HISTORY: Candle Light Presents #1
Back in October of 1997, Candle Light Press put out CANDLE LIGHT PRESENTS. It was a convention special for that year's MID-OHIO CON. We printed it using Harold Bucholz's short-run printing service. There's no cover price, but I recall it went for three or so dollars. It had a flip cover, alternating images from NIGHTCRAWLERS by Michael Ayers and Will Grant and NIGHT ANGEL by myself and Jeremy Smith. We made fifty of them and sold most of them off since. 
Each flip cover had an intro essay, one by Michael Ayers, the other mine. Reading them is a pretty interesting trip back to the early days of our efforts making comics. Here's Mike:
A Writer In ASea of Artists
I have a confession to make. I'm a closet artist. I occasionally act on the primitive impulse to create visual art. Boy, I thought that was going to be so much harder than it was. But I feel so much better now. Free. Why do I bring this up? Because I, like John, am...a writer. A comic book writer.
John and I have come to the realization that comic conventions are not created as a haven for writers, but for artists. They're the ones walking around with their little black portfolios spread out on tables talking about anatomy and proportion. Nobody gives a rat's ass about writers. It's a helluva lot harder to put a script into a publisher's hand and not get a look like "Say, I'm too busy to read it right now, but until I get to it I'll put it in this garbage can for safekeeping. Okay?" And can you blame them? Comic book writers tend to be like mufflers: sure, they're nice to have if you have the money, but we'll just turn the radio up otherwise. Hey, I'll bet the artist could write the story! Now it worked beautifully for Miller and even more so for Spiegelman, by McFarlane? Let's not get silly. It's a dilemma for unknown comic writers to be so ignored, when people like Steven Seagle are hidden somewhere over in "artists' alley".
It's even tougher to get respect from other writers when you write comics, especially in a college town renowned for its creative writing program. Everybody's sitting around, sipping cappuccino, sporting goatees and discussing oh, I don't know, Doctor Faustus as if it were better than something Marlowe crapped onto a piece of paper one day, which I have yet to be convinced of. You write...comics? Oh. You mean...likeGarfield
No. Not likeGarfield
Artists and writers should gravitate toward one another more often, as they do in comics. We aren't doctors or something. We aren't saving lives, or teaching children, or splitting the atom. We create because we have something inside us that wants to make life worth living. It sounds trite, but it takes the edge off working and going to school all damn week if I can go seeL.A.
Oh yes. Shades and Angels. The contribution from John and Jeremy is as much about making the world a better place as it is anything else. I try not to pick my comics apart, but hey, this is an introduction. Yes, the Night Angel chooses to pick up a sword and walk around and whap people into doing the right thing. The story "Absence" is a good example. What's he trying to do? Save a kid. I can't see the Shade doing that. The Shade is more interested in breaking them so they can't do the wrong thing again. And who's to say that one is right? The writer, I suppose, though I suspect John has less control over what they do than one might think. Every character in Shades and Angels has a strong will. From the vigilantes to the police detectives, to the greasy criminal minds, they make their decisions and they stand by them. Each with a different philosophy, they all get into the big boxing ring of life at the same time, slugging it out with one another while we wait to see who'll be left standing at the end. Place your bets.
And here's mine:
I hate self-publishing. I hate being the bearer of bad news ("late again"). I hate having to deal with loose cannons. I hate counting the leftover issues like strands of saffron, careful lest no wind blow. I hate dealing with oily "entrepreneurs" who promise one thing and deliver another. I hate "late".
"Late" means telling everyone you're sorry, nothing to worry about, it's the printer/shipper/malevolent eye of God slowing us up. Next week. Really. You duck your head a bit in your local comics store, that no-one catch your eye and ask "Hey, what's up with that project you were working on?" Last week they knew the day it was coming out; you're in development hell in a matter of a week.
The printer who sat on your finished books for a week before you called and raised holy hell to get them sent out calls to solemnly let you know that it's too late for them to print your next issue, blissfully unaware that you wouldn't trust them with your good wishes and fond hopes, much less anything tangible you needed back in two or three weeks time. I hate that feeling.
This is, of course, exactly what's so great about self-publishing.
Learning is never easy, and there are no guides to business for such an arcane and deliberately murky thing as comics publishing. There are books, but they point the easier way, toward work-for-hire. Day by day, that's a much easier thing. Some of the comics creators from two decades ago are astonished that anybody could be so stupid or so suicidal as to bankroll their own comic. In their time, it was. Now? Ehhhh.
