Steve Bissette's Tyrant

Tyrant #1

by Stephen R. Bissette 

(Spiderbaby Grafix, September 1994)

DAVE SIM:
(from 'A Cerebus Preview' in Cerebus #184, July 1994)

Stephen R. Bissette's TYRANT has been in the works for a long, long time. I don't know why it was, but I took to Steve in a big way after meeting him at a UK Comic Art Convention in London. Through financing the first volume of TABOO, we discovered together the inherent impossibility of successfully publishing an anthology of that kind. It was also my last experiment in publishing someone else's work (apart from these Previews). As Steve drifted towards Kevin Eastman's ill-fated Tundra experiment, our friendship became an ongoing phone debate about the possibility of running a publishing company on an ethical basis. It took many, many years and every permutation of the Advance Game, the Royalty Game, etc, etc, for Steve to arrive at the conclusion that it was not possible. Different things went wrong, but something always went wrong and his only choice was to capitulate or walk away. Halfway through TYRANT's first issue, Steve told me that he had worked on a page and for the first time since the early days on SWAMP THING, he felt himself giving one hundred percent. It wasn't until that moment that he realised the price he had paid in dealing with traditional companies: he had closed off a vital, creative part of himself as a defense mechanism. For the first time since his early twenties he had his full enthusiasm back and was hitting on all cylinders. It wasn't until that moment, when he told me, that I  was certain my advocacy of self-publishing was not just the egocentric ravings of a provocateur. Dave Sim and Cerebus were not an exception to be explained away (it works for Sim but no one else can do it, as publishers big and small were fond of saying in the pre-BONE days). If the Cerebus story-line is forgotten two weeks after it is completed in March 2004 I can safely say that that moment made it all worthwhile.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the comic book Stephen R. Bissette was born to draw: TYRANT!

Steve Bissette self-published four issues of his comic book Tyrant between September 1994 and January 1996, before retiring from the comic book industry. He currently teaches comics at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.

Dave Sim: "Breaking The Glass Ceiling"

Original ad for the first printing of High Society, 1985.

MARC SOBEL:
(from Brighter Than You Think, Ten Short Works By Alan Moore, Uncivilised Books, 2016)

...The dispute arose over Dave Sim's decision to sell the trade paperback edition of his Cerebus graphic novel, High Society, himself rather than through the comic book retail market, for which Diamond was the primary distributor.  When it was originally published as a single "phonebook" edition in 1985, High Society (which collected Cerebus #26-50) pioneered a radical new format for graphic novels. According to [Stephen] Bissette, "When Dave decided to make comics history by publishing the first collected editions of Cerebus that were larger in format and page count than any previous North American comics volume - Breaking the glass ceiling that would immediately and profoundly reshape the marketplace... he got a lot of resistance."

In order to sell High Society in comics shops, Sim would have had to sell the books to Diamond at a 65% off cover price. Because of the size and format, the book was priced at $25 (a bargain for nearly 500 pages) and, given Sim's background in self-publishing, he decided to try to maximise his profits by distributing it himself. This decision alarmed executives at Diamond, who feared that other creators might follow his example and attempt to by pass the traditional distribution channel. After some terse  communications back and forth, when Sim also refused to sell the second printing of High Society through the direct market, threats were made by Diamond employees to stop carrying and distributing The Puma Blues, an ongoing series by Stephen Murphy and Michael Zulli which Sim published separately under his company, Aardvark One International (the same company that was supposed to publish Taboo).

This unprecedented abuse of Diamond's inductry position served as a rallying call for creators and self-publishers in the late eighties, and many, including [Alan] Moore himself, contributed art and stories for The Puma Blues #20 (1988), a benefit issue to both help support the creators effected and make a statement against Diamond's unethical practices. Once the dispute was covered by the comics press, Diamond softened its position  and agreed to continue carrying The Puma Blues, but by that point, Sim had lost his appetite for publishing and dissolved Aardvark International One, leaving Taboo without a home...

