Broken Frontier

Catch yourself up to speed - Serendipity Part One

Back? Good. You didn't miss anything while you were gone. The intro was atrocious.

KILL YOUR INNER PUBLISHING CHILD…

Broken Frontier owner/operator/part-time-magician-of-order, Frederik Hautain, brought me in to talk to the publishers in the crowd. But, you know what? Screw 'em. I've got too much competition as it is.

Which, if you're following, is my point.

WIZARD IS GOD

I was sitting in Long Beach at the Wizard convention a few weeks ago. I love Wizard. Didn't see that coming did you? Yep. I love me some Wizard. Them boys are really, really smart. They know their audience and they cater to it like no other magazine in the market. Brilliant bunch.

The reason people hate Wizard, especially the Indy and Small Press crowds, is because they think that Wizard is supposed to be about comic books. That's just funny. Wizard is about insta-culture-flash-pop served up in a heaping pile to over-load your circuits and force-march your brain into step with the zombie masses. It is decidedly NOT about comics.

But there are idiots in comics that don't get that. So they get mad instead of using the Wiz as a model of business excellence and acumen. They get mad because they spend their money on convention booths at Wizard shows and then don't sell any of their books. They get mad because Wizard won't talk about their books or lower their ad rates so they can afford to buy space to promote their comic.

Instead of getting mad at themselves for not recognizing the fact that Wizard is not about comic books.

So, I was sitting at my booth at the Wizard Long Beach convention. Sales were "slow" (read that as you will). I began chatting with my neighbor, Joshua Fialkov, the Editor/Writer for Hoarse and Buggy Productions. Now Josh has some good books. Books that are getting great buzz and critical acclaim- TALES OF WESTERN TERROR and ELK'S RUN. Heard of them? If you're reading this, you probably have. Guys like Warren Ellis and Steve Niles have been talking up Josh's books a lot lately. And you know what?

Josh was having his feces force fed to him just like the rest of us.

Why? Not because the books were bad. I know for a fact that our Ape Entertainment books are of high quality and if Warren Ellis vouches for ELK'S RUN then you should have no doubts. No, it wasn't because the books were bad, it was because we were at the wrong convention. We were at a Pop Culture convention with toys, anime, video games, pirated dvd's, porn starlets and the 'oh-so-hot-artist/actor-of-the-moment'. Wizard brought the pop-culture people into the convention in droves. They filled the place. They spent their money. And we sat there with the wrong product.

So there's your lesson my Publishing Children: Understand Your Market. Know your product and who your product appeals to. Find ways to get your product into the hands of those people. Wizard does it, you can do it too.

BACK TO THE POINT…

I was talking about too much competition. I'm not kidding you. There's too much.
Too many companies with too many great products.

And a barren landscape for an audience.

Look, I don't blame you. Honest. You've been burned before. Unfinished books. Bankrupt companies. Money is tight…
and Avengers #4 has that great variant cover. But I'm telling you, its empty calories. You can't live off that diet. You got to put some meat and potatoes in that brain-gut or you're going to rot.

You're going to get tired of the same old, re-tread, super-hero tripe at some point. Then you're going to leave. You're going to stop buying comics. I don't want that. You don't want that. Feed your brain. Serendipity is looking but you got to put yourself out there if it's going to find you.

ALMOST NORMAL COMIC REVIEWS
In spite of the garish purple and green color of the website the reviews on this website are plentiful, knowledgeable, and COMPLETELY obscure. More reviews of small press zines and mini-comics can be found here than any other spot on the web as far as I can tell. If you REALLY want to get out of the mainstream, go here.

INDY MAGAZINE
An intelligent and beautiful webzine published by Jeff Mason, owner of ALTERNATIVE PRESS. The current issue boasts an oral and visual history of RAW magazine from which the Pulitzer Prize winning book, MAUS, originally saw print.

NATE PIEKOS
Some of you may know Nate because of his free, fontastic work over at www.blambot.com. However, what some of you may not have heard is that Nate is also a pretty damn fine cartoonist as well. Nate's humorous fantasy strip, ATLAND, about an undead sword fighter and his motley crew is flat out one of the best web strips going.

SLAVE LABOR GRAPHICS
I love SLAVE LABOR GRAPHICS. Who couldn't love an Indy company that has been around for the better part of 15 years and is still in existence? From the perennial favorite- JOHNNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC, to the recent super hero hit- 15 MINUTES*, Slave Labor can do it all and they almost always do it right.

AWEFUL BOOKS
Some of you may have heard of the amazing series STREET ANGEL comic coming from the Aweful Books Studio but what you may not know is that the OTHER part of the Aweful Books Crew has an equally amazing book, THE GYPSY LOUNGE. THE GYPSY LOUNGE combines the best of Indy angst and Superhero slugfest into one beautifully illustrated book. A rare instance where art and commerce blend perfectly.

ELKS RUN
ELK'S RUN by Joshua Fialkov, Noel Tuazon, and Scott A. Keating is a fine, fine comic and very worthy of all the high praise. It's an 8 issue, limited series and it deserves your support. Go pre-order the second issue so we can all continue to be treated to a cool story.

If you've got something comic-cool that you want to share, email me at grunts@ape-entertainment.com. I'll do my best to get it in here. We've only got one more of these to do so make it snappy.

*I'm the penciller for 15 MINUTES so 'super-hero hit' may be a slight exaggeration. Buy it anyway.