Borderline Press Blog #34: The Future is Coming - But My End is Nigh

Before I even reached double digits I'd been exposed to the wonderful world of comics. I was about 5 when I first noticed some of my brother's lurid four colour pamphlets. My first real personal interest started in 1969 when I discovered British comic 'annuals' and then in June 1970, aged 8, I discovered Cor, ironically the comic where my one-time employer, mentor and (in his head) nemesis Dez Skinn started his own comics career - some tenuous synchronicity there if ever I saw some.

It seems odd, especially given how slow time tends to move when you haven't got much experience of life, that it was over two years before I was to rediscover the illuminating world of American comics. It was late November 1972 and our local newsagent, Forbuoys, run by a dour Scottish chap called Gordon Dow (who employed my mum in the shop and later became her insurance man - and that isn't a euphemism) took a gamble and decided to stock some different types of comics, as opposed to your usual Beano, Dandy, Beezer, Topper and Bunty. He stocked the new Mighty World of Marvel comic and also some American comics by a company called DC.

The first 'US' comic I ever bought was actually British, the aforementioned Mighty World of Marvel #6 (finding #1-5 proved to be considerably more difficult than I would ever have believed) and the following week when I returned to buy #7 I spotted something staring back at me from the spinner rack. It was an American comic called Swamp Thing #1, drawn by Berni Wrightson and written by Len Wein. I had no idea who these guys were, all I knew is their comic was the most outrageously unbelievable thing I'd ever laid my eyes on; and in that moment my life was changed inexorably.

Me in comics has been well chronicled. Yes, there's a rambling, poorly-edited mess, on this blog and in a Kindle, which tries to be educational, emotional and honest and probably only really works if you know me and can put the way I talk to the way it was written (and serialised). I liked some of it, but probably from a cathartic perspective rather than anything else. By the time I sat down to write that comics autobiography, initially in 2005, I never thought for a second that I'd end up back in comics, again, within 10 years, despite pretty much forecasting it by having an entire chapter on why I keep getting drawn back to comics despite it never having been particularly kind to me, even when I probably, on balance, believe I deserved it to be.

What A Life in Comics doesn't much do is admit to my having become an incredibly egocentric individual; someone who for long periods of time believed I was actually the centre of some comics world where my name, my opinion and my words were important. There wasn't really ever a point in my comics career where I was overtly important; covertly most definitely, but by virtue of the term 'covertly' people had to take my word for it. I did little ego promotional stuff until I worked for Skinn and then any ego I might have harboured was beaten frequently to the point where it hid and only the lure of money helped it reappear.

My 'day' in the sun was between 2001 and 2003 when, briefly, Borderline Magazine proved that as an organiser, producer and 'print' manager I was okay - punching above my weight. The problem was Borderline came along without any financial support which meant for it to be a success, in a far more naive time, I needed to work harder, be even more innovative and not rest on my laurels. The 'success' of my internet comics magazine woke up my ego and it was ignited by the chutzpah I'd absorbed via osmosis from Skinn. However the reality was simple, it might have been great, it might have been read by hundreds of thousands of people, but it was too far ahead of the game to make any money. Try to run a PDF internet delivered comics magazine like a print magazine highlighted the limits of my innovation - I developed a great idea but had no real idea how to market it; to make it work. In a world where internet start ups were now selling for millions, I was being shafted by desperate men who saw the potential in my project and saw we weren't exploiting it. Sadly for everyone involved, the desperate men had run out of money and goodwill by that time; no one inside the Borderline Magazine team saw it as something that was almost brilliant; we saw it as yet another kick in the teeth.

Working for Dez Skinn gave me a kind of siege mentality that has always been difficult to lose. Skinn made every day feel like us against the rest of them, especially given the bizarre way comics have always worked, the strange relationships that wouldn't or don't exist in other forms of retail, such as the comics companies' lack of promotional budgets or the expectancy that fans and fan websites/fanzines etc do the bulk of the promotional work, because, after all, comics has only ever sold to comics fans - it's all about preaching to the converted, etc. So when things didn't go even remotely close to the plan, it was like the world was against us - against me.

