SOLD OUT Part 6 by John Hebert (the conclusion)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

‘Twas the day before Hallowe’en ’86, and I’d finally finished what was to be my first comic book art assignment and was on the way to deliver the pages to the printer. The girlfriend and I were in my trusty Camaro, speeding along the NY State Thruway toward the printer in Gloversville with the bundle o’ funnybook art nestled in the back seat whilst bad 80’s tunes (then again, was there any other kind of 80’s tune?) blared from the in-dash Delco. It was pretty darned cold that afternoon, but I kept the heater off to keep me uncomfortable and maintain what little edge I had left as the last thing I needed was to fall asleep at the wheel – I’d been up so long that I was ready to drop and I still had miles to go before sleep.

We alternated between exhausted whimsy and dead silence as we drove on, the whole project had been electrifying yet draining and once we’d completed what we assumed to be the final stretch, we were eager for a return to normalcy, never guessing that all things normal were no longer an option in the life I’d chosen. We hopped off of the Thruway and hit the county roads, passing fields, barns, silos, livestock and some beautiful old farmhouses, the kind of which I had always held a grudging yen for, then, suddenly, it came to me – the entire area looked like the farm town in that awful “Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch” where they manufactured the possessed fright masks. Now maybe it was just a combination of exhaustion, the season and the late night cable reruns that had kept me company at my drawing board talking, but the fact that the town not only looked so similar and was virtually deserted gave me a major case of the creeps (much like many of the editors I would later work with!)

We plodded on, finally pulling up to the printing company – a very basic, nondescript brick and block building that also functioned as a newspaper office – the freelance printing had been a secondary income, utilizing and minimizing the down times between editions, but turning a nice and not-so-little profit for the company as I was later told. We were welcomed by the manager/editor/traffic manager who whisked us inside and gave us the tour of the place, as I’d earlier inferred, it WAS very basic, yet it was also quite impressive in the volume and quality of work produced there. Skulan really had found a true diamond in the rough for his printing needs. We laid out the pages on a composing table and went over everything, stressing certain things we needed and doing a couple of last, last minute corrections that even Tom and Raj hadn’t caught and took in the almost erotic experience of viewing my…very…first…printed…COVER WORK. Since we’d missed the initial, scheduled print run, the company had run all of the covers to avoid idle presses and a few of them were sitting around on desks, in boxes and trashcans. To this day, I regret that I didn’t grab some of the “rough cuts” that were gracing the previously mentioned wastepaper baskets as even flawed, those covers would have looked so cool pinned up all over the walls in my studio and rooms, but, c’est la vie. I wanted to eat and answer the more and more desperate call of Morpheus which I was finding more and more difficult to ignore.

We thanked the manager and left, stopping at a Burger King and filling up on cholesterol for the long drive home. As we ate, I stared across the road at what must have been the world’s smallest Pontiac dealership – basically the size of a gas station, with only 4 or 5 new cars splayed about their meager lot. I respected the quaint, bygone era nature of the area, but decided then and there that “Mayberry” probably wasn’t for me and that when the time came, I’d probably be NYC bound. The girlfriend and I talked about it as we jumped into the Camaro and headed back east, alternating between moments of giddiness at the prospects of being a real, honest-to-goodness working commercial artist, possibly living in the city, and then shifting back to melancholy at the less positive prospects it conjured.

The relationship had been increasingly more strained since I’d taken on the project, especially in the last couple of weeks when we’d bearded the dreaded deadline doom and now, for the first time, as I drove on I really began to wonder where we were going and if it might end up being “me” rather than “we”. She had another year of school left to complete, we’d all heard the stories and seen the effects of separation on relationships. I know what I was running over and over during those awkward silent moments on the interstate that day, and I think she must’ve been thinking about the same thing- either that or she was just visualizing a cow and pig wearing ballroom attire and dancing to “Turkey in The Straw”, it was so hard to read her.

We made it back to Albany, I said my goodbyes as I dropped her at her house, promising to call later on after some much needed shuteye and headed back toward Stately Hebert Manor with the window open and the stereo cranked to keep me awake and prevent me from thinking too much(it almost made me agree with a couple of Reagan’s policies…for a minute) as dusk began to settle. 10 minutes after swinging into my driveway, I had the blinds drawn and was profoundly out cold, having left a wakeup call for 1988 and grinning at the possibilities my future might hold as I dropped off.

Then my Mom came home. I’d only been asleep for around a half hour when she knocked on my door and reminded me nicely, yet curtly, that I’d promised to pick up a pumpkin for the front porch. Damn! I’d been so wrapped up in “The Project” that I’d let the usual, banal everyday stuff like a simple pumpkin get away from me. “Okay”, I muttered, let’s go get one and dragged myself to my feet. Of course, by the time I’d gotten up, gotten dressed, slogged out to the car and made it to the “pumpkin store”, they were: a. closing up and b. sold out(ironic) of the damned gourds anyway. I promised to pick one up at a farm store the next morning, then carve it and have the blasted thing lit just in time for the little vandals to wreck and headed for home and my bed once more.

I’d just dosed off when, off in a hazy distance, the phone rang and a unicorn delivered it to my door, announcing that it was Tom from Fantaco. He was very excited and explained that in the “lag time” we’d created by being late with the pages, the printing company had run every other assignment they’d had on “tap” just as they’d done the covers and now, with nothing else scheduled, they were actually going to print the entire run of “SOLD OUT!” #1 overnight, having it ready the very next morning. The girlfriend and I could drive back out to Gloversville the next morning, pick up a few cases of comics, drive back to Albany, and have them available for the inevitable influx of Friday afternoon customers. Wow! That’d be great…if I wasn’t A. exhausted, B. pissed off at the world, and C. numb from the shoulders up. Somehow, though, I heard my self agreeing to do it, hanging up, then calling she-who-was not-to-be–ignored and telling her of the great adventur
e we had in store for us the next morning ( AFTER getting a pumpkin of course!), then I hung up and headed for my bed. Of course, I was now so overtired and yet wired that I couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up and cleaned and organized my studio, finally sacking out at around midnight. I’d been up for something like 36 hours at this point and I had another long drive ahead of me.

