STATUS: FLINT COMIX WEEK 3

It has now been three weeks since our initial distribution of the first issue of Flint Comix started. We have less than 1000 issues undistributed of the initial 10,000 print run and over 225 drop off points to date.

We are having a rough time keeping places stocked. I tell folks "Hey, who doesn't like FREE comics?", but seriously we underestimated the amount we have been dropping off to folks drastically. I have tried to drop off no less than 25 to any drop off point, and there are a number of points that I am now on my 3rd and 4th time stocking. Some places are well into their second hundred, while others still have 11-13 copies left of their original 25. It all depends on how visible we are displayed and the the obvious traffic flow in and out of the location. To date our best places are family restaraunts, especially those where we are the most visible (like placed on top of gumball machines). There are 2 such drop off points within walking distance of my house and both are past the 75 copy mark in distribution. I'll be dropping off 50 copies initially to each point for issue 2.

We also discovered that a lot of party stores and family restaraunts have open wire rack space designed for free publications. We're using these drop off points as often as possible. We are keeping track so hopefully with issue two we'll be able to distribute the issue within a matter of a few days as opposed to weeks. Now that we have points established, all we'll have to do is keep feeding them to keep them, while we continually search for more. What takes the longest is the initial contact and permission asking. I have only been turned down distribution from about a dozen places that we have asked, and most all of those places telling us no are from femaile managers/owners with little, if any sense of humor. I can tell if they'll say yes by how quickly their faces light up when they see the paper. Those that look like I just shoved a piece of poop under their nose are not very likely to allow us to leave it there (again, I'm typing the obvious...sorry).

The Flint Journal discovered us this last week and ran a pretty good article on us in their Thursday edition as well as their online site. Here is a link to the online article HERE: http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/flint/index.ssf/2009/04/flint_comix_and_entertainment.html.
Any publicity is good publicity, and despite the "It's a bird, It's a plane..." opening, and the little graphic explosions with "Bam!" and "POW!" in them (That were cliche' from the era of Adam West's Batman), it was a nice article and a small bump in our email traffic.

We've found a few more local talents out here and plan on printing them in future issues. One cartoonist especially does a good 4 panel strip that we plan on incorporating into out standard strip pages. He's professional enough and skilled enough that we'll have to run a header strip telling folks that he's actually a local talent- that's how good he is.

Our main website foundation was installed and put online last week. Still not enough information on it for my taste. but much more is on the way for it. If you have the chance to check it out it's at http://www.flintcomix.com. there is an original modern day Spark story there as a reward for anyone surfing the site.

Response has been nothing but positive so far, and quite frankly that makes me really happy, if not a bit nervous.

I'm working on the second issue now, I have 2 comic pages, and a Flash Gordon page mostly done, while I'm scanning in The Fool #1 and am thinking of serializing it over 3 issues, just so no feature gets more than 3 pages at a time.

That's about it for now. PLEASE remember that these updates are only for you, the Spank blog reader, and I'll update you again as soon as I get more news and a chance to put it here.

Wake UP!

Hey WTF??!! FLINT COMIX!!

Sorry I haven't been blogging folks, I've just been SUPERbusy working on the FLINT COMIX paper and I've been neglecting Spank altogether. I promise he'll be back soon in one form or another, In fact I've already been offered a regular spot in a newspaper, so it might only be a month or 2 before there's new SPANKage.

ABOUT FLINT COMIX

I'm laying low in the comic market for at least the next few months while I MAKE SURE this baby turns out as hot as it looks like it's going. I'm not even offering or sending any copies outside the county lines for another couple of weeks (except for those few places outside the county lines where we place copies in stores and outlets. IF you are still reading this blog (and THANKS for even looking here after almost an entire MONTH of not posting), I can tell you these small points:

* I started a local newspaper that's almost all comics and local entertainment based. Advertiser supported, FREE to readers, with comic stories, comic strips, single gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, FLASH GORDON, and a few other text pieces ("Tales of The Weird" and "Strange But True"), as well as an article on the comic book art exhibits at our local Institute Of Arts.

* We printed a mock-up of four pages to show advertisers and was met with mostly blank looks from business owners who could not wrap their heads around what I wanted to do.