I pretty much knew after a year of relentlessly producing Borderline Magazine that it was destined to fail, but we persevered at a time when most, if not all, of the people who worked on it deserved to be paid for their efforts and contributions and we could barely scrape together £100 to pay for all the web hosting costs. There might have been ways to make it work, to make it pay, I simply wasn't clued up enough nor did I know the right people to steer us in the right direction. Remarkably (or perhaps not) despite the amount of people who saw it, no one else came along and said, "You should be doing this..."

By the end of it, I simply had had enough of comics. If I never saw another comic again it would be too soon. Yet within a couple of years, there I was, writing a column for a new website and only because they let me tell it straight. I think I wrote some of my best columns for The Comics Village, but it didn't take me long to realise that my few years away from comics was longer in technological advancement time than I could have anticipated, plus I hadn't actually read more than a handful of comics since 1999, so I was increasingly out-of-touch and lacking in product knowledge.

I had also grown tired of the proliferation of tossers on the internet - of which I counted myself as one. There really wasn't any need to be involved in comics any longer. I'd sold all my comics to buy a new boiler and I really couldn't care less who played Batman, the Joker or Spider-Man, that was all something from my dim and distant past.

And then shit happened...

I like to kid myself that I meant something, so when I took the (personally) ridiculous decision to start a comics publishing company up, I really believed, despite having been gone from comics for 10 years, that everyone would remember me and remember that I was pretty good at spotting a hit and I knew a good thing when I saw it - Movers & Shakers was popular in many ways for this simple fact. I believed I surrounded myself with the right people; made the right choices, did the right research and had the right person to back me. I had actually spent a couple of months trying to dissuade my business partner away from this venture, but in the end the lure of money, especially in a 'job' I knew well and the opportunity arriving just as I was being shafted by another employer embracing the Herr George Osborne school of slash and burn economic politics like their existence depended on it, proved too much and here I was, back in the world of comics - never say never say never again.

I could quite easily spend 50,000 words talking about events from early May 2013 to the meeting with my business partner in August 2015 - some of which are considerably more exciting and humorous than anything I wrote in the book - and maybe one day I will, but at the moment we're heading, as quickly as we  can, to the here and now and the exit sign.

The now is October 31, 2015. Borderline Press hasn't had a book out for a year and the official, and true, line is we're on hiatus. The hiatus was a mixture of enforcement and planned consequences. My partner, who has invested a sizeable quantity of money to both produce our back catalogue and help me keep my head just above the surface of despair, quite rightly said we need to sell some of the books before he would commit to any more investment - he didn't want to throw good money after bad if that was how this idea was going to pan out. We had a distribution deal in place; we were no longer thought of as new boys or a here-today-gone-tomorrow publisher and slowly, but nowhere near enough, sales increased. The problem was that the money coming in wasn't being used for anything other than running the business and as the spring turned to summer it started to look really poor on my part that all those scheduled books were still unscheduled.

I had a bad year. One of the worst I can remember in my 53 years. I thought 2014 was poor and it couldn't possibly get worse but I'd swap 2014 for 2015 in the blink of an eye. I've spent best part of the last 9 months trying to find a decent job, something to help me rediscover my self-esteem and get a bit of positivity back into my life; but so far I've fallen short (and the prospects during a Tory government are always bleak). I've spent time in hospital, been diagnosed with depression, lost a loved one and watched the country vote for more misery and now it's the autumn and my least favourite time of the year...

So in August I opted to do something I've done throughout my life. I cut off my nose to spite my face, as my mum would have said. Faced with no life-raft from Texas and with no real way forward for the publishing company in its current situation, I told my partner I was resigning from the business and giving up my directorship at the end of October. There is no money to keep me afloat either way. He felt I was being rash, possibly throwing the baby out with the bathwater, that there was still a way forward and I agreed. There was still a way forward, it just doesn't involve me.

A few things need to be understood, if you so please. I have pretty much hated comics and most everything about them since 1999. Like Pavlov's dog, comics seemed to be a constant reminder and a painful one that this was where I'd put all my eggs and it was how I fed myself. What was intended to be my last foray into comics - at The Comics Village - ended up feeling like being in a mutually abusive relationship.

