December 2006

[IMPORTANT!  Weekly readers…Please be sure and read the note ABOUT OUR DICK HAMMER: THE DAILIES ENTRIES, which can be accessed by clicking the link on the right!]

So after five pages of drawing buildings that were never in the script, I got back to drawing the story that began the script as “page one”.  Back to Dick Hammer in a road rage, careening down the freeway.  The sequence was a few pages, and I tried to make the line work wilder and angrier and more out of control.  Guiltily, I figured, Well, I can always go back and reference the Chester Gould style when Dick gets to his employer’s, and is sitting with him in the bedroom  (Since the Chester Gould style was my original vision for the series). 

 

And as I drew what was originally scripted as the second page, I realized that there was more text than I wanted to have on this page.  This is something I’ve felt guilty about for some time.  How much goddamn text I put on every page.  How comic books shouldn’t have so much writing.  How no one will have any interest in trying to read through all that, including myself.

 

I also realized, basically on the spot, that I wanted to spend some more time showing how angry Dick gets while he’s driving.  To show people flipping Dick off, and him driving like a real prick, swerving between traffic, honking, and being a dick. 

 

And I knew I wanted to have one entry as a big panel of Dick getting out of his car and walking toward the camera, looking cool.  I began to sketch out the layout, and I’d accidentally drawn the car too big, so it wouldn’t all fit.  So I went with it, and drew Dick a little too big as well, so that his head and legs weren’t in the shot.  And I realized it was a perfect opportunity to draw him scratching his crotch, because that’s just what he does.  But I still wanted to try to capture the shot I’d had in my head, so I drew a second one, with the car fitting into the panel this time, and Dick in the panel.  So the story was getting longer and longer, but now a story was being told at the pace it needed to be.  This is how these kinds of accidents were happening, and I was just including the entire process in the story.

 

And next thing I knew, what my script described in two pages, I’d slowed the pace, and enjoyed the journey, and taken thirteen pages.  Five pages I made into city scapes, and five just of Dick getting out of his car.  And it didn’t matter if the page count was too high, because this wasn’t a comic that had to fit in twenty-two pages.  If it took thirteen instead of two, then that’s what it would be now.  And I was really pleased with everything, even though nothing was turning out the way I was visualizing.  I guess sometimes things just work out okay.

 

So then I got to the sequence where Dick would see his employer, and where I assumed I could pull out the Dick Tracy style.  And the next thing I knew, I STILL wasn’t going to that style.

 

I thought, I can use his compositions, or his use of cross-hatching.  But I haven’t even done that now.  I haven’t looked back.  I haven’t even flipped through any Dick Tracy strips.  I think all that stuck with me is Gould’s use of Tracy in all black.  I’ll keep that for Dick, but if anything else comes out referentially, it might be a miracle.

 

What I did instead is just draw a few headshots of each character.  And for the first time, I’m going to do cut-and-pastes, rather than redraw each face, each time you see them.  And for some reason, I think it will work okay this story.  I wouldn’t do it just any story. 

We’ll see what everyone else thinks.

 

While drawing the faces, I began drawing outside the borders, because I figured, by recycling the same images, that will give me more cropping options, and I can change up the panel compositions that way.  And looking at them, I thought, Fuck it.  It looks good being out of the borders.  I’m going to use them that way too.

 

I’m getting really excited about this project, and I’m only a dozen pages in.  I think I have enough of a head start to begin posting it now.  I’m anxious to hear how other people feel about it, once it starts going up.

I decided to do a web comic, because I knew whatever “next” project I would do, it would be a big one, and therefore I would be out of the published eye for at least a year.  Even if working on a web comic, in addition to my regular projects, would slow down my major projects, I felt it was worth it to keep myself publicly visible during this interim.  I also liked the idea of exploring this new medium, in which each short entry would need to be self-contained, while contributing to the larger story.

 

I hoped to produce one four-panel entry a week.  This seemed like a light and realistic enough expectation, which would give me time to continue working on whatever project I felt like working on.  So for example, when I first began Dick Hammer, I was still finishing pages for the second Doris Danger humongous treasury.  For the most part, I was able to do one Dick Hammer strip and one Doris Danger page a week.  When I finished drawing Doris Danger, I tried to continue doing one Dick Hammer entry a week, while editing, page-cleaning, lining up letters and title pages for Doris Danger, etc.