* I had a rough time (at least a rougher time than I ever thought I would have) talking to national syndicators about what I wanted to do.

* I got enough material (actually MORE than enough material) to make an edition, BARELY enough advertisers (I had a big number of folks say they were advertising until it came time to pony up the money- then about 80% of them backed out for one reason or another).

* In the process I had to "promise" a business owner or five that Spank would NOT be in it- so Spank is NOT in it and our content had to be softened down to a high PG rating.


* All this inside the county that FLINT MICHIGAN is in. Michigan has the highest unemployment rate, and our county has the super highest unemployment rate in the state, so that literally makes us the hell-hole of unemployment and devastation in the country.

BUT...

* We lined up a couple of big corporate sponsors to multi-issue contracts (THANKS Little Caesar's!) and it gave us more than enough to print.

* The paper is 24 tabloid newspaper sized pages, 8 of them are in color with the rest being in black and white (actually I "desaturated" some of the color strips offered to me to break up any kind of "coloring book" effect printing in black and white might have), mostly on 35 pound newsprint.

* We printed 10,000 (that's EASILY 3 TIMES more than any Arrow Comic has been printed in the last 15 years!) and distributed then LOCALLY, most within the county. We're still distributing them to the farthest reaches of the county.

* Get this- there's places that we left copies at that ran out of copies WITHIN HOURS of us dropping them off. Now I'm dropping off no less than 25 copies no matter where we go. We have three drop off points that have moved through nearly 200 copies EACH.

* We've almost passed 200 drop off points and we'll be gaining more for the next week or so, all while trying to keep some of our busier places properly stocked. I'm hoping for 300+ drop off points before the first of the month.

* "Where are we dropping these papers off at?" you ask. Nearly everywhere; obviously the comic shops and coffee shops, but also all the restaurants (Mexican restaurants seem to move through our product with alarming speed- the closest one to my house has probably moved 50 copies by now -I'm checking them tomorrow.), convenience stores, doctors offices, auto repair shops, even grocery stores (our local Krogers around here are all closing on moving 100 copies each for us). I've only been turned down by 3 businesses where I offered to leave copies- 2 because they said their corporate offices have policies against putting out free publications, and one because the owner was probably too old to read comics, let alone enjoy them.

* No one has voiced one negative opinion of the paper once they hold it in their hands. I did have one comics professional tell me "Print is dead" when I told him what I was doing, but honestly the way this seems to be going I think he'll be out of a job long before I am.

* Since we started distributing I've been bombarded by folks offering me material to print, local cartoonists and writers just looking for exposure and to be in on any part of this fun that they can.

AND FINALLY..,

* I'm having a BLAST doing this. Pasting up pages, handling it in print, even talking to people and the (GASP) media who want to know if we are insane or not by starting a newspaper in the area where our local daily newspaper just announced that they are cutting from 7 days printing to 3 (don't get me started on how stupid I think THAT move is- just read my posts on Circuit City to understand why).



* I'm printing Flash Gordon for the first time EVER in the mid Michigan area that I know of.

* Now here's the REAL point to all this; I'm doing a product of COMICS, that is being WIDELY accepted by a MASS audience of mostly non-comic readers, MOST of whom have never walked inside a comic shop before and know comics mostly from newspapers and movies, AND THEY ARE LOVING IT!!! I am widening the acceptance of comics in my area, and if all goes well for the next issue or two I should be making a nice bit of profit doing it.

All this at a time when Diamond Comics Distributors have announced employee cuts, new restrictions and limitations on books they distribute to a limited and ever shrinking comic market they couldn't expand if they distributed material from seven of the top ten movie blockbusters of the last decade (which they do).

This COULD turn out to be something. This COULD be big. Was all the lost hours pasting up and distributing worth it? I'm not sure yet, but it sure has been satisfying knowing folks are picking up stuff I've done (I included a Fool story, an original Miss Chevious story, and a recolored and pasted up page of the Golden Age version of Spark- a Flint based electrical hero- in this issue), supported by advertisers who are SUPER satisfied (at least so far) about what we've done, and it looks like next issue will contain twice as many advertisers (we're looking at perhaps going to 32 pages, or PERHAPS even twice a month) especially if this level of reception keeps up and advertisers pony up more money this time.