You have to go out and do the thing; get the money, make your comic, and do it. Don't wait to be asked. Not famous yet? Keep drawing and writing. Don't let up. Like Sisyphus, we push our rocks up the hill of virtue, exerting until...until...well, you don't stop. You can stop; you're not trapped. If you do become famous enough, you can stop pushing and draw tiny heads and ankles, punch your clock and live your creative life in some other way; some have.
But before you start picking accessories for your action-figure line, you have to write, draw, publish and distribute this damn thing.
Mike and Will did it. I know them; yesterday they were these guys I knew, and today, they have a book, an actual comic book. It does change things. Even the person at the remotest possible point from the idea of comics perks up at the sight of the real deal in your hand. Suddenly, it is an accomplishment.
About a day later you flip through PREVIEWS and see how many other people did it this month, too. With ten dollar nude covers, yet. That'll depress you fast. You'll start looking for places to draw tits if you don't start taking the long view.
A life well-lived has stages, its joys and difficulties; comic creating is like that as well. Mainstream comics on the whole do not bear the imprimatur of the creators' souls; independent comics can be fascinatingly personal, utterly unique in their execution. Like the films not showing at your local mall, they give something more, something that isn't guaranteed to sell 200K a month ["No, no, here's the idea. He's strong, he's polite, he flies and he dies and he has a wardrobe change occasionally." "You REBEL!"]. Hey, we'd all like to get famous, rich and pretty at this; and you do this either by going for the tastes that are out there, or you do it by cultivating a smaller audience and helping it grow. A personal statement makes this so. Every person is a collection of stories, and as we grow to know a person, we learn more about a life utterly separate from our own. We grow as a result. The tits-on-the-cover audience will get no bigger, I assure you.
But I bet the audience for NIGHTCRAWLERS gets bigger. There's fireworks in here. Mike was probably expecting me to do an analysis of the story or the characters or something, but when it all comes down to it, literary theories, reader/response theory, all of that is just people trying to tell you how to enjoy a book. I don't have to tell you how to enjoy NIGHTCRAWLERS. Get started.
Included were NIGHTCRAWLERS #1, NIGHT ANGEL #1, the first ZOO FORCE story ("Enforcers" from ED #1), and the original VOX POPULI text and illo story from NIGHT ANGEL #1. It's a beefy book, and it darn near vibrates with the effort it took to produce.
--John
Each flip cover had an intro essay, one by Michael Ayers, the other mine. Reading them is a pretty interesting trip back to the early days of our efforts making comics. Here's Mike:A Writer In A
I have a confession to make. I'm a closet artist. I occasionally act on the primitive impulse to create visual art. Boy, I thought that was going to be so much harder than it was. But I feel so much better now. Free. Why do I bring this up? Because I, like John, am...a writer. A comic book writer.
John and I have come to the realization that comic conventions are not created as a haven for writers, but for artists. They're the ones walking around with their little black portfolios spread out on tables talking about anatomy and proportion. Nobody gives a rat's ass about writers. It's a helluva lot harder to put a script into a publisher's hand and not get a look like "Say, I'm too busy to read it right now, but until I get to it I'll put it in this garbage can for safekeeping. Okay?" And can you blame them? Comic book writers tend to be like mufflers: sure, they're nice to have if you have the money, but we'll just turn the radio up otherwise. Hey, I'll bet the artist could write the story! Now it worked beautifully for Miller and even more so for Spiegelman, by McFarlane? Let's not get silly. It's a dilemma for unknown comic writers to be so ignored, when people like Steven Seagle are hidden somewhere over in "artists' alley".
It's even tougher to get respect from other writers when you write comics, especially in a college town renowned for its creative writing program. Everybody's sitting around, sipping cappuccino, sporting goatees and discussing oh, I don't know, Doctor Faustus as if it were better than something Marlowe crapped onto a piece of paper one day, which I have yet to be convinced of. You write...comics? Oh. You mean...like
No. Not like
Artists and writers should gravitate toward one another more often, as they do in comics. We aren't doctors or something. We aren't saving lives, or teaching children, or splitting the atom. We create because we have something inside us that wants to make life worth living. It sounds trite, but it takes the edge off working and going to school all damn week if I can go see
Oh yes. Shades and Angels. The contribution from John and Jeremy is as much about making the world a better place as it is anything else. I try not to pick my comics apart, but hey, this is an introduction. Yes, the Night Angel chooses to pick up a sword and walk around and whap people into doing the right thing. The story "Absence" is a good example. What's he trying to do? Save a kid. I can't see the Shade doing that. The Shade is more interested in breaking them so they can't do the wrong thing again. And who's to say that one is right? The writer, I suppose, though I suspect John has less control over what they do than one might think. Every character in Shades and Angels has a strong will. From the vigilantes to the police detectives, to the greasy criminal minds, they make their decisions and they stand by them. Each with a different philosophy, they all get into the big boxing ring of life at the same time, slugging it out with one another while we wait to see who'll be left standing at the end. Place your bets.