Also a relatively large proportion of my friends became so through comics and it wasn't easy staying friends with people when one of the main subjects of discussion was now taboo. It was difficult but not impossible and eventually I realised I could talk about comics, but through knowledge, wisdom and a slightly detached (and morally superior) air.

As much as I hated comics, in 2001 I was still a gregarious and socially adept human being. The groundwork for Borderline Magazine was done, remarkably, mainly through a burst of enthusiasm I hadn't felt since that day when I found the Swamp Thing comic. In 2001 I was not as I am now. I'd argue that in 2015 I'm a considerably nicer and compassionate human being than I've ever been, the problem is the last couple of years the last thing I've wanted to do is talk about something I don't really enjoy in a fake way.

I discovered very quickly upon my return to comics that 10 years is a very long time when you're not part of something. Had I never left comics I might have been better prepared; had I shown more than just a passing interest in technology since 2003, I might have been better prepared. Had I not forgotten how to pretend to be a nice, approachable human being, I might have made a better impression. I've had more than enough time to sit and dissect all the things I probably did wrong or could have done differently.

Promotional events should have been the pinnacle of our push for an identity, but the first was so badly organised - by both the organisers and us - that our big splash barely caused a ripple and this probably would have set a tone had I not gone there with such a miserable, pessimistic and blindly optimistic head on... I know, that contradicts itself, but the thing was I took 500 copies each of 566 Frames and Zombre expecting to shift most of them; but I went with fear, trepidation and the feeling that it also would all go wrong - it did. This made me miserable before it happened and despite the venue and my never having been at the table for more than half an hour, I still felt like it was a massive blow and with hindsight probably down to me.

I went there thinking we were a professional new publishing house and there were unemployed geeks with comics I wouldn't touch with a bargepole in displays that made ours look very 1980s. Our gimmicks weren't even gimmicks and while I still believe had we been in a prominent place it might have been different, it was Thought Bubble 2013 that imprinted on me so much it was like a dial had been switched back to 1999. From that point on, subconsciously, I think I felt we were on a hiding to nothing and the shows in 2014 were so poor that by the end of the year I realised that we needed to do something else.

Leamington Spa's amazing entrance into the comics convention world was in many ways the antithesis of Thought Bubble 2013 - we had nearly a thousand people walk past our table on the day and we took about £30, which was about £470 less than the next worse take on the day. Either I was producing the wrong books or I was scaring away the punters by looking like a bored and angry old man with a look of resignation on his face.

I could probably come up with excuses for why we struggled at every convention, but the truth was with just one exception, when I wasn't there we took more money and generated more interest. It wasn't that I was just miserable and under enormous pressure at these events, I didn't actually like being there and that probably showed in my body language and inability to smile. There were very few people I could have a conversation with about something I was interested in and if people tried to engage me about comics I had to admit to being out of touch or I would have just come across as ignorant.

Why would someone who doesn't think of himself as a masochist keep coming back to something that physically and mentally makes him ill? It's like the man who repeats the same thing over and over in the hope that just once the outcome might be different - it's insanity and I've probably joined that exclusive club this very year.

So, you need to know that even if I'm moving towards the exit sign, the publishing company - actually a good thing with some superb books - is going to continue and it will probably be more successful without me. My (now former) partner and the distributor Fanfare have discussed a way forward; I've agreed to do some freelance stuff and identify possible future projects until someone else can do the jobs no one else here can at the moment. I've identified two possible projects on verbal commitments which I hope will come out in early 2016 and without me being a drain on resources then it will all probably start to make money for the people involved.

Don't expect a massive output. Many publishers of Borderline's ilk release things as and when and that is the new model for this publisher - the same quality, but even less frequent.

A couple of things will happen between now and next week. This comics blog will effectively close down and I'll hand control of the @BorderlineEU Twitter account and Facebook page over. What Borderline Press does from that point is up to a man called Adrian, but expect a much slicker and professional approach now that real businessmen are handling things.

I'm going to tentatively say that that's me done. Obviously I have form where this is concerned...

