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THIS WEEKS BLOG

*this weeks comics are below the blog! just scroll down if ya get bored*

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That's not how any of this works...

.**DUE TO SERVER ISSUES, I'VE BEEN HAVING TROUBLE WITH MY EMAIL. IF YOU SENT ME SOMETHING AND I DIDN'T REPLY, ODDS ARE I NEVER GOT THE EMAIL. IT'S FIXED NOW.**

Before I get started, just a note on the cover image up there...Like I said last week, I'm still not sold on the colors. BUT as we have it here now with all the logos and such added, the composition of it is pretty cool.  

NOW...FIRST...for those of you blessed enough to not have the weekly goings on of the comic book industry all over your news feeds, here's a story that'll add to one of my points later. An entire print run of a new issue of Batman has been deemed, by the comic book world, to have been shipped "damaged".  As of me writing this, stores want refunds/replacements...blame is being pointed at the distributor, the publisher, the printer...ect. HERE...is an example of the "damage". Brace yourselves for the horror...

Look real close up there at the spines. Those creases are what they are talking about. I understand the position the stores are in, because customers of a certain disposition are not going to buy books in, what to their minds is, an unusable condition.

Look...all you godless nerds out there, I understand that you expect to live in a world where every copy comes to you in pristine, mint condition. However, that is not the world you live in. These, and all comics of any notable sized print run, are being mass produced on printing presses, binding machinery and boxing equipment that is not designed for, nor is it capable of doing that.

Perhaps such equipment could be designed and precisely calibrated to do so, and each box could be handled as though it was uncartoned eggs...but every copy would cost 30.00.

If we want to affix blame...we should blame the concept of expecting anything that's mass produced to end up in one's hands in "Mint Condition". Along with the toxic (and I rarely use that word) mentality that comics are "collectables" instead of forms of entertainment. That mentality is so horrifically poisonous to the medium, that it'd take an entire blog to go into it. But we have an example here of one of it's problems...perfectly readable issues being returned, causing all manner of problems for everyone involved.  And whether or not the story in it was good or bad being completely unmentioned, because of them being less "collectable".

It really tells me everything I need to know about the story itself, because if I had been waiting a month to get the next chapter of a series I was emotionally invested in...I can not imagine giving such a flying F that there was a 1/4 inch crease in part of the cover that I wasn't going to guy it.

It's five dollars...that's the price of a hamburger. and I guarantee these "damaged issues" looked closer to what was advertised than the last hamburger you got.

That actually a great analogy, because a Batman Comic book is the equivalent of a McDonalds hamburger, in that by the time you're 12 you should understand that there's way better options out there, it's not good...and only getting one occasionally, in a vain attempt at peace of mind, through an act of self-loathing.

Anyways, lord forbid we give any thought to getting new people interested in comics, consider the optics here. The buzz online this week in the comic book world-"I like this comic series but it's got a 1/4insh crease on the cover so I'm not buying it"...Imagine how that sounds to a regular human being. Would you want to be around that person/those people? Could you all just pretend to be nomal-ish...for the sake of those of us who are bringing in readers from outside the geek culture, and trying to get them to go into comic books stores? Please?

MOVING ON...

One of the notable announcements at this years comic book store convention was from 1First Comics, announcing to, I am told cheers by the audience, they would be publishing the new Arsenic Lullaby series ( I was not there to observe this personally, but several people who would have been perfectly happy telling me no one gave a f*ck, told me this was reaction from the crowd).

 For fans of Arsenic Lullaby all you really gotta know, and probably all you care about is- I have all the creative freedom I want, the new series will be coming out, to the English speaking world, under that label...

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(non-English translations are are a whole other matter, I'll explain some other time)

I've been loathe to show any previews because damn near every page has some kind of spoiler. My friend Ben from World of Strange screen printing always asks me stuff like "how far along into the script before blah blah blah? "

I have been unable to explain to him in a way that he'll accept that...there ain't script. If I am writing AND drawing wtf do I need a script for? To tell myself what I should draw? So, as a "preview" and to satisfy him, here are three pages of the "script", that happen to be next to me as I type this...

My brain knows what all those scribble are and everything being said. Boom...script. 