At around 1 p.m. on Friday, October 31st, 1986, the girlfriend, several cases of my first published work, and a pumpkin, pulled up in front of FantaCo in that very same dark green Chevette that had been a part of the beginning of all of this fiendish plot, somehow coming full circle. We trotted into the store, announced our presence and the FantaCo crew surrounded us, cracking the cases open, diving into the books with joy, satisfaction and relief, just as I when I’d picked them up at the printing plant some 90 minutes before and when I’d stolen more than a few looks at them while driving back and steering with my knees. It had been a job well done, they all agreed and now, it was time to let the general public get a crack at the comics. We opened up a case which Tom personally placed on the floor in front of the main display racks which he always did with whatever was the “hot” book of the week like Miller’s “Dark Knight” or one of the never ending array of X-Men titles and the customers descended on them, picking the proverbial bones clean to a politely positive collective response and more than a few requests for signed copies. I’d done good. I was happy.

Roger wanted to take some photos of the auspicious occasion. We agreed, but first decided to slip into our Halloween costumes that we’d secreted away under the cases of comics…and the pumpkin in the car. A few minutes later, there we were, in full “Rowdy Roddy Piper” and “Cyndi Lauper” attire, leaning up against the logo’d front window of FantaCo, capering for Roger’s camera and…loving it, even when some Tony Danza-esque lobotomy scar wandered up and asked where we were wrestling that night. I told him it was a costume, he started naming venues, again, almost demanding where I’d be in the ring that night. I politely asked him what day it was. He said “Friday”. I asked the date. He said “October something”. I said “It’s HALLOWEEN!!!” He seemed to finally get it, then told me he hoped I’d win my match and wandered off as did we a few minutes later. Fortunately, I had the legs for the kilt.

That night, after all of the relatives and friends had gone over the comic with fine tooth combs (as had we, like, a thousand times), and the evening meal was done and the stream of annoying trick-or-treaters had died down, the hastily carved pumpkin burned on, casting its eerie, yet inviting light across my front lawn, she-who-must-remain-nameless and I lay on my bed, watching “Transylvania 6-5000” on cable, grinning a thousand, satisfied grins. I had never been able to visualize what my first publishing experience might be like although I’d waited, hoped and dreamed on it for so long, and now it had happened, and it was exhausting, exasperating, trying, stressful, draining, straining and countless other “ings”, but, as I dozed off my thoughts trailed off to that quote in “Where The Buffalo Roam” where Bill Murray summed up not only Hunter Thompson’s life, but my own now as well, when he uttered the immortal last line “It Never got Weird Enough For Me”. I couldn’t agree more, even now, on the other, back side of that long lost, sometimes lamented, sometimes not so much, career, but it was ONE HELL OF A RIDE!

John Hebert

Thanks, John. John is living happily ever after with his bride, who is NOT she-who-shall-not-be-named and working on the comic book Captain Action. There was a second issue, the conclusion of Sold Out, but that tale will be told another time.
ROG

ROG

SOLD OUT, Part 5 by John Hebert

Before I get to John’s rellections, a couple comics-related things:
1. Len Wein, creator of, among many other things, X-Men staples such as Wolverine, Storm, and Nightcrawler, had a house fire, as I’ve mentioned. Here’s info for the Let’s Restore Len Wein’s Comic Book Collection Project. Contact Evanier before sending anything.
2. Free Comic Book Day is this Saturday, May 2; hope it doesn’t interfere with the Kentucky Derby. In all likelihood, I’ll go to Earthworld in Albany, as usual, get a bunch of free stuff for the kid and for me, and end up buying something i didn’t know I wanted.

Now, back to John, after I show you his X-Men 100 swipe homage with a circus strongman, Rowdy Roddy Piper, every guy who ever worked at an amusement park in the 80’s, and me.

I was a penciling fool- working and reworking pages here and there all that summer of 1986, getting the then-girlfriend to letter and dying to get to the inks. I’d been very fearful of inking my first book because I didn’t think I could ever be much of an inker. When I’d started trying to bust into the biz in earnest a couple of years before, I’d decided that penciling was a little too complicated so I thought to break in as an inker first and learn from whomever I’d inked and go from there. This brainstorm lasted just about a month- or the time it took for me to @*%*&^ up my copy of the Marvel Tryout Book and then be told by Zeck that my inks sucked, but that my pencil work had potential, so I’d gone with it.

Anyway, I’d shortly have to put my brush handle where my mouth had been. Once I’d penciled the entire comic, we’d all set a date where Tom, Roger, she-who-was-not-to-be-ignored, as well as FantaCo stalwarts Matt Mattick, Hank Jansen, and Joelle Michalkiewicz and myself would sit down, spread all of the pages out on the floor of the back office and take the “SOLD OUT!” experience in before committing it to ink, deciding what worked and what didn’t, what needed to be punched up and where we needed to tone bits down. It was a bit frustrating, to say the least. While almost everyone agreed that it was a very tight piece of effort, there was always a bit of niggling back and forth where everybody but one person would just love something, but that one detail bothered that one person which seemed to corrupt the entire apple cart and then we’d rework the damned thing until somebody else wasn’t happy and then…..Suddenly, at some point, after a very long day in the back office and losing the daylight, we staggered out into the early autumn evening clutching the bulging manila folder of pages ready to be committed to ink. My moment of truth had arrived.

One of Tom’s primary requirements for the artist was that he or she could draw a reasonably realistic turtle and hamster.

