FantaCo Archives - Page 6 of 8 - Ramblin' with Roger

The Sexiest Vegetarian

First, I MUST recommend Steve Bissette’s recollection of FantaCo’s horror publication Gore Shriek. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2, with more parts promised. I’m particularly interested in the future installments since they took place after I left FantaCo in November of 1988. Even if you’re not into horror, it is an interesting tale about artists, editors and publishing.
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Also, Librarian 2008 responds to my tag.
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I did not known until recently that June is Black Music History Month. Once upon a time, there were no black people on MTV videos. Hard to believe now, but the company thought their audience would shy away if certain performers showed up. After SONY forced MTV’s hand and got Michael Jackson on the network, one of the ubiquitous performers was Prince Nelson Rogers.

It’s peculiar that Prince is lashing out at YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay, as I think those videos are keeping him in the mindset of folks. Even funnier is this story where a Mother protects YouTube clip by suing Prince.

Prince turns 50 today. At least his name is pronounceable now. Who knows how long these clips will be available?

From my two favorite Prince albums:

Purple Rain

and Sign O’ the Times

I also own Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, Around the World in a Day. The Black Album, Batman, and a 2 CD greatest hits. I also have a 12-inch, 7-minute version of Let’s Go Crazy.

Here’s a song, like the Sinead O’Connor tune i posted on Wednesday, written by Prince:

Finally, a George Harrison tribute I remember watching at the time it first aired. His Purpleness really kicks about three minutes in:

Jaquandor’s Too Many Lists

Before that, though, I need to note a couple things

1. This Steve Bissette article, the part after Christian matchmaking, where he talks about FantaCo and its publications Gore Shriek and Smilin’ Ed.

2. The passing of Sydney Pollack, who not only directed Tootsie, one of my favorite films, but was one of those hyphenates as well known for his acting as his directing. He was a quite good actor, even in some mot so good scripts.

Jaquandor went quiz crazy. I’m answering the ones I feel like answering, having answered similar questions too recently .

Feet size: 10, although that can vacillate a bit depending on the brand of shoe in question.

Age you act: Thirty-seven. That was, in some ways, my favorite age.

Where you want to live: Don’t know, but living in upstate New York, given the rest of the country’s propensities towards fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes, as good as anywhere. And when global warming really kicks in, it’ll be as warm here in 20 years as it is in Virginia now.

Favorite Saying: “That’s doable.” Actually that’s fallen into disuse of late, for some reason.

Favorite Ice Cream: When I went to Ben & Jerry’s for free ice cream last month, I asked for rum raisin; they had none. Have they discontinued it?

Favorite Alcoholic Drink: Any rum drink.

When Do You Go To Sleep: Generally between 9:30 and 10 pm, except on Thursday night, when it’s between 11 pm and midnight.

Most Embarrassing Moment: Too hard to narrow down.

Stupidest Person You Know: I’m a snob. I tend to avoid stupid people.

Funniest Person You Know: Probably Tim, though most of his comments are groan-worthy.

Favorite Food: Chicken, I suppose.

Favorite Song: Impossible to determine, but I’ll be working on that very topic soon.

Wedding song: “At Last” by Etta James, for cause.

Pets: Only stuffed.

5 years from now? I used to have to do that years ago, and there was almost never a correlation between the aspirational and the actual, so I don’t bother.

10 years from now? Or, conversely, if I looked back 10 years would I said, “Now is what I thought it’d be”? No.

Have You Ever…?

Done Drugs: Even inhaled.

Run Away From Home: Briefly.

Hit A Girl: No.

Lied: Anyone who says they didn’t is probably a liar.

Stolen Anything: Not in a long, long time.

Broken A Bone: No.

Cheated On A Test: Answered before, yes, 9th grade bio.

Gotten Drunk: A few times in my 20s, but not in at least a decade.

Fell asleep in the shower/bath: No.

Gone to Church: Yes, on most Sundays.

Never slept during a night: The last all-nighter was in 1981, when a bunch of my grade school friends all got together.

Ever been on a motorcycle or motorbike: Yes. Didn’t like it.

Been to a camp: Every summer for about a decade growing up. Didn’t like it.

Sat in a restaurant w/o ordering: Probably not.

Seen someone die: Nope, I missed that fine honor by about an hour on two different occasions (my great uncle, my father).

