fact that web comics aren't the perfect solution, but the best one we have right now: A big problem I see is that the audience still wants to read stuff in print, except for the people who are actually fans of web comics- usually people following humor based comic strips since a four panel strip isn't hard on the eyes the way a 300-page graphic novel would be. Current fans of web comics expect one thing while fans of print expect another. We need more web comics portals that cater to fans of print-based comics looking to find what's new and interesting, to help those creators build an audience for their off-line work and we also need to educate the audience that the distribution and retailing arms of the industry are acting as a blockage that is preventing the next Eightball, Love and Rockets or Cerebus from being a success. At a time when comics are dominating Hollywood and boosting bookstore profit margins, it seems even harder than ever to find good comics in your comic book store.

Anthologies are the answer!

I was thinking this past weekend about writing a post about some issues regarding the comics industry and then along comes Tom Spurgeon with some well-timed nuggets of wisdom that really kicked my thoughts into overdrive. While Spurgeon occasionally seems a little vague or obtuse in making his points or in his use of historical analogies (although, the fault probably lies more in my ability to understand than in his writing), I find a lot there to digest.

For one, the hard number that it takes 3500 copies to break even on a black and white comic or 4600 for a color comic is nice information to have out there in an industry where hard numbers are hard to come by and sometimes even avoided. Some comics pros even take to message board bemoaning the fact that some pesky journalists demand to see sales numbers. Thanks to Spurge for plucking that one out.

The idea of a sales threshhold “magic” number also leads one to question the “profitability” of comics that fall under that sales threshold. I guess cover price has a lot to do with it since most comics come in at $2.99 and a book priced a buck more might be able to sell less copies but make more than that minimum needed to continue publishing. The price of “talent” and overhead likely is a factor- comics that pay an inker, a letterer and a colorist (or person to do graytone- colorist doesn’t seem a good term to begin with but especially when a book lacks “color”) are probably much harder to be considered a profitable or even break even venture with so many mouths to feed from one product. An indy book created by one person for a small company could maybe continue on under the 3500 level where a book with a large creative team from a mid-level indy company might not (or, conversely, maybe the mid-level company has a lower overhead cost per-book than someone doing it on their own as a sel-publisher- an interesting thing for further future investigation). Much like a touring band (where a power trio may be able to make enough to keep going where than 9-piece orchestra has a much tougher time), a book with less people to pay can be profitable at a smaller level.

This is one reason why Vertigo takes so much heat when the monthly sales charts are discussed at Heidi MacDonald’s The Beat is that people understand that a large company like Time Warner (DC) means more overhead and higher costs, thus more copies need to be sold to keep a book going. Although a large company can also afford to swallow early losses if they think a book will pay for itself later (either in trade paperback form or through other media such as film deals and licensing). A Big 2 title selling near that 4600 mark has to be in danger of cancellation and Spurgeon makes great points that companies seem to be doing a piss poor job of finding a larger audience to sell those books to.

This gets in to the next phase of this rant and that is the catch-22 in comics where the existing audience and market often do not support new and interesting books that could represent the growth of the medium and the industry but the mythical “potential” audience isn’t interested in walking into a direct market store outside, perhaps, of a few select outlets scattered in major cities, most along the coasts.

Every comics reader with a blog seems to realize what has been labeled the “death of the floppy” but few seem to understand the larger implications of it and companies seem so beholden to the cash flow of their weekly output into the direct market that they appear unable to break free. Lots of fans have offered advice but are shot down with the usual line that they don’t know what they’re talking about and don’t understand the big picture, and if only they knew the inside super secret password then they'd see that all is fine and even if it wasn't there's nothing anyone can do about it anyway. But it’s pretty obvious to most anyone with half a brain that the big picture is the entire media landscape is shifting and things don’t look much like they did 10 years ago and in another 10 years may be even more unrecognizable. It’s apparent that the landscape has shifted and all media companies are having to evolve or die. We may be a long way off from the deaths but it’s never too soon to start the evolution.


One part of that evolution is for everyone to realize that the current method of serializing comics in monthly pamphlets is becoming more economically unsustainable. Higher paper costs, higher gas prices leading to greater shipping costs and other factors are driving up the costs of what was once a disposal “sampler” package. In the early days of comic books, the basic format was a higher page count with a variety of many stories in different genres- in other words, the Golden Age blossomed under a rather similar model (with many less pages, obviously) now employed by Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat- more bang for your buck and giving new series a chance to find an audience. With production and distribution virtually free on-line more and more people are understanding that a model that includes the web in the “first run” makes more sense* (something I will hopefully tackle in my next attack on this subject matter).

