Today is the conclusion of Larry Marder's guest blog about the Self-Publishing Movement. In Part 1, Larry took us up to the early days of self-publisher gatherings… 

"It was a heady time. We knew we were onto something, but we were primarily focused on the business model of that time–creating and distributing 32 page comic books; the periodical pamphlets that were the backbone of the industry.

But we also spent a lot of time dreaming about the future of the trade paperback as a new staple of making our living. We started to envision a time when our trades would always be in print. Our books would always be available for a retailer to restock the shelves; evergreen stock that never goes out of season or fashion."

Larry Marder Part 2:

I remember pulling the first copy of my own trade paperback Larry Marder's Beanworld: Book One out of its shipping carton and being struck with the bittersweet realization that “Wow! This is the format in which my work will survive!”
I recognized that the pamphlet comics themselves would fade away and be forgotten.  The letter columns, the Do-It-Yourself Beanworld contests, the fabulous fan art, all destined to end up in the dust bin of history as the trade-book-with-spine replaced the Beanworld pamphlets. On the other hand, a trade paperback was pretty cool with its ISBN number and bar code. Novel things back then.

Around the same time, Peter Laird, co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles created the Xeric Foundation, a private, nonprofit corporation. A Xeric Grant assists a fledgling self-publisher with a financial boost allowing a worthy project to make its way into the distribution/retail marketplace.

While our group was attempting to understand and create change within the system, another idea took root, and flourished completely outside of the established comic book economy. A new generation of young comics creators turned to the freedom of mini-comics. Small and inexpensive, easy to produce at photocopy shops, anyone could make a comic and distribute it for the cost of a stamp. Legendary mini creators like Matt Feazell could literally carry his entire comics inventory to a convention in a shoe box.

Another incredible contribution to the conversations we were having during the early ‘90s was the publication of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. It was often ridiculed and picked apart by Scott's contemporaries, but the up and coming kids absorbed Scott's the ideas in Scott’s book like sponges. The effect that Understanding Comics has had on a generation of young cartoonists can not be underestimated.

Phew, that ended up a lot more long winded than I thought it would be, but from my point of view, that was the ramp up to the Self Publishing Movement.

We were a group of dedicated comic book creators that own our own characters, copyrights, and trademarks.

We published what we owned in our own periodical comics. We picked our own paper, prices, and ads.

We compiled our periodicals into our own trade paperbacks.

We were clearly in charge of our publishing destiny!
Once again, it felt like the sky is the limit!
And once again we were ultimately disappointed.

Why?
We didn’t control our own distribution destiny for one thing.
Due to reasons, far beyond the influence of the hard-working Self Publisher the comic book economy went into a tailspin.

In the mid ‘90s an epidemic of irresponsibly late and canceled titles from major publishers meant that comic book retailers had an increasingly difficult time knowing when they would have the right amounts of cash on hand to pay their distributor bills. Then in an already uncertain marketplace, Marvel Comics purchased Heroes World in order to self-distribute their books. The other distributors, faced with the loss of at least 50% of their business when Marvel Comics walked away. All went into self-survival mode. After a year of chaos and uncertainty Diamond came out on top as they signed DC, Image, and Dark Horse to long term exclusive brokerage agreements .One-by-one the other distributors faltered and fell. It was a hard blow to small and self publishers. Like it or not, the game had completely changed. Permanently.

Marvel’s self-distribution experiment failed and they ultimately ended up back with Diamond. Comics retailing increasingly became concerned with the growing importance of toys and other forms of merchandise in their retail product mix. What it meant to b a comic book retailer radically changed.

As the Executive Director of Image Comics and the President of McFarlane Toys was I an insider participant in the decision making process of some of these trends? Oh yeah, mea culpa. I tried hard to keep unpleasant situations as decent and straightforward as possible. I have no regrets about anything I did back then. But at the end of the day, for me, it was all work-made-for-hire.

But in the midst of all this up-and-down nuttiness, one thing stayed relatively stable. The sale of trade paperbacks. As the periodical business went on a crazy rollercoaster ride, trade paperback sales remained very strong. As we had hoped savvy comic book retailers increasingly learned to depend on the sales of evergreen stock. Sell one and replace it. Sell that one and replace it again. A good trade paperback never goes out of style or out of date.

And trade paperbacks have expanded out of the comic book marketplace into “real” bookstores. Our books are racked next to Japanese manga trades that are of a uniform look and size. Next to that manga projection of uniformity, our smattering of sizes and formats looks a bit ragtag. But, hey, we are there. And I think we shall stay there.

