A lot of you joining us for the first (or even the 14th) time may be totally unaware that Innocent Bystander started life as an actual, printed, hold-in-your-hands-and-ooo-and-ahh comic book. In fact, 2005 marks the 10th anniversary of IB in comic form and the start of my publishing company, Ollie Ollie! Oxen Free Press. (No, I will not be asking the programming director at Comic-Con for a special anniversary panel. That dude's a jerk.)
Men deal with their mid-life crises differently. Some go out and buy the Porsche, some start dating women (or men) half their ages. Me? Well, when I found myself around the ripe old age of 40, I decided to self-publish my own comic book. I know. At the time it seemed like a novel idea.
I discovered my talent for art late in life. Around the age of 15 or so, I read an interview with Al Williamson in a fanzine. In it, Al told how he started drawing at a very early age, literally when he was old enough to hold a pencil (and that's why 15 is late--most people do start that young). He started drawing by copying line-for-line from the Sunday comics, in particular the work of Alex Raymond. So I started copying Al Williamson line-for-line. One day I woke up and I could draw a face; a very primitive face, but a recognizable one, on my own.
After high school, I decided to go to art school. I went to (and graduated with an associate's degree from) the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. While I was there I realized I'd never have the discipline it would take to learn to draw comics for a living. So instead I became a graphic designer, a "visual communicator," in the high-falutin' words of AIP. I got a job after art school as art director for a weekly paper in my hometown. That lasted 3 years. Then I moved back to Pittsburgh, and after a year at a local comics shop, I broke into television graphic design at KDKA-TV. The rest, as they say (and I say it a lot) is history.
Somewhere in the early 90s I got frustrated with creating disposable art. The graphics we did for the TV news shows were throwaway for the most part, seen once and never again, albeit by a large audience. I wanted to create something that was mine, all mine, that I could hold and look at. I never considered someone else would even want to read it or like it. But thankfully I was wrong on that part.
So, in 1992 or so, I bought a package of those pre-prepared blueline comic pages. This was a great boost to me. At least my stuff would look semi-professional. I started with a page called "Cats," a simple one-page story that illustrated my life with 2 felines. I finished it and stuck it in the closet for 9 months. I fished it out and thought, "well...this doesn't suck." And I was on my way.
I'm not sure which story I did next. It may have been my paean to Atlantic City or the story of how I met 2 of the 3 Stooges. I know by 1993's San Diego Comic-Con, I had 20 pages done, with about 10 different stories, ranging from 1-4 pages in length. I decided to call it Innocent Bystander, because life seemed to happen around me, not to me. The stories were basically observations of those things happening. I prepared a small "ashcan," a mini comic book that's normally given out for free, at Kinko's with the 20 pages of stories and a color xerox cover and I embarked on a quest to sell this to some enterprising publisher with the foresight to recognize my talent and abiliity at Comic-Con.
And that's when things fell apart.
See, I'm not a seller of myself or self-promoter. I'm a quiet, shy guy. Sure, here on these pages I ramble on-and-on, forever and a day, but I really am shy. At that point in time in the comics industry there were any number of small companies I could try to place IB with. Everyone I approached said NO, with capital letters. One publisher refused to take the book home with him, and glancing once at the cover, tossed it back across his table at me and said, "No one would ever read that."
So I came home with my tail between my legs. And the book languished in the closet (again) for over a year. And then, somewhere, somehow, I decided I could publish this book. Lots of people were doing it. It didn't cost a lot, maybe $2000 or so to get 3000 copies printed. Color cover, black and white interiors. I CAN DO THIS. And I did. In 1995, Ollie Ollie Oxen Free Press was born and Innocent Bystander #1 came out.
I cannot begin to explain to you the absolute joy of getting a box of books back from the printer, especially for the very first time. Even though I'd been around comics all my life, and knew what they looked, felt and even smelled like, there is nothing like opening that first box ever of your own books and pulling that first copy out and holding it in your hands. I cried. Mid-life crisis solved. A ten-year battle with financial debt and almost bankruptcy would follow. But hey...I had my OWN comic book! How cool was that?!
