Katrina News From Leroy Douresseaux

Just got an email from Leroy Douresseaux, reviewer for COMIC BOOK BIN and his own NEGROMANCER site. He lives in Louisiana, not far from New Orleans. Here's what he had to say:

"I'm OK, but please pray or think Galactus-sized happy thoughts for the people in N.O. and the rest of the Gulf coast affected by Katrina."

Let's all do so. Just talked to Carter and he's giving to Red Cross. If there's something you can do, this is a good time.

Hang in there...

Just when you think YOU have problems....

New Orleans is under ten feet of water right now. Bodies are floating around, and no one can get in or out of the city. Terrible, unthinkable.

My sincerest hopes that they make it out of this okay and can rebuild and go on with their lives again.

Hang in there, people.

Orange you sweet!

Okay, so this "real" job I work at that I don't like to talk about much... well, something really nice happened there tonight.

Some other members of my crew threw a little surprise birthday party for me, and gave me a box FULL of knick-knacks and gag gifts, the unifying theme of which was that they were all ORANGE.

Y'know, OINJ, my favourite colour!!!

I got a sparkly orange pencil for my ear, a duck call on an orange lanyard, some orange candles & incense, a toy Tide-sponsored Nascar car, a really cool retro orange plastic wall clock (circa 1970-something), orange cookies and mints, and lots of other cool things.

It was a really humbling experience. I try so hard to keep that part of my life there, not here, to almost pretend it isn't real there. I forget what great people I work with, and how much I like them and, judging from their thoughtfulness tonight, they like me. I have never done anything like that for any of their birthdays.

I'll have to change that.

Here's to my very real and sweet colleagues. Thank you very much!

I was gonna make a point about commitment, comics & metal bands

...but it got lost, so I cut the metal band part. But, waste not want not, so here you go:

One of the greatest record stores in the Midwest was Sal's Record Emporium here in Iowa City, especially if you're into alt-country. Sal's the only real casualty of file-sharing that I know of, as Madonna has yet to starve to death. Anyways, Sal's observation about metal bands has always stuck with me: metal bands never ever give up. Every now and then I'll skim the metal stacks and be startled to find that Savatage is still at it (I still have my "Hall of the Mountain King" disc, but alas, no extant pics of my 80s mullet), or Testament, or hell almost all of them. Some are pretty dodgy at this point (Warrant with a haircut is still Warrant. Sorry.), but if you like Savatage, there's more Savatage for ya.

There are plenty of folks toiling in obscurity looking for validation. Validation automatically elevates you past some dutch hair metal band trying to pass for System of a Down, right? Maybe they get validated too, though; maybe there's a stadium full of Japanese on pins and needles waiting for them to return, or a Belgian DJ making room in his schedule for a chat with them, or a rural Classic Rock station desperate to figure out how to get them to shout "We're Hammerhand, and you're listening to 94.1 KRNA, Home of der Rock! Ja!" into the phone for them.

But is it true that all metal bands have this ethic? Nope. For every Savatage there's a Realm, a Scarlett O'Hara, a Warrant (you didn't hear?), and many many more that did give up. But we don't remember the vast majority of metal bands who were on and off the radar. For every band that got a minute (:53 seconds actually) of attention for their speed-metal ELEANOR RIGBY cover, there's plenty who got less. It's just that the ones that got our attention are keepin' on keepin' on. They got their dose of validation, and they're aching to reclaim it. Some stay for the "art" of metal, but metal is a strictly technical genre of music. It's a lot more complicated than it sounds or looks to do well, but it's a very narrow genre.

So this has something to do with comics? Sorta.
The rest I wrote after "sorta" is tomorrow's candlelightpress.net entry. The point ended up in my mind being more about metal than comics, so snip!

The New Hard Drive

Tonight I get to reinstall everything on my computer after a harrowing incident last week. One of those fun key Windows file corruptions happened and flooey. Fortunately, that was the extent of the damage, but these are the time when my mind turns to fatter hardrives. Using a 20 and a 40 gig non-RAID hard drive setup may have ultimately led to the problem, so I've ordered a 160 gig to cover that one. We back things up like madmen here at CLP, so nothing comics-related was lost.

Other than that, we've started up an "official" CLP blog over at candlelightpress.net -- this blog will still be around, and it will still cover a wide range of stuff, but the .net blog will be about the comics. Have a peep.

The highs...the lows...

Things move at the speed of something here in Coach C land. I'm getting back to work on MIV3 this week after a very long and complicated layoff. I began principle photography on a project called ATLANTA , starring the talented Lindsey Husak. Dub Trub 3 will be coming soon, as well as the upcoming IN BROTHERS' ARMS with Michael Ayers. So, I've got a lot going, but it is still hard just getting up in the morning and get after it. My piss and vinegar are lacking and I'm trying desperately to get it back. Without the drive, the passion, there can be no art.

Anyway, back to work.

THERE GOES NEUTRO REDUX

Okay, here's another go at posting the Neutros I got at Wizard World Chicago.

Walt Simonson

Sarah Becan
Jason Robards
Katherine Wirick

Katie CookI keep some old scans up at There Goes Neutro, a site sadly in need of upgrade. Even personal obsessions can get set aside in the flow of days.

