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You ever see the Artist Alley table for someone like Scott Snyder or Gail Simone? The folks who are pretty big in the industry and thus draw long lines of fans? Their table displays are almost literally non-existent. They often don't bring any banners or posters, and rely on the convention-printed name tag sitting on the front of the table for identification. They don't bring books to sell. An artist may have a portfolio of original art with them, sitting out on the table, but beyond that, their table display often isn't much more than a few different Sharpies they brought to sign books with.

So I was a little surprised when I caught this tweet from Scottie Young over the weekend...
I dug around a bit and found this picture of Young's C2E2 table from 2016...
You can't see everything, obviously, but he's clearly gone to enough effort to erect a banner display behind him. Now I'm sure he'd be the first to admit it's not a top-of-the-line presentation, but this is also someone's who's got a handsome list of credits at Marvel and DC, including several books around Guardians of the Galaxy. I haven't seen him with a line quite as long as Simone's, but he's still a name talent with a significant fan base.

My initial thoughts run along the lines of: the greater your name, the less you need to advertise it. If you're trying to sell your independent comic no one's ever heard of, just having a bare table with copies of your book makes you look un-professional. Like you just threw something together. Whereas, if you've got a large fanbase, you can get away with exactly that because it's assumed you're so busy working to create great content that you can be forgiven for not paying any attention to marketing.

But then have you ever seen someone like Neal Adams or Jim Steranko at a convention? They typically get large booths (not just an Artist Alley table) and it's usually made very clear who's there. While they're not the new "hot" talent, these are guys who don't need to advertise.

So I think we can all agree that, when you're starting out, it makes sense to have banners and displays and such to get your name out there. But at what point does the script flip and you become well known enough that you don't need to do that? And at what point does the script flip again and you do?

I don't have any answers here, but it's another way to consider how what worked for you in the past may not work for you now, and neither may work for you in the future.
Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: On Business: Business Cards
http://ift.tt/2pnm9Mx

Kleefeld on Comics: On History: '90s Nostaglia
http://ift.tt/2qzOzAK

Kleefeld on Comics: Weekly Comics Links
http://ift.tt/2qEHmPN

FreakSugar: Webcomics Wednesday: Eisner Noms!
http://ift.tt/2qEMjbC

Kleefeld on Comics: On -isms: Stories vs Ethics
http://ift.tt/2pJAcdV

Kleefeld on Comics: On Strips: Shelly Mayer
http://ift.tt/2qHSEDY
Sheldon "Shelly" Mayer is a well-known name in the comic book industry. He was one of Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson's earliest employees at the company that would later be known as DC Comics, and is often credited with "discovering" the Superman sample strips that eventually led to Action Comics #1. He would also go on to oversee the creation of the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, and others, and he himself created Red Tornado (the first female superhero) and Sugar & Spike taking on the writing and drawing duties for those characters. When his eyesight started failing enough to keep him from drawing, he continued writing, working on titles like House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and Forbiden Tales of Dark Mansion as well as co-creating Black Orchid. He eventually passed away in 1991.

So if Mayer spent his entire career working for DC Comics, why is he the subject of my "On Strips" feature?

Because just before finding Superman and joining DC, he spent about five months working as a nationally syndicated cartoonist.

George Storm created the comic strip Bobby Thatcher in 1927. The titular character was a 15-year-old orphan who ran away from an abusive guardian, leading to a decade's worth of adventures. It was an adventure strip not dissimilar to Little Orphan Annie but without a Daddy Warbucks character to have as a safety net for the hero. Think: a slightly younger Tintin.

The strip was fairly well-received, weathering the Great Depression with seemingly little difficulty. That said, the character wasn't exactly a chart-topper, as evidenced that he was never picked up for other media, the way Annie, Flash Gordon, and other adventure heroes were.

For reasons I can't seem to uncover, Storm left the strip in mid-1937. As he went on to live until 1976, it doesn't seem to have been a health issue. He worked for DC, Dell, and other comic book publishers throughout much of the 1940s, so there doesn't sound like he had any issues with his drawing ability, either physically or emotionally. I did come across a quote from Mayer online suggesting that Storm had gotten tired of the drudgery of a daily strip and Mayer had been largely ghosting the strip for several months anyway. (Although the site where I found that doesn't cite a source.) But regardless, Storm left the Bobby Thatcher and it was Mayer who kept the story going.

Mayer's time on the strip is believed to be from June 7 until October 16, 1937. The strips had simply been numbered sequentially for most of it's run, with a switch to actually dating them on June 7, suggesting that's when Mayer took over. The aforementioned site also seems to suggest that Storm was still doing the basic storytelling, perhaps doing pencils or rough layouts, with Mayer doing at least the inking if not a majority of the illustration. This also seems to be at the behest of the McClure Syndicate, who distributed the strip, as indicated by their telling Mayer to finish inking the last two weeks of strips before it would be cancelled.

