Tyler Page, creator of the excellent graphic novel series Nothing Better, added up his costs since 2002 and concluded he’d spent almost $47,000 on printing and promotion costs, mostly convention appearances. Wow. Then again, that’s less than $7,000 a year, and I can see that you could easily spend that much with significant travel combined with up-front print costs. As he says,

I think there may have only ever been a few shows where I did so well as to cover all costs and turn a small profit. But those were the exception rather than the rule.

My question, then — and I’m not criticizing here — would be “why keep doing it?” I know people think you have to get out on the circuit and meet people in person, but maybe if you don’t break even, you rethink your product mix or do more online promotion, fewer in-person appearances. Then again, that’s a much more viable option these days than it used to be.

He does say at the end, after being refreshingly open about his financial standing, that he’d do things differently if he could do them again, and I hope he elaborates on that in future posts. He’s changed to print-on-demand and webcomic promotion now, from his original strategy of going straight to graphic novels (as he did with Stylish Vittles). His post was a followup to a previous one where he discusses why he went print-on-demand, in large part to minimize his up-front debt on the project.

I’m very glad to see this kind of discussion taking place, because I would hope that aspiring comic creators would educate themselves on the many options open to them these days and make sensible decisions. It doesn’t do anyone any good for a talent to burn out or be financially crippled out of ignorance — I wish long careers in comics for everyone.

Cavemen in Space
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You can now order the Archie Americana Best of the Seventies Book 2 (MAR10 0708, $11.95) announced in January. Also note that the prices are being raised on Archie single issues from $2.50 to $2.99. So now the only comics regularly priced under $3 an issue are promotional specials, dollar samplers and the like.

Diamond strikes again! A full-page ad for the barely covered Tarot appears smack in the middle of the Boom! Kids section, right between various Walt Disney comic listings. Someone couldn’t adjust that layout by a page? I guess that lack of detail-checking also explains why no one said to Dynamite Entertainment, “I think there’s a typo in your ad line, or did you really mean to print ‘One will dies!’?”

The Legacy
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Speaking of Dynamite, they’re bringing Howard Chaykin’s sex comic Black Kiss (MAR10 0871, $24.99) back to print in a remastered hardcover. If you enjoy Chaykin’s work, and you’re over 18, you should read this, because it’s the ultimate expression of his usual quirks, the fishnets and domination and Hollywood setting and porn and blow jobs. Oh, and vampires, too. Read this and every other Chaykin comic will seem like a pale copy.

The Legacy (Dragonfish Comics, MAR10 0912, $10.95) is by two guys, Andrew McGinn and David Neitzke, I’ve never heard of, and the sample at their website isn’t long enough to really get a feel for the work, but I love the concept. A young man inherits his father’s beloved comic strip, the kind of inoffensive pablum that’s been left to run much beyond the time it had anything to say. He decides that the only way to get back to his own work is to get the strip cancelled by making it outrageously offensive. There’s a risk that there’s nothing to the book beyond the shock value humor, and it’s slim (96 pages) to work out all the potential of the concept, but if you have a few extra bucks and an interest in newspaper strip history and inheritance, you may want to check it out.

Archie: The Best of Dan DeCarlo
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Ah, the benefits of being a sister company. There are four catalog pages, plus an additional ad, telling us that the new Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (MAR10 0973 and following, $35 hardcover) is coming out. It’s due to release in July. The problem with this? Traditionally, the book comes out in April. That gives all the comic dealers time to find and analyze price changes and trends before summer convention season gets into gear. Now, in the middle of all that, they’re going to be asked to possibly reprice. That’s not a recipe for happy customers.

IDW honors the talented artist his home publisher ignores with Archie: The Best of Dan DeCarlo (MAR10 1052, $24.99). There aren’t many specifics on contents, number of stories, or high points — all we know is that this volume reprints stories from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. The most exciting part for me is the “Volume One” tag, providing hope for more. (Actually, this material is licensed from Archie, so I have hope that the new era of leadership is more open to accurate credits and historical recognition.) DeCarlo’s lines are beautiful and his grasp of behavior impressive.

This isn’t a graphic novel, but Oni Press has an intriguing comic debut this month. Frenemy of the State (MAR10 1102, $3.99) is a mash-up: what if a globe-trotting socialite was really a secret agent? It’s James Bond as a modern woman, co-written by Rashida Jones, Christina Weir, and Nunzio DeFlippis. The limited art samples, by unfamiliar-to-me Jeff Wamester, are attractive, as they’d need to be, but the comparisons to Buffy and Chuck sold me.

Moving Pictures
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On the other hand, I wish I liked the art I’ve seen from JAM! Tales from the World of Roller Derby (MAR10 1103, $19.95) better, because I’d love to read more about this sport after seeing and enjoying Whip It. It’s written by actual participants, so reality! There’s a 17-page preview at that link, go check for yourself.

I wonder about people who write Previews copy. Do they realize that, once you’re in the back section, most of the people reading it know nothing about them, their company, or their comic? You have to write to educate people about why they’d want your comic, not simply spew out impenetrable sentences about your characters and their world. You’ve been living with them for years, but we have no idea who they are or why we should care that one is fighting another.

The Immonens collect their webcomic Moving Pictures as a book from Top Shelf (MAR10 1136, $14.95). Unfortunately, you can no longer read it online, since they took it down once they discovered it was being redistributed in a format they didn’t like. I understand that they’re the artists, it’s their work, and they can do what they want with it — but it seems to me counterproductive to react to copying by removing the original, thus ceding the field to the copier. It’s a free comic — wouldn’t you want the authorized edition to remain available as a superior alternative? Anyway, there’s a preview of the opening pages at the book’s link. The book’s about art stolen by Nazis and promises to be thought-provoking.

As reported by TechCrunch, those who had orders canceled have received email stating

We’re sorry for any frustration the issue may have caused, and have applied a $25 promotional certificate to your account. You can use it the next time you order an item shipped and sold by Amazon.com.

This excludes third-party sellers, who are the only ones who have books by the listed comic publishers right now. Publishers Weekly explains why:

Amazon has been forced to temporarily take down buy buttons for all titles supplied by Diamond in order to correct the problem. According to the source, Amazon has to do an audit to figure out which customers got books and at what prices. While the situation is temporary, the source said, “there is no timetable for when this will be completed.”

That explains an interesting phrase in the Amazon credit email. It said, “we completely sold out — we don’t have any in stock right now, and we’re not sure when we’ll be able to get more.” That “not sure” part confused me, although now I understand. They have to finish their calculations before they can restock.