I'm sure if someone came out of the woodwork and offered me money to do something in comics again I probably would, but it depends on what else is available - as a committed vegetarian I could still have a career in abattoirs.

I'm going to make some sweeping changes to the way I interact with comics in the future and at the moment those changes involve me running away, trying not to scream, and hoping something doesn't come back and haunt me. Fortunately my true comics friends can talk about other stuff.

Thanks to every one that helped me through these tumultuous two years, special thanks to Will and Glenn and honorary mentions to Shipp, Mark, Dennis and Knut.

Stay safe and be nice to people.

Phil Hall 31-10-15

Borderline Press Blog #8 - Zombies and the Bubble of Thought

Blimey, it's been a month!?!

Admittedly during that time illness pervaded Fortress Borderline and for nearly a week not a lot of anything happened and because that week got in the way, everything else got put back and as I said to someone the other day, 'You'd think this should be a doddle, but it isn't because a lot of it is down to the mercy of others.' That said, you could argue that it's a good job that you are at the mercy of others because if everything happened with the urgency you sometimes want it too then you'd be gasping for air and hoping you could make enough money to employ a helper.

Monday was an example of another kind of thing that makes days and weeks longer, but unlike idiots from financial institutions or imbeciles from mail companies which can seriously hack one off, getting a delivery of this little beauty is a distraction I can live with - there's nothing quite like this kind of delivery day!

Cover by Tom Box

Isn't it just a luscious looking thing? I said to the book's editor, Will Vigar, that I believe our cover artist, Tom Box, is going to be a big star. But, never judge a book by its appearance, despite the covers being things of beauty. That said, I'm pretty impressed with the interiors and I think for our first effort at this kind of thing, we pretty much rock.

Plus we're launching it proper like, at Thought Bubble in Leeds this weekend (23/24 November). It's not an 'official' Thought Bubble thing and we're not having dancing girls and bells, whistles and horns, but it will be on sale, there will be people signing copies, people in T-shirts, me, zombies and we hoped we would have some badges but that didn't happen and I thought we'd have some posters, but that didn't happen the way I expected. We will have Zombre and 566 Frames plus a bunch of funky T-shirts!

Come over, talk to us, it would be impolite not to.

The following Saturday (30th) we're at Si Spencer's SWALC for an informal London launch (plus, I get to have a stomp about in my family's manor, innit.) and there will be contributors at this as well, signing books and telling people how they came up with such wondrous stories.

We also launched a bunch of T-shirts last week, which can also be found in the on-line shop, these include Tom's front and back cover, pictures from Dennis's book and a few other general designs - these are the kind of stocking fillers your partner needs showing... It is almost Christmas, after all. I've been talking to a local supplier about all manner of different apparel, mugs, calendars and anything that can take a Borderline Press logo. I'm obviously also doing it all because you need it and it would be a disservice if I didn't bow to your eventual desires.

We're also getting close to deadlines on our next few projects. In fact, most of the projects that are coming up are all colour and hardbacks. I felt like raising the bar. But until then the work doesn't stop, it just shifts into a different gear.

I think that gear could be a lot of fun, in a most unexpected way.

Oh and enjoy Zombre, we did it for you.

The Borderline Press Blog #4 - Bank Rhymes with Wank for a Reason

A gay friend of mine thinks I give gay men a bad name. "My God, you are such a drama queen." He says and he's not wrong. I am. I flounce and get shirty. I even resort to really bitchy things - I suggested to someone that they were acting like Dez Skinn and frankly had I called them a c*nt I would have come off better... However, as I become more hysterical (I obviously need more orgasms) and ultra-flouncy, there is an underlying reason for it all...

Shit just got real.

When I started throwing business cards around with carefree abandon, I said, "It's all getting a bit real now." But it wasn't, really. The first convention seemed to focus it all - we were in this for real; nearly. But it wasn't, really. Now, with Dennis Wojda's 566 Frames at the printer and me starting to write BIG cheques out - it has taken on a entirely new 'realness'.