Currently the US comics market makes it’s money on monthly pamphlets that later get collected in trade paperback. The problem is that the model is redundant. It might make sense if the cheap sampler package was affordable, on cheap paper and could be easily recycled or thrown away, but due to the collector’s market that boomed in the 90s (and led to a bust, I might add) we now have what was once a trash, disposable medium printed on archival paper with prices that effectively shut most people from buying as many books as they’d like or a newcomer from sampling that first taste that might get them hooked, especially children.

The answer, it seems obvious to me, is for comics companies to go back to the model that worked in the past when paper prices were high- more pages and more stories, and definitely more genres. We see this starting to take place, and I don’t expect like some commentators do, that this change can happen overnight or that companies will ditch one reliable revenue stream
(even if it is a dwindling one) to try a whole new one. But I do notice that more and more I notice Marvel repackaging recent material into different format, this is especially true with it’s kid-friendly Marvel Adventures line where stories that originally ran in the monthly comic get reprinted along with others (including some classic early stuff from the 1960s) and puzzles, games, pin-ups, etc. in a larger magazine format (which I think are even sold at newsstand outlets or big box stores). Marvel seems willing to at least test the waters.

Now, my dream is to the Big 2 US comics companies try to publish one monthly anthology, perhaps at the end of the month, collecting all their “family” titles into one themed anthology book. Imagine all the Bat-Man titles in one “Detective Comics” anthology bringing that book full circle? Imagine one complete Avengers anthology or X-Men. Imagine an all-Vertigo anthology? Marvel is already doing as much with it’s thrice-monthly Amazing Spider-Man though still publishing three separate books- how about on the fourth week they publish one fat with those three issues in one comic for those who can wait and want it all in one chunk? Why not try it?

Does anyone in comics realize Heavy Metal has been around for as long as it has operating on a similar model? No one in comics seems to notice Mad Magazine or Nickelodeon as potential models either.

What I like about the idea is that, as I said, it brings comics full circle. One reason, besides lowering overhead, that comics flourished in the days when they were published in thicker anthology style comics is that anthologies allow for experimentation. If DC had only featured one hero in Detective would they have given Batman a chance? If Marvel didn’t have an anthology of “Adult Fantasy” would Spider-Man have gained enough audience to sustain a monthly series? Without those anthologies would names like Siegel and Shuster or Kirby or Ditko be as well known? Would those creations even exist?

Anthologies allow unknown creators to get a few pages in front of an audience to develop, grow and even experiment. Anthologies allow new ideas to be tested in the same ways big companies use test markets to try new products. Marvel threw a lot of stuff at the wall in those early days and a lot of things didn't stick, but enough did that a tiny company with a handful of employees became a dominant force in the comics industry and now in Hollywood... all because of anthologies.

Comic Con Job

The first in a series of lessons for those wishing to break in to comics. Comic Con Job is a satirical look at the comics industry. I decided to start this series this weekend in honor of the San Diego Comic Con. In this first episode I make fun of Brian Michael Bendis, Brian Wood, Jhonen Vasquez, and David Mack just because I am an angry and horrible person.

Actually, since I've worked in editorial cartooning I'm just used to being able to name names and ridicule specific people to make my points, but since this is comics and everyone is so damned sensitive I figured I'd go with the oh-so not clever technique of slightly altering the names even though it's obvious who they are. I mean, I would actually like someone to hire me to draw comics some day so I can't completely burn my bridges here. And besides, I've learned that even if you don't like someone politics or public persona, chances are when you meet them they are actually a nice person so I try not to make it too personal. I'm really trying to make fun of the industry of comics, but occasionally the professionals and fans are going to take some collateral damage.

I started this series because, as someone trying to find a way in to working in the comics industry, I find most "how to break into comics" books and blog posts completely full of shit. They give you all this vague generality and talk about how nice everyone in comics is when the truth is that the industry seems to me to be made up of some of the most insecure, cliquish, vain, self-satisfied and emotionally-stunted human beings one could assemble into a large convention hall. The truth is that is that the way to break into comics is probably a combination of shameless salesmanship, endless knocking on doors and bothering people, a little bit of luck and skill, along with fellating a few of the right people. And there our story begins....