 A legit sized print run (that stores can order at wholesale) of a best Arsenic Lullaby collection will also be coming out shortly. A properly distributed Arsenic Lullaby collection is one of those things people have been asking for a long time, that I just haven't gotten around to dealing with...but now that I'm not alone in the world here, and working with 1First Comics, it'll be coming soon.

 I know just about everyone at 1First, and I like them.  They are smart and know what they are doing, and the way 1First is structured and operates, is precisely what I am looking for. When I decided to go to a publisher instead of continuing to do everything myself, I went right to 1First, didn't ask anyone else.  I'll touch on all of that.

As far as the "why" go to any publisher... Up to this point Arsenic Lullaby had been completely self published, meaning I was doing every damn thing on my own. You can probably imagine that's a handful without me explaining it, but just to drive the point home...on the left we have the high points of what's needed to create the comic, and on the right, the high points of what's needed to publish the comic.

...to self publish means your to-do list looks like this...

 ...and every aspect of that is on a deadline while in completion with every other publisher that has a full team and devoted financial warchest. Your team is you (and whoever is foolish enough to answer the phone when you call and end up in a crash course of how to convert tiff files to pdfs) and your financial warchest is your bank account, so any problem or organizational mistake you created because you were doing 12 jobs at once and missed a stitch, could spell you being homeless.

 I don't say any of that to puff myself up about how much work I do, or "see how I've suffered for my art" and blahblahblah. I say all that to point out that at this point in time, at this point in my career, doing this all myself is...stupid. To be honest, it has been for awhile.

When I first conceived of making the comic book "Arsenic Lullaby" I got the normal glut of being turned down by publishers. Every indy book and/or creator who is of any success also has the tale of being turned down left and right. For that matter so does every band, comedian, filmmaker ect. It's part of the process. It's a tale as old as time.  People who's job it is to spot good ideas, are invariably unable to spot good ideas.

Probably when Homer wrote the Odyssey there was some guy in a toga going "meh...Egyptian mythology is really what the market's into right now. Throw a character in there with a giant dog head, and a couple of broads with sideways eyes and get back to me"

That being said, by the time Arsenic Lullaby no.1 had gone onto it's third printing, I probably could have gone back to any of those publishers and said "THERE...how about now?".  But by that point the whole thing was running on inertia, and...I dunno, I just kept doing it that way because that was the way I was doing it.

So that's the why not continue doing everything myself. The "why" join with First Comics, I'll get into later for the few of you who are into things enough to gaf who's publishing what, or any publishers here wondering why I didn't call them. It basically breaks down to my brain and my gut both agree this is the way to go.

First, I...who has had to do every job there is in this industry, at one point or another, and by necessity learned the ins and outs as well as almost anyone, am going to explain what a Publisher ACTUALLY does/is.

 By the time I'm done, you'll have a better understanding of comic book publishing than the majority of comic book publishers.

 There's a VERY teachable moment in what I'll be droning on about,  for anyone who wants to be good at anything. Using publishing as a loose analogy, the overall point can be applied to anything you try to do. If there's any theme that runs through these email blogs it's- ...cunning people succeed because they learn the boring stuff.

There's, I dunno, lets say 50 indy publishers out there of some note. 30 of them won't be around in two years or maybe even one year. They'll be replaced by 30 others would will try and fail. Rinse, repeat. It's been like this as long as I've been in the industry. Because indy comic publishing has a rather low barrier to entry, it attracts a certain type of person/personality. The types of people/personalities just see the obvious things and say "I can do that!"

"I can do that" is the battle cry of people who cost themselves a lot of time and money not finding out how anything works, and how much expertise is actually required, and tragically fail. Much like say...someone who decides to fix their own garage door springs. "It's a couple of bolts, I can do that".

and then at some point the garage spring, which is wound and set to dangerous tension, comes loose and the next thing that person knows...they have been reincarnated as a puppy...that has been given to his children, in an awkward and ham fisted attempt to ease the loss of their father and the trauma from the horrific gory scene they stumbled onto when they went to get their bikes out of the garage.

