FantaCo Archives - Page 5 of 8 - Ramblin' with Roger

FantaCo 1987

In looking for more FantaCo-specific material, I started leafing through a my journal from 1987. Ah, John Hebert comes over to my house a couple times to work on Sold Out #2 in March. Let’s see, what else?

May 1987: A friend of a friend of mine (more like an acquaintance of a friend of mine) came into the store looking for a job. Let’s call him Jacques. Apparently, I had met him before at a party, but he didn’t leave much of an impression. He shows up without calling first and is ticked off that I’m at lunch when he arrives. He uses the phrase “Oh great, boychik” a lot. Jacques gave me a bad-looking copy of his resume. He criticized the Atari we had in the store (HE had a Commodore) and says he knows “more about comic books than anyone” because he’s been reading them for years – as though I’d never heard THAT before. Jacques tells me the other places he’s already applied today – doesn’t THAT make us feel special, if we even hiring! He then told me FantaCo was owned by Fantagraphics and that Matt, the guy behind the counter, was “stupid” for not knowing that the store was owned by the people who put out Amazing Heroes. (For the record, FantaCo was not owned by Fantagraphics, Fangoria or any other entity). I wish we had had a job to offer so I could have turned him down.

July 30, 1987: There was a boy of about 12 patiently waiting outside the door of the store at about 10 a.m. The sign clearly noted that the store didn’t open until 11, and that early morning is when I did mail order, stocked the shelves, organized the bank deposit, etc. As it turns out, the boy had come from Belfast, Northern Ireland to buy a set of Fangoria magazines ($249) plus $225 of other horror-related merchandise. His mother, who I hadn’t seen waiting – worried that he was spending so much money and wondered whether the material would even get through Customs. The boy said something to the effect that at least you don’t have to worry about getting shot all the time. I had the sense that, based on the wide range of products offered in the Fangoria ads, the store would be physically larger, but still I sensed that he felt as though he had come to Mecca. Had I known how far he had traveled to be there, I might have let him in earlier.
We sold four Fangoria sets in two days, two in the store, two in the mail.

ROG

Art jam

There is a gentleman named Jeff Kapalka, who sent his newspaper review of Fred Hembeck’s new book to Fred recently. With Jeff’s permission, Fred forwarded it to me.

Jeff also attached this item, forwarded by Fred:

Jeff describes it to Fred: “I’m also sending along a scan of a piece you participated in about two decades or so ago. Remember when we’d meet up at conventions, and I’d be toting my big-ass piece of poster board around, getting all and sundry to contribute to a mammoth character jam? Well, it finally got filled up in the mid 1980s, Karl Kesel got roped into inking any penciled characters, and I’ve kept it ever since.

“In the bit I was able to cram into my scanner, we’ve got Cartoon Fred interviewing an Al Milgrom Firestorm (who for some reason is wearing a Clyde Caldwell clown puppet on his hand). Meanwhile, CF is being crept up upon by a Steve Bissette Swamp Thing (“Let’s see if you can grow YOUR arm back.”) with Vince Giarrano’s Haywire lurking in the background. Just out of shot, a Paul Smith Storm is forming a little storm cloud over Firestorm. He doesn’t notice, as he’s busy trying to pal around with a rather disinterested Jughead, a la Stan Goldberg. That’s Brent Anderson’s Shanna in front of a Ron Frenz Spidey, and you can just about see E-Man’s outstretched hand, courtesy of Joe Staton. Can’t remember for the life of me which character from Arion, Lord of Atlantis Jan Duursema sketched, but there’s no mistaking Raoul Vezina’s Smilin’ Ed.”

“Ahh…those were the days.”

Yes, they were. It’s interesting that three people who did work for FantaCo appear in this panel:
Steve Bissette, who was in Alien Encounters, Gore Shriek, Deep Red and other horror projects.
Fred Hembeck, who, in addition to his eponymous series, also contributed to Smilin’ Ed, the Chronicles series, Gates of Eden and Alien Encounters.
And of course, the late Raoul Vezina, who, in addition to Smilin’ Ed, worked on the Chronicles and had stuff in the first four FantaCon programs.