We have the next issue scheduled for release at the end of April, just to give us a few extra days to finalize our distribution lists, get more advertisers on board, and wade through some of the submissions we've received.

I'll keep YOU posted, But ONLY YOU for now. I'm not going to start screaming about this to the comic media until I KNOW for sure it's something big and not just a "flash in the pan".

So far so good.

Thanks for being here.

WAKE UP!

THE SPIRIT MOVIE

Folks have asked me many times since Christmas Day if I had gone to see The Spirit movie. Once I got past all the sad and bad reviews, some personal work which is still not done, the loss of the family cat (okay, yes, “it was “just” a cat to some, but to me it was a member of my family for 14+ years, so I’m allowed to miss her), and just Xmas in general (already not my favorite holiday- for reasons I may go into here someday- or more likely in a graphic novel I’d like to do called “Spank The Monkey On Religion”), I took in the Sunday first showing in my second favorite theater in the area The Hollywood Cinemas in Birch Run.

I went to Birch Run because my current favorite theater (Trillium in Grand Blanc) decided not to show the film since there were already some half dozen or more films also premiering on Christmas Day and they HAD to cut somewhere, and that “somewhere” was NOT going to be Bedtime Stories (which is getting the same level of reviews, but it has Adam Sandler in it) or Benjamin Button- so The Spirit lost. Obviously someone else saw an advance copy or review of this film and had the same dread I did, albeit for different reasons.

Going in I KNEW there wasn’t a single positive review of the movie that I saw on the web. Not that I look for other folk’s opinions very often, but where Roger Ebert is quoted saying “I would call these performances cardboard but that would be an insult to descent packing material” you kind of notice. Rotten Tomatoes gave this film a 15 out of 100, and that was probably due to the fact that there are a lot of folks who read modern comics that are also web savvy as well as lovers of anything Frank Miller. Interesting to note that that number is officially 15%.

I LOVE Will Eisner’s Spirit, pure and simple. Been a big fan ever since high school and those Warren Magazine reprints, number 3 of which was the first comic magazine I ever bought and devoured. There is no question to me that Eisner is a true MASTER in the field of comics and one of my total heroes who, along with Alex Toth, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, Jack Cole, C.C. Beck and a few others I have yet to add to my My Heroes listings here on my blog- BUT I WILL EVENTUALLY, deserve their just attention in a spotlight that seems to make demi-gods out of flavor of the month hacks (who I would digress here to mention or attempt to list- that’s a rant for another time). Hacks by the way that I do NOT consider Miller to be one of.

Frank Miller’s movie is a testament to a number of things and picky points near and dear to my heart. Points that I should take the time to focus on individually here in future postings, but let me say this directly about the film; This IS FRANK MILLER'S SPIRIT, make NO doubt about THAT. It gives only passing nods to Eisner’s masterpiece, and would have paid more tribute to it if it were named FRANK MILLER'S SPIRIT. This is NOT Eisner’s Spirit as much as SIN CITY LITE, and is a prime example of two parts genius (that being Eisner’s and Miller’s) mixed with one part ego (Miller’s), devoured by a corporate filter and distilled to theaters and movie goers as “cinema”.

Everyone still alive and associated with the film did their job well, make no mistake, the film is kind of entertaining, the green screen effects are great, many of them heightened from my memory of Sin City (though I would have to watch that movie again to be sure and WILL as soon as I buy a copy of the Director’s cut version), and most parts are a joy to watch and perhaps even learn from. Some of the directing is obviously weak, but the director (Miller) is still new to the art form and given another film or 3 he may very well master this art form as well as he has mastered graphic storytelling on paper, just not now and not here in this film. Most of the performances were better than what the reviewers let on, especially considering the script (Miller’s again- which I only uttered “Jesus Christ!” out loud twice at- which was better than some others in the audience that I attended.), as well as the material the script was based upon and the format originally used for it. The real problems here with this movie all lies in their “homage” to the original material, and there is where Miller’s faults shine to the point of annoyance.

