ComicMix Radio: EZ Street and Harvey Awards previews
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! September 28th, 2008. Broadcast, 265. Three, two, one. !
ComicMix.com! Direct from the floor of the Baltimore Comic Con. ComicMix Radio! And we are direct from the floor of the 2008 Baltimore Comic Con. Hi, it's Mike Raub on ComicMix Radio.
It's a day that has seen all sorts of people come by the Comics Mix booth, which we're sharing with our good friends at the Insight Studios, of course. And we're going to talk a little bit about that, because at this point when we're doing this, we are just a little bit over a couple hours away from the Harvey's, and that is a big night for us here at ComicMix.
We have one of our, one of the best of the best. Actually, one of the properties that we're so proud to have had on the site here, that you've been able to read for free for the past few months, and now you're going to be able to, hopefully, walk around and say you knew it when, and it breaks the big time, and maybe picks up a Harvey,
which is nominated for it a little bit. We'll talk about that in the meantime. There's a lot going on at the show today. I want to also mention the fact that there's some exclusive comics that are here, so if you're planning on coming over more than likely tomorrow,
because by the time you pick this up, it's going to be probably too late to make it on Saturday. Tomorrow is another full day here in the right of the beautiful Baltimore Convention Center near the Inner Harbor. Lots going on there, of course. The nice things about the fact that the exclusive comics are that we at ComicBigs have a few this time,
and it's a new thing for us. We have three graphic novels, size, trade, paperbacks, that encompass the best of the best. Three of the things that you've read on the site for free over the past couple of months, and that begins with Jon Sable, Ashes of Eden, of course by Mike Grell, Rimsack by John Ostrander and Jim Truman, and the Harvey nominated, like I said, Easy Street,
by Robert Tinnell and Mark Wheatley. We're going to talk to Robert Tinnell, who's standing by in a little bit, but there's also a lot of other things going on on the floor, and I've got to say that the Baltimore show is much more of a comic convention than San Diego was. I'm not running to Lou Ferrigno here.
I've not seen the lady who used to play Lois Lane. There's none of that going on here, which is nice in the fact that it's a comic book convention in a world where comic books have kind of gotten away. That being said, there's also comic book retailers here, and I'm going to bring on Amanda Emmer, who's with Comics Pro, and we've got a chance to talk to her a little bit earlier today,
and we're going to talk to her more on the show later in the week, but I want to welcome Amanda. Hi, Mike. How are you? Good, thank you. Now, let's talk a little bit about what you're doing with Comics Pro and exactly what that means.
What is for the novice? What is Comics Pro? Well, Comics Pro is a trade association for comic book retailers, so we provide business services and discounts for all the comic book retailers. You know, they're independent booksellers. They have small stores, small businesses.
So we provide things to increase their profits, to help out with different things in operations that they run, and then we also provide a forum for them to get together, combine their voice when they want to talk to our industry partners, publishers, distributors, things that come up. So we give them an avenue to communicate with the rest of the industry. Are you able to do things like, for example, when Marvel comes out with a miniseries or a new big event, like a secretive agent,
but maybe not that. Do you guys get word on that ahead of time? And does Marvel come to you and say, hey, here's what we're thinking about doing, and is the door open for feedback there for you, for Comics Pro, and the retailers involved, to say, you know, it might be nicer if you did this, this, or this?
They do come to us for feedback, yes. Maybe not in Secret Invasion in particular. Right, yeah. I was using it in general, but that's fine. But yeah, there's plenty of different books that are coming out, different promotions that they want to do that they run by our retailers first,
our members first, to find out how would it hit them in those stores. How is it going to, how well is it going to be received? And they look for feedback from our members at our annual membership meeting, at conventions like this one. We'll have programming tomorrow where we talk to publishers.
We have a lot of opportunities for retailers to get in closer to what's actually going on and having some impact on the rest of the industry that way. In addition, you provide some services for retailers. In other words, like I know you guys do some credit card processing, because that's not an easy thing to do, especially, let's talk about the way the economy's been
the past couple of days and what's going on. Getting credit is not an easy thing. For a new retailer, a new business person to get credit card processing, that's not an easy thing either. And you guys do it as a group so you get better rates?