The thing is, I have actually at times been bordering on hysterical because I am surrounded by incompetence on a level that explodes frontal lobes and if it wasn't for the good team of people I have around me then I might have just said, "You know what? Stick your [delete as appropriate] bank account/e-commerce/on-line payments systems/Adobe design packages where the sun doesn't shine." There were actually other things in the last couple of weeks that have equally caused me to dance with apoplexy, but because shit happens so fast nowadays, I've clean forgotten what they were...

It really doesn't matter how hard one works to make things run smoothly there's going to be some officious twat just waiting around with his selection of spanners, ready to throw some at my carefully oiled machine. I thought all the hassle had passed once I'd got all the 'business' part out of the way, but that was me being unbelievably naive. Now it's a case of filling up things that are waiting to be filled: the web site's layout is done and I've seen it and all I have to do is write some stuff to go in it - this is actually the largest physical job left to do and as I've alluded to in the past, is likely to be one of those parts of this business that is a constant - as long as we have information for you to digest!

There is also the impending PR push...

I heard recently that there was a lot of talk about my new venture at a recent London event. The general feeling was I might be doing something good, but the question on everyone's lips was, "Why has he stayed so quiet?"

Have I? I suppose I have. but there's a reason for this and its simple economics. What is the point of me and Danny Black doing a focused PR drive when we haven't got anything to show for it. I'd feel like a politician if I was standing around promising people things that I might not be able to deliver. I'd rather release info about 566 Frames and Zombre when there's something for you to hold in your hands. And this kind of applies to corporate promotion as well; I'd rather have some product to back up any claims I might make rather than talking hypothetically.

Saying that, I have just been interviewed and that will appear somewhere I'm sure. We're slowly releasing images, cover shots and more info about the impending releases and hopefully we're teasing you enough for you to walk into a fully-fledged relationship with us - all on the back of some high quality stuff.

The only other pressing matter is the fact that we're going to be exhibiting at this year's Thought Bubble. I've taken the plunge and invested some money to ensure that we're at the premier independent comics events of the year. More info about that as and when it's relevant.

The Borderline Press Blog #2 - Zombie Madness

There were a bunch of girls I used to fancy when I was at school. The thing was, even if they had a big neon sign above their heads that said 'Go on, ask me out!' that only I could see, I'd be so reticent that I'd never actually ask them. I've always had this fear of rejection...

Recently, I was talking to a teenager I know. There's this new thing amongst school kids and less old teens where they put 'Like for a rate' in their Facebook status and then people get rated on their looks and personality via their in-boxes from the person offering to do it. Jesus, I would never have done that. When I said to the person, aren't you scared that you'll get some rejection or people will think you're an ugly dullard, he said the following, "Rejection is rejection." He said this with an air of indifference - rejection is like having to go to the dentist, something we have to do (unless we want rotten tombstones in our gobs) and accept, because, you know, it's there.

One thing I've not had to deal with too much since the creation of Borderline Press is that R word. Most of the projects we either have lined up or are in advance stages of signing up have gone swimmingly well and there's been no need for me to have to grit my teeth and prepare for the 'sorry but I'd rather kill myself' rebuff. However, I have suffered some arrogance and ignorance. Would it surprise you to know that these things came from the USA?

I offered a young upcoming star, with no contracts or affiliations the chance of having his work reproduced for a wider audience. I explained the net profit deal that Borderline Press is offering everyone - whether they're pros or amateurs and he still wanted me to pay $100 per page of artwork that he drew three years ago and has no other publisher fighting to offer him a deal. To add insult to injury, he also wanted 70% of the net profit and virtually all of the reprint profit. I suggested, very nicely, that he publish himself and good luck in the future. I think he was lucky I spotted him; he might not be so lucky in the future and it's almost quite tragic that in ten or 15 years time he might look back on his greed and regret it...

I also offered a slightly more established small press or independent creator the chance of having his web comic collected into a very nice trade paperback collection. He admitted, when I first contacted him, that no one had shown any interest in his strip since 2007 when a now defunct company published the first issue. However, two offers of publishing it have been ignored and while I'd like to reproduce his stuff, it isn't likely to happen if he can't even acknowledge receipt of an offer. It's a shame because I think he would have benefited from a relationship with Borderline Press.