Gone a week w/out shaving: A heck of a lot longer than that.

Didn’t wash your hair for a week: Probably in February 1975.

Broken something valuable: Possibly.

Thought you were in love: Or at least open to persuasion.

Streaked the streets: Interesting question.

Screamed at someone for no reason: well, not for NO reason. The reason may not have had anything to do with that person.

Said I love you and meant it: Why, yes.

Been hurt by a guy/girl you loved: Oh, God, yes.

Stayed up till 4 am on the phone: If so, it was so long ago I can’t recall.

Pulled a prank: Mostly surprise birthday parties.

Which Is Better…?

1. Coke Or Pepsi: I suppose Pepsi, though both are probably poison.

2. Cats Or Dogs: Cats.

3. DVDs or VHS: DVDs because you can get to a section easier.

4. Deaf Or Blind: I suppose blind, because I’d miss music and the sound of my daughter’s voice.

5. Pools Or Hot Tubs: Neither.

6. Television Or Radio: TV

7. CDs Or mp3: CDs, still.

8. Apples or oranges: Apples – macs.

9. Strawberries or Blueberries: I prefer blueberries, but eat more strawberries.

10. Gold or silver: Gold.

11. Vanilla or chocolate: Vanilla, a choice that traumatized me in the 6th grade.

12. Video or Movie: Movie.

13. Park or Beach: Park.

14. Hot or Cold weather: Hot.

15. Sunset or Sunrise: Sunset.

When is the Last Time You…?

1. Took a shower: Yesterday morning.

2. Cried: Yesterday, listening to music.

3. Watched a Disney movie: Some years ago, unless you count Pixar, in which case it was three months ago.

4. Given/gotten a hug: From the daughter last night.

5. Been to the movies: Sunday.

6. Danced: I dance a lot. In my office chair, especially.

7. Did a survey like this: Last week.

What Is…?

1. Your Fondest Memory Of This Year: the ships at Jamestown.

2. Your Most Prized Possession: my signed copy of Abbey Road.

3. The Thing That Makes You The Happiest: having someone be excited about info I’ve shared with them.

4. Your Favorite Food For Breakfast: pancakes with real maple syrup.

5. Your Favorite Food For Dinner: lasagna.

6. Your Favorite Slow Song: “Slow Song” by Joe Jackson.

7. Your Ideal BF/GF: Smart, more sensible than I am.

What Do You Feel About…?

1. Bill Clinton: I never got how great his Presidency was supposed to have been. Much better than his successor though. He’s really annoyed me during his wife’s campaign for POTUS. And though he didn’t come up with it, HATED that First Black President moniker.

2. Love at First Sight: I suppose it’s possible. Never happened to me.

3. Abortion: Legal, safe and rare.

4. Smoking: If I get on an elevator with someone who had been smoking recently, I practically pass out.

5. Death: Even more inevitable than taxes.

6. Rap: I LOVED early rap, but when it got all misogynistic and all, it lost me.

7. Marilyn Manson: I never think of Marilyn Manson.

8. Premarital Sex: What two consenting adults do is none of my concern.

9. Suicide: NOT painless, especially for the survivors.

ROG

Herschell Gordon Lewis

One thing watching the movie Juno took me right out of it for a minute. That was a reference to Herschell Gordon Lewis. I shan’t expand on that in terms of the movie.

Herschell Gordon Lewis is, more than anything, a businessman. He discovered that one way to make money is to make films filled with blood and/or sexual titillation that the major studios wouldn’t get caught dead doing back in the early 1960s. Read this particular description by Steve Bissette, who knows a WHOLE lot more than I do:
“BLOOD FEAST (1963) Notorious Herschell Gordon Lewis shocker dared to go where no major studio would, crudely carving out brains, tongues, limbs, and its unique niche as the first true ‘gore’ film. This widely-imitated breakthrough hit of the 1960s drive-in circuit was filmed in and around the beaches of Sarasota, Florida.”

I was working at FantaCo, primarily a comic book store, in 1983. Splatter Movies (1981), written by John McCarty, was, after we found a sales niche advertising in FANGORIA magazine every issue, became a huge success. So what do we do next? As I hope I made clear, it’s not my genre, so I haven’t a clue. But Tom Skulan, the owner, and John McCarty somehow team up with Daniel Krogh, cinematographer on Lewis’ The Wizard of Gore (1970), and decide to put out a book called The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis, and His World of Exploitation Films by Krogh, with McCarty.