Well, yeah. What we do is we negotiate with the larger companies, like Chase Payment Tech. We've negotiated with them a better rate than any of our retailers could get on their own, the size volume that they have. We have a high volume discount rate. So, because we've combined all of our memberships together, say, well, now you represent this many retailers.
So, just right out of the gate, you get a really great rate for credit card processing, health insurance the same way. It's run by another company, but they give our members a discount on it. There are distributors that give our members the highest level discount that you can get with no minimum order, no volume requirements or anything.
So, it really helps that smaller retailer have the same advantages maybe a large chain would have just by being a member of the organization. When you do these sort of things, are there some other benefits that are involved? For example, do the publishers ever do covers that are exclusive to Comic Pro or that type of thing? Yeah.
Or signings, maybe a tour for a creator? Right. Well, we've done both. And if you go over to the booth that we have today, there's a couple of different Comic Pro exclusive covers that are free to our members that they can give out to their customers. We've done creator tours.
Right now, we're in the middle of a tour with Steve Dillon, who is going around to different Comic Pro stores, and we're raising money for the hero initiative, which supports Comic Pro creators. So, we're all working together. Steve is making his appearances at the Comic Pro stores,
or the fans are coming in, and it's all the support hero initiative. For our retailer to get involved, I know there's a cost and whatever, but it sounds like there's a lot more benefit than there is the cost. But for them to take the chance to do this, what do they have to do? How do they get in touch with you guys?
Well, we're at our website. It's comicspro.org. And the email is very simple. Just info at comicspro.org. And there are full membership dues. You pay membership dues to be part of the organization. But like we tell retailers, in the product alone that publishers give to us
to give to our retailers, you make your membership dues back. Not counting the discounts you get at distributors. Not counting the discount you get for credit card processing. And all of the other benefits that we have. Insurance, which is a big deal, right?
And payroll processing and taxes. We have many other benefits that even if you don't take part in the bigger ones that we have, you still make your dues back all year long. I have abused you a couple of times today. I was over at your table. We talked. I brought you over here. So it's payback time.
Tell us about your store. Let's get a plug in. My store is called Muse Comics. It's in Missoula, Montana, which is a fantastic town for comics. Great little college town. Many people there are writers and artists.
A very creative community. We have fantastic customers up there. And the store is really plugged into what everyone is doing. So we do mini comics. We have kids from the community. We kind of publish, desktop publish our own mini comics of what kids in town do. We have art classes. We're really tied into the manga clubs in town and everything like that.
It's a fantastic place to be for comics. Great town. What are you enjoying? Let me put you on the spot. What are you enjoying in comics right now? Are you anxious to see what comes in the door on Wednesday? What do you like to grab and make sure you have a chance to read it?
My current favorite right now is basically anything that I found from a company called First Second Publishing. When they're coming out, I love their books. I love the way they're printed. I love the feel of them and everything like that. So that's probably the thing I'm excited about the most right now.
But I've been reading comics for so long. My list, I start carting my long boxes around with my comics. So it gets kind of long and you hate to leave out anybody when you're doing your favorites. But that's a new one. I'll make it easy. What was your first comic?
My very first comic was Batman. It was in Batman and Catwoman and things like that from DC. My first comic that I would say really pulled me in of course was Sandman. And a lot of people my age felt the same way. It really got sucked in by Sandman and they stayed there.
And so Vertigo and all their whole publishing line really kept me. Thank you for the Watchmen movie you guys. You're going to do a big thing for your store. Oh yeah, we always appear at our theater actually in town. They're really great to us. So we come over and we hand out comics to everyone. We sell comics out of the library.
We talk to everyone going into the theater about the movie and where it came from. And really increase that love and appreciation of comics in our town. Amanda Ebert, it's Muse Comics in Missoula, Montana. I almost said Minnesota. I looked at you like a hello. Thank you. Thanks for Comics Pro.
