ESSAY // 3.20.03

HERO'S LOCAL (YOUR AREA CODE HERE)
By Joseph DeFerrari

Anybody who's ever dreamed of seeing their name in the credits of a funny book they had a hand in creating, listen up. Your time has come.

My years as a comic book fan and the time I spent in art school taught me something: there are a lot of talented people out there that would love to publish their work and never will. Why is that? Are they all lazy? Some, I'm sure. Not everyone has the drive to do the work necessary in self-publishing, but I think the real problem lies elsewhere.

Resources.

Now, I know what you're thinking: resources = money. But money, though integral, is only one cog in the machine of self-publishing. How many artists and writers can also produce, deal with finances, put up a web site, distribute?

It's time we organize. Call out anyone and everyone you know who have the following two traits:

1. A skill, resource or talent that can be utilized in creating/producing/marketing comic books

2. The desire to do so

It's time we start pooling our resources. We build an organization, from the ground up. Today. Starting with us. Wherever you are, you're not alone anymore. Here's what I propose to do.

Start finding individuals in your area with talent, resources, skills, and the desire to use them. Where do we find them? For starters, talk to your local retailers. Chances are good that they know a few people who have something to offer. They themselves are a great resource, if only because they are the ones who control the shelf space where most folks buy their funny books. And at the very least, they'll probably let you put out flyers looking for talent.

Check with any local art or design schools. This could be a huge resource for support. I teach at a design school. I presented this idea to a few students and proposed they do a production workshop once I got things running. They loved the idea! Mind you, I wasn't asking them to draw a book, I asked them to show people how to do the grunt work. They get relevant industry experience, a chance to meet a few people publishing comics, and some potential publishers gain a little insight to get themselves one step closer to attaining that dream.

The point is, you'll find support in a lot of different places. Ask to put flyers wherever you think someone may be interested. Art supply stores, conventions, coffee shops, book stores… you get the idea.

Keep it simple. At first, limit the information on the flyer to who you're looking for and why, along with your contact information. I'm designing flyers now; email me for a copy (joe@killingcupid.net). Send me your contact info, and I'll even personalize the document. Start building a list of contacts. Talk to these people. See what they have to offer. See who they know. Once you have a few individuals who are very interested and seem solid, set a time and place to meet. Where and when is entirely up to you; coffee shops and restaurants have worked great so far with the few individuals I've been planning this with.

So, you've found some people, they're all together, what next? Well, now the organizing begins. I've picked a few brains for input and came to this conclusion: make the structure too loose, and it won't last a week. Make it too formal, and people probably won't show up in the first place. In order to keep people interested there has to be limited structure and some criteria for members.

Membership criteria are simple: have something to bring to the table. We need more than artists and writers. We need people who are willing to help with production, web design, printing, distributing, marketing and a few things I'm sure I'm leaving out. They also need to have the will to use these resources. If someone can offer nothing more than a argument for why the Thing could take the Hulk in a fight, send them home. Sorry, we're trying to change the world here.

This brings us to structure, and I'm going to ask you to step things up a bit. If you've gotten this far, you may as well see it through. Do one simple thing: keep a current list of contacts and what they can do. Connect different people with complementary talents. Let everyone know when and where meetings will be. And always, ALWAYS, ask someone to help you out.

The meetings begin. Everyone's in a room, looking to you to bring about the revolution. What you need now is an agenda. Here are a few ideas. Have people present projects they're working on that they haven't finished. Find out where the roadblocks are, and see if someone has the answers they need. Try to get workshops together, like print production or lettering, or anything else someone may be willing to volunteer a little time to. Get a group of self-publishers together to present their work to local retailers. Assemble a group of creators who are ready to publish and find printers willing to sit down and work up bids for printing (hint: if you combine a large number of jobs you can probably get a great price). The possibilities are only limited by the needs of the local publishers and the drive of the local members to get things done. There will always be questions that small publishers need answered, and now you can have people available to provide those answers.

Now your local organization is moving along. A few books have been published. There's a regular meeting. You feel you've done pretty damn good.

We're gonna go one better, though. We're going national.

While you've been hard at work in your hometown, dozens of groups in other cities have been doing the same thing. Now we have a national network waiting to happen. Compile all the books coming out of your city into a catalog; maybe gather some samples to send to other cities. We'll show them to our members and, more importantly, our retailers (hey, is that the start of an independent distribution system?) Do you want to go to a convention in another town? Find the local chapter; you now have a list of contacts ready to greet you and get you set up. Compile your lists, and send them to me. Tell me who your chapter representative is; keep me current. E-mail me with your location and what you can do (joe@killingcupid.net). I'll hook you up with anyone in your area looking to organize. I'm more than willing to do my part to keep this going in whatever way I can. Question is, are you?

Will this all work? If I had a crystal ball, I'd tell you. My magic 8 ball isn't very dependable, however, so I'm not going to consult it. I know one thing, though. I've managed to self-publish a book with a great friend, Mr. Alan Dubinsky. We've been fortunate enough to have the skills to do a lot on our own, and the connections to do the rest. That's exactly what this organization will be: the connections to do the rest. So, as for success, I can only say it's worked for us, and I think with the right people it will work on a lager scale. The welcome and support we've received in the comics scene has been overwhelmingly positive, and I'm sure there's a lot more people out there who can contribute that haven't found it yet

So, that's the plan. Simply put, we organize resources and see those that need them find them. We even have a name. "Hero's Local (area code # here)." Pittsburgh's chapter is called "Hero's Local 412". I'm anxious to see how many names we add to that list.

Will there be some bumpy spots, some bad work produced? Undoubtedly! Although, I'll bet you see some stuff that'll floor you, too. And that's what's gonna make it all worth it in the end. So, now you know your mission. Go out, build our forces, and show the world what we can do in numbers!

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Huge thanks to the people who helped me in conceiving this-Alan Dubinsky, Kevin Miller & Jonathan Keely. Having a vision is one thing, having others to help see it through is what makes it happen!