Diamond took it on and distributed it. In those days, there was more than one comics distributor. Capital Comics still existed and they, too, took it. I think I sold approximately 900 through Diamond on that first issue and an additional 300 through Capital. I was off and running.
But nobody tells you how the job just begins when you get the book back from the printer. I was smart enough to get the books printed FIRST, and have actual copies to send to distributors, comics shops, and print and online journalists (the latter just starting to have a say in the world). This got me some decent word of mouth going BEFORE the book actually hit comic shops. But if I wasn't good in promoting my work in person, I was great at doing it in print. I bought ads. I wrote copy. I did mailings. Eventually I started a fan club called FIB, Friends of Innocent Bystander, and did a yearly 4-page newsletter mailed out to 200 or so hardcore fans. It was tough work. In addition to all this, I was also shipping clerk and accountant, mailing all the books to the distributors and doing all the invoicing. And the comics world is a world where you solicit a book 2 months in advance, take orders and get paid 30 days after it comes out at a rate of about 40% of cover price. Cashflow is key. (Hey! I got these here plastic credit card thingies! They're just like money!)
So issue 1 came out to good reviews, and I was set. Only problem was I could only do 1 issue a year or so. Issue 2 came out in 1996 and I was crestfallen. 99 copies through Diamond, 275 through Capital. What did I do wrong? For 1997, I decided to add money to the "budget" (yeah, like that was a word I used through all of this) for more advertising, specifically in Diamond's giant Previews magazine, the comic book shop monthly catalogue. I also had a hook for issue 3 that would guarantee sales: The Marx Brothers. Of all my issues, #3 is the most satisfying, although not my favorite. More like a Marx Brothers fanzine than a comic book, but told in comics form, this issue got me lots of attention and sales, and is my best selling single issue to date (in fact, I have less than 10 copies left at this point). And also in 1997, I published 2 issues, the second one being all about my cats, Stan and Ollie. That became a great seller, too. I felt vindicated. I was right. I could do this, and you know what, PEOPLE WANTED TO READ IT, TOO. I started getting fan letters from all over the world. I was on a roll.
In 1997, I underwent a life-changing event when my mother died. Like my father before her, she just dropped over dead one day, no warning other than the encroachment of old age. It had a sadly liberating aspect to it, even though I hadn't lived at home in almost 20 years, and in fact lived across the state from her. Somehow work stopped being fulfilling and somehow there had to be something else for me, somewhere. Maybe this is when the real mid-life crisis kicked in for me, I don't know. Within a year, I quit my TV graphic designer job of over 15 years and embarked on the Innocent Bystander World Tour. I had an actual publishing schedule figured out for that year, and I made appearances at the Pittsburgh Comicon, WizardWorld Chicago, Comic-Con International, and SPX, with booths or tables at each. I had IB #5 ready for Pittsburgh, the first IB trade paperback, collecting issues #1-4 in one book, for Chicago, and IB #6 for Comic-Con. I had a cute little 8 page catalog printed that I gave away for free at all of the shows. I was a publisher, dammit! I had my own little empire.
Innocent Bystander #5 contained my first long-form (28-page) story, about my first junior high dance and love, interspersed with my growing love of comics in the late 60s. #6 went back to the short story form of issues 1 and 2 and contains one of my personal favorites, "I Am Joe's Stomach," about my grandparents. 1998 was my big publishing year, but also that year, I decided Pittsburgh was over for me. I had always loved San Diego, so, using a free flight (thank God for frequent flyer miles), I came out and went apartment hunting. I didn't have a job from March of 1998 on. But I found a great building downtown and made the move in December of 1998. After resisting change for most of my life, I suddenly became the poster boy for it. But with this move, my publishing empire crumbled. Although I had some savings at the time, I didn't find a job until July 1999. So there was no extra income to support my publishing jones. But then, in the nick of time, someone else appeared and I was back in the game.