 

However, with trips to comic conventions every other week taking away so many weekends this season, as well as the fact that we have bought a house, need to pack, move, unpack… and have a kid…I quickly fell behind on my hoped-for schedule.  Rats.  But I hadn’t begun publishing anything to the web yet, because I wanted a head start before I did, so I was only letting down my own expectations.

 

On November 30^th, I drew a logo/cover image.  The format I chose was horizontal, like a comic strip, rather than vertical, like a comic book.  My original vision was that I would publish the strips like a typical comic strip collection, with two or three or four strips on each page, in a column.  Over the months of creating new panels, as I began breaking the borders, changing the widths, and expanding spaces out from panel to panel, I realized stacking multiple strips on a page was no longer aesthetically possible.  I decided I would use the comic book-sized page proportions on each page, but horizontally instead of vertically, with one strip on each page.  That strip would only fill about half that vertical space (usually), centered with a lot of dead white border around it.   So it became a lot of unused space, but necessarily and eye-pleasingly so.

 

On the logo/cover image, I used bold thick lines, and retro shading.  I was trying to reference the iconic profile of Dick Tracy.  I was pleased with how it turned out.  But then for some reason, from the very first panel of the very first page, which I began on December 4^th, I threw my original idea of a Dick Tracy parody/Chester Gould artistic style out the window.  A frenzied sort of spastic line style just developed that I felt encapsulated Dick Hammer’s personality.  Sort of a pent-up rage and hostility of line.  I visualized Bill Siekiewicz’s line work, or Simon Bisley’s or Sam Kieth’s, although I feel ashamed to even say it, since it’s so unachievable with these hands of mine.

 

The first page I drew was not the first page of the comic, although I had intended for it to be.  It was of Dick on the freeway.  In the script, this was the first page.  I fell into my style of line work due to the frenzied, road-raging feel I was trying to achieve during this sequence.  When I’d finished, I thought, it might be nice to build up to this page, rather than just jump right in.  I should draw a couple cityscapes, to establish the “Crude Bay” setting.  Give the readers a feel for the location the story takes place in.  I found a few photos of Los Angeles (because let’s face it, Crude Bay is just Los Angeles), and scribbled out a three-panel page of cityscapes.

 

But I still had some cityscape images that I had found and kind of wanted to draw, so I thought, what the heck.  I’ll draw some more of them.  And I realized that even though I didn’t use a ruler for any of them, they still looked more architecturally sound than I had envisioned, so by the fifth drawing, I was trying to muck up perspectives, and make things more shaky, ominous, and nightmarish.  More like these decaying, corrupt buildings could collapse on top of its inhabitants at any moment.  Could crush and destroy them.  And I figured, this will work fine story-wise.  It will be a descent into madness.

 

And I was enjoying drawing these cityscapes so much, I then decided, I should have a terrifying two-page spread of them, crashing out of the borders.  I would throw perspective out the window.  I wanted just a hellish Cubism-looking mess of nasty architectural chaos.  I planned to draw two pages worth, side-by-side, but as I began drawing, the buildings stacked higher and higher on top of each other.  So I decided, Why not?  It’s still a two-page spread, but the two pages are stacked rather than side-by-side.

 

And of course it’s in the back of my head to draw another city scape at some point later in the story.  But that one, I might make a two-page spread horizontally, since I’d wanted to do it and haven’t yet.  And maybe I’ll draw it in more of a Dick Tracy style, since I was getting farther and farther off that track.

 

Now I had pages and panels (which ended up being the first four or five pages, depending on how you count them) of city scapes, and I was pleased with them, even though nothing I’d drawn so far wound up as I’d imagined.  And now I had all these new pages I hadn’t originally even intended to include at all.  But sometimes you just have to see where the project takes you.  I liked the idea of letting the project tell me how many pages it needed, rather than telling the story it has to fit into this much space.  I’m my publisher, so I’ll give myself permission to make it as many pages as I want.  It doesn’t have to be exactly six issues with exactly 22 pages per issue here.  I’d let the project dictate what needed to be shown and said.

December 2006

 

Because I have yet to find a format for anything I do that is catching on, I continue to try new things.