I’d put everything into the pencils, to the point where I needed to go to ink just to stir up the old creative juices with a change of technique. Even though I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly good inker and with the additional weight of the fear of screwing it all up with bad inks, I think I did a pretty darn serviceable job- especially on the first half of the book when my energy level was high and I was interested, and in fact, thrilled to be doing something other than penciling. I did a really broad John Beatty type brush style throughout most of the book with a swatch of Jerry Ordway and a ton of zip-a-tone tossed in for good measure and just enjoyed the Hell out of most of the experience, but before long, I was tiring of inking as well, especially after we’d begun making last, last-minute changes as I was going along, sometimes scrapping panels after they’d been committed to ink and making me feel like a rat in a maze.

Our deadline was fast approaching too, as was Halloween when we’d hoped to have the book on the shelves, the girlfriend and I went into overdrive, always expecting the project done “the next week”, then still spinning our creative tires in the not-so-creative sand and shooting for the following week. It finally came down to the very cold day before Halloween of 1986, when I, having been up for something like 26 hours, leaned over the drawing board in my humble, yet tastefully appointed studio, forcing myself to ink those last few pesky panels that I’d put off inking for various pointless reasons for so long. The edict had come down from Tom Skulan – the book had to be done THAT DAY!!!! We’d already missed one scheduled press day and it was not to happen again.

The girlfriend had shown up at around 8 a.m. and we’d torn into the unfinished pages immediately, determined to deliver the entire finished book to FantaCo by noon for one more final “look-over” be various staff-eyes, and then we were to drive the entire project out to the printing plant in Gloversville, NY, some 90 minutes away. I was so tried and ragged by that point that I didn’t think I’d make it and longed for the peaceful reassurance of the void I was sure to encounter as I’d fall asleep at the wheel and swing the Camaro in front of a speeding semi on the Thruway…..”Don’t bother calling an ambulance Ferdie- he was a funny book artist, now he’s road pizza!”

So, we made it into the store at around one in the afternoon and dropped the packet of pages on Skulan’s desk, ready for criticism and a very, very long nap. Tom and Raj were the primary editors now, going over every panel and page, never missing a misspelling or uninked eye on some tiny figure in the background that no one would ever notice, but we fixed everything right there in the back room where it had all begun just a few, short, holy mackerel- it was, like FIVE months earlier, what was I thinking?!?!? Anyway, thankfully, most of the required changes were of the lettering variety and she-who-must-not-have-been ignored took care of them with white out and a couple of markers while I slipped closer and closer towards comatose while sitting on that very cold, uninsulated office floor. That cold and the aching in my joints were the only things keeping me awake, but somehow, it was finally done and the time had come to drive the darned book to the printer. The pages were lashed together in a large shiny orange folder and away we went, towards the beginning of the rest of my life, the world’s smallest Pontiac dealership, and the embarrassment of being photographed in a skirt on a busy Albany street.

To be CONCLUDED!

John Hebert
***
Miss Marvel, Mister Roger, Miss Lydia, May 3, 2008, Earthworld


ROG

ROG

SOLD OUT, Part 4 by John Hebert

Mr. Hebert continues his reminisces about a comic book I had something to do with because on this topic, his memopry’s WAY better than mine.

Now, it was time to put my money where my mouth had been all those years. I had to actually sit down and produce a comic book- doing the pencils and inks all myself and I’d gotten my then-art student/girlfriend to agree to letter the project. This was the point where a lot of the poseurs and wannabes are separated from the real pros. It’s one thing to draw lots of pretty pictures of Batman, Wolverine and Phoenix standing around and looking dramatic with no real backgrounds, but when you’ve got to TELL THE STORY WITH PICTURES, make it interesting and authentic and throw in some kind of “cinematic magic” to boot, that’s where it’s all at. I’ve seen so many kids and even adults who are SO sure that they’re the next big thing in comic art crumble and drift away sheepishly once they actually get a real script in hand and they see that copying a Jim Lee or McFarlane splash page has virtually nothing to do with actual sequential art that I can see them coming from a mile away now.

This, however, was my turn to shine or fail and skulk off to a lumberyard or some worse fate and I was determined to not allow that to happen. I gave my all on that book, staying up sometimes more than 24 hours straight, drawing, redrawing, hitting the library (pre-Internet) for reference, trying to stay “current” with the look and storytelling of the piece, sometimes second and even third-guessing myself into a near nervous breakdown of worry (which, admittedly, I came to do again and again even once I’d “made it in the big leagues” a few years later) and doing my best to not only impress Tom and Roger, but to try and out-mainstream the mainstream comics that “my book” would share rack space with. I’d pencil a page or 2, then pop into the store to show Tom and Raj what I’d done, then head back to the proverbial and literal drawing board sometimes high as a kite and sometimes near-suicidal as I had to pencil, repencil and even cut and paste up some pages combining 2 or 3 pages into one . This was occasionally very frustrating, but now, in retrospect, I realize that ALMOST every change was for the better and that this was the first real editorial input I’d ever had outside of school work and the volunteer work I’d done on theatrical projects and etc.

There were a few times when I practically begged Tom to let me ink a few pages, to not only get ahead, but to break up the monotony of the thing, but he insisted that, except for the cover and ONE page that would be sent around to the Comics Journal and such for promotional purposes that the entire book had to be pencilled and lettered before we’d all sit down, go over it, making sure evry panel of every page was complete, cohesive and coherent before I’d be allowed to commit the project to ink.

Phew, “tough room”, I thought, but not as tough as the times I’d have with the lettering. As I stated previously, my then-girlfriend had been recruited to letter the book. She’d never really even read comics and was struggling her way through art school, and, in the interest of complete honesty and disclosure, we did end up breaking up during the production of SOLD OUT!- once for a few days on the first issue and then permanently and badly a few pages into the second book. She was in over her head on the book, but in all fairness, she did give her all most of the time and she really had gotten involved to support me and in retrospect some 20 years later, that was a good and decent thing and I’ll do my best to say as little as possible in regards to this subject from here on. I was constantly throwing her copies of Simonson’s Thor which was lettered by John Workman- the only letterer whose work was not only competent, but practically jumped off of the page and actually added to the compositions and storytelling. I wanted “our” first project to be a winner and as strong as possible, but at times, I was too close to it and I didn’t handle the pressures as well as I should have. I’d spend days banging out a page, then I’d drop it at her house for lettering-sometimes only a panel or two, then feeling it all slipping away when I’d come back a couple of days later and find out that nothing had been done. It was agonizing; I couldn’t let this book fall apart, I had to get it done – the right way. It was my portal to the big leagues and out of Palookaville.