Personally, I’m embarrassed to get the $25 credit. I ordered a Howard the Duck Omnibus that was already marked “out of stock” when I placed the order. I didn’t really expect to get it, and I didn’t. Getting paid for taking that gamble seems wrong to me. Anyone who thinks otherwise, who was claiming that Amazon “owed” them for their “poor” customer service in refusing to sell books at a loss, needs to read this.

In one other note, it appears that Rich Johnston isn’t making nearly as much money from his pimping of the sale as I thought. (Current article count he’s posted about the situation: 14.) That linked post says that he’s received credit for only 4 out of 5,572 Omnibuses ordered through his links. Although that doesn’t account for the status of the other 8,499 items he bragged about people ordering, and plenty of people have gotten some of the books…

Update: (3/11/10) Simon Jones lists additional publishers, including several manga companies, affected by Amazon removing all Diamond Book Distributor titles. He also pleads for “sanity”, as he puts it, in reminding us how this might negatively affect the small companies who put out comics and manga that we love.

Another oddity about this event was the lack of cover price information. Instead of listing the book’s cover price at whatever it should be, and then showing the Amazon price as a discount (as you can see in the image below), the cover price was listed as a flat $14.99, with no discount. This unannounced “sale” pushed many of the comics into the Amazon top 100 sellers. At the time of this writing, with prices returned to normal, they’re still there, as shown by this screenshot. Note also that the books are no longer in stock (likely sold through the inventory), with delays of a week or two before they can ship.

The rest of the top 10 includes The Incredible Hulk Omnibus Vol. 1; Iron Man Omnibus Vol. 1; and The Death of Captain America Omnibus, and the trend continues through the top 20.

Plenty of people who took advantage of this error are feeling entitled, with some threatening class action suits if they don’t get their discount books. How selfish. You knew the pricing was wrong, and yet you ordered anyway. If you get any books at all out of the deal, you got lucky. Saying you should get them all is pig-headed. Trying to take advantage of someone else’s error isn’t good karma (although I ordered a few books myself). Trying to profit from it, by ordering multiple copies for later resale, for instance, is just greedy.

Similarly stupid is the idea that this shows that “Comics are too expensive. You make them cheaper, much cheaper, and people will buy them.” Well, sure, if you sell product for 85% off, plenty of people will jump. But you aren’t making any money if you’re selling books for less than it costs to print them.

So what will Amazon do? And who pays for this mistake? We don’t know yet. Plenty of people have gotten confirmation of shipped orders at the $15 price. Others, who ordered multiple copies of the same books, have been told that they’re only getting one of any given title. Preorders and orders on out-of-stock books are still pending as I write this. My guess is that those are likely to be cancelled with apology letters.

BleedingCool.com, which was pushing readers to order hard, with eight different articles about the event, has revealed that 14,071 items were ordered just through their links. At that level, they get a kickback of 8.5% on each shipped sale. Assuming a price of $14.99 (might have been less), if all those orders shipped (they won’t) Rich Johnston and crew made a shade under $18,000 off of their readers. No wonder they were encouraging multiple purchases!

But let’s examine the cost. (These are round numbers, of course, and note that I’m just discussing one source. There were likely many more orders that didn’t go through that set of links.) 14,000 books at a cover price of $100 would, let’s say, normally sell for an average of $70 on Amazon (somewhere between $60 and $80). They sold for $15 instead, for a loss of $770,000. Not in real money, of course, since nothing says the same number of books would have sold at the higher price, but in potential revenue.

What about Diamond? If Diamond normally gets $50 a book (half cover), or $700,000, and now they’re getting $7.50, or $105,000, they’re out almost six hundred thousand dollars. If the publishers expect to be paid at their standard rate, and Diamond has to eat the loss (if it was their data entry error), that could be rather significant, even potentially harmful to their business. Coincidentally, today’s news was that Diamond fired three people from their book arm, with their tasks being covered by employees on the Diamond Comic Distributors side.

Update: (3/9/10) I realize I was amiss in not taking the math example far enough. Let’s continue. If Diamond takes 5% off the top as their fee, then they owe the publishers 45% of cover price, which means $630,000. (Note that I don’t pay as much attention to the details of the direct market as I used to, and so I don’t know how accurate the 5% fee is. Those with more information are asked to update me, please.)

Given all the assumptions we’ve made, then instead of earning $70,000 for handling 14,000 $100 books, Diamond is in the hole to the tune of $525,000. I don’t think they can afford to lose that much right now. However, note again that this example is hypothetical. The 14,000 number comes from one site’s orders. More were ordered elsewhere, and regardless of source, not all of those books will ship. Plus, Diamond may not be held to blame for this, or the cost might be shared among participants (publishers, distributor, and Amazon), or lawyers might have to get involved to figure it all out.

One additional ramification, as Caroline pointed out, is that this little snafu has made the books involved rather scarce, even if you want to pay a more reasonable price. Those who ordered for speculative purposes may be able to turn the books quickly, until more make it into the pipeline.

Joelle Jones, whose art I have adored in 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, Token, and You Have Killed Me, is now working on something very high profile: a graphic novel co-written by Janet Evanovich, the best-selling mystery writer, and her daughter Alex.

Troublemaker!: A Barnaby Adventure, coming from Dark Horse on July 20, is expected to have an initial print run of 100,000, which is at least four times the usual number printed. Since Evanovich is credited with selling over 90 million books, I’m guessing it’s a safe bet.

Troublemaker is the third in a series than began as prose, so expect lots of crossover customers. (Some of whom will be disappointed and confused by seeing pictures instead of words in the book, judging by previous experiments of this type, such as Dean Koontz’s In Odd We Trust.) The graphic novel continues the Barnaby and Hooker series from Metro Girl and Motor Mouth, in which a NASCAR driver and his mechanic solve crimes.

Macmillan thinks ebooks should be priced closer to $15 than the current price point of $9.99. (Many potential customers, on the other hand, think $10 is still too high for a transaction with no physical object exchanged.) This is an opinion shared by other publishers, but as of now, Macmillan is the only one removed from Amazon, who is “expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books.” Details are not known, since both companies refused to comment. Ironically, this is the title being promoted on Macmillan’s home page right now, a book that states, “prices are a collective hallucination.”

Macmillan’s imprints include First Second Books, publisher of such titles as Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, Vampire Loves, The Color of Earth, The Professor’s Daughter, and many others, including The Photographer, Prince of Persia, and American Born Chinese.

Other Macmillan graphic novels come from the manga publisher Seven Seas and Hill & Wang, which releases graphic histories and biographies, including J. Edgar Hoover (by Rick Geary) and The 9/11 Report.

