Month: May 2007

2/11/06

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2/11/06

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early 2006

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

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

However. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or, “More of Chris’s Gripes”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written right after Wondercon 2006:

I first propositioned Mr. Heath for a pin-up at Wondercon, April 25th 2003. I was new at asking, and hadn’t streamlined my technique yet. I also hadn’t yet built up such an impressive list of cool artists, and I only had a few stories inked by Dick Ayers to share. I timidly said, “I’d be interested in commissioning you for a pin-up, ” and he made some mumbling insinuation about how busy he is and who knows how many years he’s got left, and he doesn’t even know if he’ll be alive long enough to finish the ones he’s committed to. All that said, he gave me a card with his address and phone number, at which point I told him it would be for a giant monster pin-up, and showed him the stories. He hadn’t smiled yet during our entire exchange, but now that he heard and saw the subject matter, he literally rolled his eyes. But he knew it was too late for him. He had doomed himself by giving out his contact info before asking the subject matter.

I had been contacting all the other artists up to that point by email, which felt much easier, more comfortable, and less intrusive. I was a little reticent about bugging him by phone, and I didn’t get the impression he particularly wanted to do this at all, so that made it tougher to make the call too. Add to that, I’m always pacing myself asking artists for pin-ups, because I can only afford so many at a time.

Summer’s San Diego 2003 rolls around, and I haven’t called him yet. I find him and reintroduce myself, and remind him of our meeting a few months before, who I am and what I’m looking for. I ask about his schedule, and he tells me I should call him to set something up right away, because DC was wanting him to do a book, and that would keep him pretty busy.

Of course this time, I contacted him immediately like he asked, after getting home from San Diego.

He didn’t sound particularly excited I had called. I re-explained my project, and he listened as if he didn’t remember our talking at the previous conventions, and was hearing it all for the first time. He said it would help if I send him a letter with a sketch of what I’d like. Now he gave me his address. So I sent him a letter dated 7/23/03, with ideas and a few sketches for possibilities. I wanted it to be fun for him, and I wanted to give him plenty of options to find a subject he might enjoy. My contact info was in the letter, but I didn’t hear from him. I gave it a month or two, to make sure he received the letter, and had time to look it over and think about it.

I called him again, and once again, I explained who I was and what I was calling about, and once again, he listened as if this was all new to him. I asked if he received my letter, and had a chance to flip through it. He vaguely says he thinks he remembered it. I go into greater detail with what exactly I had sent him. Finally, he said, “Yeah, I’ve got that letter here somewhere.” He fumbled around a little, for quite some time. I could hear papers being riffled through. While he searched, he said how things get piled up on his desk. Finally he said, “Oh yeah, here it is.” He was quiet for another moment, I assume while he looked over the letter and tried to refresh his memory what it was all about. Then he said, “I’m pretty busy right now. Call me in a month.”

So I do, and we go through the same process of him seeming not to remember me, and my explaining the project I have in mind. He says he still busy, and to call him in a few months.

Now, on this next call, after months of going through all the same introductions and reminders of who I am and what I want, he suddenly says, “Yeah, I never really cared for those monster comics. They were really popular, to have the armies go back in time and fight dinosaurs or whatever, but I always thought they were terrible. I never enjoyed doing them.”

So I explain, look, you can draw whatever you like. Draw what you love. Draw a tank. Draw a plane. And then just include some hint of a monster. For example, a gigantic hand reaching down. Or a foot stomping down. Or a shadow of a monster falling over the tank. Or an eye peeking through a hole in a wall. Or a creature peeking around rubble. Other artists have done this kind of thing.

So he ask, “Other artists do just hints like that?” Yes. Well could I send him some samples of what other artists have done? I’m thinking, Jesus Christ, how long is this dance going to play?! So I put another package together for him, with copies of other artists’ pin-ups. I send that with my contact info, give him some time, and again don’t hear back from him.

I call again. I explain the project again. To my amazement and out of the blue, he suddenly gives me a price that he would charge me. I’m shocked. This means, after months of what seemed like pretty hard work wearing him down, I can now send him a check, and he’s ready and willing, at last, to take my money and do a pin-up for me. I’ve finally worn him out and gotten him to commit. I tell him I’ll send him a check immediately, and I tack on twenty extra dollars for shipping, which he didn’t ask for. The check was dated October 18, 2003. I include a note with the check asking him to give me an idea when the pin-up will be finished, and letting him know there’s no hurry.

I wait awhile, because I don’t want to crowd artists. But now it’s into December, and the check hasn’t cleared. I once again call and explain who I am and what the project is, and he once again gives the impression he’s hearing it all for the first time. He says he doesn’t cash checks until a job is finished, and I shouldn’t have sent a check so early. As to when he’ll get to the project, he says he has to send out Christmas cards or something, and he’s going to be busy for a month.