I got more and more stressed and was sleeping less and less, spending more and more of my awake time at the board after everybody at my house had gone to bed, and then crashing and sleeping the day away, only to begin again once the sun went down. I was a vampire without a cape and hokey accent, and I was hating it and loving it at the same time. As tough as doing a regular comic is, this was even tougher on some levels because it had to be FUNNY on top of all else and, as many have said before, “Comedy is tough”. We had to load the book up with loads and loads of sight gags, yet not overdo it and burn the reader out, we sought some weird state of balance where we’d go deeper and deeper into the absurd and twisted, then veer back into straight narrative-it was great and a true challenge as I had no problem diving into the absurd, but I sometimes needed (and still need) guidance to find my way back. The sight gags and plays on words and titles that I crammed into oh so many panels were inspiring, when I’d get a small notebook page with “John-go nuts here” scrawled on it, I did, feeding off of the guffaws and giggles I’d get from Tom and Raj when I’d plop the corresponding pages down on the desk for their look-sees.

It nurtured my need for not only reassurance and acceptance that every creative person craves, but it sustained my constant need to entertain- a flaw I still carry with me which is why I still stock a book of office traps and pranks on my desk to this day and why my cohorts at the firehouse and I spent two years planting broken lawn implements in one particular guy’s truck. It’s a sickness like drugs, drinking or gambling (at least two of which I know a bit about), but for the most part a benign one- although the lawnmower guy would most likely dispute that.

There were times it seemed like I’d never finish the project, that it’d never be an actual, tangible book. I kept working and reworking, getting closer, yet further from completion. The comics business was actually writing the damned thing for us with its absurd bombardment of the market with more and more awful small press black and white comics, some so ludicrously titled that we couldn’t even have come up with them. I sometimes think that it was a good thing that the book took us so long as we had had time to look at what was going on and say “Whoa, gotta put that in there!” The first pages completed- both in pencil and ink were actually the cover and the last page, when I got the go ahead to actually ink ’em, it felt like one big psychic enema, it was the break in the monotony that I needed – I could breathe again…for a few days, but thank God for those late night showings of HBO’s comedy specials on more than one occasion, they kept me from running screaming off into whatever night I was in the midst of.

There were a couple of inspirational moments on the project as well. The first started out absolutely horribly. I’d had a “Big Brother” when I was a kid because I’d grown up without a Dad of my own and my “Big Brother” and his family and I were and still are, close. Jack had a son named Erin who’d had a lot of behavior problems for years and had just seemed to be getting a handle
on them when he was murdered by his mother’s boyfriend on July 8th, 1986. As a tribute to him, I put Erin in the book, arguing with a doppelganger of FantaCo’s own longtime counterman Matt Mattick over a jacked up cover price and some 10 or 12 years later that very same panel was reprinted in a comics news magazine as accompaniment for a letter on speculation and distribution issues.It was self-serving, but I’d do it again in a minute.

Bottom panel is John’s tribute to Erin, on the left; I had no idea. A pretty good likeness of Matt on the right. – ROG

The second “uplift” if you will, came near the end of that summer when The Comics Buyer’s Guide printed the cover of SOLD OUT! #1 in their coming attractions section. I’d picked up a copy while dropping pages off at the store and retreated with she-who-was-not-to-be-ignored to this great little dive of a mexican restaurant where she had lunch and I stared at the cover art on that cheap newsprint blankly. I’d arrived. It’s funny, that Mexican place was still going strong until the owner died 4 or 5 years back. It’s a coffee place now; my office is basically spitting distance from there, and every time I pass it, I can’t help but think of that warmest of afternoons.

To be continued………

ROG

ROG

SOLD OUT, Part 3 by John Hebert

Notice if you will, the crazed look of Tom Skulan, me, and just about everyone else, while the artist and his then-girlfriend look relatively sane. Hmm. – ROG Now back to the artist.

Where were we? oh, yes- I’d started doing character sketches for “THE PROJECT” of which I’d spent the better part of an afternoon talking about with Tom Skulan and Roger Green in a most productive, informative, contentious first meeting that left me feeling confident and rarin’ to go as I left the store/office, yet completely bewildered as I sat down at my drawing board to begin doodling. I was supposed to come up with character sketches for: two muppetesque teenagers, a hamster and turtle who are actually 2 kids who were to just basically look like animals and the infamous empty comic book rack. The beasties weren’t that difficult as I always had encyclopedias and biology books around in addition to a well stocked public library just a few blocks away – oh, that the internet existed then, with its wellspring of potential for reference, news, and porn! – but that damned comic book rack! Geez what an awful thing to draw with its more or less cylindrical shape, countless wire racks and numerous vanishing points and negative spaces!

I looked and looked for reference on one everywhere, I’d already amassed a pretty darned good “photo morgue” or “swipe file” but had nothing even remotely similar to a comic book “spinner rack” in it. What was I to do? Well, after trying to “fake it’ and failing miserably, then whining to the FantaCo guys, they allowed me to take my camera into the store, dump all of the books off one of the racks and… take pictures! What a concept; then again, most of the grin boys in the biz these days probably wouldn’t have a clue where to get a reference photo of something like that if their computer was down and/or there was no Jim Lee or Adam Hughes comic nearby to copy from, let alone the drive to follow up on it.