The Spirit comics were always told in 7 to 9 page shorts. Some of the most genius compact storytelling one could ever witness, examples of which EVERY writer in comics and entertainment media should read and study. As manga is to visual storytelling, Eisner’s writing is to compact/compressed “point-to-point” plotting. The use of character and characterization is short, direct, and sweet, sometimes to the fault of the dialog, but NEVER to the fault of the story’s pacing. No panel is wasted, no word balloon extraneous, everything is used to further the plot in Eisner’s tales because he had so few beats, so few pages, to tell it in. Now you move that quick clip characterization over to an hour and three-quarter movie and you get Frank Miller’s Spirit movie.



The truly annoying touches here are solely Frank Miller’s mistakes in writing, pacing, and directing. Faults he may grow out of, just not here. Focusing on the Nazi motif and the llooonnnggg drawn out scene of exposition between Octopus and Spirit killed this movie outright for me. Having labeled clones as humor relief was more of a device from the 60’s Batman more than anything associated with Eisner, and over the top violence and the little side tributes to Miller’s influences (Iger Street, Ditko Delivery Service, Tuska as the name of one of the cops) were distracting to me, but that was because I knew who those folks were originally, and there were SO many of them that I started looking directly for them, and I’m sure I missed the majority of them along the way.

Finally, and this is also a picky point probably just to me, but a horribly distracting one, you have what I call “The opening of the black box” in the attempt to explain The Spirit’s seeming invulnerability and making it a major plot point in the film. Again, this is a picky point best deserving it’s own posting so I will try to compress my thoughts on it, but frankly, when you try to explain away the "fantasy" and try to make it “real” you blow all credibility with me, and you make for LOUSY entertainment. Eisner’s Spirit was always an average Joe, and his survival of whatever stabbings, shootings, and cartoon violence that he experienced came from his being a cartoon style HERO more than any scientific explanation. To try to explain that fantasy device away just robs us of that fantastic, heroic, aspect that truly made a comic book character like that unique, and not grasping that, not understanding that so-simple concept of heroism, especially old style American heroism is such a common fault of so many “modern writers” that it’s shamefully annoying. Folks who can’t brain-check their entertainment every once in a while, and need an explanation for EVERYTHING should just abandon such a fantastic and fantasy based art forms such as comics (and comics based entertainment)all together and go write their All American “slice of life” novel, or cinema and get the hell out of my playground!

Miller’s Spirit can be fun and entertaining at times, but mostly for all the wrong reasons. Stylized like Sin City is stylized, bastardized like Miller’s Dark Knight, overly egocentric and about 80% off the mark from the original material, Miller’s Spirit movie is much more a Spirit/Sin City crossover than most any of us long time Spirit fans ever wanted to see, but you better believe that I’ll buy the DVD as soon as it hits the discount bin, and if I ever see it late night on cable I’ll probably spend a few minutes watching it in a half sleep haze, then later I’ll pick up my Spirit Archives and relive some TRUE genius there. Folks who don't know the Spirit property well might be VERY entertained, but unfortunately not if the critics are listened to at all.

One final note: If you go see this movie at a theater (matinee’s only please) watch this movie all the way through the end credits as you get treated to some examples of Miller’s real talent in his drawings from storyboards and other prep materials on this film. You get to see the “Sin City” Miller, as well as the brilliant sketchy more comic book oriented Miller. That was the true treat of this film to me, and seeing it on the big screen was icing on a pretty soggy, almost bitter cake.

In the future, let’s hope Miller does more Sin City, or more ORIGINAL material (too bad he says he wants to do Buck Rogers- I honestly hope he does something LIKE that in genre only ORIGINAL in name- but better he do Buck than Flash Gordon!), or perhaps is knocked down a peg or two ego-wise, goes to film school and perhaps a creative writing class or two, and comes back to entertain us like the comic book storyteller craftsman he’s shown us he can be.

WAKE UP!

P.S. if you want to witness the REAL genius of The Spirit pick up the Archive sets from DC, particularly numbers 12-22 and relive five years worth of TRUE genius from a Master of the art form. There's a reason why some of Eisner's best Spirit stories have been reprinted, in many different formats, almost as much as Ditko's early Spider-Man works- that is because 1)they still make the publisher's huge jing every time they reprint them, and 2) They are works of genius, pure and simple.

