Review - [The] Stan Lee [Documentary]

Part One: The Beginning 

(a balding) Lee, Kirby & Ditko circa 1961

Did you know that Stan Lee was bald? Oh you did? I regard him as one of my heroes, possibly the greatest, but I never knew about his lack of hair and if I did I put it out of my head for other more practical thoughts. So that was my only real revelation with this new documentary about the man behind Marvel and that wasn't spoken about, it was just obvious. It didn't need to be mentioned because in 1960, Stanley Lieber was extremely bald and in 1962, Stan Lee had a full head of hair and by 1967 he looked like a groovy man-hippy in his mid-40s. Perhaps, this was his mid-life crisis? If it was it lasted the rest of his life (but you can see in his 90s that it probably was just a hair piece plonked on his head).

In terms of biographies, Stan Lee did pretty much what it sets out to achieve. Stan's early life - as with most of the rest of the film - are in his own words and I'd say there was probably some white lies thrown in to possibly embellish his own importance. I'd say Stan was a proud man and I think he would have looked at the poverty he grew up in - his father was often out of work - and decided he didn't want people thinking he was some kind of bum or low-life from a nothing family.

So much hair!

It quickly moves forward to end of the 1930s when he started work at Timely - the consensus is he wandered into Timely as a 16-year-old and was editor by the time he was 17, because he was essentially the only person left. This is where he stayed, him and a team of artists, writers and auxiliaries knocking out westerns, romances, sci-fi, monsters and anything but superheroes. Atlas was very much in the shadow of DC - a company that was barely mentioned (if at all, apart from a section with the late Julie Schwartz in it).  

He must have done a reasonable job because he was never replaced and Timely, then Atlas and finally Marvel Comics bimbled along, in the shadow of DC, for years and kept Lee comfortable. There are some telling moments when he recalls essentially green lighting anything he wrote so that he could earn the money to keep him and Joan living in a style they liked. There is also this insistence that he wanted to be a writer, which I've always been puzzled about. If you want to be honest, there's nothing in Lee's words that are good, but everything about the message he conveys is. 

I've always been of the opinion that Lee lied about his lifelong desire to be a writer, I think that was a idea he developed that glamorised his youth better. I think Lee was probably of the opinion he'd work in the rag trade and when he got a job at a struggling pulp publisher it was only because he didn't want to repeat his father's mistakes. He had to start writing Captain America and other stories as Jack Kirby and Joe Simon left and there was no one else to turn to. I don't think there was any doubt that Stan was a powerhouse, a man with ideas who turned them into realities. Stan did a pretty good job of being Mr Marvel and that's where I think the problems started...

Part Two: The Middle 

The documentary takes on an element of lies when we reach the 1960s. It is well known that by 1960 Marvel - or Atlas as it was - was Lee, Kirby and Ditko, but there were a couple of other guys who literally were never mentioned in the doc and apart from Flo Steinberg (office bunny) and an almost derogatory reference to his own brother Larry Lieber, you wouldn't have thought anyone else worked there. 

However, it's when Stan starts saying in the narration 'I did this' and 'I did that'. 'I thought up the idea of Spider-Man.' Which, incidentally ended up being two separate versions of how he dreamed up Spidey. There's something about Lee's anecdotes that possibly makes it easier to wonder if he's really telling the truth, yet there were stories that you knew 100% were true because of the way he talked about them - most of which were not references to creations and creators. I felt you could tell what was true to his memory and what was possibly embellished (a word Stan loved). There was something in his voice.

There were also the mentions of co-creating characters - which he admitted to with the X-Men - or even Jack Kirby solely creating the Silver Surfer. The problem was when he was talking about the Fantastic Four, The Hulk and Spider-Man it sounded like he was hiding things; not telling the whole truth. There was also this odd avoidance of certain other characters who Lee (and others) created - Daredevil, Ant-Man, Sub-Mariner and Sgt or Nick Fury - maybe the documentary would have dragged on, made it more about the comics than the man 'creating' them?

There was too much distinct 'I did this' about it, but without wanting to sound like I'm belittling the claims of Kirby, Ditko or others, there was no real evidence [in the film or in life] that the artists were more responsible in the creation of certain characters. However, this is my opinion and I've deduced this from recordings and others eye witness testimonies that both Ditko and Kirby had gone on record claiming because they designed the look of a character and spent 10 times longer drawing it than Stan did writing it, the artist was either the proper 'owner' or joint 'owner' of the character. Both Kirby and Ditko saw it as 'time served' rather than creative integrity. Or at least that's the distinct message you're getting from Jack Kirby in a 1987 phone in where he and Stan Lee 'discussed' who did what.