Now, riding shotgun to all of these developments was the home computer.
Followed by the Internet.
Everything changed with the Internet.

On the Internet, all things can be archived and catalogued. And in fact, letter columns, contests, and fan art have been reinvented on the Internet. Its astonishing how deeply involved in one's "community" a fan can become.
And rising up from the roots on the Internet, a new model has been emerging.
Where did it come from?
It has its roots in the black and white alternative comics of the ‘80s and ‘90s. And those roots came from the underground, counterculture comics of the late '60s and early '70s.

The new model also has roots springing from the mini-comics movement where small is beautiful and handcrafted objects are so much fun to behold and possess.

And yes, there are deep roots back into the Self Publishing Movement of the 1990s.

Today’s comics creator can say anything he or she wants, in any format, and retain ownership of it. And through judicious use of the Internet they can find enough people who are interested in their comics to make enough money to produce more comics. That was the heart of the Self Publishing Movement. Make enough money with your business to stay in business. And plow whatever profits you made into expanding the scope of your business by touring and advertising. And I see that specific spirit of independence thriving today.

And there are entirely new things going on too. Creators like Craig Thompson have ploughed new territory with the publication of long form graphic novels featuring all new material never serialized in a periodical format. And there seem to be thousands of online comics that aren’t intended to be viewed on paper. I think the potential of both of these formats have barely been touched so far. Amazing things are emerging from these arenas.

On the Internet, both comics creators and fans have the ability to converse directly without going through the labyrinth of the comics distribution and retail system. This generation of cartoonists has the ability to follow a model closer to the realm of music where bands don't really make so much money off of the content itself (the recorded material) but from touring revenues and licensing royalties

So today we have comics creators making a modest living from their works-on-paper or their comics online. But in addition to that, they also have revenue from self manufacturing all sorts of stuff: posters and prints, coffee mugs, T-shirts, plush dolls, tote bags and every other sort of merchandise one can imagine. And much of it is manufactured and distributed virtually on demand. Today’s creators can sell their artwork and books on personal websites, their goods on eBay and Etsy, and communicate with their fans on their blogs. Comic book creators have always had a close personal and economic bond with his or her cadre of most loyal followers; but nothing in the past has ever been so immediate!

Most of the people who are attempting to develop this model are relatively young. Pioneering is by and large a young person's game. When you take big risks, you hope you don't have that much to lose. But you don't stay young very long and your needs get more complicated as time flies.

That said, do I think that this is the trend of the future?
Yes, I do.
The general public is getting very accustomed to tailoring the goods and services in one's life to his or her needs. We are entering an era that will transition from mass-produced, mass-distributed retailer goods into to an era of direct personal fabrication. I am keenly interested in what effect the developments taking place in the personal fabrication world will have on comics publishing in the 21st century.

After spending eight years completely out of the comic book business in the toy business, and attending SPX for the first time in a decade, I’m convinced that most of the trends I've described above are already deeply rooted in today’s small press community. And expanding at an extraordinary rate.

I don't know when or where the big economic breakthrough will occur. Probably be sparked by the kids of tomorrow being influenced by today's young pioneer creators.

All I know is that I’m really excited to be reintroducing my own work, Beanworld, into this invigorating mix of creativity and technology.
Once again, it feels like the sky is the limit.
Maybe this time it really is.

Hey all! The cool cats over at Webcomics Weekly and Halfpixel asked me to sit in on their latest podcast and talk about coloring! I'm a fan of the show, so it was a bit nerve-inspiring, but I survived, and I hope they ask me back.

Click away to load up the file and listen!

Thanks to Scott Kurtz, Dave Kellett, Brad Guigar, and Kris Straub for the fun chat about comics!

Today's guest blogger is Larry Marder. Marder started his Beanworld experience in the early 80s with Eclipse Comics.  He was present at the summit in the late 80s that produced the Creator's Bill of Rights, and in 1993, tried his hand at self-publishing with Beanworld Press. Larry was a close friend during those years and we spent hours and hours talking about comics in hotel bars and restaurants. Larry has a way of analysing a situation and being able to see things very clearly; something that made obstacles seem less formidible – - at least to me. Larry was the go-to guy for a lot of us; me, Dave Sim, and Todd McFarlane to name a few.