Sadly, I can't seem to find a copy of one of Mayer's strips that isn't behind a pay wall. So, just to show an example of the strip in general, here's one from early in Storm's run.
The style didn't seem to evolve much over the life of the strip from what I've seen, and I would presume Mayer tried to mimic the same basic style when he was ghosting (and later taking more direct control over) the strip.

But it's an interesting footnote to Mayer's long career in comics that one of his earliest jobs was still working on a nationally syndicated strip. And it says much to Mayer's influence on the medium that he did so much other work later that Bobby Thatcher is scarcely ever even mentioned!
Do you recall a couple years back when Rat Queens artist Roc Upchurch was arrested for beating his wife? Writer Kurtis Wiebe removed him from the title and brought in Tess Fowler, who readers seemed to eagerly embrace. However, Wiebe had apparently been going behind Fowler's back to try to get Upchurch back on the title, and Fowler ultimately left, disgusted with the whole situation. The comic went on hiatus at that point in mid-2016, and finally returned in March, this time with artist Owen Gieni and no mention of Upchurch.

With the sales numbers of the new issue in (thanks to John Jackson Miller) I thought it might be interesting to look at the sales numbers over the course of the entire series...
You can see the debut started north of 20,000 -- respectable for the first issue of an unknown IP -- and then dropped to the mid-to-low 10,000 range with the second issue, as would be expected as a more-or-less typical first-to-second-issue dropoff. There's then a gradual decline for a few months before word of mouth seemed to start driving sales up towards 15,000.

The first red line then marks when the Upchurch news broke in early November 2014. Sales remained flat over the next two issues, presumably because Wiebe did note fairly soon after (certainly before the next issue came out) that Upchurch was off the series. The second red line then separates the Upchurch-drawn issues and the Fowler-drawn ones. You see the standard issue-to-issue decline with Fowler, with the last data point jumping to its highest with a new Gieni-drawn #1.

Now it appears Upchurch's initial arrest halted the upward trend the series was on. But none of the subsequent drama seems to have impacted sales at all. It's certainly possible all those people who stood in solidarity with Fowler and her poor treatment did indeed drop the title, and the increase are all completely new readers.

Here's the same chart for the first volume of the trade paperback...
There's a different dynamic here than individual issues. In the first place, because it's the same book, the month-to-month sales are all different people rather than the returning readers with the single issues sales. Also, the first TPB is drawn only by Upchurch. There is a drop after his arrest, but ultimately remains relatively level (the second volume was released during this period); there in fact seems to be a more sustained drop on Volume 1 sales after Fowler started on the single issues, even though she had nothing to do with this volume. Coincidence?

It seems, then, that blatant, obvious, and outwardly illegal misogyny does have an impact on immediate sales, but not long term. Nor does the more subtle dismissiveness of going behind a female creator's back seem to have any impact at all. My reading of this is cynical. I see this as readers responding to the Upchurch's arrest, but not the reason he was arrested.

If someone has better reasoning that doesn't come across as almost anti-feminist, I'd love to hear it!
Ben Saunders
While I was traversing the floor at C2E2, I caught sight of a booth for Guardian Knight Comics. Specifically, the art for something called "Gears & Bones" caught my attention. It had kind of a steampunk vibe with a large anthropomorphic rabbit. I'd never heard of the comic and/or the publisher before, so I stopped by.

The guy I talked to started by asking what types of comics I was into, noting that they had comics from several different genres. He then went into a reasonably solid, well-rehearsed sales pitch for Moon Streak and then Gears & Bones. I picked up the first two issues of the former and the TPB of the latter. What struck me as interesting, though, was that in pitching both titles, he made repeated reference to the Image comics of the 1990s, and that was such an awesome time that all the creators involved really wanted to invoke that feeling. Flipping through the books as he was talking, I could see some artistic stylings that did harken back to Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee from that period. Not outright mimicry or anything, but there was a similar visual sensibility. (I haven't read the books yet, so I can't comment on how good they actually are.)

I also picked up a series called Weird Weird West, which is kind of like the David Carradine Kung Fu TV series except the lead character is a robot ninja with a set of tentacles in place of one of his arms. Author William Haun noted that he was inspired by the Eastman/Laid version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While technically, that was a book that first came out in the 1980s, I found it more reminiscent of Eastman and Laird's later work on the title from 1992-1993.

Having grown up more on comics from the '70s and '80s, it would be easy for me to snark on "crap" from the '90s. How the decades prior were much more furtive creatively speaking, and the '90s were all leather jackets, pouches, and being "extreme." But you know, there was actually material from that period that I enjoyed. Much of it is imperfect, but so is the material from the '80s. And '70s. And '60s. And so on. I've noted repeatedly that I don't care for nostalgia. So my complaint (for lack of a better word) is that it's strange to me to see people deliberately trying to go back and recreate old material because that's what they enjoyed when they were a kid.