This dispute illustrates the danger of having such a powerful online bookstore as your enemy, especially one that wants to keep its Kindle successful in the face of new competition. On the other side, I’m guessing that publishers see what happened to the recording industry when they let Apple’s iTunes set a price point and want to avoid being trapped into the $9.99 value they see as much too low.

Update: Lots of discussion around the net on this:

• Author John Scalzi (published by Tor, a Macmillan imprint) advocates free-market pricing and says he doesn’t want a Kindle due to Amazon’s behavior and its use of DRM. The comments cover lots of aspects of pricing from various perspectives and pluses and minuses of ebooks.
• Some posters at the Amazon Kindle forum want to boycot the publisher for trying to raise prices.
• Dear Author points out that driving customers to the secondary market, as Amazon has done, means no money for the publisher or author, while the retailer still gets their cut. The site also sums up Macmillan’s negative history with ebooks overall.

Update: The NY Times has updated its story to include this information about the proposed deal:

Macmillan offered Amazon the opportunity to buy Kindle editions on the same “agency” model as it will sell e-books to Apple for the iPad. Under this model, the publisher sets the consumer book price and takes 70 percent of each sale, leaving 30 percent to the retailer. Macmillan said Amazon could continue to buy e-books under its current wholesale model, paying the publisher 50 percent of the hardcover list price while pricing the e-book at any level Amazon chooses, but that Macmillan would delay those e-book editions by seven months after hardcover release.

Commenters have pointed out that Amazon may be damaging itself by removing Macmillan books, since they can no longer be considered the world’s most complete bookstore.

Update: (1/31/10) Here’s why you don’t pick fights with the literate. How’s this for a call to arms with plenty of classic allusions?

Last Update: Amazon gives in. I don’t see the pulled books back on the store, yet. Maybe tomorrow. Part of their statement says: “Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan.”

The list of 73 titles … recommended for those ages 12-18, meet[s] the criteria of both good quality literature and appealing reading for teens.

Looking at the top ten list, I note a couple of interesting things:

The books fall into the following categories:

• Manga (3), all Viz Signature titles and all outstanding.
• Webcomic collections (2), both weird mystery
• Non-standard superheroes (2), one humor/parody, the other slice-of-life anti-hero
• Genre twists (2)
• Non-fiction (1), about a real-life modern-day tragedy

That’s pretty diverse and should provide something for almost any reader. I have only read the ones in the manga category, but I have a couple of the others on the review stack, so I think I’ll try to get to them sooner.

[T]he first volume of Jellaby will not remain in print. This means that it will becoming increasingly difficult to find copies of Jellaby in the more traditional retail outlets like book or comic stores.

Jellaby	Jellaby: Monster in the City

It’s the story of Portia and Jason, two kids with the big purple monster Jellaby as their friend. Jellaby 1 came out February 2008, with the second book released April 2009. The two books together make one big story, so if you’re curious, now is the time to find a copy of the first volume. (The Amazon used prices are already becoming ridiculous.) A planned third book will not happen.

Update: I’m not sure why the confusion is so widespread — perhaps my writeup wasn’t clear — but note that the second book came out last year. So those reporting that the first book is going out of print before book two is published: that’s not the case.

Soo continues his explanation:

This decision was wholly out of my hands. It was, I presume, a financial decision on the part of my publisher, Disney-Hyperion, even though the book has been a modest success by comic standards (more than 18,000 copies sold over the span of 21 months), and had been slowly picking up readers as time went on. Having Jellaby off the shelves does create an unfortunate situation, however — the second book, Jellaby: Monster in the City, is the conclusion of the story that runs through both books, and by removing the availability of the first book, Monster in the City is in danger of leading a shortened life as well, being a now- incomplete second half to a two-part story.

There are also Jellaby stories in Flight Explorer and Flight Volume 5, and Soo plans to do additional stories in those venues.

One can only guess at the publisher’s decision-making process, but I did find it interesting that he revealed sales numbers. Does this indicate different expectations between comic publishers and publishers of children’s books?

Coffin is currently available from Lulu.com. It’s a 392-page paperback for $22 (plus shipping). There’s a preview at that link, and Neil describes it as follows:

Coffin follows Jeffrey Dean and Annie Wylen, commuters on the PATH line, leading individual lives filled with individual fears. When their train is derailed, they find themselves trapped with eight passengers they do not know and in order to survive, are forced to depend on the kindness of strangers in an increasingly isolated society. This is what happens when humanity comes together when the lights go out and the steps they take when the love of two individuals threatens to kill them all. Questioning the vulnerability of a post-9/11 New York and inspired by the experiences of friends and family who face the fear of suicide bombers in present day Israel, Coffin is the tale of a group of passengers, waiting for someone to rescue them from Hell beneath the Earth, banding together with complete strangers to face claustrophobia, self-esteem, rat stampedes, emotional infatuation, and the ever-present, crushing darkness as they cling to one another in hopes of reaching light at the end of the tunnel.

Neil was kind enough to answer my emailed questions about his project, its place in history, and the print-on-demand format.

Q: You mention “post-9/11 New York” in your book description — how were you affected by 9/11 and how did that influence this work?

Like most New Yorkers, 9/11 pretty much redefined a lot about my place in the world, place in the city… you have to understand that I’d JUST moved to New York and was still a Midwestern suburban kid acclimating himself to the Big City, and to MY eyes at the time, everybody in New York looked out for number one. I mean, you got on the subway and though packed in with commuters, many of whom you’re a tongue’s length away from, you avoid eye contact as much as possible. A subway of One, like elevator mentality. To me — a dude who comes from an insular religious community, a “brotherhood” that looks out for each other, I really questioned whether or not my fellow New Yorker would be there if the chips were down.

And then, on September 11th, I pretty much got my answer. The events of 9/11 and the outpouring of support for and in New York made me realize that humans are humans, and New York looks out for its own. The city can be the loneliest place in the world, and often times you think that nobody gives a shit, no one cares about your troubles when they’ve got their own, but despite the viewpoints of several of my characters, human kindness is never a last resort, nor is it a myth. And 9/11 really opened our eyes to what our fellow man needs and to what he’s willing to give.

The only problem is, 9/11 also made us all incredibly paranoid, safety and security conscious… and it put me in the mind of friends and family that live in Israel, people I know who were caught in explosions inside Jerusalem, affected by suicide bombers on buses. I mean… I take the train every day. I know how easy it is to get in and out of the transit system. What’s stopping some dude from carrying a bomb in his carrier bag, or a shotgun in a guitar case? Makes us nervous, puts us on edge, and though we’ve proved we’ll be there for our fellow man we’re also not willing to trust him one hundred percent. We’re New Yorkers, and we still look out for number one, avoiding eye contact now more than ever.