Anyway, the turtle and hamster were a little nod to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that started the whole ridiculously long titled black and white independent craze and to the Adolescent, Radioactive Black Belt hamsters who continued it and they were the first designs that were immediately accepted (y’can never go wrong with REAL people, buildings,cars, animals, etc. in illustration), but the screaming kid in front of that selfsame empty comic rack was going to need a bit of tweaking. I’d gone “realistic” with him as well, thinking of, even though not directly lifting the image of a mutant kid that Mike Zeck had drawn in a then recent issue of Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man, but Tom wanted something arch, extreme. He suggested I look at some Harvey Kurtzman, and damn, he was right. Even with all of these years and miles past, I look at that cover and it’s stark, alarming and sticks in one’s mind- Tom knew what he was doing. But there would still be times when each and every one of the brave little crew that was to assemble in that dismal little office would offer some last minute, out of the box idea that would save the proverbial day (even me!)

After a couple of way too quickly passing weeks, we had the basic look of the characters, and a rough cover drawing to start sending around the horn with press releases, etc. but it was time to actually get the script together and start telling the story. At some point, I finally said to Tom and Roger, “So, am I officially ON the book or what?” and Tom simply said, matter-of-factly, “You’re the artist.” which felt very, very good, until we had to come to terms on the money situation and decide who was going to ink and letter the book. Ooops, I hadn’t thought of that- the penciling, inking and lettering duties were all to come out of the money set aside for “art” so, being a real go-getter (and so cheap I squeak), I decided to ink it myself and subcontract the lettering out to a party to be named later.

I’ll never forget being handed the first few pages of the script of which I still probably have sealed in a barrel in my heavily fortified basement. That “script’ was unlike any I’d seen before or since – it was a couple of lined 5 x 8 notepad pages written out in ballpoint pen, some actual script format with dialogue, sometimes reverting to “plot form” and in fact, sometimes merely being quickly lashed together sketches (better drawn than many Liefeld books) with hints of dialogue (even later on with comments such as “John, go nuts here”). Wow, this was going to be a real taskmaster, but I liked it from the get-go and really felt good about the project.

Probably one of the pages where Tom said to John to go nuts. -ROG

The book began with a newscaster yammering on about the black-and-white comic phenomenon, then segueing into flashbacks of the history of comics. This opened up infinite possibilities for coolness, I loved throwing in “period clothing” and sight gags on the comic racks in the backgrounds- mercilessly lampooning anything and everything and the guys let me ratchet it up further and further, using almost every twisted, borderline offensive suggestion with two exceptions. First, they decided to put the kibosh on a cover I had blatantly nailing DC’s then current “Man of Steel” as “Bland Of Steel” complete with the famous Superman chest emblem changed to snoring zzzz’s (although they finally acquiesced and allowed me a tamer version that did appear alongside “Lack of Action Comics” and “Defective Comics”. Secondly (and looking back now, I’m glad) they nixed a sight gag liquor bottle labeled “Wood alcohol” with the word “Wood” in the stylized “wood cut” typeface of the signature of the late, great Wally Wood. I had been too high on creative cooties to self edit on that one.

Late one hot June night when the house was quiet, I sat down at the drawing board in my secret crimb lab with only a boombox, the script, a piece of 2 ply kid finish bristol board and a few pencils for company and started actually drawing my first comic book.

To be continued……

ROG

ROG

SOLD OUT Part 2 by John Hebert:

I’d graduated from art school on a Sunday afternoon, then had a few days to goof around, swim, spin my tires and sleep in before Tom Skulan, the guru of FantaCo returned from vacation to (hopefully) officially anoint me the official funnybook arteest of this mysterious project Roger had clued me in on. On that Thursday, I strode into FantaCo to be greeted by Roger and whisked past the rack of comics, fanzines, toys and borderline porn into…THE BACKROOM of the store which was the office and nerve center of the whole operation, not to mention highly top secret and very much off limits to the general populace. It felt cool to be in that elite “club” of people who could pass through that tacky, tacked up curtain behind the shelves and step into the inner workings of a publishing Mecca. This may seem a gushing, drooling bit much but, as so many wanna be comic writers, artists, etc. can attest, when you get to go “behind the curtain” or security door, etc. ala’ “The Wizard Of Oz”, it’s as though you’ve arrived, made it into the inner circle, etc. I can’t even describe the way it felt the first time I was whisked inside the glass security door at Marvel while some hapless and possibly hopeless “shattered dreamers” were left cooling their heels on the couches in the waiting area- it’s like an exclusive club and since so many of us were never invited into the exclusive clubs of the world most likely DUE to being into comics and etc., it’s nice.

The backroom was kind of dismal and gloomy. Not only was it the office but a storeroom stacked with overstocks of various books, magazines, horror posters and borderline porn and it was definitely un-insulated (more on that later), but in the leftmost corner sat Tom Skulan and his desk from which the empire called FantaCo was run. I’d met Tom several times over the years as a customer but it felt different to be actually “peddling my wares” to him as he had a reputation for being able to draw out the best in his creative people. He stood and offered his hand as Roger re-introduced me to him and gave him an abbreviated version of my life’s story, then gestured for me to lay my portfolio out on the desk. I did as directed while proudly repeating the story of my recent completion of art school and coaching by the Zeck-man as Tom flipped through the acetate covered pages, occasionally nodding and mm-hmming approvingly in the quiet but deep Eric Boghosianesque voice that I would come to know well over the next few months (there’s a casting suggestion for Mr. S’s biopic if ever, right down to the curly black hair). Finally, after what seemed like and eternity of my babbling and Raj and Tom’s exchanging of knowing glances not unlike Joe Friday and Bill Gannon, Tom shut the ‘port, looked up at me and said, “Okay, here’s what we’re looking at…” and life was never to be the same again.

