San Diego Comic Con

This is the weekend for the San Diego Comic Con. The last one I went to was 2002. The first one I went to would have been in the late 80's. I remember the year that the Chicago Con (the real Chicago Con, before Wizard bought it) was just a weekend before San Diego. I ended up going to Chicago and than spending the week inbetween with my friend and artist Terry Pavlet and than heading to San Diego. That was the year that I did the Christmas issue of Quantum Leap for Innovation Comics. George Broderick, another friend, was an editor there. In fact I think I was the one that alerted George to the fact that there was a comic book company in his neck of the woods in Wheeling West Virginia.

The first San Diego Con I went to was when I met Sam Kieth. We had talked before, on the phone, but met in person for the first time. We shared a room with Wendi Lee and her boyfriend at the time, another artist that did some work for Eclipse Comics (I'm sorry I can't remember his name now). We were staying at the Hotel San Diego, not exactly in the best area of town. If I remember right across the street was an area where the local winos hung out.

That first con George Lucas came to the con. He had the con people put a different name on his name tag, like that would hide the fact of his identity. Everyone at that Con knew what George Lucas looked like. But at that time the Con wasn't invaded by Hollywood like it is now. You'd see a few Hollywood types, but they were there mainly as fans, not pushing anything. At that time Hollywood, like most of the rest of the world, didn't think appearing at a comic convention would help push anything.

To me the first cons seemed big, but compared to what San Diego is now they were small. The last one I went to six years ago was huge. It's interesting, it can be fun, but it's not a comic book convention anymore. It's a lot more than that.

Zot

Zot was written and drawn by Scott McCloud, better known now as the guy that wrote those books about comics, back in the '80's and published by Eclipse Comics. The first ten issues were in color, than the series went to black and white. I remember buying the comic when it first came out and liking it. Eclipse, Pacific, First, all these were new companies, opening the comic field up to an exciting time.

This book collects all the black and white issues of Zot that were written and drawn by Scott McCloud. The first ten, color issues, are not collected. McCloud refers to them as his learning curve for Zot. And there were two issues of a fill in drawn by Chuck Austen that is not included. But what is included is some great comics.

This is a great month for comic collections. American Flagg is finally supposed to come out. Bill Loebs' Journey is also supposed to be out this month.

Spending Habits

This post was conceived after reading a post by Heidi over at Comics Fairplay, one of my favorite blogs about comics. She was talking about how the economy is making her look at her spending habits and asked about how it changed ours. I was going to write an answer on her blog, but the more I think about it the more I realize that it may end up being kind of long winded so decided perhaps I should post it here instead.

It wan't that long ago that I didn't really think about the price of gas. Ok, maybe a little longer ago than it seems, but when gas was around two dollars a gallon or less, it didn't seem that big a thing. I wouldn't really think about gas prices when I was thinking about my expenses for the week. Stopping at a gas station to fill up was likely twenty dollars if that much. The last time I filled up my gas tank it was over $50.00. And I drive a Camary. It gets great gas mileage, I can drive from New Orleans to Memphis on one tank of gas and still have almost a quarter of a tank of gas left. Nowdays just thinking about driving anywhere makes me think about how bad I want to go or do I really need to go, I don't want to have to fill up the tank anymore than I have to.

My Local Comic Shop is about twenty five miles from where I live. Now I work in retail and I hate when people come in the store where I work and talk about how far they had to drive, all the way from Covington to Slidell. Well the reverse trip is what I drive to my LCS. Now I can sympathize with them when they say something like that. For me to drive to my LCS it's a fifty mile trip.

I can give one example of raising gas prices cutting back on my spending. This last week I didn't go to my LCS. There were none of the comics that I really want coming out this week, there were a few that I might have been interested in, but I didn't want to spend the money on gas. And I knew if I drove all the way out (ha) I would feel compelled to buy a few comics just so I didn't feel like the trip was a complete waste of time. Used to be I wouldn't have minded just picking up half a dozen comics to give them a try. But half a dozen comics could wind up costing twenty dollars.

That's another thing. I never worried too much about my comic spending before. It's been a long time since I tried to buy everything that was published. (Back in the days of the beginning of the direct market I did try that. At one time I had just about every comic First, Eclipse, Pacific and a bunch of other new companies put out. All those comics are long gone now.) But now I can go buy five comics and the price is over fifteen dollars.

I'm going to show my age here and recall back when I was a kid I could buy a couple comics, a coke and candy bar for a dollar. Yes, I know everything has went up in price and that was a long time ago, but I wonder how kids buy comics nowdays. Are their allowances that much more now?

Nowdays a comic has to be good to keep me reading. Once I used to buy to complete collections. Once I got rid of most of my collection I cured that habit. Now I'll buy a comic while it keeps me interested, but as soon as it stops I drop the comic. Lots of times that might mean when the writer leaves the comic, depending on what the incoming writer does to keep the comic interesting. I no longer have to buy every issue of a certain character just became I want to keep my collection complete. Except for a few comics I'm not even that big on keeping the past issues. If I think the comic is good enough to go back and read I'll buy the trades.

So when I'm at the LCS shop looking at the new issues I find it hard to pick up something new unless I've heard good things about it. I used to experiment with buying trades more too. Twenty dollars or so for a nice size trade wasn't that bad a deal. And it still isn't, but I have to think what else I could use that twenty for.