And day by day his memories of his past life, and all around level of awareness of who he was, diminishes. While he spends his days barking in hopes of being understood, eating food out of a dish and watching the parade of men his former wife is sleeping with. Then eventually the last spark of his former consciousness fades completely with the last thing it will ever be aware of being his balls getting removed by the vet.

what the f*ck was I talking about?

Oh yeah, comic book publishers. Comic publishing is a relatively low barrier to entry business, like I said. So, the "type of person" I mentioned jumps in with a "plan".  They get some hot illustrators, some writers that are good enough, maybe license some IP from somewhere, put up a website, get their social media cooking and "yeehaww...look it me mom, I'm a comic publisher!" They don't really understand what the job is and they don't bother to find out.

The fact of the matter is that beyond making themselves look like a big deal, they don't know what the f*ck they're doing. When I see one of these publishers, spending time on their internet presence, sporting a logo that I guarantee they spent many days and/or meetings on, all I see is a guy with a fancy tool box full of shiny wrenches about to get his head split open by a rouge garage door spring.

The teachable moment here is not actually the specifics of publishing, but that there ARE specifics. The reason these people fail is the same reason most people fail at anything. They see the job from the outside looking in and don't realize they are looking at the tip of the iceberg AND that tip is the least important part of the whole thing.

The job of a comic book publisher is to get orders, produce the book, fill the orders. Those three things, that is the job.

Is promotion part of that? Mehhh, yes, but mostly in a peripheral organizational way. In this day and age anything a publisher does online, beyond making sure the online store works, is...of very limited value. Unless you are Marvel, DC or maybe Image comics, no one gives a f*ck about a publishers online presence. People follow artists, writers, colorists in some cases...the creatives. A publishers online presence can have be of some use...but not in the way any of them are doing it, and I'm not going the say anything that might help. Not that it would matter because online content working properly involves being entertaining, which none of those people are nor have any training in.

...really the only two things that matter is word of mouth and how well the content connects to an audience. Nothing supersedes that or comes close in importance.  Once in a while someone can brute force massive sales of issue no.1 of something, but by issue 3 it's in the .50 bin if it sucks and/or no one likes it. Comic publishing has a weird slow timing to it that neuters any wave of superficial/artificial enthusiasm.  There's going to be a month,...two...maybe three in between issues hitting the stores, and that is plenty of time for astro turfed enthusiasm to wear off and word to get around on if it sucks despite the online energy, or if it's great despite the lack of same.

 So, as far a publishers actual job...let's put making tic toc videos to the side for a moment, along with the time you're spending coming up with a cool logo and talk about something important.

Like...paper.

You know...what you're printing the book on...

 The book made of pages that your illustrator and colorist labored intensely over, so that it looks as good or better than everything else on the shelf. 

Are you gonna print that on 40pound newsprint or 50pound white offset or heavier white offset? or smooth glossy stock, or matt finish or glossy stock with some texture to it?  There's a lot of options and there's pros and cons to each of them.

 Now, if you don't know wtf you are doing you will simply look at comic rack, see other people's books on glossy paper and ask the printer to print your books on glossy paper.

 That is...problematic decision making.  Something may look fantastic on a fancy schmancy computer screen, but that don't mean an industrial printer is going to produce that result, and the paper type is a major variable. .You can print the same image on three different kinds of paper and it will look three different ways. One lighter, one darker, one will have slightly different tones and different hues will stand out. You're dealing with the laws of physics here, and how a given paper stock handles saturation.

 At the time before computers, the printers had let's say...60 color codes. A certain shade of green would be say -b40 y60 and some shade of orange would be say -r30 y-70 or whatever. The colorists would match their paints to the codes and the codes used would be sent along to the printer with the art so they cold make sure everything jives.

Now...newsprint, which is the paper they used back then, isn't a bright white and the printing process at the time didn't give you very bright colors. The colorists, who were not idiots, kept this in mind. They used brighter shades than they actually wanted, knowing those shades would be muted by the process. The paper mutes it by two shades so they color it two shades brighter so in the end it's the color they actually wanted. Follow me??

