Feel The Pain

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Coming from the cuthroat world of film and TV, it’s easy to assume the world of publishing is like nirvana. Books are nice and warm and fuzzy, and comic books are comfort food.  In reality, the world of publishing is like being in the mosh pit of a Nirvana show circa 1992. You’re battered about, kicked in the face and occasionally wind up in the “Circle of Pain” where ‘roided up jocks with agression issues pummel each other and anyone who gets in their way.  To be more succinct; publishing is like any other creative industry; the “industry” comes first, followed several miles down the road by “creative”.  Publishers want to make money. They need to make money to keep publishing.  Every writer will have horror stories about their experiences, yet they soldier on, and use those experiences as cautionary tales.

I have yet to experience this first hand in publishing (film is another story — and it takes a few drinks for me to loosen the tongue and spew bile forth).  But the other day I read something that left me speechless.  It’s a cautionary tale, and a warning to anyone in the creative field; that sleazeballs may come in all shapes and sizes, but all leave the same distinctive slime-trail in their wake.

Poor Kelli Owen … all of the details here.  It’s an incredible story.

Gratitude

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1987.  I’ve just moved to Brockville Ontario from Greensboro North Carolina.  It’s winter, and I’ve been settling in for a few months when one night while doing homework I hear “Fight for your Right” on the radio. Homework for that moment is forgotten.  I don’t know who the “Beastie Boys” are, but to a 13 year old boy’s ears, it’s the greatest song I’ve ever heard.  It pisses off my parents, which makes it even better.  At a talent show later that spring, three schoolmates perform the entire song a capella.  It’s one of the funniest things the town has ever witnessed.

1989. You cannot escape “Hey Ladies”.  Not on radio, not on Much Music – the video helps kick off the late 80s/early 90s nostalgia for all things 1970s.  I’m in Toronto on one of many visits to a friend and he’s just picked up Paul’s Boutique.  It’s nothing like “License to Ill” – it’s better, deeper, more complex.  “Shadrach” is my favorite track. My friend calls it “their Sgt. Pepper” – a line I will re-use in Mixtape #3 some 23 years later.  Thing is, he’s right – it is their Sgt. Pepper, and a landmark album for the genre.  Naturally it underperforms.  It’s too ahead of its time.

1992. Careening towards high school graduation, barreling towards an uncertain future, and the Boys check back in with “Check Your Head”.  They pick up instruments and lay down some of the most ferocious grooves you’re to hear in a world where the radio is blasting Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Nirvana.  Blasting “Gratitude” on my car stereo nearly blows out the speakers it’s so heavy.  White suburban kids who claim to hate rap (“it’s crap minus the c”) become converts to the Temple of the Beasties.  College starts in the fall and you can’t escape this album.  It blasts from dorms everywhere.

1994. Alternative Nation has been wounded by the suicide of Kurt Cobain and a cloud has settled over the scene, and over that year’s Lollapalooza tour.  The Toronto date is blanketed with rain, and for the first four sets everyone’s miserable.  Then the PA plays “All Apologies” and soon the crowd is singing along.  The sun breaks through the clouds and a mighty roar pushes the rest of them off.  Then, The Beastie Boys take to the stage, and somehow manage to blow the roof off an open-air show.  They’re the shot in the arm a sodden and soggy crowd needs, and of everyone, the Beasties look like they’re having more fun than anyone else.  It’s my first time seeing them.

1998. Music has occupied a smaller portion of my life.  Focus is on work, on movies, on keeping a roof over my head, but there’s still room for the Beastie Boys.  The giant monster vs. giant robot video for “Intergalactic” even impresses my roommate, who’s not a fan of the Beasties or popular music in general.  Followed by their brilliant song and video for “Body Movin’” (channeling Maria Bava’s Danger: Diabolik — both directed by Adam “MCA” Yauch as Nathanial Hornblower), a lot of people like him realize that the Beasties are legitimate goddamn artists.  You don’t have to look far for someone who claims they “don’t like Hip-Hop” and still like the Beastie Boys.

2004. My second time seeing the Beastie Boys, as they tour “To the 5 Boroughs”.  Once again, the Beasties bring it and then some.  They come around again a couple years later, and I see them again, and again, they look like they’re having more fun than any of us.

2008. I live in one of the five boroughs. So does a college friend of mine.  She offhandedly mentions she works in the same building that houses Oscilloscope Labs, the Beasties’ company, and she occasionally sees them – MCA, usually, arriving at work on his bike.  I am insanely jealous and plot to hang around there one day to have a Beastie sighting, but I never do. I mean, what am I going to say?  “You guys rule?  You’re ‘ill’?”  They already know that.

