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The recent flare-up over the Direct Market regarding books sold at conventions before they appear in comic shops seems absurd. But since most Comics Comics readers already know that Diamond and their sales reps are doomed to some circle of Dante, I won’t bother getting into the fray. Instead I’d just like to use the subject as a springboard to talk briefly about more direct ways that cartoonists can reach their audience.

Imagine you’re a young cartoonist who’s worked with Harvey Pekar (on last year’s Macedonia) and, by virtue of that creative partnership, have a book out from a major publisher (Random House). Would you expect to be self-publishing your next book and hawking copies yourself at cons and on your website? Well, that’s what Ed Piskor’s doing these days.

“I can tell you right now,” Piskor told me the other night, “no one in comics has read WIZZYWIG yet. Only, like, computer hackers and people into that culture. I’ve been posting about my book on these message boards and like some kid with some influence in that circle of people will write about it, and I’ll get like a bunch of orders that night.”

You guessed it: the book is about computer hackers. It takes place in the early days of “phone phreaking”, when all it took to “seize phone lines” and make free calls was the right “bluebox” or a whistle with the right pitch and a little know-how. Rather than a documentary about that time and the figures involved, Piskor has created a single composite character who is emblematic of the period. Kevin Phenicle appears to be a middle-school kid living in late ’70s Steel Valley USA — who just happens to enjoy getting over on the system. Free bus rides, free video games, free long distance phone calls. But the system catches up with him. And then it’s “Free Kevin.”

So why did Piskor decide to publish it himself? “I showed it to a couple publishers and they were basically like, ‘Do you want us to print it for you?’ And I just thought I could do it myself and keep the loot. Why should I give them my book for free and MAAAYBE down the road see some cash? I mean, I just wanted to see if I could do it first. And if it didn’t work — then go round and take them up on their offer.”

I must admit I was pretty impressed when Ed told me this story. It was heartening to hear because I’ve heard a couple of stories recently about creators who have books with major publishers, who sell thousands of copies per issue, and who don’t see a dime in return. The artist is, I guess, supposed to feel that it’s an achievement in itself to have a book at all. The way the story usually goes is that the money spent on the printing and promotion hasn’t been recouped so, no, sorry, there’s no profit. “But make sure you get the next issue done on time and, gee, we’ll you give us something extra special cuz sales have been down.” I hear the same story when it’s a small publisher too. The publisher gets to look good (and makes a few bucks somewhere down the line) and the artist gets a couple free boxes of their comic.

Young cartoonists who get lucky early with big publishers might want to think about why Ed is choosing to self-publish. I think it’s important to stay connected on some level to one’s core audience. That means the convention circuit, hustling copies to cool stores, the same drill that got these young cartoonists in the position to get a deal with a publisher in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I have every hope that Ed and other talented cartoonists like him can find permanent homes at fine publishing houses. Seriously. But if any one reading this seriously doesn’t believe that the bubble won’t burst someday, they are seriously deluding themselves.

“I just want to be realistic,” says Piskor. “At the end of the day who’s going to be looking out for my best interest? Me. It might suck to be on the phone and the computer hustling these books but at least I know what’s up, where my books are selling and to who. And when the right publisher comes along, I’ll be there. I can do both. Why not do both? The reality of the market is that I have to do both just to survive or else I’d be sight out of mind.”

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1. I was just beginning to wonder why Eric Reynolds and the Fantagraphics gang weren’t putting up any new posts on the FLOG! blog, and now I know: it’s because they switched their online location. Bookmark it here.

2. An anonymous commenter to our last post pointed out a pretty interesting new interview with Bill Sienkiewicz.

3. Another (!) interview with Frank, this time including a glimpse into PictureBox:

Part One

Part Two

[Not that it matters, but I edited this to change the order of the items; it seemed weird to put so much video up top.]

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Loyal CC reader Alex H. has requested a second Cage Match feature, and while it may be a week or two before we’re ready for another one, we still need a good topic for discussion. (If you missed the first one, our subject was the current in-progress remake of Omega the Unknown.) So if any of you readers have any suggestions, please let us know by posting them in the comments. Maybe we’ll set up a poll or something after we’ve gotten enough good possibilities. Or maybe we’ll just decide amongst ourselves, if there’s only one or two.

So far, the following have been suggested:

1. Persepolis
2. The kind-of post-Bill Sienkiewicz comics created by people like Dave McKean and David Mack
3. Enigma
4. All Star Superman
5. All Star Batman and Robin
6. Marvel Zombies 2

Some of those seem like they might work, some of them don’t, but it would definitely help for us to have a few more choices (non-superhero comics are more than welcome). Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

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JFK
SILVER SURFER
NELSON MANDELA
WTF

images copyright Shaky Kane

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We’re going crazy with the talking about comics lately, and Dan steps up to the plate for the latest in our recent series of interviews. Here he is on Inkstuds, in discussion with two of the best comics thinkers around, Jeet Heer and Tom Spurgeon. I probably won’t get a chance to listen to this until this weekend, but there’s nothing stopping you from taking the plunge now.

UPDATE: I was able to listen to it after all, and there’s a lot of good talk in there. Well worth checking out.

