Wednesday.

Sigh.

I got nothing. Today.

Well, OK, I'm endlessly transcribing the interview with Neil Gaiman, which is a slog despite his lilting voice (even going two+ days with no sleep, Neil's voice is pleasurable listening -- I mean, with him going two+ days with no sleep...). In fact, that's part of the problem: like most Americans, English accents carry a strange hypnotic quality, and I find myself having to back up time and again because I stop typing and start listening again, a problem I don't have when transcribing silly, shallow Americans, even when they're being deep, profound and articulate. I still think the bedrock of Vertigo was DC and Karen Berger being so thoroughly seduced by British accents that almost anything was acceptable if it was pitched with a UK accent of one kind or another, and this transcribing process has only reinforced that conviction.

This morning started with my hope of laying uselessly in bed and a fetid pool of my own snot for at least an hour past my usual waking time pounded soundly into the dirt with Marge being unable to get her car out of our ice-rink driveway. Well, she almost got it off by plowing into a snowbank, but still, that wasn't getting her to work, was it? I was up, dressed, and spreading 25 pounds of rock salt merrily within minutes. I let the salt do its work as I scarfed down breakfast, then hustled back out to add a few flourishes of sodium chloride to the remaining patches inhibiting vehicular movement, then I backed Marge's car out of the snowbank, up our driveway and into our garage for the morn. She's home working as I type this, and the driveway is already clear enough to ensure we'll both be at our respective dayjobs by after lunch, as we should be. Lucky us.

The other highlight of the week thus far has been prepping a crash-course, for both the Center for Cartoon Studies freshmen and seniors (each in different contexts), on what happened to the Direct Sales market in the 1990s. Here's the timeline I prepared, and riffed off of (with many personal anecdotes in the classroom delivery):

_______________________

The Mid-’90s Comics Crash! A Time Line...

1989:

January 1989:
Billionaire, chairman of MacAndrews & Forbes and notorious Wall Street junkbond king Ronald O. Perelman buys Marvel Entertainment Group.

[Note: billionaire rival Carl C. Icahn fought Perelman’s reign throughout, repeatedly trying to acquire Marvel and/or organize shareholder revolts until he succeeded in June, 1997.]

1991:

Marvel Entertainment stock shares go public, yielding Perelman a $36 million cash dividend.

1993:

* March 1993:
Marvel’s “first junk bonds issued” (Comic Wars, pg. 242), yielding $288 million for Perelman; a second “tranche of junk bonds” yield $145 million in October 1993, a third set net $121 million in February 1994 (Ibid., pp. 241-243).

* Perelman’s restructuring of Marvel includes acquisition of Toy Biz (controlling shareholder: Isaac ‘Ike’ Perlmutter) via “shares-for-licensing rights deal” that makes Toy Biz a subsidiary of Marvel; Marvel also purchases trading card companies Fleer and SkyBox, Italian sticker manufacturer Panini, more.

* Marvel Entertainment stock reaches highest value since going public.

[Note: Kitchen Sink Press, founded in 1969, “merges” with Tundra Publishing, moves offices from Wisconsin to Northampton, MA., with Tundra founder Kevin Eastman reportedly holding majority share of 51%.]

1994:
“Pearl Harbor”

Marvel Comics pulls out of all Direct Market distribution to purchase NJ-based Heroes World Distribution, thus instituting/owning its own exclusive Direct Market distributor.

[Note:
* Success of the feature film adaptation of James O’Barr’s The Crow-- earning $50 million in theatrical release alone -- creates a windfall for Kitchen Sink sales of Crow comics, graphic novels, merchandizing, exceeding all expectations.
* May 1994, Los Angeles-based investment banker group Ocean Capital Corporation acquire Kitchen Sink Press]

1995:
DISTRIBUTOR WARS!

* DC Comics, Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics and others sign exclusive distribution contracts with Diamond Distribution, the Direct Market’s largest distributor.

* DC Comics, Image Comics and Dark Horse Comics report drops in sales “as much as 15%” after signing with Diamond, though the three Diamond major exclusive publishers combined still constitute about 75 percent of the market, sans Marvel.