Jeff notes to me: “I loved Smilin’ Ed. (The issue where he heads off to Hollywood, obsessed with cinematic cheese, spoke volumes to me. Even today, when I think of the poster for Angry Red Rabbit, or poor Ray Merrymausen working on his stop-motion project, I smile.)

“We probably have already met, of course. My cohorts and I made many a trip to FantaCo back in the 1980s, and we were always treated right. The feeling there was like the Cheers bar, but with comics. It was there I first found out about the redoubtable Mr. V and his critter creations. Sadly, I have no real memory of any conversations with either him or you, but I do have the sense of having talked comics with fellow fans.

“FantaCo also introduced me to the awe and mystery that is Blotto, but that’s going off on a tangent.” Not really. The FantaCo folks were big Blotto fans, too. I was singing ‘Metalhead’ in the shower just yesterday.

“The piece also features a Dave Sim Cerebus, Wendy Pini’s Skywise, Iron Man by Bob Layton, John Byrne’s Rog-2000, Mike Grell’s Warlord, Walt Simonson’s Manhunter flanked by George Perez’ Starfire and Mary Wilshire’s Firestar, a Totleben Demon squaring off against a Simons Ghost Rider, and an Incredible Vampire Balloon. (The last is a critter from my Cranberry: Certified Public Avenger series. Never heard of it? You’re not alone…) And there’s still more!”

Jeff indicated that if he gets a chance to scan some more, I might be able to share more with you fine folks. Thanks, Jeff.

ROG

SCATHING BOOK REVIEW: Fred Hembeck’s TNCEHAO

Fred Hembeck is my friend. We were friends back in my days at FantaCo. After a long hiatus, we’ve been friends in my period of blogging. So now that I’m reviewing his book, THE NEARLY COMPLETE ESSENTIAL HEMBECK ARCHIVES OMNIBUS, I feel that I should especially tough on his compendium.

Item 1: it’s not in color. Of course much of it was not in color in the first place, and it IS 900 pages for 25 bucks. (Truth is, if that page of the X-Men which was used as an insert in Hembeck #2 WERE in goldenrod, I think I would have suffered flashbacks from my days doing mail order at the ‘Co.)

Item 2: those CBG pages, which were hard to read at 11 X 17 are even harder to read at 8 X 10.5 or whatever it is. Strange though – I’ve been reading Hembeck’s work for so long (30 years!) that it’s not the problem I thought it’d be.

Item 3: it doesn’t have the Marvel and DC copyrighted stuff. Hey, if this is a big success, don’t you think Marvel will want to follow the trend and package the Fantastic Four Roast, those Marvel Age pieces, that book in which Fred destroys the Marvel universe (what IS the name of that comic book?), et al., all in one piece.

Item 4: it’s not paginated. That IS tricky, but I suppose that’s why God created the bookmark.

Item 5: in the introductory page to the last section, the village of Saugerties is MISSPELLED! Shocking!

Ah, who am I kidding? I love this book. I started reading the introductory sections first. I was TRYING to bypass the stuff FantaCo published in the early 1980s, but I found myself stopping to read some of the framing stories, such as when bride of Hembeck Lynn Moss meets Bud Abbott and Elvis Costello. Or the time when Fred was going to blow off FantaCo for a mysterious benefactor. I also got to re-remember the wordless story Fred did with Bill Mantlo.

I’ve had the book almost a month and I’d be lying if I said I had read even half of this tome. But I’m happy to have it, for I can usually pull it off the shelf and read six or eight pages at a time between other duties.

So, despite my savage criticisms, go to your local comic book store, book store or the website of artiste himself and get it!
***
To make up for that brutal review, a short piece featuring one or two of Fred’s favorite performers:

ROG

Remembering Raoul Vezina

As I’ve mentioned here before, maybe once or twice, I used to work at a comic book store/publisher called FantaCo Enterprises in Albany, NY from 1980 to 1988.
Raoul Vezina was an artist who worked for and was published by FantaCo, in the latter case, particularly in a series called Smilin’ Ed.
Raoul died 25 years ago in November, and I am looking for all things Vezina so I can write about him: primarily recollections, but also samples of his artwork.