 

I’ve tried a 32-page comics series, which was cancelled after three issues (but which the distributor allowed me to publish through the story’s completion, a giant-sized issue five).  I tried a humongous treasury-sized format.  I tried a trade paperback.  I tried sixteen-page formats.  I tried writing a blog.  I tried signing up at myspace.

 

So a natural next thing to try was a web comic.

 

I had envisioned a “Dick Hammer: The Dailies” comic book some time ago, although I hadn’t ever conceived an actual story for it.  All I knew was that I wanted to draw it in a Chester Gould style.  I owned one hardcover volume of Tracy reprints, spanning from the first strip and into the 1950’s.  While in Portland for Stumptown, I found a second hardcover volume of just the 1930’s at Powell’s Books.  I planned for these to be research material, and to reference them similarly to how I reference Kirby’s work for the Doris Dangers.

 

I also thought it might blend to reference DC’s Golden Age Flash Comics, which was an era before there were supervillains every issue, because the writers hadn’t come up with them yet, so the superheroes just fought gangsters with tommyguns.  In a few more years, all these same superheroes would begin fighting Nazis or the Japanese, or Hitler himself or Stalin or Mussolini or whatever Red Enemy was hot in the news.

 

I had one idea for a story element, which came to me years ago, after watching “Out of the Past” with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas.  In the film, Kirk Douglas described how he had been shot by his girlfriend and nearly killed, and now that he’d recovered, he wanted private detective Robert Mitchum to find his girl, who he claimed he still loved.  I found this idea hilarious, and decided I wanted to reproduce it, but with each time the girl was brought back, continuing to make attempts on his life and disappearing again, and the masochistic, love-torn guy continuing to love her and repeatedly re-hire the detective to find her and bring her back, again and again.

 

But that’s not enough to make a full-bodied story off of, so I let the project sit for a while.

 

The actual story idea came to me after watching the film “Somewhere in the Night”.  And when I say “came to me,” what I mean is, I found the story I wanted to steal from to make my own story. 

 

The more I brainstormed, the more elements I wanted to throw in, and the more complicated it all became.  It had to be an amnesia story.  Then I realized it needed two separate cases of amnesia.  I should have Rob Oder and Tabloia Weekly Magazine.  I wanted my characters, The Dirty Stinking No-Good Back-Stabbing Rats, who I created some time ago and who I planned to feature in a different Dick Hammer story that hadn’t come about yet.  I wanted a politician who’s gone missing.  Could I fit The Lump’s private detective, Lance DeLaney into the plot? 

 

I always planned to use a daily comic-strip format.  That was the fun of the whole story.  But now I was realizing that this would be the perfect format for a web comic as well.  I could post it as a comic strip online, and then collect it when it was finished.  And that way, I will still be available to the public, even though I’d be between projects, with lag time while I worked on things.

 

At the San Diego Comic-Con 2006, on a whim, I sat down on my hotel bed with my laptop one morning and scripted the first five strips of the story. 

 

Coming back from the trip, I grabbed out some paper and tried to sketch out a chart of all the different plotlines.  I’ve got a few of these attempts on paper dated 7/3/06 and 7/24/06.  But they would quickly fill up with scribbled notes and I’d run out of space to continue writing. 

 

On October 4^th, 2006, I opened a new file on my computer, and began typing all the various story elements I wanted to include.  If I felt inspired enough by a particular scene, I might jot down some of the scripted text.  The story was always on my mind, I was always trying to find ways to make it all work somehow.  On evenings walking the dog with my wife, I would try to explain the story to her, and she would shake her head at how confusing it all was.

 

But it was so complicated, some things still weren’t lining up right.  I had the elements I wanted, but now I had to boil them backwards to figure out a way that they could all work in one story.  I began simplifying, and that seemed to work out most of the problems.

 

Finally, I just decided I knew enough general stuff about what was going to happen and what needed to happen, that I went to the very beginning and began scripting.  Once I’d scripted about twenty-five entries, I began to draw it. 

 

November 26, 2006

I had just put out three comics on a monthly schedule. It was too much work for me to get the work produced AND try and promote every issue, so I promoted the first, Dr. DeBunko, and then waited until both Doris Danger 16-pagers were out, and then I sent both issues to all my usual reviewers. Now that it’s been over two years of doing this technique, I’ve been collecting a larger and larger list of people who are willing to say something about my works online. I honestly don’t know if I’ve cracked the printed review world, but I doubt it, because I haven’t seen anything written about my comics anywhere. But I do continue to send out copies to these magazines as well.