* Kitchen Sink Press is the only publisher to sign a similar exclusive with Capital City Distribution. Initially, this boosts KSP sales, but this boost doesn’t last into 1996.

* Marvel Entertainment suffers major losses, stocks value begin freefall.

1996:
THE IMPLOSION

Spring 1996:
Final Diamond Comics and Capital City Distribution trade shows. Capital City co-founders John Davis and Milton Griepp appeal to retail community; reportedly, Capital’s 1996 revenue was already half of 1995’s revenue.

July 26, 1996:
Capital City Distribution -- the second largest Direct Market distributor -- sells its assets to Diamond Comics to avoid bankruptcy. This provides Capital with a means of paying the approx. $7.4 million due to suppliers over a two-year period of incremental payments.

* The Direct Market shrank by at least 50% in the wake of the events of 1996. According to Capital City co-founder John Davis (subsequently employed by Diamond), “about half of the approximately 4500 retailers in business during 1996 dealt only with Diamond in the wake of the ‘distributor wars’...”

* Marvel Entertainment suffers further losses and stock collapse -- from $13.25 early in ‘96 to $4.50 per share and less -- down 85 percent from their high in 1993.

* Marvel fans launch a “reader rebellion,” boycotting Marvel product for almost a full year. Note that Marvel’s market share had slid throughout their ill-fated exclusivity upset: “from around 70 percent of American sales [in 1990-92] to 35 percent in 1995, then 25 percent to 1996” (Comic Wars, pg. 71).

[Note:
* Kitchen Sink Press returns to Diamond, suffering many lost orders, revenues, etc. in the transition.
* Labor Day 1996 opening of The Crow movie sequel The Crow: City of Angels enjoys $9 million opening weekend boxoffice, then fades; Kitchen Sink merchandizing fails, a fiscal disaster for KSP on heels of Capital City’s demise and delayed payments.]

1997-98:
AFTERMATH

January, 1997:
Marvel Comics files for Chapter 11 corporate bankruptcy

February, 1997:
Marvel and Acclaim (a former indy publisher purchased by Marvel) sign exclusivity contract with Diamond as its sole distributor to the Direct Market.

June, 1997:
Ronald O. Perelman departs ownership of Marvel Entertainment Group; it is estimated that “Perelman’s net gain from eight years of running Marvel could be put at $280 million -- plus the tax advantages for his wider empire” (Comic Wars, pg. 243).
Rival billionaire and corporate-raider Carl C. Icahn, purchasing Marvel bonds throughout the 1996 company crisis, becomes Marvel’s chairman June 1997, appoints former Marvel executive Joseph Calamari the new CEO of Marvel.

[Note: Due to Marvel’s bankruptcy filing, prospective Kitchen Sink investors withdraw, deciding the comics business as a whole is too risky. Kevin Eastman and others had already departed KSP’s board; Denis Kitchen is fired by board of directors; Kitchen Sink closes shop later in 1997.]

1998:

Marvel Comics emerges from corporate Chapter 11 bankruptcy (and a period of time “for sale”) with Peter Cuneo, “a turnaround specialist, at the helm” (Fortune magazine; see sources, below) via aggressive licensing of Marvel characters and concepts to movies, TV, videogame and toy manufacturers, reversing Perelman strategies of 1989-1997.

October 1998:
Marvel Entertainment is restructered by bankruptcy court order with Toy Biz partners Isaac ‘Ike’ Perlmutter and Avi Arad at the helm. Carl Icahn departs “with a relatively paltry $3.5 million” (Comic Wars, pg. 252); Marvel stock ceases to exist, replaced by Toy Biz shares, which start at $7 per share. Note Icahn continued to fight, but soon abandoned the struggle.

[Note: By 2005, Marvel Enterprises was producing its own films with great initial success.]

Sources: The Comics Journal, various issues, 1993-97; Comic Wars by Dan Raviv (2002, Broadway Books, NY); Fortune, June 27, 2005, pg. 194.