Esthetics affects the bottom line ($$$). Marvel comics has, in it's holster, some of the greatest comic book stories ever published. Groundbreaking works, high quality stories, high quality illustrations. Legendary stuff that any comic book reader would want it their library. Yet...whenever they reprint such things into collections it goes over like a wet fart. Because...and this is not just me saying this, there are entire facebook groups and reddit pages devoted to complaining that, these books look like sh*t.

Marvel, when making these reprints, just took the old codes used and printed away on modern, bright glossy paper stock, that doesn't mute anything.  So, the end result is garish gaudy harsh colors. far brighter than was ever intended by the original colorists. It's the opinion of their intended audience, that these collections look bloody awful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in this case...you're looking to sell books based on nostalgia and this dreck on the right (below) is not it. What people wanted was the original look (below on the left)

These side by sides examples were culled by world renowned colorist José Villarrubia, who stated the problem quite well-

"the colors are changed and the mood destroyed."

Paper matters.

Different types of artwork look better on different kinds of paper. Black and white comics often look bad on glossy stock. But not always. It depends on the ink coverage, the line quality. Some books look great on glossy stock and others are an eye bleeding mess. Muted colors look good on some paper, vibrant colors on others, colors with subtle tone changes on others.

Publishers who do not know this are not anyone I'm interested in handing my book over to. But forget my personal reaction to the end result of pages I spent 15-20 man hour each on. That book is going to be on the shelves competing for eyeballs with other books.  People may not know exactly why one book catches their eye and is fun to flip through and another doesn't and isn't, but the fact is that one does and is and one doesn't and isn't. 

 One unquantifiable reason "it does or it doesn't" is simply the...I dunno how to phrase this...the emotional feel? One reason black and white art often looks cheap on glossy stock is that B/W has a traditional vibe, and glossy stock feels modern and polished. The paper and the vibe don't fit. This is hard to explain, but I have an example.  There's a book out called The Santo Sisters, which is fun and well done.

 They print on slightly thicker than average newsprint. It's drawn in an old school-ish style and putting it on newsprint matches the vibe and overall tone of the comic. If it was on glossy print it would not match that vibe. Also it wouldn't look nearly as good. It has a simple color pallet and that generally looks harsh and crappy on glossy paper. Newsprint is slightly off-white and sedates everything and it just...looks great and fits and has it's own vibe.

Fantagraphics Publishing, who do a lot of collections of landmark type comics, is pretty much the gold standard for books that look great. Their decision making on what to make the books out of, how to bind them, what cover stock works, etc, is always spot on. And it matters, and it shows. You get one of their books off the shelf or pick on up at a convention and they just...it feels like you have something special in your hands.

They published Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein, and Charles Burn's Black hole. Frankenstein is intricately drawn with an old school vibe and putting it on glossy stock would have harmed the effectiveness of Wrightson's fine line work and also the whole vibe...

 but "Black Hole" is a surreal sci-fi work with heavy spotted blacks and looks great on gloss, and the gloss/modern feel, fits the vibe.

 Fantagraphics has lasted a long long time, and part of the reason why is that their books look great and feel special AND that is why they have been entrusted with so many archival, groundbreaking collections. If you have a choice between putting the reprinting of your life's work in the hands of Fantagraphics where you know it will look impressive or joe blow publishing who's past books looked cheap and half assed...it's an easy choice.

This should be kept in mind if you're hoping to attract high level creative talent to your brand...if they saw you murdered other people's work with shoddy printing, that's a mark against you.

Hack publishers think that whether or not a book looks good is souly in the hands of the artist and colorist, but it is not. It is equally or more so, in the hands of the printer. And by that I mean the actual person running the printing press.  Who can keep an eye on it and adjust what needs to be adjusted if there's an issue OR say "meh, screw it" because he thinks you're a butthole, or he is a butt hole.

By the way... are you printing digitally or offest press or sheet fed press? and what DPI is it being printed at or from? Because they'll print that f*cker at 150dpi instead of 600 unless you ask them.  (Uhmm, "dpi" is dots per inch, it's the resolution. So the difference between 600 and 150 is like the difference between hi-def and a vhs tape you got at a rummage sale).

All fundamentals that you should have a firm grasp on before you start dicking around polluting the internet with more click bait...idiots. 