I want to tell you a story and I want you to tell me who you think created the character:

Fil the Norg

In 1984, myself and a good friend created a comic strip character called Fil the Norg. Now, Fil was a cantankerous old git (based on me) and he was going to have a sidekick called Cloin, who looked a bit like my artist friend. Now, I came up with the idea of Fil but my friend designed his look. He designed Cloin singlehandedly while I came up with his name and his identity. We produced a dozen three-panel newspaper strips, all written and plotted by me and drawn by my friend.

I had an associate who was a senior editor at the Kettering Evening Telegraph and I showed her the strips, she took photocopies back to her bosses and got back to me and said the newspaper wanted to run strips from local creators, they were well up for publishing our strip. They also talked about £200 per strip and they'd want at least 26 weeks worth - up front to ensure they had plenty of lead-in time - and, most importantly, would allow us syndication rights if anyone else wanted it.

I took the proposal back to my friend and said we'd split the fees 50-50 and both of us would clear £500 a week for at least six months. We were set well. Except my friend wanted 90% of the fee, 80% at a push. He refused to accept that we were a creative team, we had created these characters together and just because he put more physical man hours in didn't mean he was entitled to more. It didn't end well and I had to turn down the gig and I fell out with my friend (and we've never really been friends since because I feel he sacrificed our chance of something big by being greedy) and was treated like some kind of despicable shit by our mutual friends, who blamed me for us not becoming famous. None of them understood the creative process and none of them wanted to - it was all about physical man hours, nothing else.

Interestingly, my friend went on to create a number of his own creations and no one was interested in them because they weren't funny or any good. He never accepted that we had a good deal at 50-50 and 20 years after this happened was still adamant that because he drew the characters, he owned them and all I did was come up with some ideas.

Who would you say is the creator of Fil the Norg? I'd always say, we created the character; it was a genuine co-creation.

I believe this is maybe what happened with all these Marvel characters created in the early 1960s. It may well have been Stan Lee rolling into the offices saying, 'What if we had this kid who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and can stick to walls?' or 'How about a good monster?' or 'Why don't we do another superhero team, this time with kids?' Maybe that was all it was and Jack and Steve went away and came back with character designs. If this is what happened in the early 60s then it's quite possible that the artists' ire was created not by the real truth but by the way Stan took responsibility for everything (or nearly everything)? Lee obviously had a massive ego and was full of self confidence (given the wigs he wore); he became the face of Marvel, therefore in corporate speak he was the man who created Marvel.

Of course the problem now is this feud between those who feel Stan Lee is god and those who feel he's a huckster charlatan who stole the ideas from his greatest artists. I've long sat on the fence about this because I believe - as the MCU does - that someone might have come up with the original idea, but every writer, artist, inker and even editor had a part to play in developing those characters to where they ended up. Co-creators the lot of them.

If I wanted to throw an existential spanner in the works, take Adam Warlock. Created by Jack Kirby, originally scripted by Stan Lee, he wasn't know as Warlock for a few years yet. However, when Jim Starlin took control of the character it changed so drastically that 'Him' created by [Lee and] Kirby in 1966 and Adam Warlock are so far removed from each other you could easily think they were different characters. Jim Starlin is, in this instance, the true creator of the Adam Warlock that became iconic in the late 1970s; he didn't think the character up but he made it a success. Out to left field - Alan Moore's Swamp Thing?

The children and grandchildren of the greatest comics artists of an era will argue until the cow's come home over who did what but they did it together; they were a team of people having some fun, there wasn't ever an issue of ownership because everyone worked for the company and the company owned everything. If you're one of the people who wants to continue this pointless argument, carry on, I'm happy believing that they were all responsible and Stan had the loudest voice.

Part Three: The End

After Marvel parted company with Stan in the late 20th century, it seemed like the grand old man of comics would fade into obscurity, however with the surge in popularity in the MCU and the taste for Marvel nostalgia at its peak, Stan was invited back as Chairman emeritus and started his new career as a cameo actor in as many of the MCU films as possible. 

The documentary didn't examine the allegations against Lee's carer and PA, nor did it spend too much time on the lows in his life - the death of his second daughter was almost casually mentioned. It was a celebration of 100 years of Stan 'the Man' Lee the guy called Stanley Lieber, as he was before Marvel.