The price of everything is going up. As gas prices either continue to go up or even stablize at the prices they are now, more things will go up. The majority of goods and food are transported by trucks, which use gas, which cost the trucking companies to spend more money, which in the end gets pushed back to the rest of us. My last trip to the grocery store I ended up spending over fifty dollars and I was able to carry all the groceries in on one trip. And that was without buying any expensive meats or anything. Used to be I'd have to make at least two trips if I spend that much money.

Besides comics I spend a good bit of money on music. So I have to think if I want the new CD by My Morning Jacket or a couple of comics. I have to think about how much use I'll get out of which, the cd I might listen to and put on my Ipod to continue to listen to. The comics I will probably read and end up throwing to the side and perhaps not ever picking them up again, until it's time to get rid of them.

It's also made me look at how I buy my comics. In a previous post I talk about buying hardbacks through Amazon instead of my LCS. It just makes sense if I can save anywhere from ten to twenty dollars on the purchase. I hate to do it, I want to support my LCS, but I can't support it to my determinate.

It also means sometimes I don't buy the floppy and wait for the trade to come out. I know that's a sure way to cause the regular monthly to die if enough people do that, but if a single issue costs $3.00 and the trade costs $15.00, it's usually a better deal since more trades collect at least six issues of a series.

The price of gas continues to climb, the price of everything continues to climb, except for one thing. My salary. I don't think what people make is keeping up with how much everything is going up. And that means things have to get cut. I used to eat out at work almost everyday. Now I try to bring my lunch as much as possible. Just eating out once a week was anywhere from thirty dollars to fifty dollars a week. A lot of these expenses used to not seem that bad, but now it all adds up too quickly.

Unfortunately I don't foresee gas prices going down or even stop from going up anytime soon, so it will just mean more cutting back on comics and other things.

William Messener-Loebs

Journey is one of the best comic books every published. This comic was published years ago, it tells the story of a different Wolverine, Wolverine MacAllister, a frontiersman during the 1800s in the Middle American Wilderness. Mr. Loebs both wrote and drew the comic.

Lately Bill and his wife Nadine (it's hard to talk about Bill without Nadine, the two come as a unit) have fallen on hard times. Bill lost his right arm while an infant. After producing comics for Marvel and DC Bill found his talents no longer sought after. Changes in management meant changes on the talent. Bill found himself without work. Through some bad times Bill and Nadine ended up living in a Salvation Army shelter. Recently there have been some efforts made to help them out and from what I've read things have improved some.

But where are the new Bill Loebs stories? Where is new issues of Journey? Why have the past issues of Journey not been collected into trades? I've read recently that Fantagraphics was thinking of publishing a phone book edition of the series and more recently I've read that IDW is supposed to be doing a collection of the first twelve issues this summer. I'm not sure which is true, but I hope that there is a collection coming out from someone of this landmark comic series.

Bill or Nadine won't remember me, but some of my past comic book history is intertwined with them. My first published work was in the back of an issue of Journey. It was titled "The Duel" and was drawn by Sam Kieth. I would call and talk with Nadine about the story and she would offer advice before the story was done.

Years later when Sam Kieth was asked to contribute to the newly created Image Comics he came up with his character The Maxx and asked Bill Loebs to script it for him. At that time Bill said no. Sam came to me (and he might have asked a few others inbetween Bill and me) and asked if I wanted to help him with the scripts. It didn't take me long to say yes. At the time I think a lot of writers were seeing Image as an artist's company, most of the original founders were using friends and people that no one knew to write the series they were creating. I wasn't worried. This was the big time for me. I was doing a lot of short stories for a lot of small publishers, but nothing that was bringing in any real money.

Well, anyone that has read The Maxx knows my name was nowhere to be found on it. Sam was able to convince Bill to give it a go and decided to use Bill as the writer. I'm sure Bill has no idea that I was ever involved with the series, however briefly.

The first San Diego Con I ever went to I met Bill Loebs. It was the year that Sam Kieth, Wendi Lee and her boyfriend (I can't remember his name but he drew a few things for Eclipse) and I shared a room at the convention. Bill has always been a great guy.

Someone get JOURNEY in print. Let's collect those old issues and even better yet let's get some new issues of a JOURNEY comic out there.

Dave Stevens Dies

I remember when I first saw Dave Steven's work. It was in the back pages of a Pacific comic, Mike Grell's StarSlayer. Like everyone reading it I was blown away by the artwork. The story that went along with this artwork proved pretty good too. Pacific published a few more chapters of the strip which was of course The Rocketeer and it was finally finished and collected by Eclipse Comics. Than Comico got a go at the series for two issues. It finally ended up with a final issue at Dark Horse Comics.

I'm not sure if Dave was the first to start championing Bette Page or just at the start. In the Rocketeer he created a character that was a stand in for the former pin up queen Bette Page. He was a big fan of hers and latter became a friend and helped her.

Dave Stevens was not a fast artist. From what I've read he would labor over a single panel, working till he got it perfect in his eyes. Unfortunately the comic industry is not set up for such a painstaking artist and he did little more work. He made his living doing commissions and illustrations for others.

When I first saw Dave's work it was an exciting time for the comic book industry. The direct market was just beginning and it seemed like there was an infinite multitudes of possibilities for the industry. Marvel and DC were no longer the only comics that people wanted to read. New companies were appearing almost overnight. Pacific, Eclipse, Comico and more were publishing a lot of new exciting comics.

Dave's art and writing seemed to reflect that excitement. There was such a love for the medium in his artwork. His stories were fun to read. Everything didn't have to be doom and gloom. You could have fun in comics.

My sympathies go out to his friends and family.