Take 'em or leave 'em

Comic Book Artist Magazine is back.

Or, at least, it will be, once Jon Cooke gets the long-delayed Peter Bagge issue put to bed. The plan is to have it done by mid-September. I am, needless to say, flabbergasted at how quickly I get sucked into the CBA trap: Jon put together the best magazine on comics (to date), and I cut my teeth as an associate editor/historian/journalist by his side. As much as I want to put CBA behind me (through the several false starts and re-starts the magazine has had), I just can’t.

CBA is like that one girl that I just can’t let go of, because I truly love the magazine that much.

I first met Jon in January of 1999; I was hungry to break out as a historian, and Jon was in need of writers. I bugged the hell out of the poor guy, and he went ahead and gave me an article on the Charlton Action Heroes line to work on. That kept me out of his hair, for a bit, until I started uncovering some pretty exciting Charlton tidbits. So, Jon told me to do a history of Charlton article.

Before we knew it, we had one half-issue on Charlton, then an entire issue. After a few months of digging even more info up, and finding even more Charlton alumni, Jon decided to make it two entire issues. Yeah, we got a lot of flack for giving two issues’ worth to a fourth-rate comics publisher, but it got us noticed, even in a slightly favorable light by The Comics Journal.

So, Jon and I stuck together, not working on every single issue together: I would work behind the scenes on some big project a few issues in advance, to have a main article ready for him when it was work time for that particular one. My days were basically my coming home from teaching, and then grueling over the keyboard, cranking away on my assignment.

And the Eisners followed. Six of them, total, for Best Comics Related Periodical. Jon was putting out the best comics magazine, and the industry noticed.

But then, Jon things hit a snag, and CBA wasn’t coming out regularly enough. The last issue of CBA was the Eisner issue, which came out in January of ’06.

Since I last worked with Jon, I’ve gotten a little further into getting the comics industry, interacting with editors and writers, going to shows much more regularly. I also took a disastrous job that ended up teaching me the logistics and the general details of writing, editing, designing, and then seeing an entire product off to the races of the press. Then, the shipping out to customers and reviewers, the bulk mailing, handling orders…

But, more importantly, it made me realize that my vision of a comics-based publication is way higher than what passes for the norm. So, without delay, here are ---

Chris Irving’s pointers on a great comics pub (take ‘em or leave ‘em):

1. Don’t assume the readers loves, or even knows as much about, the comics you’re covering. Heck, don’t even assume the reader is a comics fan! The trick is to make an accessible book or magazine that anyone, even your Mom, can pick up and “get”. A good approach to take is to assume that you’re teaching a class on whatever subject you’re writing. Whether they enjoy it or not is up to your skill as a writer and editor.

2. Make it look pretty. That’s right, I said “pretty”. You want this to be an aesthetically-pleasing, easy-to-read publication, right? First and foremost, this is something people are going to read, and want to keep flipping through. Don’t have the text blocks be so dense that they’re hard to follow yet don’t let big splashy images and wraps get in the way of a darn good design, either.

3. No one gives a shit about how many comics you own, or that comics professional you had lunch with last week, or how many people like you, or the story of how you convinced Stan Lee to get mozzarella on his grilled cheese and tomato instead of American. Nowadays, you can save that for your blog. Really, let’s stick to just celebrating comics, whatever facet you’re covering…

4. Don’t just write about things you know. Okay, that sounds silly, doesn’t it? Look at it this way: if you’re learning through research, and as you write the piece, then the readers are learning with you, right? That also ups the accessibility level, gives you something more interesting to write about (rather than reciting the same droll history of Batman that you’ve written six times in as many years), and lets you learn something in the end.

5. Get ready for criticism. When my Blue Beetle research book came out in 2006, I caught anywhere from 6 to 12 reviews, most of them fair. But the ones that weren’t? Screw ‘em. If someone can’t give a fair critique of your work, and can only spout out fanboy drivel, it’s not worth worrying about. For every objective-minded critic, there’s probably a dozen wanna-be critics and you shouldn’t take their pathos personally.

6. Take constructive criticism when you hear it. That means criticism that, while you may not agree with it, is fair and worth mulling over. Learn to separate yourself from your work, and you’ll be fine.

7. On Q & A’s: Make ‘em conversational, but be sure to also tightly edit out anything unnecessary. If you rambled for three minutes in the interview, your readers don’t need to see it, unless it’s vital to the direction of the Q & A. I, personally, don’t like Q & A’s, unless it’s a great subject (Robert Kanigher and Howard Chaykin come to mind) and they aren’t too long. But that’s just my personal preference: I don’t want 100 pages of Q & A, I just think that’s lazy editing.

8. Be excited about comics! If you don’t feel that weight fall off your shoulders when you’re telling people about the subject matter you’re writing, then you might want to rethink your subject matter.