Come January, he tells me he’s busy for another month, because he has to get his taxes together.

Come February, he say’s he’s busy for three months, because he needs to put together some new, nude prints of his girlfriend to have ready, I assume, for Wondercon. So this “call me in a month” variation has gone on for a year now, and I see him at 2004’s Wondercon, and presumably his Christmas cards went out okay and he got his taxes squared, and there are finished nude prints of his girlfriend at his table.

I remind him I’ve been bugging him for a year. He says to just keep calling. So I call again.

Right at this time, I’m getting ready to release my first comic, Tabloia #572. I’m just sending an advertisement/poster to the printer to have sent to shops. Since we had discussed the price and my usual terms (I’d like to keep the piece, I’d like to advertise the pin-up is included in my book, I’d like the payment to be one-time), and since I’ve sent him a check, I include his name in this ad, and list him at my website as a pin-up contributor. The ad is shipped and visible around May 2004.

Now, on the phone, he has a “breaking the bad news” tone to his voice. DC just hired him to do four prestige-sized (48-page?) comics written by Howard Chaykin, and every time I call he’s busy and behind schedule with that, and he can’t even guess when it will be finished or when he’ll have time for a commission, but maybe he’ll be able to squeeze something in, so keep calling.

After a few calls like this, he finally admits the DC book will most likely keep him too busy for a year or more, and so naturally the check I’ve sent him expires. He was professional enough not to cash it, and even called me one day at my request to tell me he found the check and voided it.

With all these phone calls, I would occasionally ask how the Chaykin book was going. At one point, he said he has to draw a kid growing up, and it’s always a challenge to get the proportions right. Because if you make the head too big, it can change the kid’s age by ten years.

I continue to see him at conventions, and every time I see him, he says how busy he is, and I just naturally begin to assume I’ll never get a pin-uup from him, and this is just his way of blowing people off.

Now I’m just checking in with him out of habit, not because there’s any hope of actually getting a pin-up from him. Until San Diego 2005 – over two years after first asking him for a pin-up. Out of nowhere, my hopes are aroused when he confides to me that he just told someone who‘s been bugging him for two and a half years that he has time for their commission. And I tell him, that‘s good news for me, because I‘ve been bugging you for two years and three months.

The breakthrough comes Wondercon 2006. I tell him it’s our three year anniversary since I first started bugging him. He says (I gasp with surprise) he should have time to do a commission now! Then HE actually comes over to MY table, and brings a commission he did for someone in the old EC style, and tells me that’s the closest he’s come to doing a giant monster. I introduce him to my wife, Elizabeth. I pop over and buy a couple of his prints. He tells me to call him and we’ll work out the details for the commission.

I call him two days after the con and leave a message. He calls me back the next day. I remind him what I have in mind for the pin-up, and check on the price.

Of course there has to be another hitch, because why should something go smoothly trying to get this pin-up?

He says he doesn’t know where the numbers I give him came from, but he thinks he should charge about five to eight times more. I ask if he could work smaller, or do less detail. We agree on a plane in the sky, so that there’s no background. He ends up charging me slightly less than double the original check I had sent him. Because it’s more than I had anticipated, I tell him I’ll have the money together in two months.

In a month I get a call from him. It’s done. I can’t believe it! I remind him I don’t have the money yet, but will try and get it earlier than promised. He just says, when he never knows what his schedule will be, he gets the work done whenever he can fit it in.

I had asked at Wondercon if I could pay him then, but he wouldn’t take my money at that time. He said, at his age, you never know if he takes the money, if he’ll pass away without finishing the piece. He said what he likes to do is, when he gets the check, drop the piece in the mail on his way to the bank. That way both of us are sure to be taken care of.

I sent my payment out last week. I can’t wait to see what he’s come up with.

WONDERCON 2006 Wrap-up

I was surprised how good I felt about having a couple $10 books on my table at this convention: the humongous Doris Danger “treasury”, and “Dead by Dawn,” a British horror anthology I did a four-page story for. The con didn’t feel very busy, and not many people actually bought stuff from me. But it turned out, making just a few sales with the more expensive books made it one of our most successful cons, earnings-wise. Enough so, that I found myself wondering if I should just start taking more time between projects, and putting out graphic novels. I’m so resistant to it, though, because I prefer the comic book format. I’m so much more attached to comics.

My plan, before this convention, had been to jump into my Limbo Cafe project, which will be seven issues at 200 pages. This new “expensive book” evidence, coupled with the seeming popularity of my monster book (popularity as a relative term compared to my other books so far) is definitely making me wonder if I should shelf Limbo Cafe long enough to put out another monster book.