I know..."yeah yeah yeah...How much does any of this actually move the needle for sales? Probably not much"

Oh, I don't know...do you think your books being an eye bleeding mess have anything to do with sales?

Let's get even more boring and extrapolate that "sales" into "profit". On my desk here I have two different comic books from different companies. Both are 32pages and both on glossy paper, but one paper stock is thicker than the other. SO, one book weighs 2 ounces and the other weights 2.25 ounces. You multiply that difference over a good sized print run and there is a couple hundred pound difference in shipping costs. One company is paying for four more boxes to ship the same amount of books.

And how are you shipping it? UPS or Fed Ex Ground? That's a trick question because you should be using heavy drop shipping.   Are you shipping it to yourself? or are you going to pick it up from the central shipping hub in your city and save yourself another several hundred dollars? Or did you find a printer close enough to spend a day driving there and back to get them yourself and save yourself a grand? Or is your printer willing to drop ship it for you??

Did you find out how the printer is going to box them? 78 medium boxes or 37 large boxes (cheaper) are their boxes double corrugated? Because if they ain't, you'd better ask them to double box the books or you will have 10%of your print run damaged. Which leaves you trying to sell damaged books at a discount.

That brings us back to paper... Comic book nerds want everything to be in "mint condition". A box of high gloss books are going to crease easier and they show every singe ding and dent, compared to a box of matt finish or non gloss. Damaged books don't sell well, and stores don't like having to return damaged items. It irritates them. Which means you have to pay to ship replacements, meaning you made less money.

*It's wonderful timing actually that the Batman print run damage fiasco happened while I was getting this blog ready...image if your ENTIRE print run was bad. If you're an indy publisher...you are probably out of business at that point*

Paper...important but boring.

Guess what?

 I got something even more boring that that!

Speaking of books not selling because of damage...You know what this crease that runs along the side of squarebound comics is called?

There's a few names for it "Binding crease" "band" "spine hub". It is basically an industry standard in printing squarebound books BUT, if you give a printer a rush job or you got some screaming deal on the printing, you had best make sure that is being done. Because, without it, after the second person picks it up and looks through it, it's going to start falling apart...and it ain't going to sell.

 Also, there's different kinds of that crease and some cover stocks and laminations and finishes don't play nice with some of them.

The wrong type crease with the wrong cover paper/paper finish and the first time it's opened it gets that brittle, flaking, white line, because the coating cracks. and that book is now a pariah, because no one wants to pay for something that's cracked/has an ugly flaky seam, especially comic book nerds. So, THAT copy ain't selling and that means that store ain't buying another one.

Let's get more boring! 

You can get away with no spine crease depending on how are the pages bound into the spine.  Are they just cut and glued in as a stack or sewn in sections? and what's the glue coverage?

Sewn sections are best...here's a hardcover that's sewn in in sections AND even has that fancy fringe (end bands) at the ends!

Top notch. Who made this book I wonder...oh...look. It's 1First Comics. How about that.

Here's the thing on the endurance of a book. Word of mouth is the winning or losing of the whole mess, like I already said. At every convention I go to, people bring me back issues and collections to sign. Some from many many years ago.  Instead of having fallen apart years earlier and being a book they remember reading back in the day, it's still part of their regular comic intake. They are still intact, and so they are still being read...still out their working for me. Because they stories are great, BUT also because the printing held up. Get me?

By the way...WHEN you print something can affect the cost. A lot of paper mills are in the northern midwest and Canada, and they shut down for a period in the winter. At some printers that means the cost goes up, at other printers it means the cost goes down because business is slow and the machines are sitting doing nothing.

And that's just the production chain end of things. We won't even get into the distribution, the timing of when to do what, the building of business relationships ect ect ect.

 Any handful of all this mumbo jumbo can cause a dramatic tilt in your cost/profit, if you don't know what the f*ck you are doing. Then it's "death by a thousand cuts" and...6 issues of taking it in the butt, profit wise, later, you are out of business and using your big fancy internet presence to write "it is with a heavy heart that we have decided..."

  The real value of a publisher in 2026 is their infrastructure, logistics, production value, relationships in the industry, knowledge, and over all supervision.