We lost touch after he disappeared into the depths of the toy industry while he was President of McFarlane Toys. It had been years since we had a really good talk about comics. Last year at SPX, he showed up with a bunch of new Beanworld pages and a new vigor for the art form, hints and teases of which you can find at his Beanworld blog. In Part 1, Larry takes us up to the beginning of the movement in 1993. In Part 2, he talks about why it failed, the legacy of the self-publishers, and where we're all going from here…

Larry Marder Part 1: 

Jeff Smith has initiated a conversation with several veterans of the Self Publishing Movement of the 1990s.

The questions at hand are:
What, if any, is the lasting influence of the Self Publishing Movement of the 1990s? Did we actually accomplish anything? Do we have a legacy that influences today’s new comics creators? Did the retail model that we worked so hard to change, actually change? Good questions.
And here are some personal anecdotes before I get to any sort of answer.
Over the summer of 1975, while nurturing a backyard vegetable garden, I was hit by a thunderbolt of an idea for a fantasy world that I called the Beanworld. I knew that these stories would be told in the comics format but I didn’t believe that anyone might actually publish it. Underground comics had already collapsed from greed, rising paper costs, and drug paraphernalia laws. There was nothing on the horizon to replace it.

Big deal.
I didn’t care. I labored at my day job in the advertising business. I spent my nights and weekends working on my Beans. By 1980, I was writing and drawing finished comic book stories. And by then, a new form of publishing had emerged from the ashes of the underground comics–alternative genre comics very unlike the super hero fare of Marvel and DC.

These new comics were Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest and Dave Sim’s Cerebus. I first heard about these “ground-level” comics in the fan press. I had little trouble finding copies in the comic book shops of my Chicago neighborhood. These self-published titles were distributed through the same companies that moved Marvel and DC comics into the emerging comic book store marketplace.

Pretty soon, two new trends were unfolding. Cerebus publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim began issuing other titles such as Journey, Normalman, Neil the Horse, Flaming Carrot, and Ms Tree. ElfQuest publisher WaRP Press offered A Distant Soil, Myth and Adventures, Fantagraphics, previously only known as the publisher of The Comics Journal and Amazing Heroes, tossed their hat into the ring with the Hernandez Brothers' Love & Rockets. These black and white comics vigorously explored a vast array of genres.

Simultaneously, there was a new sensibility taking root and growing within the mainstream publishers, starting with Frank Miller's run as a writer/artist on Daredevil and his revisionist take on Batman in The Dark Knight Returns. Virtually at the same time, Alan Moore's reboot of Swamp Thing followed by Watchmen, had everyone’s attention, no matter what corner of comic book industry one was working in.

Something akin to the alternative comics spirit was bursting forth from new independent publishing companies. Rocketeer and Groo at Pacific Comics, American Flagg, Mars, and Grimjack at First Comics. Grendel at Comico. Nexus and Badger at Capital City. And I entered the business when Beanworld joined Zot!, and Scout at Eclipse Comics,

"Comics have grown up," we all told ourselves. "The sky is the limit!"
Well, it didn’t happen.

The success of the alternative and independent comics led to an incredible arc of greed and lunacy that is remembered as the Great Black and White Boom and Bust. Whole histories can be written about why it happened.
Doesn't matter anymore though.
 
The effect was that everyone working in alternatives was hurt, wounded, or eliminated in the awful aftermath.

The next few years were tough for all of us working in non-traditional comics. As Max Alan Collins, during his Ms Tree run, once said to me, “We are independent because we have no alternative.”

In 1988, Dave Sim decided to compile the entire High Society story into one fat volume. The format was so thick this it quickly became known as the “phone book.”. Dave announced that his intent was to sell High Society directly to Cerebus fans through mail order and not offer it through the distribution/retail chain.

The thought that a story arc consisting of several dozen issues of a comic could be sold in one package at a hefty price was a big new concept. The idea that the book would stay in print in perpetuity was an even bolder idea. The information that this new part of the business would be completely denied to distributors and retailers was simply put, revolutionary.

The particulars of how this all shook out is a story in and of itself, but, it triggered a chain of events that led to the Creators’ Rights Summit Conference. I was one of the creators who attended the two day event in Northampton, MA.

Scott McCloud brought a document he’d drafted that became the Creator's Bill of Rights. It was edited and ratified by the comics creators there. We had our eyes on the future. We knew that in order for the business of the comic book art form to prosper, it had to reform its Depression-era way of conducting business. Two decades later, it is hard to remember how radical a document this was for its time. Most of the rights claimed in the document are now standard business practices. But the idea that a creator should show a contract to a lawyer before signing it was considered a dangerous notion at the time by publishers of all stripes.
 