All art is a product of its time, and we respond to it in the context of the time we experience it. Which is why some works grow or lessen in relevancy -- they might speak to issues that became insignificant or unnoticed shortly after the work's creation, only to see those same issues rise to the fore again years later. I heard a piece on NPR just last night about Neil Gaiman's surprise at how the American Gods TV show seems to have a political edge to it when there was nothing of the sort when he first wrote it a decade and a half ago -- the political climate has changed sufficiently that immigration is a hot topic now.

But because art is a product of its time means that what spoke to readers in the 1990s touched them, in part, because it was the 1990s. And while some elements of that era are still relevant today, certainly not all of them are. Which means trying to repeat the reactions and feelings that came from 1990s' art won't be successful. At least, not in the way that something may have been in the '90s. Because the context is different.

Like I said, I haven't read the Guardian Knight books yet -- they might be absolutely brilliant, and speak to me here in 2017 in a way that nothing else has. But it's still strikes me as a challenging way to approach storytelling at best, and an inherently self-defeating approach at worst. Best of luck to anyone looking to recreate the feeling they got from reading Image books in the 1990s, but it's not a direction that makes much sense to me.
I'm sorting through and cleaning up some of the materials I picked up and C2E2 a week and a bit ago, and in addition to the comics and graphic novels and prints, I wound up with a number of business cards. I found a few others from previous shows that never got filed away for some reason and, in looking at them all at once, had a few thoughts.

The business card is, of course, a time-honored tradition going back at least a century as a quick and easy means to give your contact information to somebody else. The specifics of business cards have varied over the years, but the same basic concept applies. But in an age where we're bombarded by information of all sorts all day -- particularly in a spectacle-type setting like a comic convention -- I think there are some things that make more sense to do than others. I thought I might fire off a few ideas here based on what I'm seeing. (Most of these fall under the "Don't do this" category, so I won't actually name names or provide scans of them or anything.)

I have one here that lists the artist's name, his website, and a quote about geniuses. On the back is his logo. Problem 1: muddy coloring. He's got three color bands (magenta, purple, and dark blue) with simple black text on top of it. But the black text on the dark blue background is almost illegible. Granted, it's only this quote, but you really don't know if it's useful information or not until you strain your eyes trying to read it. Problem 2: No direct contact. I can understand not wanting to include a phone number or address, but there's no email either. The only way you can contact him on the card. Yes, it's got his website and there's a contact form there. There are far too many steps to get in touch with him. Problem 3: No art. Despite citing himself as an artist on the card, there's no art. I have no clue what his style might be without going to the site. A website is indeed a critical component of doing business with anyone these days, and you should keep contact info there as well as art samples (if you're an artist), but a business card is about relaying contact information, not coercing me into an online quest.

This next card does address all of the above problems. One side of the card is devoted to her information (name, email, DeviantArt & Tumblr URLs) and the flip side is devoted to her comic with good sample art and the URL of the comic itself. I don't know that there's anything wrong here per se, although I do wonder about listing three websites on one card. And that two of them aren't her own domain gives me pause. Also, if you DO have your own domain, why would you provide a Gmail address instead of one based off your domain? I'd think that would be better marketing, as you're reinforcing the comics' URL.

This next one isn't actually a card, but a quarter of a sheet of paper. Name, email, website, and art sample. But it's clearly a piece of card stock ran through a copier and chopped into quarters. There are some people who try to do something fancy with the specific dimensions of their card so it stands out from all the others that are the more standard 3.5" x 2" layout, and I can respect that, but a quarter of a sheet of paper seems lazy. We're all so familiar with the size of typing paper that a quarter of it is almost immediately recognizable as such. So it looks like you dashed these off at your hotel on your way out the door this morning. Which, I suppose, is better than nothing if you accidentally left your real business cards at home, but it's not a great look.

I will highlight the winner of business cards from what I picked up was Ryan Fisher. The front of his card has his name, email, website, and an art sample -- specifically, the art from the cover of his latest book. The back of his card is a floorplan of C2E2's Artist Alley with his location highlighted; he had this batch of cards specifically printed up for this show. That's obviously an additional expense and wouldn't make sense for every show he might do, but for something as large as C2E2, that's not a bad idea. It's easy to get lost and/or turned around in Artist Alley, even if you just run to the end of the aisle to use the ATM (conveniently also noted on his map) so he's making sure you can find your way back to his table if you had any interest in his material. The last I checked, I think Vistaprint was doing 500 cards for $25 so it's not an unwieldy cost and if that meant he sold just one more book, he'd at least break even on them.

That's certainly not a comprehensive list of DOs and DON'Ts but I noticed these, like I said, with some of the cards I recently picked up. Just some things to consider when putting together materials for your next show.