Q: What do you say to someone who’s tired of hearing about 9/11? Does this make the novel a bit of a period piece from a previous era?

I suppose it does, though I think we’re still living in a post-9/11 world and the after-effects of that tragedy continue to this day. Sure, there’s been a glut of 9/11 films and novels, and it can get a bit much, but for those of us that lived through it there’s an immediacy to it — it’s still so close, and I know that for New Yorkers that were here, it comes up in conversation: “Where were you?” and then the stories come out. People still have something to say about that day, and though it’s been nearly a decade the emotional power behind the tragedy and its aftermath… the wounds are fresh. I still haven’t seen Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center because I’m not sure I can take it. I work blocks from Ground Zero and it’s always tense to walk by the site.

What do I say to those that are sick of it? I’m not sure I have the words to make them “untired”… it can get heavy, it does feel like every day since then has sort of weighed us down with this crushing guilt, this “terrorists can’t win” credo that just seems a bit too much after the eightieth time you’ve heard it. But… we lived through it, dude. We’re part of that history, you know? Six degrees of separation from what happened, and though I hesitate using the oppressed mantra of many in my faith, often using it to describe the Shoah, we really should never forget. I wonder if my children will get tired of me telling them where I was that day, like some kids get sick of their father’s war stories. I don’t know — I just know that the events of that day inspired questions in my head, and this book was a way to get some answers down on paper while also telling a good, thrilling, character-driven story.

Q: In what ways does this book transcend the plot of “train crash, gotta get to the surface”? Is is just a thriller, or something more?

It’s what I call psychological thriller, kind of an emotional exploration inside the minds of the protagonists struggling to survive. Think “Daylight” as seen through the amateur psychologist’s eye. It’s got a bit of everything — horror, pop culture, romance, rat stampedes. You know, a fun book for the family.

The novel really focuses on character development, letting you swim around inside the protagonists’ minds, and I think that along with some (in my humble opinion) killer dialogue and a creepy situation create a wonderfully suspenseful book.

Q: You’ve written several well-reviewed comics — why prose for this story?

Frustrated novelist? I don’t ever think there’s an either/or as a writer. I want to stretch my legs in all mediums, but prose has always been a precious dream for me, and I plan on working more in this space in the future. Some stories are comics, some stories are films, some are novels. Depends on which world my mind and hands want to play in that year.

Q: This begin as a serialization on LiveJournal. Why that location? And how was the structure affected by that outlet?

I’d been working on the novel for a good year and a half before I started serializing it online and to be honest… I’d stalled. I’d pick it up, put it down, get stuck, get moving — I had no DEADLINES and therefore, it gathered dust for months at a time. What really got me moving was the introduction of the serialized webcomic and, in particular, ACT-I-VATE. When Dean, Dan, and the boys got together and started serializing their comics online, I was enthralled with the steady, deadlined pace they were keeping up, and it inspired me — at the time, focusing on my writing — to use the system they’d constructed to set my deadline and actually FINISH the freaking thing. It also set me up for the internet drug of instant reader gratification. I had folks commenting on chapters and I knew whether or not I was onto something. Every Monday, another chapter went live, and it helped me really breakthrough the stalling and excuses. A chapter HAD to be up on Monday, so I HAD to write it and would edit once the first draft was done. Worked surprisingly well.

Did it have to be LiveJournal? Probably not… but what LJ had going for it (at the time) was the post-WEF pre-Engine Delphi-like internet community that made it feel like I was working on the book within a virtual studio, like an online writer’s workshop. The format of the novel didn’t alter much because of the tool I used, and I think the overall piece stands up fairly well for having been written week-to-week for a virtual space.

Q: Why print-on-demand? What options did you have, and why did you choose this one?

Coffin has been shopped around and done its time in the agencies and publishing houses, but it wasn’t until Warren Ellis recently released his Shivering Sands essay collection via Lulu that I sat down, had a look at print-on-demand, and thought about what I might be able to do with it.

What I dig about the POD system is that it feels like I’m making a DIY novel, a 392-page minicomic xeroxed by the handful for an appreciative base of fans, friends, colleagues, and community. There’s something empowering about writing, designing, and distributing a prose novel by yourself, and though having the book in at a publishing house would obviously bring me more cash, wider distribution, and better marketing… I look at this experiment wiht the same eye I looked at creating Ninety Candles, the book I published and distributed with the help of a Xeric Grant. I’m now learning about book retailers, Amazon Kindles and e-readers, nuances and details I never thought about with comics and graphic novels. It’s different, and with the glut of e-readers coming to market, probably the future. Like webcomics, it’s the next bold step in bookselling, and I’d like some time to fiddle with the dials to see what i can do.

Q: Given your POD experience, would you consider it for future comics/graphic novels?

Definitely. I mean, Coffin just hit the net, so I don’t know if it’s going to be a success or just another 10PM Jay Leno show… the next two months will tell. But I like the model, and I already know what my first sequential offering would be… a trade collection of the Late Night Block short horror stories I wrote for opi8.com back in the Ellis/Chad Ward days. I released those as 3-4 22-page minicomics, but it’d be nice to have them all in one shiny, black, Ben Templesmith-covered package, no? YES.

Q: Prose, comics, graphic design — what field will you be tackling next? What’s your next project?

Old Tyme Radio, naturally! I’ll probably always be writing and designing — I’m an art director by day, my roots borne in the typographic process, and if I don’t write I’ll probably die — but now I’m thrilled to be picking up my Microns again to do a metric ton of cartooning. I’m drawing a 4-page anthology story this year, possibly doing the same for another well-known licensed book, and working on my next big cartoon book already attached to a Big-Time Publisher Type. I like to keep busy, you know? Of course, I’ve been hankering to craft some episodic television these days. I might just do a webcomic instead, though.

2010 finally sees the release of Pop: The Darlings of America, a mini-series about celebutante culture I co-created with Dan Taylor and Chris Moreno for IDW Publishing, and its distribution method should raise some eyelids, too. I’m writing American Caesar, my next graphic novel for NBM Publishing, and there’s a bit of work for hire in the ether, as well. Busy busy busy.

Glad to hear it, Neil! Thanks for talking with me. Here’s that Coffin link one more time.

This source of funding isn’t surprising, given the typical Hollywood interest in comics as printed storyboards for movie projects, plus Top Shelf drew a lot of attention when The Surrogates was turned into a Bruce Willis movie last year.