_________________

And it was fun, fun, fun till Daddy took the T-Bird awaaaaaaaaay ---

Anyone still wondering why SpiderBaby Comix & Publications quietly folded up its tents in 1997, reread the above five times.

Have a whacked Wednesday!

WANTED:
A New Home for This Vampire!

Plus: Wild Doings Tonight in Utah!
Sip & Sup Salt Lake Surprises!
Be There or Be Unloved!

And: Jesus Saves! Scores!

Weekend Update:
No Politics Today, Promise

As I continue to labor, like some bloated pregnant collector ready to pop like a tick, toward passing my massive tons of shit -- a massive library of films, books, comics, magazines, and all manner of collectibles and invaluables -- out of the 50+-mile-birth canal that yawns, gaping, across half of my native state, it's sweet to know there's some kindred souls who understand this lunacy.

Thankfully, the Center for Cartoon Studies is full of such kindred souls -- many of whom have helped Marge and I through this momentous move.

In celebration of that fact, I wish to bring your attention to just one of these kindred spirits this morning, and the amazing event he has a hand in over in his own home state, Utah.

Take it away, Blair --

* Blair C. Sterrett is among this year's Center for Cartoon Studies freshmen class, and we bonded early on over our genetic predisposition to weird shit, and our attitudes toward archiving and pack-ratting. Blair is smarter than creaky ol' Bissette, though, in that he has collaborated on an archival collective with a plan that has long-term goals (with public access) as an integral part of its operation. This may free Blair in the long term from the kind of massive move Bissette is currently overwhelmed with, schlepping a half-century of pop cultural debris from one locale to another.

Back in his home state of Utah over the CCS winter break, Blair has been a busy fellow. He and his cronies are, today, January 13th, hosting a momentous multi-media event entitled "Excavations."

The particulars can be found over here,

amid the miracles of The Lost Media Archive website,

and has received some local press (Blair says, "We were just interviewed today by the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper"), but here's the overview Blair and his fellow Lost Media Archive fellow Tyrone Davies provided me via email and his posting on our beloved CCS board:

The Lost Media Archive announces it’s first event of 2007…

EXCAVATIONS:
An exhibition of unearthed films, videos, records, and other forgotten media.

On January 13th, starting at 7:00 pm, the Lost Media Archive will host a FREE multimedia film and audio event at the No Brow Coffee and Tea Company (315 E. 300 S. Salt Lake City).

What is the Lost Media Archive?
-------------
The Lost Media Archive is a Utah-based collection of mondo/kitch/cult/ephemeral/experimental/historical/
obsolete/forgotten/unearthed audio-visual and textual documents. LMA is also a resource for those who cling to bygone media formats. When possible, the LMA maintains equipment and media for use by recordists and filmmakers. The LMA was founded by Blair Sterrett and works together with loaf-i productions and the Free Form Film Festival to arrange screenings, viewings, and concerts. The LMA also promotes and initiates the creation of new and unusual films, albums, performative projects, and book events.

What will be shown?
LMA founders Blair Sterrett and Tyrone Davies will exhibit numerous works on 8mm film, 16mm film, video, and frame-by-frame filmstrip, as well as audio recordings and rare books. The evening’s events will include screenings of many delightfully bizarre films and also demonstrate some of the benefits of “obsolete” media formats. What’s more, the two founders will describe how the public can become members of this archive and make personal use of the Lost Media collection.

For more information visit

lost media’s temporary website,

or visit

freeformfilm.org,

or contact Tyrone Davies at tyrone@loaf-i.com

Blair adds, "Here's a list of some of the machines and formats that we will have on exhibit:"

Machines:
Wire Recorder
Wax Cylinder
Windup Victrola
Reel to Reel
8-Track
Frame by Frame Filmstrip Projectors
Portable Turntable
16mm Projectors
8 mm Projectors
Super 8 Projectors
Slide Projectors
Portable foldout Slide Projector Theater
U-matic Tape Deck
6 rpm record player for the blind
Micro-Film Projector
Stereo-scopic Viewer
Fisher Price Movie Viewer
and more...