The book premiered at the 1983 FantaCon, and HGL, as I referred to him, was making an appearance. What kind of man makes these kind of films? Well, as it turns out, the guy was very much a gentleman, sweet, soft-spoken, at least in that setting. He was a natty dresser. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with him, but I did get him to sign my copy of the book, which read: “To my friend Roger”. Daniel Krogh signed it “TO ROGER OF FANTACO”. John McCarty, who I had gotten to know from Splatter Movies, wrote, “To Roger – Whose job I don’t envy”. That was in reference to the fact that my task, once the convention was over, was to ship hundreds and hundreds of these to the comic book distributors. Ultimately, we also sold directly to non-comic book shops and at retail. As FantaCo subsequently published scripts for 2000 Maniacs and Blood Feast, HGL dominated my life until I left FantaCo in 1988.

I started my new job as a librarian in 1992. Perusing the shelves of the SBDC Research Network, what should I see but a book on direct marketing by someone named Herschell Gordon Lewis! Could it be the same guy? It could, and it was – check out his bibliography and filmography, right on his own website. He doesn’t shy away from his past – or his present – there is a Blood Feast 2 listed for 2002.

So seeing the HGL reference in Juno brought it full circle for me.
ROG

What Hast Moss Wrought

Lynn Moss, the wife of Fred Hembeck, has posted pictures of the second FantaCon back in 1980, before she WAS the wife of Fred Hembeck, if I’m remembering correctly. (EDIT: I wasn’t remembering correctly: they were married the year before.) The convention was put on by FantaCo Enterprises, the comic book store I worked at from 1980 to 1988. The pictures feature Fred, Lynn, Bill Anderson, Joe Staton, Wendy and Richard Pini, Dave Simons, and John Caldwell, plus FantaCo artist/front man Raoul Vezina, FantaCo employee Mitch Cohn and FantaCo owner Tom Skulan. The pictures also feature the “art jam” drawing done by Fred, Raoul, Wendy Pini, Berni Wrightson, Jeff Jones, Simons, Caldwell, and Staton, a drawing Fred described on November 28, 2003.

BTW, 21 Central Avenue, Albany, which was FantaCo’s location for its 20 years, has been several things in the years since it closed in 1998. Currently it’s a bazzar (their spelling), a convenience store that sells halal meats and other items.
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R: You really ought to plug Fred’s upcoming book again.
R: Well, I have all of those FantaCo publications in the Smilin’ Ed and Hembeck series. In fact, just came across them in the attic this weekend.
R: Yeah, but there’s over 600 MORE pages, some of which you’ve never seen.
R: Really?
R: Yeah, and all for about $25.
R: WOW! But I need a new angle.
R: How’s that?
R: I need a new way to plug the book again.
R: How about the cover, with the color scheme they chose NOT to use?

R: That’d work.
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A bunch of Jack Kirby stories that have allegedly never been reprinted. (Thanks, Dan.)
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Fred and Rose talk about commerce, of a sort.

ROG

Chronicles of the Fantastic Four Chronicles

(This conversation will be limited to the Chronicles series. FantaCo had also put out Splatter Movies and Hembeck 6, among other items, in this period.)

The X-Men Chronicles was a hit for FantaCo Enterprises in 1981. We had printed 50,000 copies and had presold at least 35.000 to the distributors. And not only did it also sell as an individual item in the store and in the mail order, we were able to trade some for Marvel, DC and other companies’ product, particularly underground comics from Last Gasp, a company our comics distributor, Seagate, wasn’t dealing with.
So what do we do as a follow-up? We decided to do two books, the Daredevil Chronicles, which Mitch Cohn would edit, and the Fantastic Four Chronicles, which would be my baby. I’m not going to talk much more about the former, except that I thought it was terribly Frank Miller-heavy. One of the Mullaney brothers from Eclipse Comics, Jan or Dean, apparently agreed; he wrote to say he read the book and threw it in the trash. (The letter, I think, appeared in the Spider-Man Chronicles, or maybe the Avengers Chronicles.)

