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I accidentally sort of invented a weird cheap comics format in 2005.

This is just slightly technical. Comics are printed in what are called signatures – eight pages to a signature. Comics have generally been four signatures, 32 pages – either with a cover on a different stock, or, increasingly from the early 2000s, what are called “self-cover” – the cover is on the same stock as the interior signatures.

Comics were getting expensive — there was the beginnings of pressure to go from a standard $2.99 to $3.99 — and also getting less dense. So I came up with something stupid. A three-signature self-cover comic. So the whole thing, including the covers, was 24 pages, all on the same stock. And the story inside was sixteen pages of comics, with backmatter notes to fill out the page count.

(None of this was radical. Previous to, say, the early 1980s, many comics still contained only sixteen or seventeen pages of material. History is there to be learned on and stood upon to reach for something hopefully new.)

I set up many difficult problems for myself on this book, with the additional work involved to make it look not-difficult. The main one was this: each issue would be a self-contained story. A new reader could join the book at any point, not be lost, and get a complete experience out of it.

And it sold for USD $1.99.

Oh, the hate mail I got from retailers.

Until the first issue went to a fifth printing.

And my email instead filled up with shock and pleasure at a comic that wasn’t trying to gouge their pockets.

For various reasons, that project came to an end. My friend and co-creator on that book, Ben Templesmith, went on to bigger and better things, became completely independent and runs his own show through Patreon now. https://www.patreon.com/templesmith

LIke I say, I set myself a whole bunch of things to solve, and this was one: in 1984, Alan Moore did an interview in a fanzine called Arkensword, and the interview is not, to my knowledge, online, but there was a bit in there that hit me so hard that I’ve been quoting it ever since: that you can walk into a conics shop with the change in your pocket and come out with, in Alan’s phrase, “a real slab of culture.”

Most things you want to read are $3.99 now. Laying down a line of books in this format at — well, it’s fifteen years later, so say $2.50 — would be a significant statement.

Image produced, to my memory, three series in this format. The other two gave you Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, Matt Fraction, Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon.

So, you know, don’t tell me the format is bad and evil and cannot add to the culture.

(all notions herein Not Fully Baked)

The Comics Train was what they called the train out of Oslo to Bergen for the Bergen comics festival. The industry was in Oslo, the festival was in Bergen, so everyone in comics in Oslo got on the one train to get them into Bergen that night. My family and I – my daughter was not quite three years old, I think — actually went to the station to help greet the Comics Train. It seemed to be a thing.

I like trains, as mentioned. I like train schedules. You come to understand them, early in life, as speculative. They’re the stories everyone tries very hard to make come true.

Oh, but sometimes the rolling stock gets old, and the overhead lines rot out, and a dozen different things start happening that prevent the train from leaping down the rails into the future.

(Joe Maneely, one of early American comics’ most unique stylists, on the verge of his very best work, died on a train. Crushed between coaches. Not sure why I feel the need to note that, but everything I write here is Not Fully Baked and intended to be sorted out later, so I just throw everything in.)

(I’m throwing in bracketed comments already, like DO ANYTHING (UK) (US). This may not bode well.)

I remember, years ago, a prominent comics retailer doing an aria at me about how the small tankoubon editions of LONE WOLF AND CUB were a crime perpetrated upon the market by the publisher. They were too small, they were going to be easily nicked, they were hard to rack, etcetera. They quickly became the best-selling book in their category. I remember, a little later, a retailer looking me in the eye and telling me he didn’t want new stuff, he wanted the old stuff done better. When I pointed out that, from that stance, he never would have ordered a copy of WATCHMEN, he kept eye contact and said, “That’s right. So?”

I accidentally sort of invented a weird cheap comics format, which, later, to not enough fanfare, introduced Matt Fraction and Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie to the wider world. Bet you that guy made many gold coins off those three.

Comics can get caught up with market issues and opinions, and forget the engine pulling the people to the next station.

Given that this space is always Not Fully Baked thoughts, and given a recent cursory look that suggests Anglophone comics are in a similar space to that I found when I created said goofy format, I kind of want to spend a little time looking at the engines.

Said similar space: everything I look at lately looks kind of the same.

Additional: Comics Are The Ghost Train