Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 17:21:43 -0400 To: [comics pro] at [netcom.com] From: [c--yd--g] at [mi.net] (coydog) Subject: Atlantic Canada comics scene SELF-PUBLISHING COMICS ACTIVITY IN ATLANTIC CANADA PART 1: A A REPORT FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH If you were ever in Fredericton, New Brunswick or Halifax, Nova Scotia, and if you were to visit the Strange Adventures store in either or those locations, you would find along with the handsomely printed slicks a motley assortment of photocopied books in a wide array of sizes and formats. Some are ashcan-sized, some come closer in format and in production values to their richer cousins. It would look no different from any other store in other parts of the continent which is receptive to small local publishers. But along with the high-school superheros and warty mutants are comics attempting to express a distinct perspective which comes from living in Canada and especially the far-eastern part of it. One need not be obsessed with fishing, unemployment cheques and hating Toronto to get the point; the essence of it is as well expressed in a journey between dimensions (*Ehlissa*) as it is in the frustrations of day-to-day existence (*The Pogey Boys*) It can be a style of phrasing, a drawing on ethnic, cultural or spiritual roots or a way of being. Other titles dealt with such subjects as paper routes, commuting, ghost stories (plenty of them up here) and local history. Finally there are all the more SF-and-Fantasy oriented works which still have an idiosyncratic spin to them from their point of origin. We're not exactly Seattle, but we are here. At last year's NovaCon in Halifax, there were at least four creators either wandering around or hawking their wares at dealers' tables. Peter Murphy (co-publishing the supernatural anthology *Subterranean by Design*), M.A. Bramstrup and Dave Cullen (writer and artist on *Dragon's Star*) and myself, wandering around offering copies of my latest *Arrowflight* and T-shirts to anyone who would spring for them. There were also the usual compliment of high-school hopefuls and their DC-and-Marvel inspired efforts. Some of them showed promise. Of all the artists in that age group, the most promising and most individualistic was Nic Recha, who at 17 is already well on the way to forming a personal visual language and a confidence and willingness to mark out his own territory with regards to subject matter. He will be starting his first year at the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design this fall. I have forgone my usual trip to Ontario this summer, because I have taken that amount of money and sunk it into my new commercial web site. I'm hoping to get something out of it. Eventually I hope to start publishing online though how much people are willing to pay for content is open to question. Getting all the mechanisms in place may take more of HTML than I know right now. Getting my artwork scanned in is another matter. I'm still waiting on the artwork for the first three issues of *Arrowflight* that I left at the service bureau for scanning. I haven't heard back from them yet. It's been a month now... Tomorrow my latest issue goes to the printers. My books, though photocopied, are saddle-stitched and close to regular size. The per unit cost on a print run of 100 comes out to $2.30. I sell them at $3.50 apiece, which is not that bad for a zine of 56 pages. I am contemplating going to a smaller, less expensive format, but the readers who follow the book have come to certain expectations and I should not jeapardize that. It would be an idea for other publications, though. The greatest advantage would be putting out whole layouts on my printer with a minimum of cutting and pasting, as paper is not getting any cheaper. For those of you with fairly adequate computers it might be worth it to get at least a modest desktop publishing app. I hope to get my tablet and stylus soon, though I'm close to hiking all the way down to California and personally throttling the execs at CalComp and Lockheed Martin for dragging their tails on delivering the product to the people I'm buying it from. It would make some tasks a lot easier. Finally, a word of advice that may keep a printer from throttling *you*: paste your layouts back-to-back, exactly as they are going to be printed (I would assume you are using both sides). This is especially important if they are going to be photocopied, as it is difficult to tell which way you should place your work on the platen glass to make sure both sides are printed in the right direction. It may save you from paying for a costly mistake. Also, insist on seeing the machine it's going to be reproduced on (or at least some sample output). Whether or not it can hold a level of quality and print cleanly through a long run is important. You're paying for it. I hope to have a detailed creator/title list and survey ready in the near future. I hope that you will find it usefule and informative. "Different is strange, different is lonely, Different is hard for you only, Different brings heartache, different brings pain, But I'd rather be different than be the same." Monique MacNaughton 26 Stonehurst Ave. Fredericton, NB E3C 1H2 Phone/Fax: (506) 455-7774 http://www.mi.net/dialin/coydog/taaos.htm http://web.idirect.com/~coydog/home.htm http://web.idirect.com/~coydog/arrw1.htm