Formats:
Reel To Reel
Wire
Accoustic (Pre-electric) 78
Electric 78
Edison Records
Recordio Discs
Flexi-Disc
Paper Records
Cardboard Records
Metal Records
Resin and Metal Records
Glass Records
Mini - 78
45 rpm
33 1/3 rpm
6 rpm
8-Track
Beta
VHS
U-matic Video
Large VHS for Broadcasting
Frame by Frame Film Strips
Slides
8 mm
Super 8
16 mm
33 mm
Cassette
Mini – Cassette
Laser Disc
Mini – DVD
Regular DVD
and other stuff I can't describe

If I were in Utah, I'd be there.

BTW, Blair also noted this week, "Wow! Canyon Crest Elementary School in Provo is giving us a huge donation of film strips today!" So if you've got some pop cultural debris in need of a new home, you now know where to go. Don't send it to me; I've got enough!

* The multi-talented Mr. Sterrett also plays music (including sweet saw, with which he briefly serenaded the CCS auction back in December), and

his band "The Nourishment" just released a new MP3 EP for all to hear place on their IPods -- right here: The Nourishment, "Shareholders' Annual Stock Report 2003."

Enjoy. Blair notes, "It's funny because when this was recorded back in 2003, it was to help explain why nothing had come out from us since 2001. Thus, the 1st track blaming our manager. Sigh, now at last this lost EP sees the light of day in 2007."

And that ain't all. Earlier this week, one of Blair's collection rarities made an appearance on

365 Days 2007; check out "365 Days #9" listing (Antonio Eugenio Martinez - Puno De Tierra/Volver Volver) for that mp3 treat!

Judging just from the sampling Blair has shared with CCS classmates and yours truly over the past semester, his record collection is extraordinary, ripe with oddities and curios.

_______________________

* Amid a week punctuated with wonders -- including a VT contact out-of-the-blue with vital information on A Vermont Romance (1915), one of the first feature films ever made in the Green Mountain State and among the elusive research plums for my still-in-progress Green Mountain Cinema book series project -- was this gem from the one and only Jamie Meyers, aka Reverend Jay, who I was lucky to come to know via his formative years in Brattleboro and our time working together at First Run Video waaaaaaaaay back in the '90s (remember the '90s?).

As out-of-the-blue as the surprise A Vermont Romance info (from another source, mind you), James surfaced unexpectedly and sent me

"Jesus Saves! ...Rebound Gretzky! He scores!!!,"

noting:

"I'm not sure what to say about this. I think it just speaks for itself.



You've got to figure that Jesus is always the first one picked when choosing teams right?

I mean you've gotta figure he's good for a whole bunch of goals/
touchdowns/
RBIs.

How about the kid tackling Jesus? I would think he's gotta be good to take down the almighty.

And what if Jesus is one of the team captains? How would you feel if you don't get picked to be on his team? That's gotta sting."



The Rev found the Jesus statue website via

this blog,

and thus all credit due has been given its due.

______________________

* As the attentive of you may have already noticed, my ol' Massachusetts cartooning crony Mark M. (man of mystery, and not Mark Martin) already noted on January 9th amid the comments for this very blog,

"Holy Crap! Someone's selling Varnae the Vampire!,"

referring to the original art for the back cover of Bizarre Adventures #33 magazine that I painted back in 1982 to accompany Steve Perry and my Dracula story, "The Blood Bequest," which indeed introduced Varnae the Vampire as a new and original twist for Dracula's origin in terms of the Marvel Universe. Varnae was our contribution to the Marvel Universe, crafted with love but under Marvel's rigorous work-for-hire terms, and Varnae has since been elevated to the official pantheon. Cool; too bad we never get any credit for that, but hey, we knew the rules going in, having fought to preserve a 'thank you' nod to Marv Wolfman and Neal Adams on the credit scroll for "The Blood Bequest" which Marvel editorial vindictively removed (they were mucho pissed at Marv at the time).