The film wasn't or at least didn't appear to be a Marvel or Disney production, which suggested to me that they could have delved into some of the controversy a little more, but, just to emphasise this, only a handful of very loud unwittingly angry comics buffs want to keep the creator/owner debate going; it's like they want a message from the grave from Stan saying 'they did it really'. This was just a celebration and it was interesting that Stan narrated it himself. 

There are some anachronistic things about the visuals, which was off-putting to someone who knew the timeline before I sat down to watch and when it was made there were still a few of the 1960s bullpen still alive so it would have been nice if they had said a few things, if able or willing.

This wasn't a hagiography, but it did veer towards it at times. The film also wasn't as universally accessible as I thought it should be; it felt like a film made by a fan - but I suppose anyone who grew up with Marvel is going to be a fan of Stan Lee. Whether you think he was an 20th century icon or a thieving manipulative sociopath, there's no escaping the fact that as a simple comic book publisher, he certainly made his mark. 

Si Spencer

Borderline Press's second project was Zombre. In my mind's eye, I saw myself literally as 'the publisher' and was happy to get others involved, especially if they were going to do most of the donkey work. The idea was my friend Will Vigar would compile and edit an anthology to try and we'd cash in on the zombie/walking dead popularity. Yes, it was an unprecedented attempt to cash in, but it was done in the spirit of putting something out that would sell a lot and allow us to do other more eclectic projects.

My role was essentially publisher and editor-in-chief/designer, but the latter was literally only as a safety net. I had to make some difficult decisions as far as page count etc was concerned and wrangle Will into getting it all to me so I could get it to the printer. 

Will was massively excited about having the opportunity to do such a project and managed to get his old friend, professional TV and comics writer Si Spencer involved. For someone such as myself, who had essentially been out of comics for ten years, I was vaguely familiar with the name but accepted Will's assurances that having Si involved would be a good thing; after all, I was trying to surround myself with people who were more 'in tune' with trends in comics than I was. And to be frank, I couldn't care who he got involved as long as the quality was high.

To this day, Zombre has been the best selling of all the Borderline Press titles; although 'best' is something of a misnomer as it sold about 300 copies (a rough estimate, I no longer have actual figures etc) and I don't know if that was because it had a 'name' involved or if it was catching the zeitgeist of zombies and dead things.

To say that my initial meeting with Si was all fluffy kittens and £ signs would be a massive understatement. He had arranged a sort of small scale 'comics mart' at his local pub The Lord Clyde and Will and I found our way into London to be present at what was effectively a 2nd, much lower key, launch (we had been to Leeds in the early autumn for an official launch which proved to be a huge waste of time and money). There was, if I recall correctly, a slight frisson of mistrust from both of us. In 2013, I was still kind of known in the industry, but more for being Skinn's pit bull rather than for such proper achievements as Borderline Magazine and the good stuff I did for Comics International, and thanks to renowned shitmongerer Rich Johnston I was being painted as some kind of misogynistic arsehole as Johnston focused on my numerous faux pas than on the fact we were trying to do something new and for the underdogs in comics and I got the impression that Si did the job for Will and had I approached him I would have got a big fat no.

However, by the end of the day, we'd sat with beers and talked about stuff and I began to warm to him; we had, it seemed, a lot in common. We hooked up on Facebook, although at first it felt more like an arrangement of convenience rather than because we liked each other, but gradually I commented more on his timeline and I noticed he was appearing on mine. It seems that social media has some benefits, it can cast you in a bad light, but it can also help shine a light on the fact that for all my faults - of which I have many - you can sometimes get a feel for what a person is really like by the stuff he or she posts.

I realised that we were friends at some point in 2015 when Si got banned from Facebook for a month - his hobby it seemed was going onto right wing FB pages and winding the fascists up. He set up a new FB account and befriended the people he was in contact with or liked, I was one of them and in a weird kind of way that was a bit of an ego-booster for me.

Over the last few years, with memories of Zombre fading, my involvement in comics completely gone, we would talk either publicly or in private messages about other shit. Music, old TV, interesting stuff that he or I found funny or abhorrent and eventually a lot of our discussions turned to depression - something both of us suffered from, but Si obviously was further down that road than me. I once said to him, 'I sometimes wonder if being born when we were is indicative of our mental health 50 years down the line'. He agreed.