So that brings us nicely round to... Zombre, the working title for an idea Will Vigar gave me - a zombie anthology - that Borderline Press is going to be producing in the next few months and Will is going to edit!

It is, in many ways, a complete departure from the basic mission statement the new publishing house has been working under, because it is asking for new material rather than sourcing existing or nearly finished but homeless stuff. It is also something I have thrown open not just to my wannabe associates, it is something I have also thrown open to the host of well known and established comics creators I know.

This is the skinny - We’re looking for stories that are no more than 8 pages and in either comic format or illustrated prose. Any subject as long as it is zombie themed. For instance, an artist friend of mine suggested that he could do a story about a man who goes down the shop to buy some tobacco and gets eaten by a zombie with the moral being smoking can kill!

It can be bleak and apocalyptic; it can be humorous; it can be surreal, poignant or post-modern. It can be anything as long as it's as far removed from The Walking Dead or Shaun of the Dead as possible.

A post-modern zombie tale is preferable to a George Romero homage unless you have a good and unique angle (or just want to draw someone eating someone else's face).

If you are a writer that needs an artist or an artist in need of a writer, we’ll do our best to match you up with someone suitable. If anyone reading this hasn't seen all the other bits of promotion contact us at info@borderline-press.com and we'll sort something out... Well, Will will... [ouch]

Zombre will be out in November, just in time for the zombie-apocalypse-mas!

***

I mentioned somewhere that working on stuff for Christmas 2014 seems weird, especially as we haven't had 2013's version of events yet; but it is essential. I've been itching to release news about some of the things we've got lined up, but, you know, those final few details are still to be ironed out and I'm not about to say, "Hey, Borderline Press is doing something with ### ###," just in case something goes wrong or ### ### dies with two pages to complete!

This is completely normal. Honest. But it is terribly frustrating because I want to tell you ...

***

The Borderline Press web pages are currently under construction... Yeah, I know, it's really annoying when you see Under Construction on sites, but they really are! My web man - Glenn Carter, the man behind The Comics Village - is building it specifically for us. None of this off the shelf stuff; so (sticks neck out) expect something funky and functional!

***

In other news...

I'm starting to get Dennis Wojda's 566 Frames put together. It is a good book to cut my teeth on, after so long away, as it already exists in Poland. We've been discussing edits and slight changes to help people to understand what life was like under German and Soviet occupation. Most Poles, even younger generations, understand completely, while the rest of us have films to educate us.

Joanna Karpowicz assures me that she'll be completing Robotz sometime around June/July 2014.

I'm going up to the Lake District for the Lakes convention in Kendal at the end of October. I shall remember my mint cake. I am also going down to Kent for Demoncon6 and there's going to be an exhibition, curated by Paul Gravett, of Polish comics in London, after Lodz, so I'm hoping to bump into some old friends there, as well as make some new ones!

More next week!

The Borderline Press Blog #1

"Why don't you bring Borderline back?" Asked a friend of mine in 2008. I laughed at him; five years ago it was already a concept that was dead in my opinion, and to go into proper publishing with paper and ink and t'ing? You are 'avin' a larf.

"Why don't you bring Borderline back?" Said the same friend five years later. 
"Why don't you bring Borderline back?" I said, laughing again.
"Okay. I'll pay for it." I didn't laugh at him this time, but I did turn him down flat and explained to him that if print was dead in 2008 where did he honestly think it was in 2013? I added to this the fact that most anything you want is available for free on the Internet, so there would be no reason for someone to buy a magazine. Books will be obsolete in a few years.

Preconceptions. Misconceptions. Print isn't dead. Far from it. It is, in fact, healthier than it has been for a long time and as for the other thing... 

Back in May, when the idea of an almost flawless July was unheard of, I was having an afternoon with a dear old friend, an almost but never quite really famous musician and we talked about magazines and books; the fact that there is all of this information, articles, artwork, adverts and everything you can think of already on the Internet but regardless of this fact there are still racks of magazines and books in newsagents, supermarkets, Smiths and like print, vinyl is also having a renaissance. 