One thing I learned is that I really do have to be more careful about people who come up to my table, because I lose track of faces, and I certainly never can remember names. My wife can attest how awful I am about remembering names. I don’t even know the names of any of her friends, for God’s sake. I just AM NOT GOOD with names. And on top of that, at the conventions, you see so many faces, one after the other, and the environment is so stressful. Next thing I know, I’m making a pitch to someone who’s already come up and heard the pitch and visited with me, and when they come up they think we’re friends, I treat them like a complete stranger and try to sell them books they’ve already bought, and then I just look like an asshole and they wonder why the hell they bothered to buy anything from this asshole to begin with. Remember when I talked about Dave Stevens not remembering me? That’s why it didn’t bother me. Because I’m humiliated at how much I know why he didn’t recognize me.

So that’s something I have to really try and be careful about, because it’s IMPORTANT. And for those few of you fans out there who I’ve done this to, or who I’m going to do it to, next time I meet you…I’M REALLY SORRY. I hope you won’t take it personally, and understand now that I’m just a uncaring punk.

Someone at the con was sitting opposite me in the food court, and it turned out he drew my portrait, which I plan to post at the website soon. We visited for a while, and he went into specific and lengthy detail of a story he had come up with for Speed Racer, and he wanted to publish it. I told him he’d better find out who owned the rights to Speed Racer, and that might be a good place to look for someone to give his pitch to.

When Elizabeth showed up for the second day of the con, we began for the first time telling all our comics acquaintances we’re having a baby. Other than phone calls to friends, this was my first real “coming out” experience, and Elizabeth loved doing it. You could tell by the way she told everyone. And it felt awkward and strange to me. I’m not used to telling people this.

A strange thing happened this convention. It may not sound as strange to you as it does to me. Because, after all, from the moment I began sitting behind a table, people started bringing me their portfolios to look at and give them advice. And people started giving me comics, or sample sketchbooks or zines they’d printed or made at Kinkos. But this felt different, this time.

First, I was approached by someone, who asked if I might do a commission for him, which he could use as a poster, I believe, for a film. Granted it was a student film. He teaches. I told him, I really haven’t done this kind of work before. But he came back and asked a second time. We exchanged contact information.

Later, a self-publisher I’d met at another convention gave me a copy of his newly-printed first issue, and said he had a story in mind that he thought I’d be great for, as the artist. More and more, people are approaching me, and asking me for this kind of stuff. More and more, people are asking if I want them to do a pin-up, to publish in my own book. More and more, I’m having to explain to them, Look, the pin-ups I put in my book are famous artists I admire, revere, who inspire me, who have contributed to comics history and to my development as an artist. I pay them to include them, and I hope their inclusion will get readers to look at my book, and give me a chance as a struggling artist. I’m not some famous publisher of some famous book, looking to scout talent. I’m not just putting pin-ups of everyone I meet into my book. It doesn’t matter how good the pin-ups are. That’s not the point of what I’m doing.

But I can’t blame them, because I’ve desperately tried pawning my books off on other artists and editors, hoping someone will see it and think it’s good. And I’ve come to realize probably most of the copies get left in hotel rooms, or brought home and thrown out, or at the least not looked at, or glanced through but not appreciated. I’ve tried offering my services, and who cares if it’s for free, if it could get me a little exposure. But it never leads to anything, because no one’s interested. I’ve met people I look up to and admire, and tried to seem cool and friendly, not only because I admire them so much, but because you never know if maybe they’ll think I’m okay, and just happen to need someone to spot their blacks, or happen to introduce me to their editor, who will no doubt be dying to see what kind of work I’ve been doing. It’s a desperate medium, and no one knows how to get in, and we’re all just trying any way we can think of.

I don’t tell them all that. They’ll learn, and either keep trying, or get frustrated and give up. What I tell them is, I’m flattered you want to be a part of things (and I am). I tell them, I’ve got so many projects of my own that I don’t have time to do, I don’t really have time to work on a project for them (And I don’t. And I’ve gotten this excuse from a lot of other artists, and I’m beginning to realize maybe it’s true and not just a blow-off.)

But what I do tell them is that I’m working on putting a links site together on my website, and if they have any interest, I’d love for them to draw me a sketch of a giant monster, and I’ll post it there, as a link to their email or website or whatever they want. And some of them seem disappointed that I’m not planning to print their pin-up in my book, or hire them to do work in my book, or let them hire me (I hope they at least assume they’d pay me, and not just think their story is so good I’ll feel honored just to be a part of their brilliant project for free). But most of them like the opportunity to be a part of that.

Overall, so far, of all the cons I’ve done, I seem to feel best (that is, the least negative and pessimistic) and do best with Wondercon.