HEROES I MISS: Adam Strange

Truly a metaphor of what was so right and then so wrong with the mainstream comic market, ADAM STRANGE remains one of my personal favorites, and yet at the same time most disgusted and frustrated hero properties in the DC Universe. Adam Strange went from genius to misunderstood to sheer waste in his career, and comics are much worse off for the attempt.

Starting as a kind of heroic science fiction adventurer in the pages of DC’s Showcase series (#17, December 1958) Adam Strange was a modern day world traveling archaeologist, traveling the world in a quest for knowledge when, in an opening so much like Raiders of The Lost Arc, he was being chased off a cliff by the local spear throwing natives and was suddenly hit by a mysterious light that transported him to the far planet of Rann. Once having the alien language implanted into him, he becomes involved with Sardath, a single father-mad scientist type (responsible for shooting the zeta-beam ray to earth in an attempt to teleport earth artifacts to him for study), and his lovely daughter Alanna who, in true heroic fashion, is the most beautiful woman Adam has ever seen. What follows are a number of Flash Gordon style adventures with Adam, armed with rocket pack and ray-gun (staples of most any heroic space opera stories of the day) defending Rann from all sorts of baddies using his imagination (something Rann apparently had in short, short supply- as well as guts), until the Zeta Beam wears off, transporting him back to Earth. Luckily Sardath has been making a number of Zeta beam attempts as Adam continues to tack their hit points on Earth, enabling him to return to Rann every chance he gets to do the same thing over and over again.

When I was younger my parents wouldn’t allow me to read superhero comics because of the violence. It took a little bit of explaining to my mom to convince her that Adam Strange really wasn’t a superhero as much as a science fiction space man. Having only appeared in Showcase for the usual 3 issues, Adam Strange them went to the lead spot in DC’s sci-fi anthology book Mystery In Space, then later on, when I was first reading comics, his adventures were reprinted in Strange Adventures (another sci-fi anthology that for whatever reason, DC kept printing long into the 70’s, even though most of the reprints they did were firmly planted in the 50’s). I read a couple of year’s worth of Adam Strange before I read most other superheroes. Sure, the stories were basic formula: get to Rann- hug Alanna- find trouble, solve trouble, and before he could really enjoy his time with Alanna he was teleported back to earth. Thinking about it, it was again a metaphor, this time for most relationships between boy and girl at the time: hang around- fight off all the barriers to get her alone, then just as you were about to get some- the ultimate put off and you were left to try to get to a base on your next date.

It WAS formula, but it remains a solid and entertaining one, and one that with a reboot on DC’s end could be VERY viable given today’s writing structure. Imagine a younger- early twenties Adam doing his lonesome globetrotting waiting, measuring, trying his best at predicting just where that Zeta-beam was going to hit so he could be once more teleported to his true love on Rann, only to meet with whatever catastrophe found there to fight, then in eternal frustration, never knowing just when the Zeta Beam would wear-off- if you leave it more unpredictable, never quite keeping to a time schedule, the possibilities for drama here would be endless. The ultimate young adult story, especially keeping the odd 50’s sci-fi elements when he is on Rann- making them all the more alien and bizarre, it could easily once again become a space-opera style romance/adventure strip.

Instead of keeping the chase alive, and trying to keep a fresh, more modern to this concept DC incorporated Adam Strange into the DC Universe proper, actually marrying him off in the mid to late 80’s to Alanna, and changing his body chemistry, if memory serves me correctly, so that he could never set foot on earth without dying. Now he his some oddball space policeman/protector/leader of the Rann army, decked out in more fierce armor, with a much bigger gun and armor. Gone is the romance, gone is the “fantastic” elements that made the series a joy to read, but most disappointingly of all, gone is the QUEST. The continual FIGHT Adam had in pursuing his own private happiness, not only on Earth, but also on Rann and with Alanna. He is no longer the hero that I knew and loved. That’s where my true frustration comes in. I miss those elements that made him unique and nostalgic to me, elements that could easily be VERY attractive to new readers, particularly I suspect a female audience. DC has from time to time, tried to attract such an audience in the past and they always seem to fail miserably (I’m planning a “Comics My Way” posting soon to address that, so stay tuned if you’re interested).