About a week after sending review copies, I begin doing periodic ego-searches of the books’ titles on search engines, or ego-searches of my own name, to see if anyone is saying anything about the books. Dr. DeBunko did pretty well with reviews. People online were wanting to do interviews, sneak peeks, and reviews. New reviewers who hadn’t given me reviews before spoke out about Dr. DeBunko. That was nice, and I assumed it meant I would get all these same reviewers looking at the Doris Danger books. But for some reason, the Doris reviews didn’t seem to pop up so heartily as Dr. DeBunko’s. And they were slower to appear, as well.

One common theme people mentioned in Dr. DeBunko AND Doris Danger reviews was how the stories are just “one-gag” jokes, building to a punchline. That had been one of my insecurities with the Dr. DeBunko stories, enough so that I even joked about it in the introduction to the issue. But now, are people saying it in reviews because they feel the same way I do, or are they just unclever, and read that I had said it, and believe everything they read? Or they believe anything the writer says about what he writes? The reviewers tended to agree with me, though, that it’s still a good joke, and you just have to read it in small doses.

But then I got a first review suggesting that the reviewer felt that the Doris Danger stories were “one-gaggers” as well. And that’s beginning to get me a little defensive, even if that IS all they are. Because Jesus Christ, aren’t we talking about comic books here? And aren’t ALL comics just a crappy goddamn one-gag joke? And I’m not just talking about flaccid vapid newspaper funnies (which are HORRIBLE DAILY one-gag jokes, year after year). I’m talking about mainstream comics. Superhero comics. Don’t they all just have the same goddamn character fighting a couple thugs on the street as an intro, then finding out a plot from some asinine villain that’s the same as all the others, then fighting them, then beating them, and then moving on by repeating the whole simplistic formula again? Isn’t the entire MEDIUM just one goddamn “one-gag” joke??! Doesn’t it HAVE to be, if you want to keep using the same goddamn character over and over, EVERY MONTH, for forty or sixty years for Christ’s sake?? So why should my characters be singled out?

Except that, of course, I’m being pessimistic because I love superhero comics, all the more if they’re no good. And also, of course, MY stories are pretty formulaic.

Last week, my blog hosting site announced that they had a newer update for the hosting, with all these upgrades and new features.  I loaded it up, and then learned that not only could I not edit any of my previous posts (which I do constantly, whenever I find formatting errors or remember something I forgot to mention).  I also learned I could no longer post a new blog at all!

So I fucked with and fretted over this for a week, and tried to figure out how to get it going again.  Finally this morning, I deleted my entire 65-entry blog, and began a “new blog,” in which I reposted my previous one in its entirety.

What a project, but I’m hoping by tonight, that means I’ll be caught up and able to continue sharing my saga of self-publishing.

I found a mention of my blog at Warren Ellis’s “The Engine” site.  A discussion was going on about how self-publishers should stay away from superhero subject matter, and carve their own niche, because that way these creators will have a voice, and eventually, if they’re good enough, superhero companies will recognize their talent and see their individuality, and hire them to do superhero comics anyways, in the same way they eventually collect up all the talent.

Larry Young from AIT/Planet LAR was supporting this theory, in his arguments against some cocky young upstart, eager to try self-publishing superhero comics.  Larry mentioned my blog, and said, “What makes you think this won’t happen to you?” and he added a link to my “falures of Tabloia” blog, in which I stated all the pathetic numbers my book sold, and how nothing I tried got me any sales or recognition.

The debate became so heated, that Newsarama picked up the story, and said that checking out the argument is worthwhile, if for nothing else, then to read the “depressing true story of Chris” self-publishing, or something like that.

This is all really the first press I’ve noticed about my blog.  It was nice to see some people were beginning to talk about my blog.  But on the other hand, I didn’t realilze everyone considered my blog so depressing.  I didn’t know I was the perfect sample of a pitiable, pathetic, loser in the self-publishing industry.