Thank you.

ROG

Roger Answers Your Questions, ADD

The inimitable Alan David Doane, with whom I spent much of last Saturday afternoon, along with John Hebert, Rocco Nigro and Fred Hembeck wrote: I have five questions, which if you answer them all, I will steal your responses and put on my blog, because that’s just the kind of guy I am. And he is. He really is. He’s also a guy who hates his cell phone but keeps it charged, whereas I often don’t know where the phone and/or the charger are.

What is your favourite comic book story?

Yeesh. I must admit a fondness for the Defenders when Gerber was writing it, and I love a good origin story (Spider-Man, Hulk), but ultimately, I end up with Giant-Size Man Thing #1.

When reading comics, do you focus on the writing over the art, the art over the writing, or both about equally?

Serviceable art will allow me to read a well-told story. The most beautiful art will not save a terrible story line. One of the comic books I hate the most has to be Spider-Man #1. The McFarlane art was tolerable at best, but the story was so gawd awful, I stopped buying the title after 3 or 4 issues. Given the fact that I LOVED-LOVED-LOVED Peter Parker/Spider-Man, it was painful, but necessary. This was NOT the Peter I knew. The Spider-Man was more like Spawn. Loathsome.
When the Pinis used to come to FantaCo to do Elfquest signings, Richard used to rail against the comic fanboys who cared about art to the exclusion of story, and I thought he was absolutely right.
That said, sometimes the art DOES move me. I was buying Sub-Mariner during Bill Everett’s second run, and I loved the look.

Who do you think is the greatest comic book artist still alive today and why?

Well, besides Fred G. Hembeck, who should be considered just based on the sheer number of characters he’s drawn? I’ll cop out and say Art Spiegelman because he helped bring the comic form out of the comic book ghetto.

What’s your happiest memory of working at FantaCo?

I almost always loved when our publications came in, but I’m going to pick something rather arcane.
There was a graphic novelization of the Stephen King’s Creepshow drawn by Berni Wrightson in the mid-1980s. Having connections in both the comic and horror markets we knew, both instinctively and from comic and horror film stores we dealt with that there was still a demand for this title. The publisher, we ascertained, still had many copies of the book. I wrote to the publisher- nothing. I called the publisher – I was told the book was no longer available, which I knew to be untrue. Finally, I reached someone who acknowledged that they had copies but that it was not worth it for them to send it out only to deal with a huge percentage of returns.
So I said, “What if we bought them non-returnable?” I thought the guy’s teeth were going to fall out. “Non-returnable?” So, we took 100 copies of it at 70% off the $6.95 cover price, put them in the store and listed them in a Fangoria ad, and blew through them. So I called again and said, can we have another 100?” By this point other stores were clamoring for this book, so we ordered an additional 500, and sold it to these horror book stores, and a few comic book stores, at 40% non-returnable. The stores got to sell a book they could otherwise not get, we made a decent profit even wholesaling someone else’s book, and we kept the Wrightson book from just being remaindered. My persistence in dealing with this publisher was, strangely, my favorite FantaCo moment.

Here’s another: I just came across in the past week a letter that one of FantaCo’s mail order customers sent to me. Why it should resurface now, I have no idea, since we’ve only been in the house since 2000. (A 1989 article about the comic book Shriek was also in the pile.) This guy worked for Ryko, and he would send me, his mail order purveyor, free music.
Roger-
Good to speak to you on the phone today (1-26-88)…I’m finding Ryko fans in the strangest places.
Hope you enjoy these guys – I chucked in a couple 3″, too. The one with no writing is “They Might Be Giants”, a couple of guys from Hoboken, NJ. I like this not for the swag, but because apparently I was giving him service worthy of him sending me free stuff. Still have that unlabeled TMBG disc.

What do you think is the single best publication FantaCo released in its history?

While I have a strong affection for the Spider-Man Chronicles, which I edited, I’m going to say Gates of Eden, which Mitch Cohn edited. No, I’m NOT going to pick the Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis and his World of Exploitation Films, no matter how much you beg, Alan.

ROG