Monthly Archives: April 2012

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.

No Excuses

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Timing is everything.

Like most creative types, I owe my career to it.  A stint volunteering at a film festival turned into the opportunity to pen a TV miniseries, and launched me into the world of being a professional writer.  Had I not volunteered at that festival and ingratiated myself with the producer running it, who knows where I’d be?

Success is predicated on the ability to recognize an opportunity when it presents itself, and acting accordingly.  Being in the right place at the right time is key; being able to recognize when you are in one of those moments is crucial.  If you’re not paying attention to the signals, that ship sails, leaving you standing on the shore and realizing that you just missed the golden opportunity that would have put you on it, rather than looking at it from a distance.

So what does that have to do with Kurt Cobain?

Everything.

Kurt is immortal.  He’s deified and lionized and memorialized every time you hear “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”  He’s a genuine rock icon on the same level as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin (all of whom, like Kurt, died at 27).  heck, NECA even released not one but two collectable toys of Kurt:

His journals have been published, a movie is forever in the works, books have been written, conspiracy theories about his death abound.  He’s forever trapped in amber, howling like a demon in a fog shrouded high school gymnasium as a pep rally goes out of control.  He’s forever twenty-seven.

So another year comes and goes minus Kurt Cobain.  Everyone knows who he was.  But he’s not the reason I’m writing this.  This is due to the gentleman pictured below.

If you don’t know who that is just by looking at him, chances are you’re one of the ones who forgot that Layne Staley, lead singer of Alice in Chains died ten years ago, on April 5, 2002.  He died of an overdose.  His body lay for two weeks in his luxury Seattle condo before they found him.  He was 35 — the same age Kurt would have been had he lived.

Both deaths were tragic.  Yes, even Kurt, despite suicide being widely regarded as a dick move.  Unless you’ve dealt with crippling depression, or drug addiction, or chronic health problems like Kurt did, you’re in a glass house throwing rocks.  But as years pass on, I find Layne’s passing to be the more tragic.  It’s also hard to remember now just how big Alice in Chains was.  Multiple platinum albums.  Sell-out tours.  A legendary Unplugged performance.  Legions of devoted fans.  And the songs, man the songs still have the power to send chills up one’s spine; The Rooster, Angry Chair, Man in the Box, Them Bones – fantastic.  I saw Nirvana once, in 1993, in Toronto.  But I saw Alice in Chains twice, once in 92 and again in 93 when they co-headlined that year’s Lollapalooza festival and for my money, their work cuts deeper than Nirvana, who had the luxury of releasing three great albums before imploding in such a dramatic fashion.  They never got old or stale.  Neither did Alice, but as each April passes with piles of stories about Kurt, I wonder why Layne isn’t afforded the same.

Why is Kurt commemorated with galleries and books and toys, but not Layne?

Obviously, timing – or as much timing as death  requires.  Kurt died, if not at the height of popularity, then at the height of fame, when he’d shifted from being the indie rock star who broke into the mainstream and heralded a shift in music, to becoming a tabloid train-wreck aided and abetted by his very public marriage to Courtney Love.  His rise into public consciousness was meteoric – roughly 5 years lapsed from Nirvana’s debut Bleach, to the shotgun suicide that ended Nirvana, and alternative nation.  Kurt had timing on his side of going out when Grunge and Alt-Rock were at their peak.  His death triggered their decline.  It was hard to listen to Bleach or Nevermind with the knowledge that the guy singing about angst and loneliness blew his brains out.  Face it, when “the voice of your generation” kills himself, it doesn’t say much about that generation’s prospects does it?

When Layne died in 2002, Grunge had been dead for nearly 8 years.  Generation X had grown up, graduated college, gotten jobs and started families.  I’m sure some people reacted with more surprise that he was still around – heck, I probably reacted the same way.  There were no vigils at the Space Needle in Seattle like there were with Kurt.  Rolling Stone and Spin didn’t publish commemorative issues.  There are no toys of Layne.  The band took time to mourn, and lick their wounds, and eventually reform with a new singer … and as it turns out they’re pretty damn good.  But Layne’s absence is one they’ll never overcome, just like as great a band as Foo Fighters have became, they’ll never be a game-changer like Nirvana.

Kurt is remembered/deified because his death signalled the end of Grunge, and the end of Alternative Rock as a mainstream force.  It was like that moment in high school when a classmate dies sudden and unexpected. It’s that big moment that forces everyone around it to grow up.  I know for my personal experience that Kurt’s death and Nirvana’s break-up marked the beginning of the end of music in my life.  Not that it ended entirely, but its importance in my life began to wane.  School became more important, as did getting my career off the ground.  I gradually stopped going to shows, and while I still bought music, it wasn’t to the degree it had been since 1989.  It took fourteen years, and the beginnings of Mixtape, for me to rekindle that passion for music.  Growing up means letting go of childish things and accepting responsibility.  Not everything ends with a shotgun blast or a lonely overdose.  Life is rarely that dramatic.

