Want to know a fatal flaw in the Nix Comics business plan?  At least part of it is contingent on me walking out of record stores with more money than I came in with.  I usually sell 5-10 copies of a new comic to most record shops, which means at wholesale I make between $12 and $25 bucks per visit.  You’d think that it’d be easy to walk out of a record store, buying less than $12 worth of stuff.  And it would be for someone who wasn’t sick and weak like me.

How sick and weak am I? Well, when started distributing Nix Comics Quarterly #5 to the local Columbus shops this week, my first stop was Lost Weekend Records.  Right as I walked in, I saw the pictured Guitar Wolf records sitting there in the “just in” bin.

Fuck.

Priced at $25 a pop, I just knew that Kyle (Lost Weekend’s owner and operator) would go $60 on all three, because his motto is “The more you buy, the more you save.”  That beats what I’d pay on stoopid Ebay, for sure.

Fuck.  Fuck.

And these three records all fall in the category of “Regrets: Things I could’ve bought when they came out, shouldn’t have sold when I was broke and/or should’ve stolen from my jerk roommates.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck me… I had to buy ‘em.

After all, the Nix Comics character “The Vicar” is at least in part inspired by Guitar Wolf and his role in the movie Wild Zero.  Sure the style and appearance of the Vicar is more about Joey Ramone and Question Mark (of Mysterian fame), but if not for scenes like the one below in Wild zero, I doubt I would have made the leap from “Favorite Rockers” to “Invincible Monster Hunter.”

This Thursday was one of the more exciting days I’ve had in a long time.  The Ohio Art League Member Curated exhibit that I’ve been putting together with Matt Wyatt for the past few months finally opened up with a great reception event!

I really need to thank the Ohio Art League for giving me and my peers here in town a chance to strut our stuff.  I hope that is the beginning of a strong connection between comics culture in town and an organization that has benefited artists in Columbus for over 100 years.  

(Note local yokels, that means I hope the OAL will do more comic related events.  It also means that I hope more local comic artists will sign up for OAL memberships.  Mine cost $50 for a year and I feel that was a bargain!)

Is it a little trite to break down notes based on "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" of an experience.  Yeah.  Probably.  As with all thing Nix, write your own comics and get yer own blog if it bugs you.

The Good: Buzz

The press leading up to the event has been truly phenomenal.  I’ve been soap-boxing about how the local media needs to take notice of the local comics community for a couple years and I’m glad that my earnest pleas have not fallen on deaf ears.

Here’s a link to the article in the Columbus Alive which focuses the comic community as a whole.  Jackie Mantey did a great job of showing who some of the important people are in the community, what some of the great resources are and why we have all of the ingredients on the recipe for a great scene.  She really knocked it out of the park!

http://www.columbusalive.com/content/stories/2013/02/07/comic-book-central.html

(Track down a print copy.  The layout people at the Alive did a great job on this story!)

Columbusunderground.com also did a nice piece  This one was a little more “Ken-centric” and I got to talk more about Nix Comics and stuff specific to the exhibit.  (That makes me naturally inclined towards liking it more… because… y’know… I’m an egotist.)  I should say that Anne Evans delivered the best survey style interview I’ve ever been a part of.  By survey style, I mean a list of questions emailed to me as opposed to a conversational style interview where the interviewer has the opportunity to get immediate follow up. Survey style interviews can suffer from a lack of continuity in the spots where the subject’s answer doesn’t match the author’s expected answers.  Anne avoided that pitfall deftly and asked some pretty pertinent and provocative questions.

http://www.columbusunderground.com/what-does-it-take-to-make-a-comic-book

Even OSU’s lantern chimed in with a nice little piece.

http://www.thelantern.com/a-e/comics-exhibit-to-showcase-columbus-natives-works-explain-creative-methods-1.2983507#.URUthqVEF8E

The Bad: Comic Town

Am I really calling out a local business?  A local comic shop of all things? You bet.

Towards the bottom of the Lantern article, Julia Hilder throws in some comments from Comic Town owner/manager Ryan Seymore that blew my mind.  Somebody calls him up to interview him about local comics and all the guy can talk about is why his customers DON’T buy local stuff. 

For the record, and from my personal experience, local comics sell pretty well.  I’ve sold hundreds of them over the past two years, both wholesale and retail.  Stores like Laughing Ogre as well as non-conventional vendors like What The Rock?!, Kafe Kerouac and Lost Weekend Records have placed multiple reorders of Nix titles.  There’s a definitely a market for local comics.

So here’s a tip to Comic Town… Say NICE THINGS about local comics and then maybe people will buy them from your shop.  Or don’t sell local stuff at all, leaving it to shops like Laughing Ogre that “get it.” 

The Ugly: I Can Be Kinda a Putz

Whenever I do any sort of event where I’m more or less the center of attention, I have to get over long hours of anxiety over what I’m going do to embarrass myself.   That’s right, going to do.  It’s a foregone conclusion No matter how hard I plan, I’ll make some faux pas that’ll bring me down.

Given that it was an art opening, I thought maybe my presentation with three different kinds of cheap dollar store frames would look motley and unprofessional, or that I’d insult some major Art League donor’s ugly tie or maybe I’d eat too many cheese cubes and have gastro-issues.  As the event progressed I began to think maybe I was going to get away without the faux pas.  Thanks to Matt Wyatt’s help, the display looked great despite its frugal origins, nobody was wearing an ugly tie and I managed to steer mostly clear of the delicious snack spread.

That’s’ when Eric Palicki came up and bashfully told me “Hey, I didn’t see any of my comics in the pop up store.”  I was crushed.  Eric had gone out of his way to deliver books to me during the work week and I had somehow managed to leave them at home!  I’m so sorry!

Orphans is pretty cool take on the classic “Super Soldier” type character with a healthy does of government intrigue thrown in.  Definitely worth checking out!  I promise copies will be at the Pop Up Store on Saturday  

Sadly, I must confirm the rumors that the Pander Bear web-comic is going on an indefinite hiatus.  Bob and I simply don't have the time to keep it up with all of our other projects.   Expect the Nix Mascot to pop up from time to time still in various Nix Comics promotional items and at grocery store openings across central, Ohio.  Also, I plan on releasing a compiled Pander Bear trade paperback that includes all of the webcomics, mini-comics and other appearances.

Thanks so much to Pander's co-creator Bob Ray Starker for helping me breathe life into a character that was little more than sketch and half-idea.  

That said, I hate to let a good blog format go to waste.  Watch this space for essays, editorials and general blatherings, spurt directly from my heart onto the keyboard with minimal interference from my brain.

Ken Eppstein,
Editor, Publisher and punk with the junk at Nix Comics