Classic Adam Strange reprints hold MUCH more than a good formula story. Once his feature was moved from Showcase to Mystery In Space Carmine Infantino became the penciller on the series. It is definitely one of his very best works, especially when Murphy Anderson is inking him and the majority of those old stories have them together- VERY classic stuff there. Additionally most of the stories (if not all of them) were written by comic’s veteran (and sci-fi plotter extraordinaire) Gardner Fox. It is one of those rare occurrences of top-notch talent working on a top-notch concept- he has never looked or read as good as with them three on him, in fact any story of Adam Strange without one of those three on it just seems a pale imitation.


DC, in a rare case of intelligence, acknowledges how great this series was with multiple reprints of this classic series, in hardbound Archive editions, as well as at least one Showcase Presents volume to date. There’s only enough good stuff to last one more Showcase Presents volume, and I sincerely hope they get around to producing that soon. If you get the chance either one of those reprint venues are great to read and I recommend them both highly, and know they are all available on Amazon. Take it from me, the Adam Strange currently shown in the DC Universe is also a pale imitation of what was, and we as comic readers are MUCH worse off because of it.

Enjoy, and WAKE UP!

Site of the Week: Ugo Comics

Here's Ugo Comics top 50 "WTF" moments in comics. Haven't read them all yet, but from what I've seen they're pretty spot on! Go take a look be either clicking on the headline above or go to this address:

http://www.ugo.com/comics/wtf-moments-in-comics/

Enjoy, and WAKE UP!

COMICS MY WAY: MY HISTORY

When I was a small little monkey, raised in a small cage in a small town, I needed the escape of comics just to try to stay sane. My parents, afraid of the violence and probably juvenile delinquent influences found in these silly books, refused to allow me to have any comics with superheroes in them. So I was left with Saturday Morning (see my post about Space Ghost below), the small box of mostly superhero comics my grandparents kept stashed at their house, and the Adam West Batman show. After taking a spanking for smuggling in a Batman 80 pager (and, I HAVE to wonder what kind of beating would I have gotten if I had brought home a CURRENT version of Batman I shudder), I eventually started getting every other kind of comic into the house to read and escape with as well as learn to draw my own as much as possible.


I came to love comics as an art form and saw it’s potential very early on, though probably on some subconscious level, I understood most of the language of comics, the storytelling, the flow, the very ART of it all. Like I said above I was restricted from any kind of superheroes in the house, so in my hard core quest to soak up comics in any form I literally absorbed ANYTHING on comics I could find at the local library, the collections of any of my friends, as well as anything I could get away reading at my local drugstore. Frankly, by the time my parents rescinded their no superhero policy I knew as much about each and every one of the costumed vigilantes before even owning a single issue of their adventures.


During this time I did convince my parent to allow me to buy Strange Adventures featuring Adam Strange, able to pass him off as an ordinary Joe in a space suit that kinda looked like a superhero outfit, as well as most everything that Gold Key printed. In fact the deciding factor that superheroes weren’t all that bad for me came as a result of a Twilight Zone comics digest that had a few morality plays featuring folks selling their souls to the devil. My mom decided that she’s rather have me reading morality plays about guys wearing brightly colored spandex as opposed to morality plays that featured demons. Luckily she never read an issue of Ghost Rider or Son of Satan that I bought. Eerie and Creepy, along with Conan and the Marvel Magazines would come in a little later.


A few years after being allowed to have superheroes I bargained a deal with my local drugstore to stop by after school and straighten out all of their comics shelves in return for a dollar’s worth of comics. A deal that went awry when I tried to barter for the first issue of Planet Of The Apes magazine, which was a buck twenty five. When the comic collection got to be too big I would bargain away issues for others, or give away grocery bags full to allow folks to sell at rummage sales.