2012. And now it’s over.

In a way we knew it was over when only two of them showed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, having had to cancel plans to perform because MCA was too sick.  We hoped it was a minor setback, but it was not.  You won’t see the Beasties perform again, and they have too much integrity to open the vaults and keep that money machine going.  You can’t have the Beastie Boys with only two. You have to have three MCs and one DJ.  Otherwise it’s not them.

I was woken up early that morning as a storm rolled through the area.  Lightning crashed and thunder boomed, and rains fell for a short time.  Then, the storm moved off and the sun came out, like it did eighteen years earlier in a muddy field outside Toronto.  Only this time it wasn’t really rain; it was Adam Yauch, “MCA”, showing New York how to rock a block party ’til your hair turns grey.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

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So I was talking with a friend the other day and asked him if he’d picked up a copy of Mixtape yet.  He had not, and was quite frustrated by the experience. His conversation with the clerk went something like this:

Him: I’m looking for a new title called Mixtape.

Comic store clerk: All the new titles are this shelf.

Him: I checked, it’s not there.

Comic store clerk: Then we don’t have it. I’ve never heard of it.

Him: Can I order it?

Comic store clerk: You have to talk to the owner. He’s here until 5pm during the week.

Him: You can’t take an order for me?

Comic store clerk: No. Only the owner takes comic orders.

Him: Can I phone him and give him my order request?

Comic store clerk: No. The owner only takes orders in person.

To clarify:

The owner only takes orders in person, Monday to Friday, 9-5.

Which is great, if you live and work in the area and you can find the time out of your work schedule (which, for most people, ends at 5 – right when the store owner in this case heads home for the day) to present yourself on bended knee before this Lord of Graphic Arts, and ask him if he could be so kind as to order a book you wish to purchase with money.  You may even ask for several copies, because others would like a copy as well.

If you can’t, however.  If you, say, commute to your job from your town, are out the door at 7 and back home at, well, 7, then you’re pretty much fucked.

This isn’t an isolated case either.  A friend on the west coast who lives in something approximating isolation (yet still has mail delivery) called one of the big stores and asked if he could order a copy of Mixtape and have it shipped to him.  He was told in no uncertain terms to “find a store on your island” because apparently it wasn’t worth the effort to charge his credit card and stick the book in the mail.

Yes, there are other avenues available. Copies of Mixtape are showing up on eBay and Amazon, and while those are certainly avenues to follow if you want to get a copy of the book and can’t find it anywhere, I still prefer you to buy Mixtape from your local shop. It supports them, and it also supports their decision to carry the book in the first place (and to continue carrying it).

That said … if the shop in question isn’t interested in carrying the book despite people asking them to order it, if that shop makes the customer leap through hoops to make an order in the age of the internet, and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone-machine, and mail delivery, then that shop clearly doesn’t need your business that badly.

[UPDATE: that friend who couldn't order Mixtape from his local store ended up getting his copy from a shop in Texas.  He lives in Newmarket Ontario.  Do the math]

To reiterate; I’m a big supporter of local comic shops.  They’re the backbone and lifeblood of this business.  But, frankly, a lot of them are run by (for lack of a better word) assholes.  I say this not as a creator pissed because stores aren’t stocking Mixtape, but as a fan who has been patronizing comic book stores since I was 10.  No matter where I lived, no matter where I moved to, no matter who I was visiting, finding a reliable local comic book store was a priority.  Hell, I travelled to Toronto specifically so I could visit the comic stores there.  And even back then, a lot of those stores didn’t deserve the business they got.  Know why?

Because they didn’t need my business.  Because they were the only deal in town.

For a creator it’s agony because, more than anything, you want people to read your work.  People who want to read your work want to be able to find it.  If they can’t read it, what’s the point?  It’s something every creative person will tell you happens, and ask any of them what they’d rather have; their work be seen, or just get paid and who cares what happens to it, 99% will pick having it seen (the other 1% are, as we know, assholes.  Who run shitty comic book shops).

“But, Brad,” they’ll say. “Running a store is hard work, and we can’t carry everything.  A lot of us are in a small, and shrinking market.  We’ve had to diversify, selling sports memorabilia and toys and other collector’s items because the single-issue market is drying up.  Our margins are razor thin and, honestly, our audience has specific tastes we need to fill if we’re going to stay afloat.”

To which I reply; I understand the argument – what I don’t understand is why so many of you are indifferent to the point of hostile to refuse to order copies of something that someone, with money, wants to buy. How many of those toys or sports jerseys sit on the racks for months without a buyer?  Contrast that with an item someone wants you to get for them?  A definite sale?