Stephen Bissette: Feeding The DC Machine

Brighter Than You Think: Ten Short Works By Alan Moore

with essays by Marc Sobel

(Uncivilised Books, 2016)

MARC SOBEL:
(from Brighter Than You Think, Ten Short Works By Alan Moore, Uncivilised Books, 2016)

...Taboo was a horror anthology series edited and published by Stephen Bissette. Like Moore's short story [Come On Down], its origin also dates back to 1985 when Moore, Bissette and John Totlebon were still working together on Swamp Thing for DC Comics. While the three creators were enjoying great success with DC, the winds in the industry were shifting and more and more creators were embracing the underground comix model of self-publishing. At the time, no one had achieved more success in the self-publishing arena than the Canadian cartoonist, Dave Sim, the visionary creator and publisher of Cerebus The Aardvark, a series that he had produced entirely on his own since 1977. Inspired by his own experience, Sim was a passionate and outspoken advocate for creator independence and, according to Bissette, in 1985 he, "began extending invitations to a small pool of creators he felt were ready (and needed) to make the plunge into the deep, wide waters of self-publishing. This was part of a creative community re-education process Dave was committed to..." In particular, Sim believed that the Swamp Thing creative team was wasting their talents "renovating, restructuring and making (DC's) defunct corporate property worth something... Dave wanted us to be self-publishers, not feeding the DC machine".

But Sim was not simply encouraging creators with no publishing experience to blindly cast out on their own; he was also committed to helping them do so by building upon his own success. As a result, in 1985, he created a new corporate entity, Aardvark One International, in order to publish work from these creators. In addition to Moore, Bissette and Totlebon, many other creators working for the mainstream publishers, including Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz, were also contacted by Sim.

Bissette and Totlebon were intrigued by Sim's offer. In particular, the two artists were excited about publishing a new kind of horror anthology which would fill a creative void they perceived existed in the industry at the time. Despite the presence of some new alternative horror series in the 1980s like Twisted Tales and Gore Shriek, Bissette felt that "horror comics were in a funk. John and I were finding no fertile ground for our own efforts in these 'new' anthologies, despite our attempts, and found it frustrating that the genuinely innovative horror comic stories were appearing sporadically in non-genre anthologies like RAW or self-published tiles like Chester Brown's Yummy Fur. There was no focal point for these creators and sensibilities to come together; no publisher willing to take the risks necessary to do a genuinely adult horror comic for the 1990s; no title with a point of view or understanding of the genre willing to explore, rather than exploit, its often dangerous potential." In short, Bissette felt that the "evolution of horror comics required something more radical and unfettered" and that he and Totlebon "were audacious enough to think it could be done and that (they) might be the ones to do it". Although Sim was reluctant at first to support an anthology, he eventually agreed and early in 1986, Bissette and Totlebon began contacting potential contributors.

However, just months before Taboo's first issue was scheduled to be printed, a protracted dispute between Sim and Diamond Comics, the largest comic book distributor in the United States, reached its tipping point, resulting in the dissolution of Aardvark One. With so many creators having already contributed to the series, the sudden loss of its publisher at the last second forced Bissette and his wife to scramble to form their own publishing business. Thus, SpiderBaby Grafix was born, hastily created to publish Taboo much the same way Moore had founded Mad Love to publish AARGH!...

Taboo: A Financial Kamikaze Plane

Taboo #1 (SpiderBaby Grafix, 1988)
Cover art by Steve Bissette

STEVE BISSETTE:
(from an interview with Chris Dahlen at A.V.Club, 23 July 2009)

...Taboo was not self-publishing. Taboo was my first real experience with publishing. Of the work that appeared in Taboo, very little of it was mine. With Taboo, I learned about the ethics of publishing. And our deal with Taboo was, we sunk no proprietary rights or hooks into any of that material. It was one-time publication, a flat page-rate, $100 a page, and that was it. Deal over.

When From Hell the movie was made, we got nothing from it. Some people felt like that was unfair, but hey, that was the deal. The whole reason From Hell and Lost Girls and Throat Sprockets exist today is because they were made for Taboo, and Taboo, I was the midwife. I literally looked at it as that profession. My job was to facilitate the birth of something into this world, and then I’m done...

...Dave Sim forged a friendship with John Totleben and I at the Mid-Ohio-Con. And Dave laid out his whole vision of the inverted pyramid, that the whole superstructure of these businesses was built on the backs of freelancers that they were treating badly, paying badly. But they wouldn't be going home with their paycheck every Friday if the freelancers didn't get their work done, and all their income and revenue was generated by the work of a freelance pool that was at the end of the food chain, instead of benefiting from the food chain.