Despite the fact we had little to do with each other personally, it didn't stop us from communicating more. I got the impression that first impressions had long been put aside and while I would never consider myself one of his proper friends, I often felt I had become part of his infamous Hivemind of friends who would be consulted when Si needed advice or input from people he thought might know what he didn't.

Oddly enough, whenever Si got banned from social media, I felt something was missing from my Facebook and whenever he reappeared either as Si or Simon depending on which account hadn't been frozen it made me happier. You know, for all my disdain towards things like Facebook and social media in all its forms, I've made some good 'friends' who I've barely ever met and Si was one of them.

Then on the 17th February, Will posted something about Si dying. My initial reaction was, this has got to be wrong, he had only posted something like 20 hours earlier about vaccine rollouts for Covid and toad in the hole, but it proved to be very true. I have no idea what happened in those hours after his last post and the announcement from Colleen his wife, on his FB page, but it all pretty much became a reality very quickly. 

It left me in a profound state of shock. We were virtually the same age and like dear Terry Wiley I had lost another 'comics' friend far too early. 

John Freeman of Down the Tubes contacted me and asked if I would write Si's obit; I turned him down because there are far more people out there far more qualified who would do it justice, but I tagged my own little tribute onto the end of Will's. https://downthetubes.net/?p=124922&fbclid=IwAR04_16Zpr_u0q78RbXXOK5c1wcKFdgmmno7aQ99SjJaEUlEz2xF162jbr8

However, he was still one of mine. I was someone who published him, albeit in a small way and therefore he was important to me. 

The world is a little less today and tomorrow and all the subsequent days that follow. I wish I'd known him a lot better, but equally I'm selfishly glad I didn't because that would have made this so difficult to write. I have the utmost sympathy and love to his wife Colleen and all of the fantastic people whose lives have even been slightly touched by Si Spencer not being in the world any longer. KYAL as he used to say - Know You Are Loved. You were. 

Terry Wiley (1961-2018)

I lost one of my best comics friends last week. It feels much more raw than it should, but that's probably because Terry Wiley was only a few months older than me and nothing brings home your own mortality than someone close dying. He was 56. In terms of a child it's an ancient age, but when you're 56 it's just over two-thirds of the way through what you'd expect in the 21st century.

Terry was the creator of Verity Fair (published by me in 2014) and co-conspirator for British small press classics such as Sleaze Castle, Surreal School Stories and Miffy (which would grace the pages of Borderline magazine while simultaneously create a publishing paradox that only Terry could explain...) all unique; all harkening back to a time when comics were fun but with nods to how contemporary they had become.

A sunburned Miffy appears in Verity Fair, albeit briefly. Miffy's first appearance was in 2001, however, according to Terry, Miffy's three-panel strips in Borderline take place after events in Verity Fair, completed nearly a decade and a half later... Terry knew what the score was, I didn't question him. A paradox was not a hurdle and he alluded to a future project that tied all of this weird time jiggery-pokery up. I can only ponder now...

Terry spent the last few weeks of his life in a hospice; as someone with a disease that will eventually kill me, the idea of a hospice is terrifying, yet is also supposed to be uplifting for those involved. He was visited by many of his friends and fellow comics people; he had a stream of people reminding him that he was important. He spent two great weeks with Cindi his fiancee and his final moments surrounded by his closest friends and family.


It seems that only now is the rest of comics waking up to the fact that one of their own is no longer with us... You see, I think that was down to the simple fact that Terry was going through seven kinds of hell, yet he and his friends didn't really want the attention. For some people, the end of life is sacred on all kinds of levels and wanting the dignity of slipping away peacefully is pretty much top of most of our lists. It's just a shame (in my head, I have no idea how Terry felt) that he knew for best part of the last 2 years that the new 'friend' he was carrying around in his head wasn't friendly and would kill him, probably sooner than later.


Let's make a few things clear: a lot of us knew he was ill for a long time, some of us knew how bad it was (not me), but we all respected his wishes to keep it quiet. This was typically Terry. No fuss, no frills, let's have a laugh, but look after the kittens after I'm gone.

I'm going to miss the big man even though our time was limited to conventions and the occasional long, drawn out, convos on FB, SMS or Twitter. And I wish that the problems that befell Borderline Press, while Verity Fair was floundering around in a print shop in China, hadn't happened until much later, with a different project by someone else...
It would have been so much easier had we had a fair crack at marketing, selling the book and making him some money, but most of all getting him the recognition outside of small press. I don't think Terry ever wanted to draw Deadpool and make a fortune, but I do think he was have liked some recognition, not just for him but also for Adrian Kermode (also no longer with us) and Dave McKinnon (hopefully with us for a long time). Recognition was something Terry didn't have a problem with, mainly because he liked talking to people and recognition made that more possible.

