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.

More Irrelevance (part 1)

Many years ago, in another century, I wrote a review of a book and kinda felt a little like Salman Rushdie and his fatwah. The review, which appeared in Comics International, was of a novel/linked collection of short stories and it got held over a month because Dez [Skinn] wanted to read the book himself.

The thing was, it was Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire and it had lots of fans and most everyone knew that there was this acrimony between Dez and Alan and my review could easily have been construed as Dez having a dig at Alan via a third party, mainly because I gave it a really bad write-up. Dez felt that his magazine would come in for unnecessary attention and criticism if a negative review of Alan's debut book was published by him with my name attached to it. At the time I probably agreed with him, so the reviewer's name was changed. Dez got halfway through the book and couldn't read any more and it sat in his bathroom between 1996 and 1998 when I believe one of his 'friends' borrowed it. He went with the less than flattering review...

It was at the 1996 Christmas party in Finchley which polarised it for me. Peter Hogan (DC and 2000AD writer) was laying into Sarah Bolesworth (the reviews editor) about this horrendous review; she explained to Peter that it 'was fucking Dez's idea to run a novel review' and for him to take it up with Dez. The aforementioned was already 9 sheets to the wind by this time, so he pushed Peter in my direction and said, 'Talk to Phil, he knows the bloke that reviewed it' and normally I would have been quite straight with whoever was demanding of a situation like this, but Peter was almost apoplectic, arguing the reviewer 'just didn't get it' and 'obviously didn't understand the place Alan was coming from' ... Well, Alan is a bit older than me and I haven't lived in Northampton all my life, but I have been here for 7/10ths of mine and I fancy I know a fair bit of it - unlike the non-existent part of the town that Alan referred to in his recent Observer interview which either was altered to stop loonies from putting impromptu blue plaques up or because he really comes from a very nice part of town and doesn't want people to see his true middle class roots.

There was also this guy in Wellingborough who claimed he was Alan's brother - he ran a pub and the resemblance was there even without the hair and beard - but everyone I've spoken to about this said Alan was an only child...

Anyhow, the point was, that kind of scared me off of writing that many scathing reviews again - it didn't stop me and as an editor and it got me into trouble more often than it didn't; but I figure I've always meant well (um, well maybe not meant well, perhaps being honest and opinionated, but hey everyone has one, an opinion too). This preamble is because I watched something the other day; I was impressed with it as a documentary film; I knew some of the people in it (one I class as a friend), but in its attempt to be post modern about a subject that almost by definition isn't ever going to be post modern in the eyes of Joe Public, I think it did nothing but accentuate many of the stereotypical points I made throughout the book. I watched Morgan Spurlock's Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope and while it was clear that the message was 'the geeks will inherit the earth', the reality is the geeks will NOT inherit the earth. The geeks will inherit some sad lonely bastard's comic/book/toy/action figure/porno collection and maybe their parents' debt.

What this film does is perpetuate a myth, except it isn't a myth, that's just an expression - a stereotype - we keep using, but the reality is despite the mainstream coverage San Diego gets and the fact it is used as a vehicle for Big Entertainment, it is a geekfest, pure and simple and yes people make money out of geeks; it isn't football, but it keeps people in work, makes a few millionaires and even if it metaphorically is killing people, it doesn't normally do it for real (eh, Greg?). What Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope does is say, 'look at these people, take pride in the fact that you aren't them (but wouldn't it be nice if the soldier gets a job)' and by the end you get a pay off even if millionaires aren't involved and my lack of knowledge of the industry now means I have absolutely no idea who offered the soldier some work, but I hope they paid him and that he's not given up his day job.

The thing is Spurlock likes sensational, but he's so obviously a comics fan and the film is produced by a Who's Who of icons and well known geeks, that there was never going to be much more than sugar coating. The two joined at the hip lovers were a perfect example. By the time they'd been on screen for ten minutes and he could not even go to the bathroom without her suspecting he was going off to have fun without her. What he wanted was to get her an engagement ring and propose to her at a Kevin Smith talk; Smith was in on it, the organisers were in on it and obviously Spurlock was. Bunny Boiler Girl was probably clued up by the time he was in the queue to ask Smith a question; she even kind of spoiled his big surprise and all you wanted to do was grab hold of him and scream as loudly in his face as humanly possible - DO NOT MARRY THIS LIMPET MASQUERADING AS AN ASIAN WOMAN, SHE WILL DRIVE YOU TO SERIAL KILLING! Spurlock just upped the schmaltz levels and made it look like a really cool thing, when in reality he was saying 'please do not allow these two people to procreate'. It was probably only the 2nd really subversive thing in the entire film (the first being the two minute skit on how badly the place smells after a couple of days) and it was done so subtly perhaps it was just cynical old me who saw it.

