STEVE H. [who Dave stayed with when he got his recent MRI]:
The First Half poster was one that Dave singed at his warehouse visit to Diamond Comic Distribution Chicago location back in 1992. It used to hang on the wall at the front entryway into the offices back then... and Dave was really excited to see new work out of Scott Beaderstadt, old friend and Trollords creator.
Tell Dave that Bonut (the dog) misses him!
Tell Dave that Bonut (the dog) misses him!
14 comments:
All those pages.... What book are they for... Or from?
They are from the New Trollords book coming soon
from Scott Beaderstadt! An all new Trollords story
featuring the lead character, Death (a character in
this book before there was ever a Neil Gaiman
Sandman) and the four horseman of the Apocalypse
(before there was ever a character with that name
in X-men). The cover art is by Alex Ross from the
forthcoming Complete Trollords collection. For
those of you who haven't read Trollords, you should
seek it out! A great series with stories & art that
were ahead of their time.
That sweater Dave is wearing ... it looks familiar.
Where have I seen it before?
Oh yeah, the Road Map pic just below - HA!
Steve
Getting a MUCH earlier start today thanks to a very infrequent (i.e. once every few weeks) coffee.
The situation with Scott and TROLLORDS exemplifies self-publishing, I think. TROLLORDS was definitely a hot book "back in the day" -- basically The Three Stooges done as trolls -- and was perceived to be in the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES category and experienced the same kind of exponential growth. The successive jumps in sales over the first few issues meant they couldn't NOT do TROLLORDS. But they were unreliable at getting their issues out and that took its toll -- as it always takes it toll. Self-publishing is a lot like the Feminist Theocracy in that way: STRUCTURALLY unsound. Always wanting to dismiss the central road of Reality -- are you getting your book out on time? -- with "Well, BESIDES that..." digressions and evasions. If you aren't getting your book out on time or close to on time, you're going to fail. And you deserve to fail. Period.
I'm working on one more attempt to try to fix that structural flaw: to build a publicity/marketing/sales model for self-publishing that's "self-winnowing": as a self-publisher, you plug yourself into the model and you EARN your prominence by being reliable. Or you EARN oblivion by being unreliable. "Know thyself". If you can only get a book out once a year, you're going to have to face that head on. If you can only get a book out once a year or once every five years and you list yourself as "quarterly" you will get chewed up and spit out.
Hopefully this will create a niche market model that comic book retailers can rely on. HERE -- these are the reliable self-publishers. Two of them? Three of them? And here are the unreliable self-publishers. All four thousand of them. Start at the top and work down.
Scott is determined to actually make it work this time. Getting a Complete Collection out there seems to me a good idea and I'm trying to figure a way to build that into my model: "Here's a guy who doesn't claim he's going to do a regular book, BUT he has a COMPLETE COLLECTION (of 300 pages, 400 pages, whatever) that he does keep in print." That SHOULD push him to prominence. As long as he doesn't claim that he's going to get two issues out a year from now on and blow his COMPLETE COLLECTION cred by lying to the retailers who are supporting him.
God (or, if you prefer, Fortune or Providence) does favour those who deserve His/a favour. The term "troll" has far greater "real world" cachet in 2015 than it did back when the TROLLORDS were created, which would seem to suggest that Scott is being given the "one more chance" that he's hoped for and waited a long time for. Scott has gone through "hell and high water" to retain his rights to the TROLLORDS. I wish him good luck, but also urge him to self-assess accurately. Don't over-promise and under-deliver. Under-promise and over-deliver.
Unreliability is the watch word of all comics publishing. It's taken about 10 months for the 6 issue Sandman comic to come out...
Marvel blew its relaunch by having come of the Secret Wars issues come out AFTER titles had relaunched.
Steve H: When I had to go back in the house to get something, I gave Bonut his choice of staying with you and Liz and the kids or coming with me to Canada, so he really has no one to blame but himself.
It's a long-winded story, but I think you owe it to the people to explain how Bonut got his name.
some of the secret wars even
I just realized that Dave Sim and I have a similar fashion sense.
Well Trollords never made it to 300 issues but they came out longer than most including a stint with Comico, which is another story in and of itself. Yes Dave the true benchmark is coming out regularly and on time and successful titles do just that. You can look around and the amount of self published titles surviving 50 or more is pretty slim. Creator owned properties seldom hit that mark. You can count them up and still have enough fingers left to choose which one would be best for nose picking. It will be interesting to see what you come up with if you are going to put something together with numbers, time and how to use it.
Hey AMOC!. I'm starting to read Cerebus for the first time with these REMASTERED copies that started coming out recently. May I ask what's the plan/timetable for the next ones?
I think webcomics is currently the most viable form of self-publishing. There are many more self-publishing cartoonists making a living today than ever before - unless webcomics are excluded.
(Of course, the term "webcomics" is a little bit odd, since most successful webcomics are eventually reprinted as paperback books. For these cartoonists, webcomics have taken the place of floppy comics - it's how you publish your work until you have enough to publish a book.)
But, as Dave says, reliability is key. There are some webcartoonists making a living without keeping to a reliable schedule, but they are a small minority. Most of webcartoonists I know who are making a living have been generally reliable - and they've stuck with it a long time.
This isn't a guarantee - but nothing in comics is guaranteed, for most cartoonists.
There's a Cerebus drawn by Dave in at least one of these huge Jam pieces from years ago.
Wow, this week we get the Puma Blues collection, the new book from Alex Robinson (Our Expanding Universe), news of a Complete Trollords (YES!!!), and we can pick up Barry's new Hereville book. Truly, we are in the Golden Age of Comics.
And really, that's got to be a least a little part of why keeping Cerebus in the forefront of the minds of comics fans is tough -- there are just SO MANY good comics coming out, and tons of great comics coming back out like Puma Blues, it's tough to get the attention of people. Particularly since Cerebus carries...baggage, to be euphemistic.
But yes, I will be contributing to the Kickstarter (finally took a look to see approximately how much I should be able to comfortably kick in), now I just have to figure out what bonus prints I want in addition to Collected Letters v3!
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