Breaking and entering... comics

Almost two years ago (has it really been that long?), Red Flag Publishing published the first issue of our anthology Red Flags. We published what was basically a 20 page business card on crappy newsprint (a misunderstanding in reading the quote from a printer not used to dealing with comics and assuming they were printed on that 1940s war-rationed toilet paper) mostly to take to conventions and send to publishers as a way to introduce ourselves without seeming like rank amateurs. Every "how to break in" article or message board thread suggested actually producing something. And since Jim and I were both in the publishing business (newspapers) we figured that was simple enough. Jim's a writer and editor and I work in layout and produce graphics so we pretty much had the bases on production covered. We got them published just in time to hand quite a few out at Wizard World Chicago, we traded many people for copies of their self-published or small press books. We didn't have a table so we were limited on how many we could sell but it was a good taste of what the world of comics was like. We vowed to come back bigger, stronger, faster.

We very quickly had ourselves a second and much better issue of Red Flags. Immediately thereafter, writer extraordinare James Hitchcock began soliciting other artists to draw the products of his fertile imagination as he was writing faster than I could draw them. We also received a submission of mind-blowing comics from Slovenian creator Matjaz Bertoncelj.

We hit the Wizard World Chicago convention again, this time with a small table and what we thought was an attractive set up. The convention wasn't a spectacular success since we got stuck in one of the side aisles of Artists Alley in a sort of no-man's land (and I can see how that display wasn't as cool as maybe we thought and that guy sitting there probably scared off people). There also wasn't any big names to draw people past our set up so we could get the valuable foot traffic retail establishments seek when hunting for a location- we were the guy at the end of town near the industrial park. Plus, we still only had our first issue for sale. Our second issue was 99% done but at the show we had only some fliers I'd made- a tabloid size sheet of paper folded over with one page devoted to hyping the three stories for our next issue. We also had another flier hyping the work of Matjaz with a couple actual sample pages. I should mention that Wizard World Chicago is also a very mainstream town, despite Chicago being home to some of the best indy comics creators and retailers, and many fans just aren't interested in anything besides the spandex and cape comics from the Big 2- I even talked with one award-winning mini comics creator who flew out from the West Coast and sold less books than we had!

After the show we began posting our stories at Web Comics Nation as a way to stir up some publicity for the next book. But our press releases got ignored by the news sites we sent them to, despite Jim being a professional editor who knows how to craft a press release and despite those same sites featuring press releases of much more questionable news content or for work which is far less professional in its level of quality. We got a decent number of hits from our own efforts (the web comics aggregator sites worked very well for us) but no reviews, comments or feedback to show for it. Our plan all along had been to self-publish the second book at some point and hit the convention circuit again. Those plans fell through when our publicity efforts fell on deaf ears and then my partner Jim got busy with starting his own retail frog business, and any funds we'd have used to publish a second book dried up gas prices shot through the roof.

Finally, after much deliberation I asked Jim if it would be OK to start seeking publishers who might be interested in the stories we've produced. One of our problems has been that neither Jim or I has a published credit in the industry yet. In an industry filled with thousands of amateurs all trying to break in, it's hard to be noticed when you are just one of a faceless herd of rookies looking for a try out, especially if you aren't part of a circle of friends based in an urban center as this industry is extremely cliqueish and creators tend to bring their friends up the ladder with them, leaving less spots in the life raft for everyone else. So, we've decided that instead of peeing into the wind and continuing our self-publishing venture, that for now we'll try to entice someone else to focus on publishing so we can focus on creating (especially while Jim gets his store up and running to become the engine that funds our future publishing empire- insert maniacal laugh here).

So, long story made not quite short, last night I sent off the first submission to a publisher who produces an anthology featuring comics that kind of straddle the line between indy and mainstream. Something we've noticed in our past efforts has been that what we're doing is neither fish nor fowl in a industry where people like their niches. We're too mainstream for the indy crowd since we tend to play in genres and feature realistic art (except for Matjaz) while we're too indy for the mainstream crowd that follows name creators and tends to favor their genres untainted by things such as deeper meaning and politics. Besides, their anthology is also known for giving a break to people who go on to become something in the industry.

The only other time I've submitted any comics for publication was to Top Shelf (when they still pretty much just published their Top Shelf anthology, long before Blankets or Lost Girls) around 1999 or 2000 for which I got back a nice postcard saying that my story wasn't quite what they wanted but they'd be interested in seeing more of my work. I never got back to them and actually kind of gave up on comics for a few years. It's only now that I'm realizing how much I really want to do comics and that I'm sort of wasting my life waiting for the industry to beat down my door to beg me to come work for them.

So, hopefully this is just the first in a series of posts about my efforts to hustle my way in which ends with me getting paid to create comics. Stay tuned...