UPDATE II: Oh, but Dan: Omega the Unknown? Really? Obviously I like that comic a lot, but if you only get to pick one book …

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Frank’s energy these days is starting to make the rest of us here at Comics Comics look bad, so I’m kind of pissed at him, but if you want more of Frank on art and comics (including Storeyville and Cold Heat), Chris Mautner has just posted the second part of his interview with him today. Frank’s really on fire in this one.

(And here’s part one if you missed it.)

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Tastes change. Styles change. Everyone knows the story about Hitchcock’s Psycho, right? After filming lots of big-budget color movies in the mid to late ’50s, Hitch decided to take a different approach with Psycho. Convinced that he could do it better with his smaller TV crew (from Alfred Hitchcock Presents), he shot Psycho in black-and-white and structured it very much like the short-form pieces he was doing for TV. I think Hitch also understood that tastes were changing and that people liked the small-screen, simple and clear, episodic format that hearkened back to radio (and to Hitch’s own films from the ’30s). Also, many of the people who worked in TV in the ’50s and ’60s were former filmmakers from the pre-Technicolor, pre-Cinemascope era.

Contemporary filmmakers can attempt to evoke older films (Todd Haynes’ Sirk-themed Far From Heaven, for example) as much as they like — but in my opinion they will never be able to truly match or copy exactly what the old timers did BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT FORMED IN THE SAME CAULDRON. (Of course Haynes didn’t want to copy Sirk exactly. Haynes was investigating Sirk’s LANGUAGE.) The dominant style of staged movement, proscenium stage “blocking”, nuts-and-bolts “shot/reaction shot” that one can easily see running through all films of the ’40s and ’50s began to give way eventually. Interestingly enough, it was the French New Wave that had a lot to do with this because they themselves were looking back, like Hitchcock, to the older, formative films of Hollywood, to noir, and to westerns. This back to basics approach was picked up on by the ’60s and ’70s auteurs, but by then they could inject new flavors in to the form (more skin and sex) and the whole paradigm shifted.

Comics have a similar trajectory. All the talk that comics artists today can draw BETTER than their forebears is meaningless. The point is that this common language I’m describing IS NO LONGER IN USAGE. It’s all but dead because the people who were formed by it, who passed it on, are gone. Toth was an innovator; he was more forward-thinking than Caniff, yet he was still a “Caniffer.” Darwyn Cooke can attempt to evoke Toth in some of his Batman stories, but he will never be Toth because he was not formed in the same 1950s cauldron. So subtly, step by step, each generation puts its own spin on the dominant style. Any attempt to resurrect these “house styles” is seen as retro and somewhat conservative. The bland illustration style that ruled ’50s and early ’60s comics was part Caniff, part advertising, part hackwork. The practitioners of this style, though, knew how to construct a page that read clearly, much like directors of the ’50s films knew how to stage action.

Steve Rude is a great example of an artist who, like Toth, builds on the existing nuts-and-bolts style of comic storytelling without resorting to drawing in a more stylized approach like Frank Cho or Dave Stevens. One hundred issues of Nexus continuity prove Rude’s determination to remain a “classicist” and document his development. He’s committed to telling a story and frames the movement across the page in order to extract the maximum dramatic impact. Rude’s choices work for me as a reader because the clarity of it all, the simplicity of the drawing, allow the narrative to retain its momentum. Cho’s flourishes of technical wizardry, I think, actually prevent the narrative from assuming center stage. His transitions from panel to panel are generally awkward and ham-fisted. Compare the clarity of the Rude page (below left) to the clumsiness of Cho’s page (below right) in sequences that have a similar “action.”

Does Miami Vice look like Dragnet? Does a Dave Stevens page read like a Caniff page? Would I rather watch The Streets of San Francisco or Law & Order? Would I rather read Don Heck or Frank Cho? For me, the last is a litmus test. If you think Cho is a better draftsman, fine. But if you think Cho is a better comics artist than Don Heck, then I’m sorry, but I do not agree. In fact, I think it’s pointless to compare the two. For the reasons I’ve explained above, I think Cho is an ILLUSTRATOR first and a comics artist second. Don Heck, long reviled as one of the worst hacks in the Marvel Bullpen, was a solid storyteller. He had a great sense of comics “naturalism” and is a perfect example of the kind of “nuts-and-bolts” non-photo-referenced approach that prevailed before 1970 or so. In my opinion, artists like Cho and Stevens have contributed very little to the development of the form. Except maybe to impress upon a generation of young comics artists that technical virtuosity is more important than basic storytelling.

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I’ve heard a lot of cartoonists talking about this dilemma: in order to find all the strength within one to summon up the images needed for the comic, to maintain all the focus and attention to detail necessary, to have an editor’s eye + guiding hand, to be the objective reader who keeps the narrative whole, the artist then suffers the atrophying of other “occular” abilities.

I only draw the landscapes + figures I need for the story. The demands of the story are what engulfs me, so that my waking moments are spent shape-shifting into a camera, a projector. I’m an editing machine that plays my comic on an endless loop for months.

Yet when I’m walking along the Braddock trail with Gretchen and I spy those stacked mills + houses above, I furiously look at EVERYTHING and it inevitably leads me to draw other things, new things that have no place in the narrative other than it is my life, my story — and if I don’t record it here, her, now, it’ll be left on the cutting room floor.