The guys broke down the basic plot of what was to become “SOLD OUT”, and I loved it from the moment I heard it, even more so than most of the pitches I’ve gotten over the years from M*rV*l or whomever, this was to be “AN EVENT”, and one helluva satirical one at that. The project was to be a 2 issue spoof/indictment/tell all of all that was bad, hypocritical, phony, and just plain screwed up in comics(I figured that would guarantee some 500 or so pages worth of work right off the top) springing from the then overblown independent, black and white(or as we came to say WAAAAYYYY too many times “poorly drawn black and white”) comic craze. The book would begin with a 3/4 issue or so retelling of the actual history of the comic book marketplace, mercilessly skewering many a comics personality and practice along the way, then spinning out into what may have come to pass if the black-n-white phenomenon was allowed to continue as it had, eventually pushing the comics market into a world of rampant speculation, greed, corruption and eventually decimation due to a lack of that old adage “Those who do not acknowledge the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Before we go any further, let me be the first to say that without reservation, APPROXIMATELY 90% OF WHAT WE EVENTUALLY HAD TO SAY IN THAT LITTLE POORLY DRAWN BLACK AND WHITE COMIC ACTUALLY DID COME TO BE AND WAS EERILY CLOSE TO THE WAY THAT COMICS TOOK A SWAN DIVE IN THE MID-90’s, ALTHOUGH WE “PREDICTED IT” IN 1986!!!!!!!!!! You heard it here, folks, go dig up a back issue and give it a read, it’s more interesting to read now, some 20 plus years later, but, I digress, we’ll come to this later so for now, back to our tale already in progress….

Over the next 45 minutes or so, the 3 or us bounced a lot of ideas off of each other as the project was already obviously writing itself as we went along a la “Casablanca” and the last half of the tale was purposely left to only a brief outline so that we might adapt to the events as they transpired. By the end of our meeting, we’d cited such diverse influences or possible influences as: “Mickey Mouse and The Air Pirates”, “Citizen Kane”, the graphic novel adaptation of “1941” and The Bible. I was sent off to begin sketches of, of all things, a hamster, a turtle, and a stunned kid in front of an empty comic book rack, and, let me tell you, of all the years I was an illustrator and of all the weird stuff I had to reference and sometimes out and out fake, fudge or swipe to tell a story, there weren’t many things tougher to draw than a simple,…… empty,…….. comic book rack…..

To be continued in part 3

ROG

ROG

SOLD OUT Part 1 by John Hebert

This is the recollection of John Hebert, FantaCo customer, who became John Hebert, FantaCo artist. It’s always…interesting…to read about yourself with details that you’ve long forgotten.

Let’s see, where to begin, well, how about at THE BEGINNING!?! I’d been trying to break into comics for quite awhile, even managing to get to the point where I was being coached in art from the legendary Mike Zeck- he of Punisher, Captain America and Secret Wars fame due to his growing up in Florida with my life drawing teacher which brings us to the gist of this. I was just about to graduate from The Junior College of Albany with my Associates in Graphic Design, but had no idea where to go from there with no “bites” in big time comics, I, like so many others just graduated or about to graduate feared the onset of the phrase “Would you like fries with that?” but the fickle finger of fate was, as so often in my life, about to beckon out of nowhere.

It was a hot Friday afternoon in May of 1986, and I was on my way to JCA for graduation practice and, for once, I was running EARLY. With time to kill, I decided to slip into FantaCo – the legendary Albany, NY comic shop (and sometimes publishing house) which had been supplying me with my weekly dose of mind-decay for several years and pick up that weeks new comics (that way, I’d have something to read while the windbags were prattling on at grad practice). Anyway, I popped in, grabbed my books and waited patiently in line at the counter whilst one Roger Green rang up customers ahead of me. When it was my turn at the register and the customary greetings had been exchanged, Roger spake the words that legends would be formed from (at least in my mind at the time).

“Hi Raj,” I smiled, “How’s it goin’?”

“Say, John, are you still drawing?” Roger asked, casually looking up over his glasses while bagging the latest Jerry Ordway opus.

“Yep, sure am, in fact I’m just about to graduate from art school on Sunday, why do you ask?”

Well, we’re about to start publishing again.”, he said, continuing to bag my books, “… and we might just be in search of an artist.”

Oh, man, this couldn’t have come at a better time! I immediately went into a long babbling, run-on sentence detailing how I’d been taken under the wing of Mike Zeck, how I was really getting good and how I’d be delighted to grab my ever-present portfolio from the car. I tossed cash on the counter, grabbed my bag o’ funnybooks and darted for the door without waiting for my change and ignoring Roger’s statements that it could wait. I got out to the steaming sidewalk of Central Ave. and was halfway to the car when it hit me-

“The Car!?!?!” Dammit, for once in my life, I wasn’t driving MY car, but that of my grandmother while my beloved, trusty Camaro (which I’ve owned TWENTY FIVE YEARS as of the day after this writing) sat, with my portfolio nestled in its undersized, yet cushy back seat, in my garage in Wynantskill. Why did I for once, heed my mother’s request to give my grandmother’s Chevette a “good run and a gas up”?!? I stalked back into the store, hastily explaining my tale of woe to Roger who told me that it would be just fine for me to return on Monday, but I was having NONE of it. Criminals may be a cowardly and superstitious lot, but wanna-be comic arteests are a driven and obsessive lot. I promised I’d be back “in a few” with my portfolio and dashed out the door.

It usually takes around 25 minutes to a half hour to make it from FantaCo’s then-location to Stately Hebert Manor in scenic North Greenbush, but that day despite the valiant little Chevy’s seemingly anemic 4 cylinder motor, I made it in just over 15 minutes (POSSIBLY bending a speed limit or 3), ran into the house, grabbed my keys, jumped into “Trigger The Wonder Camaro”, cranked it over(“Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed…”) and jetted back to Albany in even less time (POSSIBLY fracturing even more speed limits but I fail to recall). Squealing my tires,I slid into a parking spot right in front of FantaCo, vaulting from the driver’s seat, grabbing my battered portfolio and charging into the store, loudly proclaiming that I had returned as Roger stood behind the counter, holding up one index finger for me to wait as 3 oily haired people who looked as though they’d spent way too much time in the basement of some science building stared on blankly.