I was receptive to that. Not just because it was a radical thought -- and it was, at the time -- but also because it was the first thing I'd ever heard from someone else in the industry that was making sense of my real-life experiences with the industry...

...Taboo was like a kamikaze plane going into the deck of the Midway. It was a defunct business model before it started! I lost tens of thousands of dollars. Dave Sim poured tens of thousands of dollars into it that he never got back. The year I made a ton of money off 1963, I sent Dave Sim a check for $10,000. And he said "Steve, your checks are no good here. Keep it." For Dave, it was an investment he had made in not just Taboo, but a group of creators he believed in, and it ended up having a beneficial effect on comics.

But no one ever waited for a check from Taboo. My family ate macaroni and cheese some weeks, which drove my wife nuts, as you can well understand. Because instead, a few hundred dollars were going to Eddie Campbell and Alan Moore, because the work on From Hell was underway...

As a comics-artist, Steve Bissette is best known for his collaboration with Alan Moore and John Totleben on DC Comics' Swamp Thing in the 1980s, as well as his own self-published Tyrant. As editor of the horror-anthology Taboo, he published the first serialised appearances of From Hell (by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell), Lost Girls (by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie) and the still-born Sweeney Todd (by Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli).

After self-publishing Taboo #1-4 through SpiderBaby Grafix, Steve edited Taboo #5-7 and Taboo Especial which were co-published with Kevin Eastman's Tundra Publishing. In 1993 Tundra Publishing was involved in a controversial merger with Dennis Kitchen's Kitchen Sink Press, which published the final two volumes of Taboo, #8-9, in 1995 edited by Philip Amara. In 1994 Kitchen Sink Press had been purchased by Ocean Capital Corp. Kitchen Sink Press was finally dissolved in 1999.

Eddie Campbell's From Hell Companion

From Hell Companion
by Eddie Campbell & Alan Moore
(Top Shelf/Knockabout, July 2013)

EDDIE CAMPBELL:
(from the introduction to From Hell Companion, 2013)

...Watchmen had been a continuous celebration for two year by [1988]. But Alan had fallen out with the publisher, DC Comics, and was determined to reinvent his career in a way that did not involve corporate manipulations. His first moves consisted of, on the one hand, self-published Big Numbers with Bill Sienkiewicz as illustrator, and on the other he lined up  a second to be serialized in Taboo, the new horror anthology published  by fellow discontent Steve Bissette. This was to be a complex retelling of the story of the Whitechapel muders of 1888. Alan and Steve set their minds to choosing an artist for the job. Like Alan, I had already appeared in the first issue of Taboo (Nov 1988) with a short story, The Pyjama Girl. I had also worked with Alan once before when I illustrated Globetrotting for Agoraphobics (in Knockabout, 1985). But my work was otherwise about the contemporary and the quotidian. Horror was  not my thing and I must have seemed an odd choice to illustrate the doings of the most infamous serial killer in history, Jack The Riper. The rational, as Steve explained, was that "It was essential that the artist not be seduced by the violence in the tale..."

And so it was off and running. From Hell appeared in Taboo for six issues of that publication, and then assembled and completed in ten volumes of its own title between 1991 and August 1996, published by Tundra and then Kitchen Sink Press. An eleventh volume, The Dance Of The Gull Catchers, being an appendix, was added two years later in September 1998. The complete work was first published all in one book, under my own Eddie Campbell Comics imprint (all of our previous publishers having by then gone out of business), in the last month of the old millennium, December 1999. It has been continuously in print since then in about twenty languages, still increasing as I write this. When I say continuously, I'm ignoring a one-year hiatus after the printer of our US edition went bankrupt. Considering the collapses of publishers, distributors and a printer, one has to marvel that the complete book got published at all.

DAVE SIM:

(from a fax, 16 July 2013)
I don't know if Eddie forgot or never knew that I was the one who financed TABOO at first, so I'm technically FROM HELL's first publisher. Bissette vouchered all the jobs and I cut him a cheque and paid the printing bill... It really is quite a good book: exhaustive coverage. I hope he sells a bunch. I'm assuming that FROM HELL the graphic novel has survived FROM HELL the movie in a way that WATCHMEN didn't.