And here's mine:
I hate self-publishing. I hate being the bearer of bad news ("late again"). I hate having to deal with loose cannons. I hate counting the leftover issues like strands of saffron, careful lest no wind blow. I hate dealing with oily "entrepreneurs" who promise one thing and deliver another. I hate "late".
"Late" means telling everyone you're sorry, nothing to worry about, it's the printer/shipper/malevolent eye of God slowing us up. Next week. Really. You duck your head a bit in your local comics store, that no-one catch your eye and ask "Hey, what's up with that project you were working on?" Last week they knew the day it was coming out; you're in development hell in a matter of a week.
The printer who sat on your finished books for a week before you called and raised holy hell to get them sent out calls to solemnly let you know that it's too late for them to print your next issue, blissfully unaware that you wouldn't trust them with your good wishes and fond hopes, much less anything tangible you needed back in two or three weeks time. I hate that feeling.
This is, of course, exactly what's so great about self-publishing.
Learning is never easy, and there are no guides to business for such an arcane and deliberately murky thing as comics publishing. There are books, but they point the easier way, toward work-for-hire. Day by day, that's a much easier thing. Some of the comics creators from two decades ago are astonished that anybody could be so stupid or so suicidal as to bankroll their own comic. In their time, it was. Now? Ehhhh.
You have to go out and do the thing; get the money, make your comic, and do it. Don't wait to be asked. Not famous yet? Keep drawing and writing. Don't let up. Like Sisyphus, we push our rocks up the hill of virtue, exerting until...until...well, you don't stop. You can stop; you're not trapped. If you do become famous enough, you can stop pushing and draw tiny heads and ankles, punch your clock and live your creative life in some other way; some have.
But before you start picking accessories for your action-figure line, you have to write, draw, publish and distribute this damn thing.
Mike and Will did it. I know them; yesterday they were these guys I knew, and today, they have a book, an actual comic book. It does change things. Even the person at the remotest possible point from the idea of comics perks up at the sight of the real deal in your hand. Suddenly, it is an accomplishment.
About a day later you flip through PREVIEWS and see how many other people did it this month, too. With ten dollar nude covers, yet. That'll depress you fast. You'll start looking for places to draw tits if you don't start taking the long view.
A life well-lived has stages, its joys and difficulties; comic creating is like that as well. Mainstream comics on the whole do not bear the imprimatur of the creators' souls; independent comics can be fascinatingly personal, utterly unique in their execution. Like the films not showing at your local mall, they give something more, something that isn't guaranteed to sell 200K a month ["No, no, here's the idea. He's strong, he's polite, he flies and he dies and he has a wardrobe change occasionally." "You REBEL!"]. Hey, we'd all like to get famous, rich and pretty at this; and you do this either by going for the tastes that are out there, or you do it by cultivating a smaller audience and helping it grow. A personal statement makes this so. Every person is a collection of stories, and as we grow to know a person, we learn more about a life utterly separate from our own. We grow as a result. The tits-on-the-cover audience will get no bigger, I assure you.
But I bet the audience for NIGHTCRAWLERS gets bigger. There's fireworks in here. Mike was probably expecting me to do an analysis of the story or the characters or something, but when it all comes down to it, literary theories, reader/response theory, all of that is just people trying to tell you how to enjoy a book. I don't have to tell you how to enjoy NIGHTCRAWLERS. Get started.
Included were NIGHTCRAWLERS #1, NIGHT ANGEL #1, the first ZOO FORCE story ("Enforcers" from ED #1), and the original VOX POPULI text and illo story from NIGHT ANGEL #1. It's a beefy book, and it darn near vibrates with the effort it took to produce.
--John
posted by John Ira Thomas at
3:42 PM
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