It seemed to take forever as Roger rang up his customers, at least long enough for me to memorize all of the cast list on the “Dawn Of The Dead” poster on the west wall and the eclectic contents of the display counter while a green latex Yoda mask stared benignly from within.

Finally, Roger beckoned me over to the counter and I threw the ‘port up on the scratched glass top and he began to flip through it, closely studying the fruits of my labors, leaving me to fidget and hum. Roger mmm’ed and aaahhh’ed over the Batman and Squadron Supreme pages as I chewed the inside of my cheek raw. By the time he looked up, smiling, I had become sure that one of the tiny glass coffins with “Genuine Transylvanian Dracula Grave Soil” had moved on its own within the case and that the aforementioned Yoda mask had winked at me.

Roger told me that FantaCo was, indeed about to begin publishing some comics once more after a self-imposed hiatus and that an illustrator was needed. He told me that he liked what he was seeing and that as far as he was concerned, I was “it” but that I’d have to wait to talk to Tom (Skulan) the following week as he was on vacation. Great, the carrot was dangled and I had all weekend to sweat it out, but Roger again told me that there shouldn’t be a problem as my work had progressed significantly since he’d last seen it and that I was indeed “getting good”. I thanked him, vowed to return on Monday and fled to grad practice on cloud nine. Within an hour, I’d told everybody and anybody at grad practice that it looked as though I’d snared my first comic project to the point where I’d been shushed back to the stone age by the rehearsal Nazis, but I didn’t care. “It” was happening, and I could tell be the amount of well-wishers,sycophants and out and out suck-ups who were surrounding me, seething with envy and trying to “hitch their wagon to me”- even those who never had anything to do with comics were asking me to get them work. It felt good – too good. After practice FINALLY ended, I popped the T-tops off of the Camaro and drove rather quickly to my then-girlfriend’s house to share the big news as I couldn’t get a hold of her since I’d spoken to Roger and there were no car phones at that point outside of Banacek reruns. I walked into her house to find her sitting on the front stairs and when she asked what was new I said “Oh, nothing much, I just got hired to do my FIRST COMIC BOOK!!!!” Her eyes lit up, she dove off the stairs into my arms and proclaimed; “Now, we can get MARRIED!!!!”

I was in real trouble but hadn’t figured it out yet.

To be continued…………

John’s bio – written by John: John Hebert has been many things…or he’s been CALLED many things. He was a semi successful comic book artist drawing such title as X-Men Adventures, Punisher, Nomad and Deathlok for Marvel as well as Jonny Quest, Wild Wild West and Mars Attacks for various other publishers. After leaving comics, he went on to become a firefighter, EMT, and fingerprint examiner which he remains to this day as a supervisor at the NY State Division Of Criminal Justice Services, helping to keep our stree
ts safe-by keeping himself off of them as much as possible. Born in the far away land known as Wynantskill, NY, he now makes his home in Albany where he dabbles in politics, tending his car collection and pushing the envelope in pretty much whatever he does. The self proclaimed “Hunter S. Thompson of comic book art” has recently begun a return to comics after a lengthy exile, excitedly taking on some Captain Action assignments for Moonstone Publishing as well as a super top secret project involving a character with a red cape and a name that begins with “S” and ends with “N”. He can be reached at Hawkeyepierced@yahoo.com

This series will be continued approximately once a week.

ROG

ROG

Walk-Off Balk

There’s this fun website Win Expectancy Finder that determines the likelihood that a baseball team with a lead of X in the Y inning is likely to win the game.

I discovered it in a conversation in salon about one game in which a team with a five-run lead in the sixth inning stole a base. The losing team seemed to think that this was somehow unsporting and (allegedly) threw at a subsequent batter. The WEF shows that a team with a one-run lead in the eighth inning was statistically more likely to win the game than the team in the first scenario, yet no one would chastise a team up 3-2 to try to pad its lead.
***
I have a Google alert for Roger Green. What I get a lot of is the Brett Favre drama, with NFL commissioner ROGER Goodell arbitrating between Favre and the GREEN Bay Packers.
***
I understand why teams play preseason football games. What I don’t know is why anyone WATCHES them, let alone thinks they’re significant. It’s August; football weather requires at least a sweater. At least when they play hockey in June – another anomaly in my mind – it means something.
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Synchronized librarians.
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I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m intrigued by this guy who you call up and he writes your life story. On a postcard. Any of you done this?
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We had an intern this summer, and she said that this website “captures the essence of Roger”. I think that’s good thing.
***
It pains me, it really does, for tI used to ban the very mention of her name from this blog: I’ve begun to see Paris Hilton in a more positive light.
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<a href="http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=248&dept_id=462336&newsid=1989342
2&PAG=461&rfi=9″ target=_new>Local artists make good. Including one I know.
***
The Psychology of Color.

ROG

ROG

FantaCo 1987

In looking for more FantaCo-specific material, I started leafing through a my journal from 1987. Ah, John Hebert comes over to my house a couple times to work on Sold Out #2 in March. Let’s see, what else?

May 1987: A friend of a friend of mine (more like an acquaintance of a friend of mine) came into the store looking for a job. Let’s call him Jacques. Apparently, I had met him before at a party, but he didn’t leave much of an impression. He shows up without calling first and is ticked off that I’m at lunch when he arrives. He uses the phrase “Oh great, boychik” a lot. Jacques gave me a bad-looking copy of his resume. He criticized the Atari we had in the store (HE had a Commodore) and says he knows “more about comic books than anyone” because he’s been reading them for years – as though I’d never heard THAT before. Jacques tells me the other places he’s already applied today – doesn’t THAT make us feel special, if we even hiring! He then told me FantaCo was owned by Fantagraphics and that Matt, the guy behind the counter, was “stupid” for not knowing that the store was owned by the people who put out Amazing Heroes. (For the record, FantaCo was not owned by Fantagraphics, Fangoria or any other entity). I wish we had had a job to offer so I could have turned him down.