Taboo: "Steve Can't Be Here."

Taboo #8 & 9 (Kitchen Sink Press, 1995)
Cover art by Charles J. Lang & Alan M. Clarke

DAVE SIM:
(from the introduction to Taboo #9, 1995)

"Steve.. can't be here." Dave Sim looked introspective after making the assertion. Suddenly mindful of the anxiousness of the reader at the flatness of  his voice (what's going on?) he seemed to come to himself, turned to face the reader directly for a brief moment - and then drifted back beneath a tide of reflection.

"He really can't. If you've read the introduction in the last volume," he paused, weighing the likelihood of his conjecture. The question grew larger for him, carrying him away from the reader. He drew a deep breath. And then he began speaking in a normal tone (a normal rapid tone - the look on his face recalled someone attempting to focus on their oration and ignore the distant echo of their voice rebounding back to them a second or two later).

It's just crazy, I know. I'm thinking about Aardvark One International, my second and final attempt to publish other people's work and what a mistake it was - how it broke my final connection with the notion of publishing. Not my notion. What am I trying to say? Self-publishing was it. Publishing doesn't work. I mean, if you read the introduction to the previous volume, you know that's all that Steve has to say. This is like something that should be a clean break like...

Like driving someone to the airport that you like well enough but can only take in small doses and you've definitely had enough to last you a good long while. So you get to the airport and their flight is delayed and you stay and keep them company. And the flight is delayed again and they keep saying that you should go, they'll be fine. But you can tell by looking at them that it wouldn't be fine, so you stay on. And you start moving toward the state where you're sort of vaguely annoyed and impatient and you can feel that it is really draining your energy and you start to wonder if you're going mad. And you have to keep telling yourself that it's just a little while longer, that this is what being an adult is all about, life is filled with little sacrifices. All those kind of thoughts. And then the flight is delayed again and the someone suggests that they just come back and spend the night at your place and try again the next morning.

Well.

That's why Steve can't be here.

It's like that story. To try to write another introduction after the piece he wrote in the last volume, well - there comes a point where you wonder if you're going to just... lose it. Know what I mean? Like, the Big Lose It.

So here I am. Me, I'm not in the same story as Steve. No, my story is more like... like...

He pinches his index and middle fingers on his cigarette, attempts to pull it out of the corner of his mouth. He misses his grip and the two fingers slide to the end, pinching on either side of the glowing tip.

"SHIT!" He brushes furiously at the front of his shirt adorned with blazing bits of tobacco. He misses one which drops into the folds of his dress shirt just above his belt. "FUCK!" He dislodges it with his two burned fingers, further scorching them.

Dave Sim slumps into a chair, lighting another cigarette.

He exhales heavily.

A dozen expressions cross his face in the next moments.

Finally he grins broadly and laughs.

"Ocean Group," he says and then laughs again.

He seems to notice the reader for the first time.

He regards the individual with a dispassionate eye.

"See," he says. "Steve and I are out of here."

He gets up and leaves.

The End

After self-publishing Taboo #1-4 through SpiderBaby Grafix, Steve Bissette edited Taboo #5-7 and Taboo Especial which were co-published with Kevin Eastman's Tundra Publishing. In 1993 Tundra Publishing was involved in a controversial merger with Dennis Kitchen's Kitchen Sink Press, which published the final two volumes of Taboo, #8-9, in 1995 edited by Philip Amara. In 1994 Kitchen Sink Press had been purchased by Ocean Capital Corp. Kitchen Sink Press was finally dissolved in 1999.

Taboo: "A Creative Reaction Against The Status Quo"

Taboo #1-4 (SpiderBaby Grafix, 1988-1990)
Cover art by Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Michael Zulli & Moebius

STEVE BISSETTE:
(from 'Taboo Is Taboo', Gauntlet Magazine #1, 1990, reprinted in Taboo #9, 1995)

...Taboo was created four years ago by John Totleben and myself as a creative reaction against the "status quo" of the American comic book industry's perception and exploitation of the "horror comic" genre. Despite the outlet we were enjoying in the pages of Swamp Thing, and the resurfacing of the horror  anthology comics format (Twisted Tales, Tales Of Terror and House Of Mystery), none of the new breed of horror anthology comics were emulating, or even acknowledging, the progress the genre had made in every other media and medium. It was as if Stephen King and Clive Barker didn't exist, as if Night Of The Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Eraserhead had never been made. Worse still, it was as if the underground comix revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s had never happened, with none of the 1980s independents showing a fraction of the creative excess and inventiveness of the underground horrors like Skull, Slow Death, and Death Rattle (whose revival in the mid-1980s had many high points, but lacked any real focus or impact) had revelled in. Even the best of the new horror comics were still regurgitating the themes and formulas of the infamous 1950s pre-Code EC horror comics.