In High School there came the above-mentioned magazines, which lead to my discovering underground comics. Then, when I was allowed a car and able to drive back and forth from work, I discovered a local bookstore that was in early on the direct distribution system. They got comics 3 weeks ahead of the newsstand, which was awesome to me and just encouraged me to read even more. Then, with them getting comics from Big Rapids distributors (which I believe eventually became Glenwood Distributors) they also started carrying more esoteric comics like Cerebus (where I was in on the ground floor with that title) as well as First Kingdom and the Tandra books.


The first Graphic Novels weren’t too far behind as Eclipse’s Sabre as well as others emerged. I started taking a liking to oddball formats, looking to read comics that came from anywhere, any country, as long as I could read them, and most any size shape of form (like the pocketbook collections, or anything bound into a book, or even some of the lighter sci-fi and pulp works like Doc Savage and Weird Heroes).

After high school, I was lucky enough to take the backroom of the arcade I was working in and, again with the help of Big Rapids Distributors, start my own little comic shop, the first one ever in my county. There I sold the first Fantasy Quarterly ElfQuest, as well as more issues of Cerebus, I took in collections and sold some and got ripped off on others. I remember fondly the Byrne Claremont X-men during this period. The shop was pretty successful to start with, but after a short time it became aggravating and frustrating to me as I was reading and selling product that I KNEW I could do better. Eventually, after the owner of the arcade messing with our books and (realizing that we were turning in a good profit) trying to enforce a high rent on us, we shut the store down, but not until after planting the bug in a number of other comic collectors to follow suit and start their own shops.


Then I got married the first time and life got into the way. I started working for a living at the very bookstore that I had made my primary stopping point only a few years before, and started something of a family, still with the bug to draw and see some of my own comic stories in print. After attending a few conventions and drawing up a few ideas, I traveled halfway across the state to visit a comic convention in the mall where there would be a professional guest to show my work to. The guest never showed, but there was another dealer there that was printing a little localized comic, so I showed my stuff to him. He asked me point blank why I hadn’t been printed yet, and to send him a story and her would print it.

That little 8 page story took four months for me to do and re-do and when I finally saw it out in print, well that was it as far as I was concerned, that’s what I wanted to do from then on, much to the chagrin of my then wife. I was divorced not long after that.


My need for work spun me into commercial art and being the art department for one of the bigger screen printers in the county, but I was still getting as much as possible printed, or self printed whenever or wherever I could. I produced comics during both the black and white boom and bust, I’ve knocked on the door at one time or another of most all of the major (and some of the minor) comic companies over the last 2 and a half decades. I’ve gotten SO close to a decent amount of respect and a good deal from the big two and missed out by a hair’s breath on more than one occasion. I’ve bluntly pissed off quite a few editors, almost twice as many as have gotten my admiration and respect, and burned enough bridges to keep anyone from driving across town. I’ve started and stopped no less than four self-publishing companies, and I’ve seen comics from almost EVERY possible angle and researched them through almost every possible era.


If you doubt my ability to understand comics then I welcome you to buy my 3 part miniseries, entitled oddly enough, Spank The Monkey On The Comic Market, where I’ve pointed out my views on comics’ past, present, and future. I have to tell you I know a LOT about comics, mostly because I LOVE comics!

My reasons for spewing all this to you is that through this blog I plan on staking my claim as a comic book art form critique. I’ve shown you a little bit of my REAL credentials here, just in case you stumble across a future posting here of “Comics My Way” and you think I’m full of shit, I wholeheartedly submit to you that I am not. So I hope when future installments of Comics My Way headers pop up here that you not only read them, but you let me know what you think about them and contribute to whatever discussion(s) you can about this art form. Feel free to send anyone here to my blog that you can. Feel free to use me as reference, as I will use references whenever I can, but most of these "Comics My Way" posts will be about how I would change things in comics and why.

When it comes to comics, there’s a lot to talk about, there’s a LOT of things horribly, horribly wrong and I plan on not just bitchin’ and moaning about the screwed up shit, but offer solutions on what I would do to fix it, and what HAS to be done to fix it, and how I would do comics MY WAY. Plus I might even tell you when comics are going right- but don't hold your breath waiting for it.

Stay Tuned, and WAKE UP!