Yep, Varnae -- ahem, I mean, The Primal Vampire -- is indeed for sale, and here's your shot at purchasing a primo Bissette original painting, suitable for framing and scaring the shit out of your household.



Now, there's a history to this piece not discussed at the online eBay auction site (and one error in fact: this never, ever appeared in Taboo. It did, however, enjoy a reprint in The Year in Fear calender G. Michael Dobbs created, I illustrated, Mark Martin art directed and Tundra published back in '91).

I'll not go into all of it, but among the tidbits I will share this weekend:

* This art was originally published by Marvel in a slightly different version, rendering Steve Perry's and my original conception of Varnae. However, Marvel's archaic methodology of returning original artwork circa 1982, amid the hubbub over their refusal to return Jack Kirby's original art, was the blind alley, ass-backward mail-order form we lowly artists received from Marvel prior to receiving our original art. The form, a photocopy of which is still in my files, stated that the artist acknowledged the art still and forever belonged to Marvel Comics, along with all rights, in perpetuity, like, forever, man. And that if you signed the release, and mailed it back to Marvel, you might, maybe, get your art back (if you did not sign the form, no artwork; no tikky, no washy).

Signing the form (as I knew the rules by then; there's a reason I did very, very little work for Marvel Comics in my career), I was pleasured about a month or two later with a package containing "The Blood Bequest" original art, including the Bizarre Adventures #33 back cover painting -- with a fucking hole the size of a quarter punched through the dead center of the painting and the double-page spread splash page. I kid you not. (The only worst treatment my original art ever suffered via a publisher -- other than the outright theft of Saga of the Swamp Thing pages, covers and pinup art from the DC offices -- was via Eclipse Comics, who similarly mangled pages of "Scraps," one of my personal fave stories I retain my copyright to. Sigh.)

Now, I took the time to not only repair said quarter-sized hole inexplicably rammed through my art, but I also redid major portions of the back cover painting, changing it significantly so that it was no longer Varnae -- the Marvel Varnae -- and was now a slightly new painting, another variation on the primal vampire archetype Steve and I had conceived.

So, that's what this painting is -- that's what saw print in The Year in Fear calender, and that's the original now on sale.

* A friend begged me to sell him this painting back in '88 or so, and I reluctantly did. A couple of years later, he was going through some tough times, and chose to put the painting out for sale at a horror convention we both attended; thus, the Primal Vampire at some point found a new home. I've no idea what the route this painting went through might have been, but it somehow ended up with Texas-based Heritage Auctions about three years ago, and my Texas bud and fanzine maestro and cartoonist extraordinaire Jeff Smith (not, as he hastens to add, "the Jeff Smith," of Bone fame) let me know it was going up for online auction.

Alas, that auction didn't find a buyer for the piece, which prompted me to abandon any and all plans to sell my own original art via online auction venues, if at all or ever, period.

* Thus, the fate of this painting determined the fate of all my artwork: it stays with me and in the family, bunky, save for those precious few times I'm contacted by serious buyers. I haven't deviated from that decision. In the past decade, there's been only two buyers I've sold to among my circle of friends and associates, and one sale to a stranger that was worth the trouble -- being the last time I sold a page of original art back in the late 1990s. This went to a serious fan and buyer (who, coincidentally, was a writer and on the creative staff for Seinfeld). The price was dear, the sale was worth making, I shared the income with my kids, and I knew the art went to someone who dearly wanted the piece.

So, here's the deal: This is a rare opportunity, for anyone who cares. You've got until January 18th to

bid on this Bissette original art, right here.

I've got no stake in this, get nothing for or from it -- but would like to see The Primal Vampire in a new home. I got a new home this year for Christmas, my Primal Vampire deserves a new home.

Whoever buys/wins this art, and contacts me at msbissette@yahoo.com, I will send you a signature card you can frame with the art, personalized to you (or, if it's to be a gift to someone else, signed to that gift recipient), which can be framed with the art.

(Now to get to those sketches (now paintings) I still owe some very patient people... who have been waiting a decade for their sketches/paintings...)

__________________

Have a great weekend!