The first project now in development is based on Alex Robinson’s Too Cool to Be Forgotten, a graphic novel about a guy who goes back in time to his high school self when stop-smoking hypnosis goes wrong. It’s a high-concept project that touches on lots of powerful themes, including nostalgia and wondering if our life choices should have been different. I thought it was a great read.

Staros and Warnock are quick to reassure that this change won’t negatively affect the well-respected indy/art comic publisher:

This deal represents a supportive investment in the company; one that leaves Chris Staros and Brett Warnock as majority stockholders (and firmly in control of the company), but also brings to bear the resources, skills, and connections of John and Anthony in helping the company expand and grow over time. …

[According to Staros,] “Two years ago, I casually mentioned that while I loved every aspect of running Top Shelf, Brett and I were starting to get worn out with being the ‘personal banks’ for the company, and by the stress that this brought during the rocky periods that publishing undergoes. Coincidentally, at that time, John S. Johnson, a long-time friend of Anthony’s (and big fan of literary graphic novels) mentioned to him that he was toying with the idea of graphic novel publishing, to possibly make it a part of his other new media interests. Anthony suggested we all meet, and over the last couple of years, our mutual friendship, common interests and goals, and respect for each other developed to the point that we decided to work together as partners in the future of Top Shelf.”

The Gyakushu! series debuted in 2007, with Volume One, and followed the next year with Volume Two. Volume Three, the final volume, was caught up in the re-structuring of Tokyopop in mid 2008 and was delayed. Tokyopop has given me permission to post the first two volumes online, along with the first seventy-five pages of Volume Three.

Dan Hipp was kind enough to respond to some of my questions about the project in email.

Q: How did you connect with Tokyopop?

Tokyopop had recently started their OEL manga program, and I was a newly published artist without any writing credits. I had blindly gone to them to see if they would be interested in publishing a story (that I hadn’t come up with yet). They saw my work and gave me an invitation to pitch something, so I did. What started in my head as a samurai/ spaghetti western/ revenge/ action extravaganza became a three-book deal with a very determined beginning, middle, and end. The whole thing developed very organically, as I created the story specifically for this Tokyopop deal. Thankfully, I fell in love with it.

Q: What were the pros and cons of your experience at Tokyopop as part of their OEL
manga program?

I’ve had a positive relationship with Tokyopop, outside of that the final volume of my series got caught in the Tokyopop restructure. That said, they’ve never suggested I not finish the book, or they not honor their contract. They’ve been cool about me posting the series online, and strangely enough, this will probably give more people the opportunity to read the book, as getting people to pick up an OEL manga to begin with can be hard enough. With respect to the OEL manga program, I didn’t have any major issues, or certainly not any issue I wouldn’t have had at any other publisher. Being a newbie writer/artist at the time, I’ve always appreciated the support I did get from Tokyopop, and I never signed anything I didn’t read first. :)

Q: What’s the posting schedule?

I will be posting 475 pages of the 600-page series immediately. That includes the first 75 pages of Volume 3, but yes, the remaining 125 pages, the conclusion, will follow at some point. That time has yet to be determined, but it will be in the next handful of months. The first seventy-five pages of Volume 3 sets up the mad rush to the end of the series, so I’d like to post the rest at one time, but I’m being respectful of any plans Tokyopop may have.

Q: How likely are fans to see the remaining 125 pages, and in what format? What will influence this decision? Do you and/or Tokyopop expect to see sales of the first two volumes increase, for example?

This is probably where I get to sound vague, but the fans WILL get to see the remaining 125 pages. At the very least, they will see them posted on the site. If people check out the site and feel compelled to buy hard copies of the first two volumes, that would be awesome. Will it affect whether or not we see the third volume in print someday? It certainly would not hurt. Regardless, I’ve been sitting on a 600-page behemoth of revenge that’s taken up the last three years of my life, so I will make sure that it’s out there in one format or another. Yeah, I know, vague.

Q: Why not run this as part of the serialization they’re doing on their website? Why do it yourself?

Tokyopop may very well have plans to run the book as a serialization on their website. I’m not a huge fan of the serialized, comic/manga-player format that we’ve seen on varying publishers’ sites. I don’t have the patience to click through, page by page, any story. As an artist, the pages I most admire online are posted on blogs/livejournals in a large format. So what I’ve done is simplify the reading process as much as I can, keeping the images fairly large. As a designer, I’m very particular as to how my images are seen. A blog may be the most simple format around, but I love it, it’s something I can control, and is very accessible. You don’t need Flash, or an updated viewer of some kind, you just need a browser. I have no idea if it will be successful, but at the very least, the work I’ve done can be seen in a way I’m happy with, second to the published book.

Q: You’ve also drawn The Amazing Joy Buzzards. Was this at the same time as you were working on Gyakushu!? What’s your future with that title?

I was working on The Amazing Joy Buzzards prior to working on Gyakushu!, and I’ve managed to squeeze in a few pages here and there between volumes. There are future volumes of AJB in the works, I just need to sit down and finish hammering out the pages. Other project commitments, like the Ben 10: Alien Force book I have coming out with Peter David, keep getting in the way, but The Amazing Joy Buzzards will return.

My thanks to Dan Hipp for sharing his thoughts and books with us.

Update: Dan also talked to Brigid Alverson at Robot 6. In addition to some of the subjects we talked about here, they also covered what changes were made for the online posting and more on the Ben 10 comic.

It’s described as “the story of a recently deceased girl who is transported to the after-life. She … is briskly swept up in a twisted plot of intrigue, deception, and danger between the Dead Realms.” Which could cover an awful lot of similar “visiting the land of the dead” stories, but as always, it’s what the artist does with it.

I’m interested because the graphic novel is based on and expanded from a short story from Tokyopop’s Rising Stars of Manga. (His web page says Rising Stars of Manga Volume 3, so I’m guessing that it’s the story “Dorothy Needs Needles and Knives” by “Iain Gill”.) That first link has 6 preview pages. I can see the manga influence in the art style. And I like this description by Gilgrim of his inspiration:

“Originally the idea came from spending time in Moscow and riding the old wooden metro system. The cars are really old, decrepit, and at the same time beautiful, it’s like taking the tube from another dimension. That got me started thinking about monsters and escorting people in an old other-wordly-tube system.”

The book can be ordered through comic shops with Diamond code JAN10 1115.

Their website (click the banner) has five sample stories posted, so if nothing else, go check out some free comics. Or if you’re interested in reading a diverse selection of comics under the metaphor of a “graphic mixtape” (that tickles me), order the full book with Diamond code DEC09 0379 at $30 for over 500 pages. There’s more sample art in this interview with editor D.J. Kirkbride.

