ALTERNATIVE COMICS NEEDS YOUR HELP !

a few months ago, i've talked about the financial problems that Fantagraphics publisher went through, then it was Ferraille Magazine who got some trouble, well... this is the turn of Alternative Comics, one of the best nowadays publishers around.
Jeff Mason, Alternative Comics publisher and one-guy-does-it-all, speak to you ; listen carefully, and then buy some food for your eyes and your brain with ordering a few AC comics.

"Alternative Comics needs your help!
Please buy our books from your local comic book store to help Alternative Comics survive!"

"Dear Comics Fans,
I'm Jeff Mason making a direct appeal to you, our faithful readers, in a time of serious financial difficulty. If you could find a way to buy some of our books listed below, you would greatly help in our time of financial crisis. Please check off the books you want below and then buy these books from your favorite retailer. You can also use the checklist in the back of your copy of Alternative Comics #2 that was given out by your local comic book store on Free Comic Book Day. If your retailer does not stock our comics and books, they can use this form below as a way to order our in-stock titles form any of our distributors.

Alternative Comics is suffering some very dire cash flow problems and I am turning to you for help. In the spring of 2002 our book trade distributor, LPC, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy owing Alternative Comics a lot of money. I had hoped that I could weather the storm by taking money from my savings and by borrowing on credit until receiving the agreed-upon 42% of what LPC owed us. Now over two years later, LPC is still in bankruptcy proceedings and I am completely out of savings and credit.
In the past (prior to LPC) I had ample working capital - I had great credit terms with my various printers. Now (post LPC) I have absolutely no working capital and must pay up front to print every book.
For each publication, I now wait for all of the retailer advance orders to come in to Diamond, then I contract Diamond to assign the payment they'd pay to me to my printer to print the book. This contractual agreement costs money and cuts into our razor thin margin.
Lack of cash on hand has also caused me to have to shrink print runs on some books. This increases the cost per unit of each book, and speeds the looming reprint costs.

I've been increasing my publishing schedule over the last two years, and in hindsight, I expanded too quickly.
Alternative Comics is moving forward with a much more reasonable, much more foresighted publishing schedule, with some really amazing projects in the works! Alternative Comics' cash flow problems have been the only reason for not yet reprinting Bipolar #1 and Humor
Can Be Funny as well as having been the only reason a number of books have been arriving late or re-solicited.
I am asking you to please buy Alternative Comics books from your local retailers. In my fanciful imagination, the best result would be for retailers to quickly sell out of all Alternative Comics books in inventory to customers and hurriedly place nice reorders with distributors.

Alternative Comics has no staff other than myself, so I am unable to handle orders directly. I ask that readers buy from your local comic book retailers, and retailers to buy from your favorite distributors.
The single most important variable for our publishing efforts is the number of comics or books advance ordered by retailers. Retailers decide their advance orders of books based on what you, the reader, let them know you want to buy.

If you can find it in your hearts to help Alternative Comics, I will be eternally grateful.

Thank you,
Jeff Mason
Publisher - Alternative Comics"

beam me up, scotty. ZZZZTTTTTTT!!!!

FIIIRRRSSSSST :
i just wanna say CONGRATS !!! to my pal Fred, to Delphine, and to their sweat little Odessa, recently landed around Lyon, for their parents' pleasure. i'm glad for you, guys ! 8)


COMBAT MEDIA HUB. AND OTHER SHIT, TOO

it's been a pretty long time since i haven't done any Warren Ellis related post. talking about the guy with some net friends reminds me it. so, let's go.

sometimes in june, somewhere in one of this +50 mails that he send on a monthly regular basis (under the Bad Signal mailing list moniker), the always highly pertinent Warren Ellis (who also run some brilliant kind of blog) had another of his usual smart mind gigs ; this one was called "[BAD SIGNAL]Combat Media Hubs", and it goes like this :

"This is something I was talking about with a friend on a private forum last night. It's been in my head for a couple of weeks. I'm going to road test the notion here.
Combat big media. Use the web.