I'm not privy to Mr Wiley's personal bank account details, but I never heard from anyone that he needed financial assistance. I expect he got the most out of our free NHS, from MacMillan and his local council. I also expect he found it easier to get some form of government benefits because of his situation, even if I do concede that getting forms of DLA from our benevolent and humanitarian government is often more difficult than extracting the eggs from a cooked cake, so I'm heartened that Terry had no struggle to make ends meet in his final months, and what I've heard from friends money was never an issue. In fact, I have literally discovered in the last few minutes that friends of his considered starting a crowdfunder or some such, but quickly opted against it on the grounds that Terry really would not like his private predicament dragged into a public spotlight, especially the kind of web page he had problems with even on a purely creative level; without bringing one's personal life into proceedings. His friends and fans respected that wish, without even really having to ask him.

How did Borderline Press and Terry team-up? I launched the idea and groundwork for it at Caption in 2013, Terry, who I had known for 15 years, was there and I basically said, probably in a slightly gushing way, ‘Can I publish your book?’ Meaning Verity Fair. He agreed and I had my first ‘project’. That was it. He didn't ask me what he was going to get out of it; he wasn't interested schedules or printers or even a contract or anything else. He was concerned about one thing ... "Can it have dust flaps?" Of course he could and it did.

That was how I’ll always remember him, unreservedly easy-going, humorous and benevolent. While I was growing increasingly frustrated with the delays and the fact I might not have a company by the time Verity Fair arrived back from China, he had been tweaking CMYK stuff for the printer, talking with me, being patient and available when I needed him, despite flitting back and forth across the Atlantic to spend time with his fiancee in Illinois. He amazed me with the way he dealt with the stuff considering it was his.

In a world with very few consummate professionals, Terry was exactly that.

When the really rather splendid collected edition of Verity Fair arrived, Borderline Press was in the throes of becoming another failed publisher, but undaunted by what I could no longer do for him, he took all my stock to conventions and then helped man tables for my successor, to help promote, not just his, but all the range of books. I remember getting a text message from him in October 2015, from the Lakes International Comics Festival, telling me how he'd done and how much he'd spent on sustenance that day. When I saw how much, I texted him back: "Go and buy yourself some dinner and a beer!" He'd spent less than a fiver on a coffee and a doughnut.

Not enough is said about the kind of person someone was when we lose them; it’s usually about achievements or how others felt about him. Terry and I both shared a passion for social justice and a fairer society; it’s what drove our conversations – in person and on-line – and it’s ultimately why we became friends. Yet, I don’t want you to ever think that I published him because of some 'old mates' network; I published him because he was a unique story teller, married to modern independent comics but never forgetting the British comics he grew up with and loved.

Sadly, death, like life, comes at unexpected times and I am just one of a few people who would have wanted to be at Terry's funeral on September 25th but are unable to do so because of immutable circumstances. I’ll miss the big lovely man and I’ll treasure his legacy. I was proud to have published him and call him my friend, so I will find a nice quiet beach somewhere and spend a few minutes thinking about Mr Terry Wiley and maybe shed a tear or two.

Oh and while you are here...

The Borderline Press edition of Verity Fair is again on sale (subject to quantity) and every single penny of sales (excluding P&P) will be donated to a charity of Terry's choice. His long-term, long-distance fiancee Cindi Geeze will decide where all money goes to, but it is likely to go to either a brain cancer trust or a local Newcastle animal charity - maybe both if people clear us out of Terry's final book. I want my friend to look down from wherever he is and think we're doing okay by him.

If you want a copy then either contact me via the blogs email thing; look out for me on Facebook, send me an email squonk_uk@yahoo.com or contact Ponent Mon publisher Stephen Robson (stephen@fanfareuk.demon.co.uk) or via their website or Facebook page. 

The stupid thing about it all is the only regret you'll have is not having bought it sooner.

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 #33 - What 'Hiatus' Means.

Just a quickie as it appears that my last blog alerted people to the fact that Borderline Press has ceased to exist, which is clearly not correct. The publisher who produced Paul Rainey's latest opus didn't produce anything for nearly two years, but I suppose because Paul Gravett didn't tell people he was taking a 'no cash in the bank' break no one presumed he'd packed up.