Not only that, but who’s to say the person interested in Mixtape isn’t going to be interested in books like it?  Books like Local or The Waiting Place or Box Office Poison?  Someone purchases Mixtape from you, you can always point them to other books they might enjoy.  There’s another sale.  A sale you wouldn’t get otherwise, because a number of the people buying Mixtape haven’t set foot in a comic shop in years, if they ever have.  People you want to attract to the medium.

As one who used to work retail, we mostly carried items we knew our customers were interested in buying. However, if someone wanted a rare item, we made damn sure to get it, lest the person who wanted it decide “they obviously don’t want my business enough I’ll try someone else.” We didn’t want that customer to defect to one of our competitors. We wanted them to know we valued their business.

Fact: nothing happens in a vacuum.  The guy who comes in and orders Mixtape comes back to pick it up, and brings his 6 year old son with him.  Said son is a Star Wars nut.  He sees the Star Wars paraphernalia (which I know does sell) on display and his mind is blown.  Dad picks up his copy of Mixtape, and grabs something for his son, and they come back again in a month for Mixtape #2, and more Star Wars .  Maybe this six year old discovers Batman and Spider-Man on one of these trips and next thing you know, you’ve just gained another loyal customer, and one who will keep coming back.

Not every retailer is an asshole – I must clarify that.  Other people have had success in ordering and receiving their copies.  My favorite comic shop – The Beguiling – is getting a fresh batch of Mixtape in stock this week. Most stores are only too happy to place that order and collect your payment for it.  They understand that in the internet age, every customer is worth their weight in gold.  Friends in towns big and small have had nothing but pleasant experiences dealing with their local store (in several cases, their first time buying a comic book ever).

And that is why this retailer, who shall remain nameless (because why direct business his way when he clearly doesn’t need it?), is now the proud recipient of the first ever Mixtape “Go Fuck Yourself Award”.

You can’t see it, but it looks something like this:

The Real Thing

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And there it is … on shelves as we speak.

I snapped this photo at Midtown Comics on Friday April 13th.  As I was lining up the shot someone picked a copy from the stack, looked at the cover, flipped through some pages, and added it to their armload of purchases for the week.

The cynic in me says “lucky me, happening upon the stack of Mixtape comics the very moment the one person who bought a copy at that store happened by.”  Of course, I got to that store after a couple delays, so the odds are good someone else bought a copy sometime between April 11 and 13.  Then again, on the 11th, I witnessed Forbidden Planet sell out of their last copy of Mixtape.  They’ve assured me more are on the way, so if you’re looking for a copy, and are NYC based, they’ll fix you up.

Did I mention this was all unexpected?

Diamond, the main comic book distributor told the publisher (who subsequently told me) the date of publication was April 18th.  I actually found out through a post on Twitter, where a fan wrote he was thrilled Mixtape #1 finally arrived.  Brendan, the book’s editor and co-publisher, found this out while ducking into the shop down the street from his offices, and was informed by the owner he had new book out this week and that said book was selling.

Hopefully this raises the bar on solicits for #2.  Second issues typically get a lower number, as the general consensus is that issue #1 is the collector’s item.  I also received the final pages for #3 last week, so we have that on the boards too.

[Regarding subsequent issues, I plan on announcing where we're at with those soon.  We'll be doing something cool in tandem with them, and as issues 4,5, and 6 are probably my favorite of the first arc, I'm as anxious as you to get them out the door]

To be frank, it’s a strange feeling, walking into your local comic book store like you have countless times before, and seeing YOUR BOOK on the shelf along with the other new releases.  A book you’ve been thinking and dreaming about for the last three and a half years; a book that, with its publication, finally gives me the right to call myself a comic book creator.  At least I think it does — feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

So if you’ve been following my Mixtape antics, I’d appreciate you supporting the book and spreading the word about it.  Mixtape has always been a comic book for people who don’t normally buy comic books.  As I’ve said before, the characters in Mixtape don’t have super-powers.  They don’t fight zombies or date vampires or have crazy adventures.  The aim was to tell real stories about real people — people you or I could have known (or indeed may have known) in High School, no matter what your age is now, or what era you were a teen in.  So far I’ve received some nice comments about the book on its FB page.  One reader wrote “I felt like I was back in high school and I see my old friends in each character.” 
Another said “It more than lived up to the expectations. Memories have been kickstarted after reading issue one and I am currently playing 7″s on my floor from the 90′s.” 
That was really the goal with Mixtape.  To tell stories that prompt them to do stuff like that — drag out the old 7″s, dust off the boom box and those old cassettes, switch from the morning news on the commute to music. To unlock those memories we all bury, and discover we’ve spent the past twenty years or so running away from our teen years, only to wonder why we ran so fast and so far.

On a sidenote, I am talking with a couple local stores about doing a signing, and hope to do the same next month when I’m up in the Toronto area for work.  If anybody has any suggestions please message me here.