Another incredibly important event that occurred in the late ‘80s was distribution growth and consolidation spasms. Many distributors either went out of business or were gobbled up by aggressive competitors. By 1988, instead of a patchwork of interlinking and overlapping small regional distributors, there were now two powerful national distributors. Sure there were still reliable regional distributors, but they were playing minor league ball now.

In the early ‘90s I went into the retail end of the business when I became Marketing Director of a chain of popular culture stores in Chicagoland called Moondog's. I was shocked to recognize how little knowledge the individual links of the business chain had of each other needs.

They way I perceived it was:
Creators understood publishers.
Publishers understood creators and distributors.
Distributors understood publishers and retailers.
Retailers understood distributors and consumers aka fans.

Creators and fans always understood each other—they were, in fact, two sides of the same coin. But in between the people-who-created-comics and the fans-that-read-comics were all these business people with an incredibly limited understanding of the other people they were thoroughly dependant upon.
Am I simplifying here?
Not really.

It was during this phase of my life that I met Jeff Smith in the early '90s. He had a handful of issues of Bone under his belt and a “gosh-wow” attitude that was quite refreshing to us, the survivors of the '80s cataclysms.

Jeff joined us in the loose confederation of self-published creators that began hanging out together at conventions. Instead of spending convention nights lying to each other about how much money we had made that day; we compared notes about how we believed the money flowed through the comic industry.

It was a heady time. We knew we were onto something, but we were primarily focused on the business model of that time–creating and distributing 32 page comic books; the periodical pamphlets that were the backbone of the industry.

But we also spent a lot of time dreaming about the future of the trade paperback as a new staple of making our living. We started to envision a time when our trades would always be in print. Our books would always be available for a retailer to restock the shelves; evergreen stock that never goes out of season or fashion.

End of Part 1

Steve just finished up the color work for Treasure Hunters, the penultimate book in the new color series from Scholastic/Graphix, and I wanted to share a couple of the panels. Nice job, Steve. You nailed these!

Bone 8: Treasure Hunters will go on sale in August. 

And if you're in New York tomorrow, don't forget to come to Symphony Space, Feb 10 @1pm. I'll be taking part in their childrens book program with moderator Matthew Cody.  

Today's guest blog is by web comics artist Joshua Smeaton. He has two books available for downloading at his website. It's a new model of do-it-yourselfing. We'll be hearing more from this group of artists in the weeks ahead. I also want to thank Joshua for highlighting Sergio's pivotal role in creator owned comics; the appearance of Groo was a watershed moment in comics…

Joshua Smeaton:

Growing up my idol was Sergio Aragones. I was a huge Groo fan. Groo & Sergio are what got me into comics. Part of the appeal (though I don't think I registered it at the time) was that Groo was different than everything else. And I don't just mean that it wasn't a super hero book. Groo was creator owned. You can't think of Groo with out thinking of Sergio Aragones. They're inseparable.

You hear the words "creator owned" and it's not a big deal today.
Everyone has some creator owned project going. But back when Sergio came up with Groo it was a big deal. Sergio Aragones, though not a self-publisher is a true independent.

To me independence is what self-publishing is all about. Free from the influence, guidance, or control of others. I doubt most people get into self-publishing because they think it would be fun to put out a book on their own.

There are a lot of reasons to self-publish but I think most of them can come down to not wanting to be just another cog in the machine. Self expression. The thought that "These are my ideas, this represents me and no one else and I want to share that."

It's also fairly masochistic. Slaving away for ages on something that you pray you'll receive validation for. And when you don't you continue at it anyway. I'm a little embarrassed to admit I've yet to cover the cost of a show I've exhibited at. But each show I do a little better and I always enjoy being there and making connections.

I do a web comic called "Haunted." It's about a group of kids that get trapped in a mansion haunted by a magical ghost and his pet baboon. I bring print copies to sell at conventions. But I put it online for free because I want to share it with as many people as possible.

I work ridiculous hours on it. I spend a lot more time working on that than I do my "real" job. And I'm certainly not making money off of it. Not yet anyway. So why bother? I guess because I believe in it. And that's a round about way of believing in myself. Kind of hippy-dippy I guess but at least I
like my publisher.