Every day, people release new creative work on to the web. Prose, essays (often in blog form), art, photography, music, animation, video, spoken word, whatever. The web, and a bunch of free or cheap tools, gives the creator access to the full spectrum of media for web broadcast.
Live Journal gives you the ability to subscribe to other LJs, which you read on a dynamically updating page - your own channel of selected content.
Expand that up a bit.

Take Dr Joshua Ellis' notion of "taste tribes," small communities connected by a shared aesthetic.
Now, you and your tribe -- and if you're all on Tribe.net, you can grab a bit of code from the site that displays you all on a sidebar on your website -- select out the content streams on the web you like. Your favourite online comics, the internet radio stations you like, the artists who put new mp3s and art and photography on their sites, etc.
You grab some webspace. Your Hub, if you like.
And you cause to be created a system whereby the Hub is informed when one of your selected sites updates. The way a blog puts a new entry at the top. The way a new piece by a favoured LJ appears at the top of your Friends page.
You've just built a multimedia channel in webspace.

If you feel like it, you can nail some community software onto it, like Beehive. And you've got the place on the web where your tribe is, in real time. At the very least, you could set up to launch IMs off the site. Make your friends' information invisible to the public, set up an account with Ipipi, and you can SMS your friends' mobile phones from off the site (I set up a system like that for a private community earlier this year).
Hell, there's not even any need to make the Hub public, if you don't want to -- put the whole thing behind a password gate. But if you do make it public, you can construct a powerful evangelism tool for the content you like. Use it to create awareness of your favourite artists, even set up PayPal donation points.

It's your full-spectrum multimedia channel. It's the TV-killer.
It's the advertising-killer. It's all free original material selected by you and the friends you share tastes with.
Your Combat Media Hub.

I'm on the Treo at the pub, so I don't have the link to Josh's original "taste tribes" article, but a quick Google should
bring it up.
There could be great big holes in this, but I figure the idea's worth road-testing in any case."

i like this guy, i tell you.

as you see (and probably know by now), Ellis is very attentive to today-is-tomorrow technologies ; he spend months on the web and here's a few selection of the Alternative Comics published stuff he offers recently through this same Bad Signal mailing-list

"Quick Alternative Comics thoughts :
- Dean Haspiel's always good ; the Billy Dogma stuff is just mental.
- The Hanuka twins are brilliant.
- I know nothing about Rebecca Dart's work, but I love the shit out of that cover.
- Derek Kirk Kim is the guy whom everyone will be pretending they independently discovered next year. Alternative are distributing one of his books. Get it now, be ahead of the curve.
- Colleen Coover and Laurenn McCubbin were in True Porn. You don't need another reason.
- I haven't read Perverso, but Rich Tommaso is very good."

oh, and while around the Ellis topic, here's an interview of his "crazy southern belle", Colleen Doran, who works with him quite often, and a few Ocean pages available as PDF on DC website.


many things to do these last weeks doesn't help to update this blog that much ; next weeks seems pretty busy too, but i think i'll be able to blog a little bit more in the upcoming weeks. well. we'll see.

BACK.

i was out for the last weeks but all goods thing comes to an end, and that's something that i'm still learning each and everydays. which is one of the main exacts reasons why this life is so hard to live, sometimes. out of topic. anyway.

french southern and western coast (we're talkin about atlantic ocean here) was really, really great.

not because we founded some totally (and i mean totally) empty beaches in august (in august, yep).
not for the giant waves that were thousands to try to kill me every day.
not because we filled the maximum of our days with a maximum of cool things to do.
not because we take our time and visited a lot of cools places like museums, expos, old monuments.
not because we learned plenty of things about this french countryside.
not because we were two and glad to be together.
no.

these last weeks were cool cause for the first time in (maybe) years, i'd understood a few things about how my mind is really working ; it wasn't this easy and i didn't wished it that much, but there were some gears who strangely decided to fit, and i've learned things.
which doesn't make any sense for those of you reading this shit, but believe me, it makes sense for me.

the only thing that i can easily transcribe around ?
fuck.
i'm 32, or so.
and looooaaaaads of these last years are just wasted times ; i already knew that, no big news. no. only the fact that i think i know a few shit to do, quickly, really quickly.

so what ? well... we'll see, as it's still pretty disturbing to find only bad decisions to take, and trying to stop wasting any other time.