Update: The release date has been moved from February 10 to February 24.

For those disappointed by too many “best graphic novel” lists that ignored manga, you should be happy with this combined list, with manga ranking in third place and continuing to be mixed in with the rest.

With the exception of the manga and Masterpiece Comics, everything else on my list, I was the only person to vote for. Good to be an independent thinker, I guess. There are lots of great titles on that single-vote list, too — time to put together a shopping list.

Afrodisiac, the new book by Brian Maruca and Jim Rugg (the team behind Street Angel), will have a Southeast US promotional tour starting in Richmond, VA, on February 5.

Velocity Comics plays host to artist Jim Rugg and publisher Chris Pitzer from 6-9 PM on that Friday, with further stops that weekend in Chapel Hill and Charlotte, NC.

Update: David Brothers has a comprehensive review of the book and why it’s cool — because it filters blaxploitation conventions through the lens of 70s Marvel comics.

The reaction was generally negative, although the reason WHY it was disliked varied greatly depending on the speaker. And before I get into all that, note that key details are missing from the announcement, like price point, marketing plans, and release dates, so a lot of reaction, including mine, is speculation, informed or not.

Lots of people are assuming that this is DC’s way of experimenting outside the direct market and the model of periodical serialization. It’s been discussed for years how many customers don’t care to visit a specialty shop for overly confusing, high-priced-for-what-you-get monthly comics, although they do like the characters and would read stories about them if there was a clear entry point that provided stand-alone entertainment. (Latest example: Long-time superhero readers talk about how they think comics are worse this year. Those of us who gave up chasing books that were clearly no longer written for the mainstream reader think, “it’s not that the books are worse, it’s that your tastes have finally grown up.” :) )

Anyway, I’m digressing. When it comes to this particular Earth One effort, I’m glad to see DC considering trying something new. Putting out comics for the bookstore market and their readers, stand-alone single-volume experiences that capture what’s good about the characters while ditching the accreted baggage, is a fabulous idea. However, in this case, I think it may be (as so many of their past outreach attempts have been) too little, too late. Note that I’m only assuming that this IS an outreach effort. And the company has lots of inertia in leadership and customer reaction (remember, direct market shops are DC’s customers, not the comic readers) that makes it hard to try something really new. Baby steps are a lot easier, even if such lukewarm attempts are doomed to fail.

Me, I don’t think that the world needs yet another origin retelling (this is like the fifth one for Superman in recent memory), but maybe that’s just a starting point. DC does say that this will be an ongoing series, so maybe they felt they needed to “set the rules”, although the kind of new readers they need for this project to be successful won’t care about such details. Regardless, don’t we all already know how Superman and Batman came to be heroes? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to see them living their heroism in modern day? And will the Earth One title mean anything to new readers? Are the connotations too continuity-bound?

I don’t care for the work of writers J. Michael Straczynski (Superman) and Geoff Johns (Batman), so I don’t think they’re particularly good choices for this effort. I don’t think they write well for readers more interested in story and characterization than nostalgia and status quo.

It doesn’t solve the biggest problem with “converting civilians” (and isn’t that interesting language that’s commonly used?) — what do they read NEXT? There’s little to recommend to someone attracted by one of these books as a starting point. (Compare, for example, Vertigo, where someone can read 10 Sandman volumes and then move on to similar books and keep going.) If the line succeeds and continues for a few years, there would be several items to choose from, but there are enough problems with the idea as presented that that survival doesn’t seem likely.

I’m not sure I’m still part of the target market for any effort like this, though. I’d rather see a story about one of the lesser known characters with potential, although I do think I’d read a fresh, stand-alone take on the core heroes — I adored Superman: Secret Identity, for example — but maybe I’m too picky to be worth chasing. Let’s go to the retailers.

Forward-looking Christopher Butcher postulates that DC has chosen their language carefully so that they won’t turn off existing readers, which allows them to use those near-guaranteed direct market sales as a kind of safety base while reaching into bookstores. (My opinion: trying to please both audiences when their interests are almost diametrically opposed is a bad idea, or at least an overly cautious one, that will cause neither to be satisfied.) Says Chris:

[T]his is all speculation and analysis, but looking at the announcement as it stands, it seems like a half-measure at capturing a new audience (at best) with product that’s indistinguishable from their regular releases, or recent initiatives. Possibly worse.

He also wonders how that hypothetical book shopper will know that Earth One is the best choice for the new reader when faced with a shelf of Superman: This and Batman: That collected volumes. In other words, there’s a huge marketing hurdle to overcome.

Mike Sterling thinks they’ll sell well if they’re under $10 each and tie into a hypothetical upcoming movie. Then there’s Brian Hibbs, who runs some guesstimates and concludes that he’ll make less money with original graphic novels than he does with serialization. This is likely true, since selling comics and then their collections gives the retailer two bites at the (often) same apple (customer). The bigger question is: is a customer that will buy the same story in two different formats just to keep their collection complete the future of the industry?

I know, I’m making as many assumptions in that word picture as he does. But my point is that trying to keep wringing money out of outdated business models may work in the short term but lose you the future. The existing serialization is not bringing in new customers, and it’s increasingly losing the old ones. The publishers have tried to make up for that with bigger and bigger events (so the same people have to buy more comics) and higher prices, but that’s not an effective long-term strategy, because it burns out old customers and doesn’t bring in new ones.

Retailers like being able to sell to the same customers every week or month, and so it’s important to them to bring them into the stores consistently. People who load up on book comics every three or six months or so go elsewhere, to bookstores or Amazon.com, so they’re already not part of the direct market strategy. In the comments to his post, Hibbs says, “there are significantly more people who are willing to spend $2.99 for x minutes of entertainment, then there are who are willing to spend $20+ for 6x minutes of entertainment.” In comic shops, sure. Comic fans have notoriously been cheap. But it seems to me that there are enough people willing to spend $10 on two hours of entertainment to make The Dark Knight a $600 million-grossing movie. Again, a lot depends on the price point of these original graphic novel comics. And problematic as Earth One sounds, I kind of want to see it succeed just to support book-format comics.

I know Previews is different than it used to be, what with order minimum requirements, Marvel’s separate booklet, and less dependence on periodical publishing, but it still surprised me to see that this month’s catalog was under 400 pages. If you only count comic pages, there are 266. Seems more manageable, but then I remember that I find fewer and fewer items of interest to me every month.