I wrote a quick email to Larry, and he was so sweet writing back.  He said that he was just trying to point out that he thinks I’m a perfect example of someone who’s done everything right, and how it’s still just so difficult to get any attention or success in this industry.  Larry pointed out that he might not personally have written about all the comics companies I had tried to apply to, to get work from, who had turned me down (himself included), because it might look like my work isn’t good enough for any of them.  It’s a hell of a valid point.  So I mulled it over and decided, you know, this is what has happened to me, and maybe it is pathetic.  Maybe it doesn’t look good that I keep trying to get work, and no one has hired me.  Maybe that DOES mean my work isn’t good enough, or maybe it means I’m perceived that way.  Who am I to say?  But this is my story, and that’s part of my story.  I’m telling my own version of how I perceive things to have happened, and that’s the whole point of this blog anyways.  To mythologically share stories, about the fun, pathetic embarassments, and hell I’ve gone through over all these years. 

I feel like I must sound like a drunk lush, upsetting a chair, all of a sudden raising my voice and shouting out, uncomfortably loudly in a public place, my bitter disappointed frustrations at my world turned sour.  “Fuck it, FUCK IT, bunch-a no good…Sho no one will hire me, sho what?  I’ve got my pride!  I’VE GOT MY PRIDE!”  Slurring my sentences, wiping the saliva off my mouth and toppling, unbalanced, into a pile of trash in the gutter and spilling my bottle before the embarrassed, pitying eyes of all.

And who knows, maybe I’ll keep at this self-publishing for years and years, and maybe I’ll be able to make a name for myself eventually, and then all this pathetic depressing shit that happened to me won’t look so pathetic any more.  Maybe then it will all look ironic, that I worked my ass off, so hard, for so many YEARS and YEARS, but it all worked out eventually.  I’ll be an inspiration, like Jack London who had hundreds of rejection letters before he was published or whatever.

I’m being sarcastic, of course, but JESUS, this industry!  How can someone make it here??!  As long as I’ve been self-publishing, my mind is consumed by this problem.  I find myself not getting any sleep nights, because my mind is racing, trying to come up with ways to just make it in this godamn industry.  It is so bitter and cold in the world of comics creating.

My wife used to joke, if anyone ever asks how I started making comics, that I should just tell them, “Oh, I just decided it’s something I wanted to do, and I just did it.”  And just promote the myth that I was this instant sensation whose work just shined on that first, initial excursion.

 

2. Second priority.

I’ve been working my ass off and really enjoying scripting the new Dick Hammer web comic I’m planning.  I’ve got the entire back-story lined up, which is a doozy to sort out, because it’s so complicated.  I had to get the back-story figured out, and then the actual comic story timeline begins AFTER the back-story has run its course.  So then I started trying to figure out the plotting, and when and how you, the reader, will learn which facts, so that it remains a mystery, makes sense, paces all right, and is hopefully an enjoyable read.  After spending maybe a week on this, and it going difficultly, I decided, screw it, and just started plotting.  I will figure it out as it goes.  I will let it reveal itself to me at its own pace, and I’ll go in and re-work the plot threads as needed, as they flesh themselves out.

This web-comic is going to be in the Dick Tracy newspaper comic strip style, and I will only do four panels per entry, and I’m thinking realistically, I probably won’t do more than one entry per week.  I’ve finished the scripts for almost a year of installments, at that pace, and I’m barely into the story at all.  My concern is that many of my stories pace slowly, and there’s a lot of dialogue.  So I’m making a conscious effort to minimize the text-per-panel.

 

Overall, it’s going to be a big, slow project, but I’m really looking forward to it.  It’s gonna go along slowly, and then after that year mark, you the reader are going to realize something is going on, and even more slowly you’ll begin to piece together all the craziness.  It’s going to build to a huge film-noir-style climax, with lots of crazy plot twists.  I’m excited about the story.  I’m excited to begin something new.  I’m hoping to begin drawing this week.

 

3. 3^rd Priority

Once the Doris Danger book is completed, I’d like to jump back into my religious story, “Limbo Cafe,” which is long overdue.  This was the first comic script I wrote, years before I began publishing my other comics, and I drew about thirty pages of it a year ago, then got side-tracked. 

Originally I envisioned this project as a seven-issue mini-series, but now I have an idea to also produce five or so similarly-religiously-themed mini-comics, and then later include them in the overall big picture.  Once again, this is thinking marketing-wise about releasing products while tied up producing bigger, slower projects.  This is why I decided to do Dick Hammer as a web comic- so that even though it’s a huge project, it will be something people can enjoy along the way, instead of waiting for three years or whatever it takes to finish it.