Someone, and I can’t remember who, said something to the effect that “Foo Fighters are to Nirvana what New Order was to Joy Division”, and that’s as apt a comparison as any.  Nirvana became legends the moment Kurt pulled the trigger.  Alice was wounded the moment Layne OD’d, and while that’s unfair, it’s what it is.

So as the music world marks another sad anniversary, I encourage everyone to give more than a passing thought to Layne.  He deserves it, because sometimes the worse thing than being trapped in the spotlight is going on after that spotlight has passed you by.

Rhymin’ and Stealin’

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Thirteen years

That’s how long I’ve been writing professionally.  And by professionally, I mean “writing full-time, and earning my living by writing alone.”  Since January 1999 I’ve earned my keep as a writer without holding down a “day job” at the same time.

Thirteen years is a long time.  In human terms, it’d be mouthing off to me and calling me an asshole while they sneak out to smoke cigarettes and listen to crappy music.

But it’s not a person; it’s a passage of time, and it still boggles my mind that I’ve managed to earn a living at it.

This means one of two things: I’m either incredibly lucky or incredibly stupid.

On the stupid side:

I don’t get to take vacations.  Even when I’m on vacation, work is there.

I have to pay for my own health coverage, dental, retirement fund etc.  Factor that into a year where you barely break even before those costs.

I always take a hit at tax time, unlike those who have taxes deducted from their regular paychecks.  Good year or mediocre year or bad year, out comes the checkbook.

I don’t get regular paychecks.  Annual pay fluctuates wildly, but generally you have a very good year, followed by two to three lousy ones, which evens out the good year and plays havoc on any retirement savings or investments.

On the lucky side:

I haven’t had to be up at a specific time to commute to a job where I’m required to work at an assigned task for an assigned number of hours, since late 1998.  That’s right; most days I’m still in my pajamas three hours after you started work.

I work my own hours, at my own pace, on my own schedule.  If I want to go see a movie, or play video games, or read comic books, I can do that whenever I feel, because it’s all technically part of work anyway.

Flexibility of schedule gives me freedom to actually live my life while I work.  It also affords me opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise.  Were it not for that flexible schedule there’s no way I ever would have met my wife.

I get to earn a living doing what I’ve wanted to do since I was seven.  Top that.

I am actually working in the profession I studied at University.  Top that too.

So yeah, despite the hassles that come with the job, I love what I do.  I will never do anything else.  I don’t aspire to direct movies like a lot of screenwriters, because the writing part of movie making is, for me, the most enjoyable (and frankly there are far too many mediocre writer-directors out there).  Plus, I hate waking up early and call-times on movie sets are in the 7:00 am range.

But every year around this time (i.e. Tax Season) I always seem to stop and take stock of how far I’ve come.  I remember the first time I got to list “writer” as my occupation on my Tax return – it was both awe-inspiring and frightening.  Awe-inspiring, because I had made it, and at a relatively young age too ( like, within three years of graduating).

Frightening, because I always worried if this was it – that things will collapse or go downhill and I’ll be forced to slink back to an office job after a brief moment in the sun.  Hell, it could still happen, and what’s frightening about that is it’s been so long since I worked an office job I’m pretty much unemployable.

My first year as a pro was, until recently, my best financially. In that year my income tripled from the year previous, I was able to pay off my remaining student loans, register as a business, get a bigger apartment, get an agent and a manager, and be what I’d wanted to be since kindergarten … amazing.

The following year I earned half the amount of the year previous.  The year following was worse.  The year after that was great.  Things picked up and while there were other dips and rises, I figured “hey, it’s just a like a roller coaster so I might as well enjoy the ride”.  It’s still a rollercoaster, but over the years I’ve figured out how to weather the ride.

First; keep moving.  Be like a shark, always on the prowl. Don’t take a moment to rest on your laurels.  A break here and there is okay, but don’t let it run for too long.  I’m talking a week at most.

Second; keep seeking inspiration.  Get away for the weekend or a week, take in some new surroundings and stimulate your creative centers.  I capped off a very busy 2011 with a week in Paris, and found myself rejuvenated on returning home.  You don’t have to go that far — Philly is fine.

Three; avoid self-reflection.  Avoid taking yourself too seriously.  Don’t spend weeks retooling an old project.  Finish it, send it out the door, and move onto something new.  Otherwise you sink into stagnation, and that’s creative death.

Still, that feeling, that it’s all going to end, that the work’s going to dry up, that I’m going to find myself back in the same dead-end job I was in before, never really goes away.  I’ve come to see it as extra motivation to keep pushing hard at work; to keep busy, to keep working on a variety of projects across a range of mediums.

I’ve got a movie coming out later this year, and am going into production on another.  There’s also the matter of a top secret project I’m in the early stages of, with someone I’ve wanted to work with for nearly twenty years.  There’s also MIXTAPE, of course, which is the first genuine passion project I’ve had to see the light of day.

But with each year that goes by, and each time I list writer (and since moving to the US – “Independent Artist”) as my occupation on my taxes, I realize; it is what I do.  It is who I am, and I won’t stop doing it until the pen is pried from my cold dead hand.