“Big Four”

Bryan Talbot’s Tale of One Bad Rat is getting a new hardcover printing (DEC09 0034, $19.99, April 28). This book is part of my canon, a comic classic everyone should read. It’s about an abused runaway who finds inspiration in the creations of Beatrix Potter. In this edition, Neil Gaiman provides a new foreword and the background material has been updated. Since part of it is about resources for sexual abuse survivors, that’s a good thing. And the hardcover binding makes it easier to stock this as a reference in libraries and other public service locations. (I’d heard, for example, that some therapists found it helpful to have a copy available.)

Hardware: The Man in the Machine
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After dropping them as a teen, I started reading superhero comics again back in the early 90s, due to two things: the Legion of Super-Heroes and Milestone Comics. Together, the two showed me that the genre could tackle tough subjects. So I’m a sucker for Milestone Forever (DEC09 0178, $5.99, Feb 3), even though I find the two-issue miniseries a really stupid format. But they’re promising they’re going to “complete the tales told in the original runs of Static Shock, Icon, Hardware, Shadow Cabinet, and Blood Syndicate“, which I’d love to see. (Even though I know that wasn’t Static’s title. And pointing out that Milestone started 16 years ago is rubbing salt in the wound, though. I’m already feeling old enough.) I hope that 96 pages (in two issues) is enough to give everyone a satisfactory ending. There’s also a new Hardware collection (DEC09 0208, reprinting #1-8, $19.99, March 24) offered, hopefully just the first of many Milestone books to come.

I’ve been impressed by the look of Zuda series Night Owls, so I’ll be checking out their first collection (DEC09 0224, $14.99, March 24). I like their blend of period supernatural comedy.

The Lizard Prince Book 2
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I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the first Lizard Prince manga, so I’ll look for the second (and final) installment (DEC09 0294, $9.99, March 3). Fun all-ages comedy romance with a light fantasy twist: the boy turns into a lizard every so often.

This sentence should not be surprising, but Marvel doesn’t know how to write for romance fans. In amongst all the Iron Man movie tie-ins and rainbow Hulks appears Marvel Heartbreakers, a one-shot anthology promoted thusly:

This Valentine’s Day, drop that box of chocolates and satisfy the inner romantic with an oversized helping of heartache! In these four spandex-ripping tales, the fabulous femmes of Marvel discover that there’s no such thing as love without tears. … Find out in this special filled with passion, power, and pain!

Who wants to read about heartbreak on Valentine’s Day? Is Marvel playing to the stereotype of superhero fans being dateless losers by running stories that are about things not working out? Or do they think that their readers will love seeing female heroes they can fantasize consoling?

The Good Stuff

Smile
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I’ve been looking forward to seeing Raina Telgemeier’s Smile (DEC09 0873, $10.99, Feb 3) for a long while now. It’s the story of how she dealt with losing her front teeth, but it’s also about being a teen, all in her beautiful, deceptively simple style.

Scott Chantler’s Northwest Passage (DEC09 0967, $15.99, Feb 10) makes an appearance in softcover. This historical adventure was one of my Best Books of 2007 due to its accomplished cartooning.

I’m thrilled yet disappointed to see the concluding volume of Pluto offered (DEC09 1026, $12.99, March 17). Thrilled because I know it will pack quite a punch, but disappointed because it’s such a great read, I hate to see it end.

All of the book-format comics, manga and graphic novels, used to be in the Planet Teen young adult section. But as the picture shows, my county library has now created a section of graphic novels for adults. I think this is a great idea, showing that the format has material for every age group. Plus, I got a chance to check out an unusual Osamu Tezuka volume; try a recommended artistic European memoir; and catch up on Adrian Tomine’s work.

Most surprising was the discovery of a book called Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd. It’s an anthology of stories about being geeks in love, edited by Holly Black (The Good Neighbors) and Cecil Castellucci (The Plain Janes) and featuring short comic inserts by Hope Larson (Chiggers) and Bryan Lee O’Malley (Scott Pilgrim). That’s my favorite part of going to the library: finding something neat you didn’t even know existed.

V for Vendetta
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by KC Carlson

Seeing myself on the New York Times bestseller list as the editor of V for Vendetta is sort of amusing. And not really entirely unexpected. More than a decade ago, when I first learned the concept of Googling oneself, I gave it a shot. Not much came up back then, except for my “editorial” credits for both the V for Vendetta collection and for the Sandman: The Doll’s House collection — both of which showed Amazon listing me as editor. Actually, the V for Vendetta book did offer me my first thrill of seeing my name in print while standing in a bookstore (the late, lamented Coliseum Books in NYC).

I don’t think my name is in the book at all anymore, since it has gone through a couple of design changes and lord knows how many printings since I first “packaged” the book for DC in 1990. There wasn’t much actual editing by me, but that was the title I was given for my role on the original collected edition.

It was certainly one of the most memorable Collected Books projects I worked on, as there were numerous production headaches for both myself and designer Dale Crain, including missing, mislabeled, and damaged film. Apparently, the U.S, was one of the last countries to produce a V For Vendetta collection, as the film had traveled around the world several times before DC did their version. By the time I got it, it had been reduced from the original 8-up film (8 pages of story per film flat x 4 for 4-color printing — black, red, yellow, and blue) and cut apart into each individual page. Unfortunately, whoever did the cutting had also cut off all of the identifying marks on the film (like issue and page numbers!), and the pieces were randomly stuffed into several unsorted envelopes. If you’ve never looked at 4-color film, only the black plate has any real identifying marks, since it is the only one to include the black outlines of the artwork as well as the word balloons. All of the film for the other colors basically looks like blobs of negative, which represents various percentages of the the base colors, but to the naked eye, pretty much unidentifiable as much of anything.

Since V for Vendetta includes well over 250 pages of artwork, and there were four individual pieces of film for each page, that meant I was dealing with over 1,000 pieces of cut-apart film — three-quarters of which were pretty much completely unidentifiable without first locating the black plate to use for matching reference. So first, I had to find all the black plates and put them in order, no small task without page numbers OR even issue numbers.

But even that was a problem because every page of black plate film had all the word balloons opaqued out — a common thing to happen when a book is printed in a foreign country where the English words are covered up and replaced with the host language. Most people who do this are polite enough to clean the film before returning it. Not this time.

I don’t recall if I did the cleaning or not. Probably not, as they had to be cleaned individually by hand, probably with some horrible turpentine-like solution of which the fumes would have eventually killed everybody in the already overcrowded environs of DC’s beloved 666 Fifth Ave. offices. When I eventually got the cleaned black plates back, I discovered a new problem. The film had been so well-travelled that the lettering was starting to break up. Most of the letter “E”s were breaking apart (so they looked like “F” or “L”), and the “A”s and “B”s and “P”s were beginning to block up solid.