When I told him about the amount of comics content that's free on the net, he looked at me, smiled and said that Google is a gateway drug for the young and a default setting for most people. All comic readers use Google (or alternatives) to find comics they want, and therefore know all the usual comics places on the internet - all the free sites, the download places - because we all know if something exists some bugger will scan it and put a copy up on Pirate Bay or whoever. Comicbooks have a familiarity there wouldn't be if people started looking up wool sites or macramé ducks. 

As has been well documented, comics and me became a little like oil and water, especially after Borderline and then big time with My Monthly Curse and anyone reading that and following me would have thought that me going back to comics was a little like asking Jose Mourinho to return to English football management, say Chelsea. Been there, done it, worn the T-shirt out!

But, you know, people have said that I must love it because I can't let it go. It's like an addiction (boy do I know about them!) and I tried a number of times to talk about comics addiction; I even wrote several chapters on it and its metaphorical link to comics - that was one of the major edits I did on MMC. The thing is I've given up all my addictions - they were killing me, literally - and I'm left with nothing to do with my hands and, well, comics and me are old dance partners, perennial slippers or those oh so idle hands inside comfortably familiar gloves.

So, I sat down, assembled a lot of the old crowd and we chewed the fat, shot the shit and came up with a template that was both Borderline of old and new and for the 21st century baby-booming-£7.95-for-a-glossy-magazine-and-he-doesn't-even-flinch. The thing is, this was just over three months ago and we were all set to launch a new comics magazine, ASAP and then I did the physical costings and the overheads projection and the cashflow forecast and suddenly the idea of bringing Borderline back was a mixture of futile and pointless; it would cost too much money, would need 6 months to sink or swim and during that time my investors would have blown £½million and... well, no one is that silly, not even me.

That idea was not shelved, but binned, nay, incinerated on the pyre of worthless ideas. I do not believe there will ever be a time when a magazine about comics is successful enough to make one person a fortune let alone a few quid, so doing it with an investor... I'd kinda pinned all my hopes on this; I was unemployed, in desperate need of money and yet the fact that it was just quite simply a non-starter seemed to lift a huge burden off my shoulders and I concentrated on getting my shit together and finding a job. Then there was the start of some (not fearful) symmetry. I like symmetry, especially in humanity, because it affirms the fantasy in us all; it makes us see patterns and mystic pathways that aren't really there, but, metaphorically, in our heads, they are one of the totems that we need to exist and be successful.

I reconnected with Matt de Monti, who was my first assistant manager and one of the two reasons why Squonk stayed in business for so long. We had lunch, we talked about the comics magazine and he said something along the lines of 'there's so much stuff out there, on line, being done in mini-comics and no one sees it,' and that statement washed right over me (hence why I paraphrased it). I got home, walked the dogs, got back and this being the third weekend in May we were experiencing reasonably warm weather, I sat in the garden with the netbook and was just trying to get the volume on the thing to get above a whisper when it hit me; publish...

I sat there, pushed the portable computer to one side, grabbed my handy pad and pen and started to list everyone in comics who I know, everyone who I owe and everyone who owes me. I stopped when I realised that this was a futile exercise; provided they were still in comics and not dead, I still had at least 50% of them in one address book or another.

I then listed what I wanted to see from a publisher (then ripped that up and asked people who liked comics). I then got slagged off and metaphorically shouted at for insisting that I hated comics when it's patently obvious I don't (the person who had that stunning piece of realisation was Rad, who thought up the name Borderline in the first place...) and I don't, I just feel burned by them - the abused lover, who does everything and still gets left at home while his missus goes and shags everyone else.

So, let me get this straight, you feel burned by comics, you've had heaps of shitty luck, you've been gone for 10 years, you have systematically told anyone that will listen (and many that don't want to) that comics are the blood-filled pus spewing from the devil's shit-stained gaping wound of an arse and you want to publish your own? Oooooo-kay... 

I could answer this in many ways, but this one works best for me. Back in 1990, I started to write about the need for Marvel and DC to employ ex-retailers as consultant editors. When I was questioned about this or just looked at like I was 'special', I said that retailers were at the coal face of the mine; they were the people who knew, before anyone else, whether a comic was good or if it was the proverbial.

What about the existing editors? Surely they know better?