START.
STOP.
RE-START.
ORGANIZE.
CLEAN THE PLAYGROUND.
CHOOSE WHO TO BELIEVE.
WAIT LESS,
DO MORE.
DON'T THINK THAT THE NOWADAYS AREA YOU'RE TRYING TO CONSERVE AND FEED IS THIS GOOD FOR YOU.
THIS IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE.
DECIDE.

well. nevermind.
which doesn't mean i gotta nothing to say...

Jamie Thomas, in some 411 dvd, looks like a crazy motherfucker that don't give a shit to anything but him. ok, he looks pretty stupid, but gosh, he probably fill his life with plenty of things he like, which is the ultimate good point. oh, and this poser got some pretty nices tricks in his camouflage skate bag too.

what can i say ?
well, i tried this bodyboard shit (pictures soon), as i'm a pretty bad swimmer and doesn't know how to surf (i've tried a few years ago and after 2 days, surfing looked to me like doing some 50/50 to backside flip 360° on skateboard : impossible, not for me).
and gee, it was funny, really ; i'd never drink so much salted water in my whole life, but it was really, really cool.

ok, one day, Drine and i almost killed ourselves, really : we almost forgot that sand and beaches slowly moves everyday ; the result : sure to be in the same quiet water than the day before, we went too far from the beach and cannot reach it back.

people who already saw me knows that i haven't got the shadow of one single muscle, and i really thinked that i was ready to die.
pretty scary.
ocean' big waves (the weather wasn't this beautiful, loads of wind) won't let us reach the beach, it was slowly but surely send us away from it ; as soon as we saw it, Drine and I tried not to panic, but of course, i was unable to stay quiet... i mean, i tried to stay calm while talking (or not talking) to her, keeping my "no problems" face, but inside my head was the terrific pictures of my death. gosh ! 8)
at least, Drine was in front of me, closer to the coast, which means that she got more chances to survive... don't laugh : a few seconds, i was sure to die. really. really, really scary experience.

after a few minutes (which looked like years for my calf of legs attacked by several cramps at once), i had regrets about the place we choose : a desert and really quiet beach, faaaar awwwaaaaaay from any people or any David Hasselhof kind of guy ready to save my miserable life...
...of course, 30 minutes right before it, i was glad to forget all clothes and expose my hairy ass to the timid sun, alone for the 5 kilometers around at least.
but while in the water, i felt really, really stupid, alone on atlantic ocean which never looked this big to me.

ok, you know how it ended as you read me right now... we survived, of course, but frankly, the days which followed were pretty strange when we were on the beach : i think we never went far enough to have water on our knees. 8)


what else ? well, i read books while in the car, on the beach, or in the tent. 8)

- "Slaughterhouse-Five" , from Kurt Vonnegut ("Abattoir 5" in its french version).
well, i don't think you can call it "war story", even if war is a big ingredient of this absurd recipe... some says there's some Swift in it, and it's pretty ok ; Vonnegut had a big sci-fi background and loads of SF books behind him when he wrote this, in the early 70's.
but this story goes in more humanist roads, and shows, one more time, how far in stupidity the human being can go.
a disturbing read, with a mid-acid, mid-sweet taste.