Borderline Press might never produce another book; but it plans to. I just needed (and need) to get my own house in order and, you know, I thought by keeping people in the loop I wouldn't have to constantly tell people. If problems mean that it's 18 months between releases, that's still better than some of my competition. I just needed people to be aware that books they were waiting for were going to be late, or done by another publisher.

We're in the process of generating money after the continuous Diamond cock-ups (let me tell you, being treated like the idiot cousin does have consequences, especially when you get dropped for a conglomerate who pretty much don't need extra pages of advertising) and I'm trying to get Santa scheduled (but Diamond's unreliability means having to make tough decisions about soliciting it - it's been bumped twice now). Treating yourself to a good book at a good discount can help us out, big time.

So if you haven't got all our books you can for 50% off from our web shop, that's about 50% less than you'll pay in the half dozen comic shops with progressive owners/managers who can spot a good thing when it bites them on the arse.

So anyone who picked up on the last blog wrongly, I have a simple message for you: I'm down, but I'm not out.

Borderline Press Blog #32 - Hiatus

Because of distributor cock-ups, health issues and a bunch of general problems, Borderline Press is officially on hiatus for the foreseeable future.

On a personal level, I need to take myself away from this for a while - doctor's orders - so there will be nothing scheduled or published before August 2015 when Santa Claus versus the Nazis will come out.

Robotz was cancelled. I found out about it in a circular email from the artist, which kind of sums up everything about this year.

I'm not packing it up; I just need some time to sort my life out and Borderline Press just compounds things almost on a daily basis.

Be patient; stick with Borderline Press and don't forget, if you haven't got all our books so far, they are all fantastic.

Borderline Press Blog #31 - Sod's Law

"We've had our fair share of setbacks," was a nice line aimed at me from Ben (Santa Claus) Dickson - who I'm glad to say thinks of himself as part of our little publishing family - and frankly I'm pretty amazed we're still here at times.

Setbacks and problems are part and parcel of this kind of venture, you just don't expect them to happen as you approach the end of Trading Year 2 - you would have pretty much cut all your teething troubles out by this point. Yet printers of a variety that would make Butch Cassidy proud, staffing troubles and ill health were just three things that were sent to try me in 2014 and 2015 was only going to get better...

Except we're at the end of March and I have nothing scheduled at the printer before the summer and yet again the reasons have been beyond my control. To say that it would be unwise of me to spotlight the recent debacle is an understatement. You don't walk into your only pub for 50 miles and call the landlord a See You En Tee and then punch his wife, especially if you're an alcoholic and that colourful metaphor pretty much sums up the situation I find myself in at the moment. I simply cannot tell you who's fucked up this time because I'd like to carry on trading/publishing.

Suffice it to say this latest setback is beginning to feel like someone somewhere has got it in for me, or perhaps some karma has found its way back to me - after all, I've been pretty scathing about comics for years, so anything that can go wrong was probably a nailed on certainty...

The whole thing has become a worry because I'm suddenly faced with a situation I'd not bargained for - a cash flow crisis. We pretty much knew this first quarter of 2015 was going to be a very important time; the orders from Previews were going to determine the next quarter and we were, effectively, going to become a publisher working on what we make rather than from investment. But, more than that I cannot say (I think I've dropped enough hints).

On top of all of this my health has been poor; my mobile phone is knackered while O2 are obfuscating like a Tory MP trying to offset the blame elsewhere. My search for a job to preserve my sanity hasn't been fruitful and I'd talk about depression but I wouldn't want people thinking I'm going to fly a plane into someone's house or a mountain...

On a positive front. I'm personally chairing a panel about self-publishing (which seems odd considering I'm not a self-publisher per se) at the Sunderland GN Expo in May and I'm also doing something with the extremely clever Dan Mallier - who was the brains behind one of the convention hits of 2014 with his extremely well patronised Leamington Spa Con - on Free Comic Book Day, if we can work out the logistics, etc.

However, for the few positives, having no cash has meant that I'm struggling to fit Borderline Press into conventions this year; although given the pointlessness of many of them perhaps this could be viewed as a money saving exercise... Plus it's annual returns time and at the moment if I could find a convenient stone to crawl under I would. With my 53rd birthday less than a month away everything is beginning to feel like a chore. I just feel sorry for my creators, they probably deserve more than me.

Maybe next month I'll have something good to tell you.