July 30, 1987: There was a boy of about 12 patiently waiting outside the door of the store at about 10 a.m. The sign clearly noted that the store didn’t open until 11, and that early morning is when I did mail order, stocked the shelves, organized the bank deposit, etc. As it turns out, the boy had come from Belfast, Northern Ireland to buy a set of Fangoria magazines ($249) plus $225 of other horror-related merchandise. His mother, who I hadn’t seen waiting – worried that he was spending so much money and wondered whether the material would even get through Customs. The boy said something to the effect that at least you don’t have to worry about getting shot all the time. I had the sense that, based on the wide range of products offered in the Fangoria ads, the store would be physically larger, but still I sensed that he felt as though he had come to Mecca. Had I known how far he had traveled to be there, I might have let him in earlier.
We sold four Fangoria sets in two days, two in the store, two in the mail.

ROG

ROG

Roger Answers Your Questions, ADD

The inimitable Alan David Doane, with whom I spent much of last Saturday afternoon, along with John Hebert, Rocco Nigro and Fred Hembeck wrote: I have five questions, which if you answer them all, I will steal your responses and put on my blog, because that’s just the kind of guy I am. And he is. He really is. He’s also a guy who hates his cell phone but keeps it charged, whereas I often don’t know where the phone and/or the charger are.

What is your favourite comic book story?

Yeesh. I must admit a fondness for the Defenders when Gerber was writing it, and I love a good origin story (Spider-Man, Hulk), but ultimately, I end up with Giant-Size Man Thing #1.

When reading comics, do you focus on the writing over the art, the art over the writing, or both about equally?

Serviceable art will allow me to read a well-told story. The most beautiful art will not save a terrible story line. One of the comic books I hate the most has to be Spider-Man #1. The McFarlane art was tolerable at best, but the story was so gawd awful, I stopped buying the title after 3 or 4 issues. Given the fact that I LOVED-LOVED-LOVED Peter Parker/Spider-Man, it was painful, but necessary. This was NOT the Peter I knew. The Spider-Man was more like Spawn. Loathsome.
When the Pinis used to come to FantaCo to do Elfquest signings, Richard used to rail against the comic fanboys who cared about art to the exclusion of story, and I thought he was absolutely right.
That said, sometimes the art DOES move me. I was buying Sub-Mariner during Bill Everett’s second run, and I loved the look.

Who do you think is the greatest comic book artist still alive today and why?

Well, besides Fred G. Hembeck, who should be considered just based on the sheer number of characters he’s drawn? I’ll cop out and say Art Spiegelman because he helped bring the comic form out of the comic book ghetto.

What’s your happiest memory of working at FantaCo?

I almost always loved when our publications came in, but I’m going to pick something rather arcane.
There was a graphic novelization of the Stephen King’s Creepshow drawn by Berni Wrightson in the mid-1980s. Having connections in both the comic and horror markets we knew, both instinctively and from comic and horror film stores we dealt with that there was still a demand for this title. The publisher, we ascertained, still had many copies of the book. I wrote to the publisher- nothing. I called the publisher – I was told the book was no longer available, which I knew to be untrue. Finally, I reached someone who acknowledged that they had copies but that it was not worth it for them to send it out only to deal with a huge percentage of returns.
So I said, “What if we bought them non-returnable?” I thought the guy’s teeth were going to fall out. “Non-returnable?” So, we took 100 copies of it at 70% off the $6.95 cover price, put them in the store and listed them in a Fangoria ad, and blew through them. So I called again and said, can we have another 100?” By this point other stores were clamoring for this book, so we ordered an additional 500, and sold it to these horror book stores, and a few comic book stores, at 40% non-returnable. The stores got to sell a book they could otherwise not get, we made a decent profit even wholesaling someone else’s book, and we kept the Wrightson book from just being remaindered. My persistence in dealing with this publisher was, strangely, my favorite FantaCo moment.

Here’s another: I just came across in the past week a letter that one of FantaCo’s mail order customers sent to me. Why it should resurface now, I have no idea, since we’ve only been in the house since 2000. (A 1989 article about the comic book Shriek was also in the pile.) This guy worked for Ryko, and he would send me, his mail order purveyor, free music.
Roger-
Good to speak to you on the phone today (1-26-88)…I’m finding Ryko fans in the strangest places.
Hope you enjoy these guys – I chucked in a couple 3″, too. The one with no writing is “They Might Be Giants”, a couple of guys from Hoboken, NJ. I like this not for the swag, but because apparently I was giving him service worthy of him sending me free stuff. Still have that unlabeled TMBG disc.

What do you think is the single best publication FantaCo released in its history?

While I have a strong affection for the Spider-Man Chronicles, which I edited, I’m going to say Gates of Eden, which Mitch Cohn edited. No, I’m NOT going to pick the Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis and his World of Exploitation Films, no matter how much you beg, Alan.

ROG

ROG

File Under Blackmail Pictures

Every year, I go to Free Comic Book Day, and every year, I get assaulted by some superfolks. This year, FCBD is this Saturday, May 3rd. Hope I survive.

BTW, to prepare for FCBD, I went to this show this past weekend and saw my old compatriots Rocco Nigro, Bill Anderson and John Hebert. AND I finally ran into ADD; he DOES exist! He’s written a nice account of our meeting here.
And I even won a drawing for a copy of Iron Man #97, “The Return of the Guardsman”. Almost certainly, I owned this comic book once upon a time – all those Marvels with the 30-cent cover price I would have been buying perforce – but without looking inside, I just don’t remember The Guardsman at all.
ROG

ROG