- "Something fresh", from PG Wodehouse ("bienvenue a Blandings" in its french version).
well, don't ask me why i'm loving so much this classic english humor that Wodehouse made his own mark.
it's nothing but quick dialogs, misundertandings, non sense... first published in 1915, this books is not one of Wodehouse's "Jeeves" saga, but it could be ; same situations, same kind of stories. a funny read.

- "The mistress of spices", from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni ("la maitresse des epices" in its french version).
well, this author knows how to handle words and specific vocabulary with a grace, with a real personnal way, which is already 50% of what makes a good book to me. now, it was quite hard to understand how to enter this little realm where the story goes...
...but as far as i came into it, i read it very quickly. a good book full of good ideas and positives waves, with a brilliant creating process of writing.

- "Ostre sledovane vlaky", from Bohumir Hrabal ("Trains etroitement surveilles" in its french version).
another book from Hrabal is one of the best books that i had ever read in my life. this one is a quicker read, with less negative contents and more optimism... with one of the best writings i'd ever met, it's another story of war, of despair, of hope... of life. it's incredibly hard to resume Hrabal's books. you gotta read it to make your own idea. satisfaction guaranteed.

- "Comment je suis devenu stupide", from Martin Page.
(the title means "how i became stupid"...)
a few months ago, i loved the comic book adaptation from this book, with Witko on pencils ; i decided to read the original version of it too, as this sarcastic, caustic and acid story looked like a great idea to me. Antoine, a guy very intelligent and full of various knowledges, isn't happy with life. and he think that these intelligence and knowledges are exactly the main reasons why he's not.
so, he decided to stop thinking, like this.
at first, for helping himself in his quest, he try to be an alcoholic, then a people with suicidal tendencies, but cannot die this simple.
the last step for him is the ultimate one : he only got to becomes stupid.
Martin Page is a dirty fucker younger than me who write stories that really deserves more attention.

- "All quiet on the Orient Express", from Magnus Mills ("sur le depart" in its french version).
with only 3 books, this Mills guy definitely rules ; a naive and simple traveller slowly fall into the claws of the owner of the boss of the camp site where he stopped. the more he try to escape, the more he finds him stick to this strange english countryside...
really funny : original humor, and totally surprising, fresh. i loved it.

- "Nihon sanmon opera", from Takeshi Kaiko ("L'opera des gueux" in its french version).
Bertolt Bretcht probably fall on Kaiko one day... i started it another time but read it too quickly... it's the third book from this author that i read, and each time i tell to myself that his use of words has something totally different. the tale of a bunch of forgotten people, let aside from the highest society that rules their society and send police to their ass on a perpetual basis ; it's moving, it's alive, it's full of life... nice tale.

- "The best of animals", from Lauren Grodstein ("le meilleur des animaux" in its french version).
french publisher 10/18 probably publishes its worse cover ever, an horrible 72 DPI pixellized picture which sucks, and well... this collection of ministories is not this bad, not this good... a few of them are correct reads but frankly, either her writing, either her stories, i didn't find anything really satisfying into this Grodstein's book. i didn't read it entirely.

- "Survivor", from Chuck Palahniuk ("Survivant" in its french version).
holy shit, this book is a real good book. Palahniuk is the author of "Fight Club", and i loved it also, but here's, well... it's going into something totally disturbing. i gotta tell that i was really, really, really into the first part ; then, things take another twist and change of speed, and it's different... but still pretty good.
it's full of real mighty caustic humor, full of terrific ideas, and written on a real nice mode ; Palahniuk did it again, and this guy is not only a original freak, but also one of the best contemporary authors i'd read for years.

while on the beach, i also read some old Adrenalin magazines that i founded half priced in local press shops, plus the last issue. there's short prose and essays that deserves the try in it, depending in which ish you'll find and if you're into slide culture, either skate, surf or snowboard. there's this personnal touch and editorial line that is missing in 99% of today's skate press... nice mag, really.

what else, again ? well, nothing for today. more tomorrow.
ladies and gentlemen, have a very nice day.