Somewhere in my convention travels, I met Rich and Sandy Koslowski. Rich worked for Archie Comics as an inker, but he also self-published the adventures of his own creation, those three lovable comic book collecting fools, The 3 Geeks. Rich was much more prolific than I was, but he also realized the need to get onto a more consistent publishing schedule. So at APE 1999 in San Jose, we came up with a plan to do a special book to debut at San Diego later that year, a flip book, with IB on one side and The 3 Geeks on the other.
Work commenced, and one day I got a phone call from Rich. "How would you like to make this a regular book?" he asked. I said yes. Both of us agreed that we could make a bi-monthly schedule if we shared the same book. We finished a 32-page first issue of Geeksville in time for San Diego that year. I did 8 pages per issue, plus all the publication design, coloring of covers and the letters pages and ads. Rich did a longer 3 Geeks story, plus he wrote a series called "True Tales from the Comic Shop." We were off and running. And at Comic-Con that year we were approached by the new publisher of Image Comics, Jim Valentino, about bringing Geeksville to Image. Seems that the Image guys always liked both Rich's and my work separately, but could never figure out a way to do our books. Combining them was the key element. So after 3 issues of Geeksville on our own, we moved to Image for 7 more issues. And I suddenly lost my entire urge to do comics.
Now around this time, I also started a new job as Director of Programming for Comic-Con International in San Diego (I told you that guy was a jerk--I should know!). And that became more and more time-consuming. But the real problem was simple: I had lost control. Having this kind of self-awareness of your own foibles comes in handy at times, even in retrospect. Once I stopped opening those boxes and gently pulling out those babies of mine, the joy went away. Doing Geeksville became another chore and not a particularly pleasant one. My contributions dwindled, and Rich agreed to kill the book. It wasn't quite the same for him, either. There were some golden moments at Image, I think...the story "Arthur and Elliott" in issue 0, our first Image issue, is my own pick as my best-ever work. A lot of people read it and think it's just another Marx Brothers-like biography, but they fail to do the research that would reveal that A&E (yes, that was deliberate) never existed as a silent comedy team. While the story incorporates true happenings, they're fictional characters.
And then, as quickly as it began, my publishing career was over. Yeah, I'm still paying the credit card bills for it, thanks to debt consolidation. But every once in a while, I dig up those old IB issues and look at them and think, "You know...this wasn't half bad." Thanks to the few of you who have written and bought sets in the last week or so. You're helping support this blog.
So what am I doing now? Well, this blog occupies a lot of my creative time. I have a graphic novel percolating for years called The Accountant with about 40 or so pages written. It's a sweeping story of one man's behind-the-scenes contribution to the history of American comic books. It's Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay meets Will Eisner's The Dreamer meets The Aviator, I guess, to title-drop a bit. Rich Koslowski went on to great success with a graphic novel he did for Top Shelf, called 3 Fingers. He pays yearly visits to the 3 Geeks and has a new graphic novel coming out this summer called The King. He's also put out an additional collaborative effort with his wife Sandy: They're parents to the lovely Stella.
Do I miss my comics work? Yep, sure. It was a satisfying experience, creating something basically for myself and having other people find it and then seek it out and enjoy it. Will I do it again? Right now, I don't know. I'm very impatient with my own work and have realized I'm a far better writer than artist. But I'll never say never.
All six issues of Innocent Bystander are available. See the Innocent Bystander photo album at right for more details. I have a limited number of sets for sale at $25.00 each, postpaid. Once they're gone, they're gone. Individual copies of #1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 are available at $3.00 each plus $1.00 for postage. Very few copies of #3 are left, and they will be used solely for making complete sets. The Complete Innocent Bystander Volume One, reprinting issues 1-4 in trade paperback format, is sold out. I have some copies of Geeksville available also at $3.00 each, but only the Image issues. The 3 self-published issues (by Rich and myself) are all out-of-print, sadly. I may, some day, reissue the trade paperback and do a second volume reprinting IB 5 and 6 and all the Geeksville stories. May. Some day. E-mail me with any questions regarding purchasing copies.
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