You can extrapolate from alla that which I've said, as to the pragmatic side of why 1First Comics was my choice.

As for what my gut had to say about it...

There's a small handful of indy publishers out there that I have great respect for. You know who you are. But, let's be honest with ourselves, I'd be "locker room poison", and probably butting heads constantly with whoever your second in command is, who hasn't known me for 20 years and doesn't know how to take me. I love you guys, but I'd be a square peg in a round hole in your operation. I don't just mean my work, I mean ME. I personally am as much an anomaly in this industry as my work is. Some of you people reading this will feel me here...being an anomaly is great fun and entertaining for everyone else, but it gets old for you. 

Sometimes, and I know how this is going to sound, you just want to be around your own kind. In this case...twin Asian brothers and a six foot tall black guy with dreadlocks.

I have a quote that will put it all in perspective. When I told Django of The Comics Place, I was teaming up with 1First. He said "Sigh...yeah, that makes perfect sense...you're all lunatics".

I'm sure he meant that in the nicest possible way. In any case he is correct. And there is comfort in not always being the one ranting and raving, but simply being in agreement.

We are simpatico in many ways, along with this important disposition- We are looking to make cool, weird awesome stuff, and comics happen to be the medium we are using. As opposed to wanting to make cool, weird, awesome, comics. They're both fine and sound like the same thing, but it's really two different foundations you're building from.

Back to the pragmatic side of things...

Ken, the head man in charge at 1First has been doing this since the late 80s and you don't need to spend much time talking to him to quickly understand that he knows the industry as well as anyone else on the room, if not better. He started in 1987 and that means he's seen all manner of industry rises and falls and trends. And all that stuff is circular, including the pitfalls and fools gold.

How you operate in 1990 is not the same way you want to operate in 2000. How you operate in 2000 is not how you want to operate in 2010 and by 2026...what you did in 1990 might be the way to do it again. Most publishers don't remember how anything was done two cycles ago, if they ever even learned. Nor do they know why it worked and why it stopped working. They know how things were done when they started paying attention 6 months ago and how they are doing things now, and that is all they know. knowwhatimean?

A couple specific things that'll shed light on why I am very pleased with my decision, from a pragmatic standpoint. First, this book here they did "Love Town- The Long Take". The entire story is one long progressive page. I had never seen nor heard of such a comic being produced.

It's hard to show what this is with the pictures, and even a bit hard to explain, but it unfolds like an accordion ...it's 24 pages printed out as one long page. and the story is illustrated where the action from one page goes into the next like a "tracking shot" in film making. F*cking wild and ingenious storytelling.

...AND...it is clear evidence that they have no problem what-so-ever with several conversations, and possibly one final direct curt conversation, with a printer, in which the bottom line is - this is what we want and this is how we want it done. Knowing a thing or two about printers...this likely took some strategy and some convincing.

Then there is the case of their hit "Space Negro, the last Negro".  A third party told me of a   dust up when a certain, at the time, all powerful distributor was not very keen on the title of the book. Was concerned it was oh...problematic, and preferred it be given a different name. I'll not go into the particulars, but the end of the story is - 1First got the book distributed by them, with the title "Space Negro- the last negro". Which, by the way, has at this point been reprinted several times.

They know how to produce awesome weird stuff and they ain't interested in any excuses anyone comes up with to not produce said awesome weird stuff.

You know what I've been doing since I made this decision, which it's recently dawned on me I haven't been doing in years? Having fun..

So, that's all of that. I gotta go. I have to get work done on the new series, and then I gotta call the boys so we can organize some convention details, and then talk sh*t about other comic book pros. You'll be able to eavesdrop on our sh*t talking at several cons this year including my first ever appearance in Portland. You can Pacific North westerners can thank 1First for that.

Here's some comics

FROM THE ARCHIVES!

Protect your art from AI with Glaze or Nightshade

Protect your art from AI with Glaze or Nightshade

Protect your art from AI with Glaze or Nightshade

 Protect your art from AI with Glaze or Nightshade

ARSENIC LULLABY ONLINE STORE TEMPORARILY OPEN 10.00 off second print with coupon code- 2prints2