We'll make sure that the information is up on our website too so people can get there and say hi. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming by. I appreciate it. It is the Baltimore Comic Con and of course it continues tomorrow. There's a lot more going on. We're going to do another broadcast tomorrow as well. Here from the booth. And if you have a chance to stop by you're going to be in the area.
Please do that. If not we're happy to share the information with you. We're going to try and get a little bit of the Harveys tonight. There's no guarantee of that because they've got some big people here doing some recording. And I mean some of the guys from CBS right here doing for 60 minutes to do a couple of different things. So they're here tonight so we may have to step around them.
So I'm not going to promise something I can't guarantee we can deliver but we'll see exactly what happens. In the meantime the Harveys are a big thing but there's a lot more other big things going on. I'm going to see if I can grab a program book here and page over to what's going on tomorrow to mention a little bit of what's happening and some of the things that we're going to cover. Of course there's a plethora of guests of honor here starting with Bernie Wrightson of course and Jim Lee who last night did the first pitch at the Orioles game. We're right across if you're not familiar with Baltimore the convention center where the Comic Con is right directly across from the field which is a beautiful field.
One of the better baseball fields certainly better than the Antony Stadium which is in the process of changing. Tomorrow Boom Studios is going to premiere some interesting stuff that starts about 1130. There's a thing with Bernie Wrightson like I said guest of honor later in the day. Howard Chakin and Adam Hughes get together for an interesting panel just personality wise that should be interesting as well. There's also a visionary panel with a number of different people that include Ron Wilson, John Herbert, Jerry the King, Walter and his first comic work.
And they're going to be talking about that which is really going to be an interesting new company because a lot of people have mentioned that Jerry Lawler in a while. We had an interview with him I think it's been almost a year ago that we had him on the program. And as you know he of course with the WWE and has been one of the color announcers there on and off as well as a wrestling personality with WWE. And he's been a Superman fan forever so now it looks like he's going to be doing some comics work on his own. And that's going to be happening with a company called Visionary and they're going to premiere here tomorrow.
There's the Marvel Universe deal going on tomorrow as well and also Dan DeDio is going to talk about the love of comics with a presentation. I don't think it's as much on DC but it looks like it covers comics in all ages. We will talk more about that as the moments progress. In the meantime let me hand the microphone over to this guy. Hey buddy how are you?
Great Mike how are you doing? I'm alright Robert Tinnell who of course is if you're looking time wise he's a little bit over two hours away from the Harvey's tonight. Very excited. Very excited. Easy Street was a beautiful beautiful piece of work.
I told you that before and I can say that even though we're all involved in the same company it was an amazing piece of work. But you've done it. You've done it. You've done it. People have said that about a number of you.
Let's talk about your resume. Well you know I'm just blessed that I get to work with a lot of really really great artists. You know Bo Hampton, Neil Vokes, Alex Savik. These guys just do wonderful work. But I think you're right I mean with Easy Street, Mark Wheatley just knocked it out of the park.
He pushed himself. The story was just so personal for him I think. You know that it just started calling stuff up. And if you look at the boat from the beginning to the end you can see him just changing styles trying things. Just pushing himself the way the characters are pushing themselves.
When you wrote this did you envision it looking the way it did or you know I know you're happy with what came out. I'm not going to ask you that question either way anyway. But did you vision, did you have a certain vision in mind? You know Mark was pretty clear going in that he had actually said to me I'm just going to try what I want to try. You know he didn't go in with a lot of preconceptions.
I mean the first few pages which I was really proud of. I mean it was something that I wanted to do. I wanted to do the book just to do that opening. You know with the little boys and the invisible boys. And it looked nothing like what I thought I was going to look at.
It wasn't what I had planned in my head. And at that point I said okay Mark's going to do what Mark's going to do. And I loved what he did and I said just trust him. And even you know there's a sequence in the book when there's a vampire or a comic within the book. Sure.