If one editor, a usually deluded E-i-C and a bunch of interns think a book will be a success you can bet that most of these people approving it either have a vested interest or want to impress someone. DC had a policy in the 1980s and 90s of 'throw enough shit and see how much will stick' (but only because they had TimeWarner's money and was being used as a tax write-off) - I'm thinking to be an editor at DC at that time in the company's history you just needed to be able to multi-task - walk and talk; shit and sing; nod and think - but then again they would have given Dez Skinn a job had it not been for Alan Moore threatening to quit if they did (this is allegedly the real reason Karen Berger got the Vertigo gig).

If the people approving books like the shit that was being pumped out of New York in the 70s, 80s and 90s had any real quality threshold they probably would have gone into another branch of the entertainments industry. For every good book there were 5 crap ones.

An existing or former retailer has to live his life by his ability to know, more instinctively than by logical terms, what will be good and what will be a pile of pooh. It's why there's the occasional hot value book, because it defied expectations and was quite readable. The retailer's life is pretty much dependent on his ability to know a winner, a flop and something worth a gamble.

It's been over 20 years since my shop shut, I've been away from retail a long time. It has changed. However, there are some things that you don't forget - you don't forget how to ride a bike or drive a car if you don't do it for a while; you might be a bit ring-rusty but you can do it, even if there are a few wobbles to begin with. I haven't forgotten how to spot a good comic...

I was going to write about how all of this came about - how someone would be crazy enough to want to invest in me, but the answer is simple. I took the idea of PDF files to a Technical Author who worked for a market research firm. they liked this new (it was 1998) idea as a way of sweetening deals with potential clients and I produced their reports in electronic format for 3 or 4 years. We eventually parted (I was working at CI to begin with and had started working with the homeless when I finished) on very good terms and several years later they sold the business for lots of money and the rest, as someone has said, is history. Or, in my case, the future. The symmetry here is that some of the product Borderline Press is going to be putting out will be in PDF format (as well as paper and ebooks and any other method of delivery I can find).

So... What can you expect?

Hmm. A nice presentation. Some of the best comics you never knew existed. Great deals for creators. Great deals for retailers! A publisher that cares about the business, not about making loads of money and then buggering off to do something else. I want an imprint that people will know will be worth their money even if they have no idea what a book is about or who it's by.

That's not just in the UK either. Borderline had its roots firmly in world comics and Borderline Press has to exploit those markets for all our benefits. The world is a big place (really) and I have expansive ideas for this company; so many my partner is having to hold me back a little.

I have what I believe will be a real winner; something that won't be ready for a while but will be ground breaking; a couple of collections of already web-published comics, ones that I really feel deserve a bigger, wider audience and a couple of things that I'm in negotiation about. Obviously there's the launch book and the two others planned for a pre-Christmas release. 

It surprises me just how much or how little is known about certain comics. I look at something and think, 'Well, this is pretty good, my comics reading friends must all know this,' and two out of ten do and only one has read it. It confused me until I realised that in many ways some comics are regional on a really small scale. Because I know X, Y and Z doesn't necessarily means that everyone else does. There's a chance that they might be well known in their geographical region, but the further you go away from that the more chance someone else will be on the local radar.

I've even fallen into that horrible, 'Ooh, it's just a vanity publishing set up to do his own thing,' area, because I am doing a book that I will publish; but it honestly wasn't my intention and when one of the best artists in Poland wants to work with you, you kind of don't turn her down. You dig? That's not until Christmas 2014, by which time you will all have seen what kind of a set up this is going to be and hopefully you'll all be so blown away by it all that I'll be on holiday in the Maldives when it comes out!

Yeah, but can you really spot a winner?

Remember Movers & Shakers? That was, arguably, one of the most popular regular columns in comics - ever. It was certainly one of the most extensively read pre-internet days. It wasn't ostensibly a gossip column; it was fundamentally a 'who and what's hot' column and I pretty much batted 100% and this goes hand-in-hand with the theory that an ex-retailer is far more attuned to identifying a piece of shit than an editor who is blinded by success or having to two the line. Also, people made money from Movers, let's see if I can do that again.