Max Allen Nugent 1993-2005

This past Friday, my dog Max was put to sleep. My family had adopted him from The Iowa City/Coralville Animal Care and Adoption Center in 1995. Aside from being a wonderful companion and addition to the clan, he was also the dog behind Ambassador Roka in the Dub Trub series as well as the mascot for the fictional Rocket Dog fast food chain. After 12 years of life he had developed serious health issues. We decided to end his suffering and give him eternal peace. He was a good dog, a great friend and a loyal soul. He will be missed.

There Goes Neutro!

...right down the drain after I had the post all laid out nice. Fooey. Will attempt this again later.

More thoughts on the place of print-on-demand in comics? Sure.

Currently, we have no relationship with Diamond Comic Distributors. Back in the mid 90s, we put out an issue of SHADES AND ANGELS (essentially the first chapeter of NUMBERS) through them, and before that there was ED #1 (first appearance of ZOO FORCE) as 3CG. Now that we're distributed by a book distributor (Ingram) and a reorder distributor (Cold Cut), Diamond is more of a nice but not necessary deal. Ingram has a much greater reach (we are better represented in our local bookstores than in our local comics shop), and with Diamond you're in the catalog for a month, then poof! Diamond's desire for exclusivity precludes any other arrangements.

Still, those who know a bit about comics distribution look confused when I explain that no, we're not carried by Diamond, we're carried by a much larger book distributor--silence. What could be bigger than Diamond in comics? Diamond has done a good job of convincing folks that being in PREVIEWS is a stamp of approval, a mark of quality, proof positive that your work stands tall with Certified Cool books like LIBERALITY FOR ALL. I tell these folks there's a bigger arena out there for comics, and that there are multiple paths to the palace of wisdom here.

Print-on-demand is still like magic to me, even. In a poster we did for THE CHANGING BOOK, Fred Haygood tells Tom Hobbes that the process may involve "fairy dust and taco sauce for all I know, but at the end you get a real book." Still seems that way to me too, Fred. Instead of landing books at all the US comics shops, we can now hit any store on the map, worldwide. It means entering the arena of the book industry itself; and when folks there are still calling graphic novels a "genre", it can seem like a much better idea to scuttle back to the home crowd.

So here we are, making longform comics, skipping the monthlies and making exactly what we intended in the first place. We made a book with Matchbox cars and handpuppets; we made a multi-part original graphic novel series with cliffhangers; we have coloring and puzzles; we are doing more as I type this. I have a figure from a printer that I got a few years ago when (pre-POD) I was looking into an offset-printed version of NUMBERS. Eleven volumes of print-on-demand books later, I find we could do thirty more volumes before we exceed that cost. Where the off-set NUMBERS could have been, at best, in a couple issues of PREVIEWS, these eleven books are perpetually orderable through any outlet that uses Books In Print. That's the killer figure.

But, then the problem goes back to, who's buying? A thought for another post...

Ah the Experience, Ah The Innocence

What to say about Wizard World Chicago? Hmm. It's really really big, and it acts as a harrowing for people not interested in the big boys. Think of the room as a filter...If you make it through Marvel, DC, Tokyopop, etc, then you must pass through the second tier of blue-curtained booths...then through the dealer area...and then at last artists alley, the end of the road (unless the loading dock is of interest). Anyone who makes it that far is looking for something different (or the toilets).

I met some great folks, nabbed a few interesting comics (three made me laugh out loud--Ouija comics are too cool), and we sold our share. Talked with another reviewer for the ALA Booklist (Hi Tina!), got some Neutro sketches (I will scan these for you in the coming days), got a fantastic piece of original art from an old romance comic, and satisfied my geek urge. We even vastly expanded our mailing list, thanks to a giant pen (think comedy big) from Walgreen's.

The best part was talking to people who'd read our books from last year and came back wanting more. That was a gas. Still, even with the filter in place, it's a tough room. This is still a con for people who want their existing tastes validated more than anything else. Its size and lack of comparably-sized midwest competitors draw in some folks interested in something different, but it ain't SPX, APE, MOCCA or the like.

We can be a tough sell. LJ Douresseaux told me once that once he learned how to read our comics, he really enjoyed them. I read a random quick review of THE FAIRER SEX that said it sucked because there wasn't one of those "And here's exactly who everyone is" pages. You need a page like that if you need to know that this guy is the rebel and this gal is the abused one to explain the action; but if you write motivations into the action, then you find out for yourself who these people are...they ain't the X-Men.

An interesting occurrence was explaining to folks that we were the artists and writers, as well as the publishers. There was a lot of surprise there; many folks thought we were merely salesmen. Okay, we're not kids, and several of us have dayjobs in frontline public contact; so we don't present ourselves as your average DIY types. That picture in the middle of the page here, that's us. Well, that's us having on the Sears Portrait Studio people, but there you go. I know whenever I get introduced as the writer of MAN IS VOX, people tend to disbelieve it at first, then get a little more creeped out, because I look basically normal. It's almost scarier, right? He seemed like such a nice man...

Still, it's easy to overdissect these things, resecting a liver until we find that it's just all liver. Cons always feel like Schwab's Drug Store, the place where you suddenly break out. There's a fever that can take hold. For some reason, each day you spend working, writing, drawing, publishing, none of those feel quite the same as the con daze. And that's strange, because those are the moments that matter. At a con, you're a raw nerve jammed in a river of sense data; no wonder most con stories involve drinking.

In the end, WWChicago was fun, but I can't help but feel there are greener pastures awaiting.