The problem is a film like Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope is not going to change the opinion of someone who doesn't understand the kick. The reaction is likely to be derisive rather than of interest. One of the 'famous' talking heads commented about how it took a certain kind of person to look at a comic to become that kind of person - it's what happened to me. Comics is one thing, but this was really a documentary about the SDCC and that meant costume parades, video games, films; about breaking in, making a splash, having your heart broken. The theme was acceptance, the feeling it gave was of a bunch of weirdos in a very hot place for 4 days every year - avoid.

For all the celebrity endorsements in this film, there were actually very few true celebrities on show; Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, Seths Rogan & Green, Eli Roth, and Stan Lee, who, of course, is most famous for ... comics. The film and TV guys drafted in all have something of the geek about them (while Whedon and Smith came over as the two most irreverent and erudite, yet in many ways as uber-nerds) and it was their contribution to this celebration of geekiness and nerdism that lifted it.

My wife sat and watched the documentary with me. She did so because 18 years ago, long before SDCC became this mythical near-nirvana for US comics fans, I was there, doing my bit for Britain in a predominantly USA world. I had to explain to her that things haven't just expanded, they have exploded and the irony is that while comics continue to wane, the peripheral ephemera of toys, films, TV and general nerdism has grown exponentially. If SDCC in 1994 was a 7 on the Geek Overkill monitor, 2010's SDCC was an 11.

Yet, I was rooting for Eric Henson - the soldier with the right balance of naivety and talent to either succeed or get royally butt-fucked - and watched Skip Harvey's dreams get pulverised - and yet there was I almost shouting at the TV screen that 'this guy needs to learn from this and go away and do all the things the editors told him to do', but for a while I thought we'd get nothing but self pity from him. He redeemed himself at the end by having a Never Say Die attitude and while he won't ever be a big time comics artist, he should have fun trying - rejection is part of life. Holly Conrad's story was the least interesting because I've never understood the need or desire for cosplay or fancy dress parades - it will never be cool, it will always smell vaguely of 8-year-old's birthday parties. The fact that Holly, presumably on a shoestring budget, is knocking out SFX that were pretty damned good was probably the reason why I didn't end up fast forwarding through her bits and she will be a success in her field even if her story felt like padding.

The rest of the film was taken up with Chuck Rozanski's struggles at being the leading comics retailer in the USA. I've met Chuck a couple of times, he's a nice genuine guy and he is successful. yet, amazingly, he doesn't fit the bill for a successful retailer - he's a fan and as times were hard he was considering selling his Red Raven #1. I said right at the start, he will not sell that book, he doesn't want to and he didn't have to, he took enough money from the weekend to mean that he could stick it back in the vault for another 30 odd years.

The Red Raven #1 Chuck had for sale was almost as new and he was looking for $500,000 for it. As someone who has owned this book and can trace how I lost it with vivid accuracy, I'm glad my mother isn't alive today, because I would have shown her this film repeatedly because I just know that the kids my mother gave this comic to will have destroyed it within 24 hours of getting their shit-encrusted mitts on it. It was maybe only worth about $500 in 1971; when I wrote My Monthly Curse it was probably only worth about $10,000 and my copy would have been vg+ at best... But... You know...

Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope is the best film I've ever seen about comics and a comicbook convention, but it is also a horror show of serial geekiness that tries to be post modern but only succeeds in looking like it's trying to be post modern but remains the domain of people with deep social needs. It doesn't matter how articulate or passionate someone is about their subject if the rest of the world is going to point at you and laugh or sneer at your supposed childishness.

You need to understand that I tend to think of myself as an anomaly. I have grown to hate comics and everything about them because of my experiences. I have more venom in my blood than anyone attached to comics that I know; yet the many people I know or who have met who have even more disparate and disparaging views on comics and geekery is frightening. I know people who will go to the cinema next summer and watch Pacific Rim and come out sporting massive fanboy-like erections, waxing lyrically about how that film rocked, but if you put, I don't know, Appleseed or Guyver in front of them, they wouldn't wipe their arses with it and would be even less respectful to the people who worship comics such as these. Transformers movies are fine; but the comics or the toys - getoutohere!

Geek Nation exists and it's a growing democracy of diverse and independent nerds, but it will never rid itself of a certain image and there will never be enough members of the Geek Nation to allow it to rise above the derision it gets. The geeks will inherit the earth, but only in their dreams.