The stuff below in italics is directly from my journal:

September 2, 1981: I call John Byrne, who agreed to write an article and do a centerspread, in addition to the front cover. And I called Jack Kirby, who agreed to fill out a questionnaire about the FF. “What a coup!” I wrote.
October 16: George Perez agrees to do the back cover for the FF book.
October 22: Receive Byrne front cover, centerspread and article.
November 5: Call Jay Zilber re: Wein/Wolfman interview. Then called Jack Kirby re: Q&A – he said he couldn’t answer questions re: FF, Marvel, only re: new projects. I panicked and got upset and angry. By that point, we probably had sent out info on the book to the comic distributors, indicating its content.Mitch calmed me down & said “Why don’t you do interview on Kirby now with a caveat. He [Kirby] agreed to that & also said I could use the rather nasty stuff re: FF 236 & his lack of prior knowledge that it would be used. Typed up new questions.
November 18: Michael Hobson of Marvel called to OK licensing on the FF and DD books, and that the company had “no problem” with the non-licensed X-Men Chronicles.
November 23: Get Kirby response.
December 17: I was going to do some editing (e.g., Joe Fludd’s lengthy piece, Jay Zilber’s just-arrived article), but instead spent most of the day looking unsuccessfully for a letter from Mike Hobson of Marvel giving us permission for licensing, which Tom needs for another bank loan.
O.K., I lied. I AM going to talk a little about Splatter Movies. This was a book written by an author named John McCarty that was really Tom’s baby; Mitch, Raoul and I were all a bit disturbed by it, although I did end up up proofreading it. And it turned out to be the most profitable thing FantaCo published in my tenure there. But at $8.95, it was initially a slow road selling to our distributors, who, after all, were comic book folks. This created a cash flow problem, for which the loan was to address.

January 3, 1982: Type the FF checklist at home while I watch football (Cincinnati beat the Bills, the 49ers beat the Giants; I doubt I was happy about that.)
January 7: I assume we found the Hobson letter eventually because Tom was able to secure $25,000 note from the bank so we’ll be able to pay $8700 printing bill for Splatter Movies.
January: Get various articles and artwork, not including Perez back cover. At some point, I call John Byrne, who allows us to use the front cover as the back cover as well, for free. Byrne was not universally loved, but I always had very good dealings with him; the FFC was not the last time. After the covers go to the printer, Perez cover FINALLY shows up, and I end up replacing content from one of the inside covers. (I’m thinking it was a Joe Fludd piece, because it seemed ironic that such a Perez devotee would be bumped by Perez himself.)
January 26: Tom called accounts (Bud Plant, NMI, Pacific). We now have fewer than 100 out of 50,000 X-Men Chronicles, and anticipate print runs of 70,000 each for FF and DD (the latter, eventually set at 80,000).
March 1: Start shipping out FFC, DDC orders, which takes a week, between the wholesale and retail orders.
March 5: Tom had made up 100 copies each of FFC and DDC in white paper stock, rather than newsprint. Gave 25 each to Mitch and me, 2 each to Rocco and Raoul. Somewhere I still have some of these.
March 15: Returning artwork, paying contributors, sending out review copies.
March 22: For Spider-Man Chronicles, got a Fred Hembeck to interview Roger Stern.
March 26: Mitch called Jim Shooter, who told Mitch in no uncertain terms (“What the f*** were you guys thinking about?”) that they at Marvel were unhappy with the Chronicles series, that there can be no licensing in the future, and that we’d “better be careful” in the future…No [more] Chronicles would be disastrous because another loan was contingent on publishing them…Tom called a patent attorney.
Oddly, a couple months later, there WAS further conversation with Mike Hobson about licensing, but nothing ever came to fruition, and the Avengers and Spider-Man Chronicles came out license-free, with no hassle from Marvel. We DID have another legal tussle, however, but that’s for another day.

In retrospect – let’s hear it for retrospect – I should have either 1) called Marvel about the content of the Kirby interview or 2) pulled the Kirby interview. The former just didn’t cross my mind. The latter did, but I was resistant because it would have meant resoliciting the FFC to the distributors and a costly delay.

I wrote this today for two reasons. One: FantaCo’s birthday was August 28, 1978; the store survived 20 years. The other is that Jack Kirby’s birthday was August 28, 1917, which means he would have been 90 today; he passed on February 6, 1994. Here’s a picture of Jack from the 1982 San Diego comic con, taken by Alan Light.