Having no idea what it would cost (this was one of the first trades I worked on), I wondered if it would be easier to get new film struck, so I showed this to Production Manager Bob Rozakis, and I think we both went to see Publisher Paul Levitz. And the answer was — no new film. It was not in the budget, and moreover, there probably wasn’t enough time to get it done. So I asked how I should deal with the problem, and I believe that Paul said something like “use your best judgment and fix everything that looks bad.” Which meant carefully pouring over the book and circling hundreds (maybe thousands!) of broken letters with instructions to “clean out” or “fix”.

More on this later. Back to the film.

Once I had the black plates separated out, labeled (using the original comics as reference), and in order, I moved into the DC conference room and spread out my piles and piles of unlabeled film on the large conference table. Mostly I needed the room for its wall-mounted track lighting. I carefully taped each piece of black plate film to the lights, so I could see through it, like a doctor looking at an x-ray. Then I painstakingly took each piece of color film and held it up to each black plate to see if it matched. So, for about a week, all I did was walk around the room, holding each piece of film, muttering “Nope… Nope… Nope…” to myself, until I could find the match — and then quickly labeled it, by page and issue number!

(I first tried doing this on a light box but quickly abandoned it for two reasons: First, on a light box, I could only do one or two pages at a time. In the conference room, I could do two issues at a time, one on each side of the room. Second, DC had a limited number of light boxes available, and all were in high demand by production artists and visiting freelancers.)

Since the conference room was literarily across the the hall from Paul’s office, he would occasionally look in, shake his head a couple of times, and then move on. Once, early on in the procedure, he asked me, “Isn’t there somebody else who should be doing that?” Sadly, at that point in time, the answer was no, as the DC film library was in a major period of transition and a very long subway ride away from the office — way out in Brooklyn. It would be two office moves and several years later before the film library would be in the same building as the DC offices. (And after the floors were reinforced. Film is heavy!)

Earlier, just after I was made Collected Books Editor, I was struggling with dealing with the normally huge sheets of film on a desk that wasn’t large enough to accommodate them. Salvation came when cubicle dividers were installed in my three-person office. I quickly un-installed mine and propped it up on a short file cabinet to make a larger desk surface. (The dividers were unasked for and unwanted, because we had the happiest office at DC, cramped as it was). Weeks later, Paul finally noticed that I had “defaced” my new office furniture. He wasn’t happy about it and told me so, but the matter was largely forgotten when he realized that I needed a larger flat space for the film and the then very-crowded office could not accommodate me. Shortly afterwards, and after they got better organized, the film library dealt exclusively with film matters. Today, the collected book editors seldom ever touch film. And I have to wonder, in this digital age, if film even exists at all.

Later, while the book was being printed, artist and colorist David Lloyd traveled to Montreal (on his own dime) to join me at the press check for the printing of the book (in the middle of the night, when most comics are printed — or, at least, they were then). The print run on the first edition was relatively small, and therefore, each signature of the book was “on press” for only a short period of time. It was maybe only 10-20 minutes per signature for the high-speed presses, so adjustments for color had to be done quickly, while the presses were running. Unfortunately, bound contributor copies of the book were later sent to David from the front end of the print run (while the color was still being “fine-tuned” by David), and he was understandably quite upset at the time. All seems forgiven now, as David and I met up at the Baltimore Comic-Con a couple of years back, and we had a great chat about those crazy days.

There were other odd things about the book, most of which vexed designer Dale Crain, such as the slightly different sized interior pages (most of the original chapters were originally printed in the UK black and white magazine Warrior). The indicia and copyright page was done before DC had standardized their masthead for collected books, which meant I was inadvertently listed as Editor of the book over Karen Berger, the rightful Editor of the US version of the original series and over whoever actually edited it in Warrior (who wasn’t mentioned at all). These errors, I hope, have been corrected in subsequent editions of the book. Me, I still have my prized (and rare?) hardcover edition of the original printing given to me by my friend Phyllis Hume, longtime coordinator of DC’s international editions. I’m still not sure where this particular version of the book comes from, as the guts were from the original Printed in Canada First Printing, but the dust jacket was printed in the USA. Oddly, it doesn’t have a cover price either, so perhaps it’s a book club version.

One last thing. Remember those lettering corrections? Several months after V For Vendetta: the Collected Edition was printed and distributed and eagerly snapped up by people who love great comics and I had moved on to other projects, one day Bob Rozakis appeared in my office. “Paul would like to see us.” he said in that wonderful half-sighing way that Bob has. Uh-oh, I thought. Rule of thumb in the DC offices: If Paul had good news for you, he delivered it in person. If you were summoned, it probably wasn’t good news.

When we got to Paul’s office, his face was red, and and he had what looked like an invoice held tightly in his hand. He said something like, “This is our printing bill for the V For Vendetta trade. It says here that there were hundreds of corrections made in the lettering for the trade.”

“Yes,” I said, which seemed to make him more upset.

“Why?” he asked, exasperated.

It was here that I first realized that Paul probably had to deal with thousands of things like this every day. And that what was a big deal to me — the conversation about whether or not to have new film struck for the book — was probably the 537th decision that he had to make that day — and had since forgotten since there were several thousand much more important decisions to be be made since that day. I struggled to figure out what to say.

Luckily, BobRo jumped in, a old hand at talking to Paul, and gently reminded him that the film was in very bad shape and that corrections were necessary.

“But this many? Why did you make so many corrections?” he asked me directly.

“Because there were that many things that looked bad. And you told me to correct anything that looked bad,” I said.

Paul looked like he wanted to yell but couldn’t. BobRo helpfully chimed in, “You did tell him that, Paul.” Which was not really all that helpful at all, now that I think about it.

Paul went on to explain to me that the cost for all the corrections was so high that the book was probably not going to be profitable for DC until sometime into its third printing, whenever that was. I’m fairly sure that by now DC has turned a nice profit on the multiple printings of the perennial bestseller, but back then, it really wasn’t all that clear-cut. Collections took awhile to gain their footing, especially in the early days when many Direct Market retailers were skeptical of items with relatively high cover prices, and the general populace audience (through bookstores) wasn’t as developed or even widely accepted like it is today.

These days when I see Paul at a convention or other social gathering and I see that his hair is a little more gray, I always think, “Part of that’s my fault.” But then again, since my hair turned gray virtually overnight while I was editing the Superman books during a particularly contentious period, I think we’re kinda even.