That piece. And that was probably the closest to being what I sort of described in this script. But beyond that you don't control Wheatley. You just kind of try to hang on and get to the end you know. Let's talk about one of your other projects that has certainly been in the bookstores and around.
Faced with the seven fishes. Now what's going on with that? Well you know the movie was in pre-production in the winter of last year. And there were some issues with casting and it became untenable to film in time for you know they were going to be leads on the tree. So the film was pushed to this winter and God willing we should be opening up the production offices in the next four to six weeks.
And getting back on track with that. You have to restart the casting process again? We do. I mean we have several parts cast, smaller parts but name wise yeah we'll have to go back to it. Let's be fair I mean the strike also you know put a crimp in after we got it.
It was disastrous. I mean the uncertainty in the industry in the last year has been very very painful. But you know these things have they just they're sickly cool. They happen and when they happen you just kind of have to ride it out. I think interestingly enough I think this last round of stuff may have actually affected the way the business does business.
And maybe not in the way that people would have liked it to. If you were to cast Easy Street. Oh my gosh. You know who I would love to have in it actually would be Peter Krause who was on Six Feet Under. Sure.
Sports Night. Sports Night. I always want to say Sports Center. Best of Aaron Sorkin absolutely. Yeah it was a wonderful show.
And I just think he's just a wonderful actor. He is. I'd love to see him play. Play Scott. And I'm not sure.
You know I'd almost like to be somebody that I didn't know who they were or Aaron Eckertz maybe getting a little old for it. He'd be really interesting. Somebody like that or I tell you it would also be really great. And his name is going to go Tim in the Oliphant. I think I think like if you had him and Krause in a show in this storyline I think it would be really really fascinating to watch the two of them go at it.
I think it'd be a great idea. Well I'm going to keep that down and we'll see two years from now when this is going to be your next motion picture project. I predict that right now buddy. It's going to happen. God.
You know I said I said you know what's the funny thing was we so did not go at this project with that in mind at all. It was not that we were trying to be really novelistic as opposed to plot driven. Sure. You know. It's going to happen.
We'll take it. Real quick you got something else coming up. Can we talk about what you should talk about. Crash. Long Justice Crash.
Yeah. Well no. I want to talk about your other project that you showed me. Are we allowed to talk about that yet? Oh.
The one with Neil Vost. Yeah that one. Well we don't have a home for that yet. It's a little bit early. There you go.
The work is currently untitled. We call it Through a Glass Darkly but we won't keep that title for obvious reasons. But imagine people that remember our book The Black Forest was a universal horror inspired monster rally. Right. This would be a Hammer film inspired monster rally.
So you'd see you know it. And it begins at the end of what would be the novel Carmilla or any of the Hammer lesbian vampire movies and takes off from there. But everybody shows up. You know Frankenstein Dracula you know a wolf man character. It is just.
In 1966 we didn't think they were lesbians. We just thought it was cool. You know. You know we had no idea. Well I saw Jim Demonakis earlier.
And Jim got to page two and he goes you had me at page two. But we did you know it does it does evolve beyond that. But you know what's not to like. Beautiful. I wish you the best.
I wish you both the best coming up to two hours obviously we're going to be there. But nonetheless it's a beautiful piece of work. Whatever you do is but easy street especially. And right now you can just click over from where you're listening to and down the page a little bit and see the whole thing for free and believe me to splash on your computer and you will be well rewarded visually and entertained. And I thank you my friend.
All right. Thanks Mike. No problem. All right. We are sets away.
Sex away from rapid because we've got the Harvey just around the corner. So we've got to get there ready and get down to that. We will report on those for you. Like I said tomorrow. We'll have a little bit of audio maybe later in the week.
Lesson video to on the site. We'll certainly tell you about what happens as we do an extended and a special broadcast and coming back to radio here tomorrow. It'll be posted on the site more than likely later tomorrow evening. I would imagine somewhere around the five or six o'clock range later in the afternoon. So look for it then.
It will still be up on the site later in the week as well for you to share and hopefully listen to a couple of times. We'll talk to you from Baltimore in just a few hours. Bye. ComicMix radio.