John and I were finding no fertile ground for our own efforts in these "new" anthologies, despite our attempts, and found it frustrating that the genuinely innovative horror comic stories were appearing sporadically in non-genre anthologies like RAW or the self-published titles like Chester Brown's Yummy Fur. There was no focal point for these creators and sensibilities to come together; no publisher willing to take the risks necessary to do a genuinely adult horror comic for the 1990s; no title with a point of view or understanding  of the genre willing to explore, rather than exploit, its often dangerous potential.

We were audacious enough to think it could be done and that we might be the ones to do it.

Enter self-publisher and friend Dave Sim, whose tenacity in writing, drawing, and publishing the monthly Cerebus for over a decade had earned him enough  of a private financial stronghold to accurately proclaim his true artistic independence. Dave had begun to selectively offer creators he felt a kinship with the opportunity to "self-publish" their own creations  under the wing of a corporation Dave had formed to bankroll their ventures, without any creative interferences.

When the offer was extended to John, Alan [Moore] and me, we chose to take advantage of it, though not as a trio, and not in the manner Dave had expected. John and I proposed our anthology title, with Alan as one of the contributors, and although Dave was uncomfortable with suddenly having to, by proxy, deal with many more creators than he had dreamed of, he finally gave the go-ahead. Taboo began to take shape.

Dave's "creator-ownership" corporation, Aardvark One International, would only spawn one periodical, Stephen Murphy and Michael Zulli's Puma Blues, before Dave's decision to dissolve the corporation in September 1988. Taboo would have been the second title published under its umbrella.

Dave's reason for dissolving the corporation had nothing to do with Taboo itself. The corporation had problems with Diamond Distribution, one of the largest comic distributors in the U.S., which he felt would undermine future venture, and taint work such as ours by our being associated with his corporation. Dave dissolved Aardvark One in August 1988, mere weeks before Taboo 1 was to be printed, after almost three years of work and considerable monetary investment from Aardvark One.

At the time of Dave's call we had only two choices: to publish, or not to publish. The former, really, was the only feasible alternative: the creators, Dave, and John, and I, had poured too much work into the book to simply deep-six it on the eve of its publication. Publishing it, however, meant forming our own company... a necessity John did not care to get involved in.

As a result, my wife, Nancy O'Connor, stepped into the fray, and together she and I created SpiderBaby Grafix & Publications. Though the initial torrent of work and responsibilities was daunting, we persevered and - with Dave's help in retaining his own printer's services - Taboo 1 shipped in November 1988. Selling for $9.95 retail, we were able to sell over 15,000 copies, earning solid royalties for our creators and laying financial bedrock under SpiderBaby.

For a first issue from a new company, Taboo 1 was a phenomenal success. Though we had no paid advertising to promote the book, we took full advantage of all the "guerrilla advertising" possible, yielding illustrated articles and press releases in as many comic book and horror-related periodicals as we could interest. Though we're still proud of our first issue, barely a third of it lived up to what we saw as its potential. With our second issue, we would have to push the parameters of what was possible and permissible even further.

I suppose what was to follow was proof of our "success"...

Taboo #5, Especial, #6-7 (SpiderBaby Grafix / Tundra Publishing, 1991-1992)
Cover art by Jeff Jones, Jeff K. Potter, Cru Zen & Joe Coleman

As a comics-artist, Steve Bissette is best known for his collaboration with Alan Moore and John Totleben on DC Comics' Swamp Thing in the 1980s, as well as his own self-published Tyrant. As editor of Taboo, he published the first serialised appearances of From Hell (by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell), Lost Girls (by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie) and the still-born Sweeney Todd (by Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli). The text of this article is © Steve Bissette, and all Taboo cover artwork is © the respective artists.