So the re-visualization of Limbo Café is that these between-chapter installments, which I will release as home-printed mini-comics beforehand, will be “behind-the-scenes, absolutely true stories of the New Testament Bible,” which will be my own atheist’s version of the Jack Chick-style pamphlets. 

And then Limbo Café, I’ve decided to fuck single issues and just put this goddamn thing out as a graphic novel.  As a package, it will be fine, but from a marketing standpoint, I just don’t think I can justify trying to do single issues again.  I haven’t had the luck for it.  Every time, sales have been so horrible.  So I hate myself for it, deciding to make the move to graphic novels.  Because I despise graphic novels, and I love comics, and I wanted to resist as hard and for as long as I could, but I see it so clearly now…it’s futile, futile…

So these three priorities (the second Doris Danger giant book, the hundreds-of-pages Dick Hammer Web Comic, and the 150-or so page Limbo Café), in all likelihood, could keep me busy for two or more years.   Which is a shame, because I’ve got SO many more stories I want to tell.  All I can do is pump everything out as fast as I can, and look forward to the next one.

I literally have nothing to worry about at this point.  No projects committed to.  Nothing particularly to do, unless I feel like it.  I’m open to begin working on whatever I want to do.  It’s pretty freeing. 

I’ve wound up with a game plan, but I don’t need to stick with it unless I feel like it.

1. First priority. 

I’m going to do another giant-sized Doris Danger book.  This is the obvious one, because it can collect the two 16-page Doris Danger books, and all I need to do is pound out maybe a dozen or twenty new pages, and that will be ready. It will be a big book with a big cover price, with a minimum of extra work to be done. 

I’ve got a blurb from Stan Lee, and a cover by Shag.  It’s going to be another nice package, that I can be as proud of as the first one.  And I’m really proud with the Doris Danger work I’ve been doing.  I flip through the pages, and find myself laughing out loud at all my jokes.  Isn’t it nice knowing my books have at least one fan…ME.  Of course I’d like to have this published in time for San Diego this year.

The sixteen pagers sold pathetically low numbers, and on top of that, because the cover prices were so low, it did that much worse.  On top of that, I woke up in a sweat one night and realized I can only break just even, if for some reason I manage to sell every issue I print.  Which is impossible, because I’ll send a portion out to reviewers and editors.

When I came up with the $2.50 cover price, I felt like a heel charging so high for a piddly 24-page book.  But the problem was, that means I only get one dollar a book from the distributor.  The problem with that is that the printer charges me, including shipping, $960 for a thousand issues.  For the less-math-inclined, that means it costs me ninety-six cents for each issue, and Diamond pays me a dollar.  So when I went to the printer with these books, I figured, well that’s four cents I can theoretically make per book.  And never mind the books I give away for notice or reviews, which would automatically cut into that four-cent-per-book profit I was making.

The reason I woke up in a sweat is, I realized I’d forgotten that Diamond charges an extra two percent fee for shipping my books from the printer to them.  So just like that, my amazing profits are cut in half!  I just NEVER FUCKING WIN AT THIS GODDAMN INDUSTRY!  OH, THE GODDAMN MISERY OF IT ALL, JUST TRYING TO GET MY BOOKS INTO THE HANDS OF POTENTIAL FANS!  THE GODDAMN MISERY!

I’ve drawn four Doris Danger pages in the last three weeks.  I did two pages in two weeks on my own.  This week was Thanksgiving, so not only did I have less days of work, but also my parents were in town, and could hold my little screaming baby and keep him busy and smiling while I got some work done.  Realistically, I don’t know the likelihood I’ll be able to be this “productive,” EVER AGAIN…And I say “productive” with quotes because I think it’s PATHETIC to only get two pages done in a week, for Christ’s sake…but everyone said becoming a parent is a definite life change…

OCTOBER 27-28, 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October27-28, 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you’ve been enjoying this blog, it would be a tremendous help if you might download a bunch of my comics, COMPLETELY FREE TO YOU, at WOWIO.COM.

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

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

Don’t take my word for it, check it out at WOWIO.COM.

Thanks for your support,

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