Snippets #29: March 28, 1985

This is from a March 28, 1985 letter to my friend Stan Wiater:

"Dear Stan,

Back from Atlanta we are, and plowing through the accumulated work… answering mail, sending out orders of t-shirt iron-ons, figures, and books. Getting settled in again so we can get back to work on the art for Raphael, the one issue "Micro-Series" which has to go to press on April 15. In between now and then, we expect to get back 35,000 copies of the third printing of #1, which we will have to count, box and ship out. Then after that, we will have 50,000 copies of #3 with which to do the same.

Whoa! Am I getting ahead of myself? I guess I am… we haven't corresponded since some time around Christmas, so you aren't up on all the Turtle news. Briefly, things are still expanding at a fairly rapid clip. Kevin and I are still amazed at the response to our Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles book, but we don't have much time these days for amazement. It's workworkwork, 70-hour weeks, all on TMNT stuff. The books are selling like the proverbial hotcakes, and we have t-shirt iron-ons, little metal miniatures, and a projected fantasy role-plaing game based around the turtles which is in the works. Plus we've just started doing conventions; two weekends ago we did a small one up in Kittery, ME, and this past weekend we did one in Atlanta, GA… and can you believe that the Atlanta people actually paid for our hotel room and plane fare? Too much!!! I'm not complaining, of course… but it does take some getting used to.

Atlanta was fun, but it seemed to go really quickly… it almost seems now like we were never really there… there was no sense of actually traveling a great distance. On the plane, once you get high enough altitude-wise, you can't really tell where you are. It gets to be like riding a bus. Then you land, a couple of hours later, and you are a thousand miles away. And what we saw of Atlanta seemed no different than any big town up this way; the same stores, the same cars, the same people in the same clothes. About the only significant difference was the way everyone added "you all" to almost every sentence. The Northlake Hilton, at which we stayed, was on the outer outskirts of Atlanta proper, so we didn't get to stroll around downtown. That was okay, though, because we were too busy to really notice.

We got to the hotel at around 2:00 PM, checked in, freshened up, and then went and set up our table. The con opened at 3:00, and from then 'til about 7:00 we sold books and drew sketches. After it all closed down for the night, we were both too beat to do anything but take a short walk down "Mall Avenue", eat at Wendy's, and then go back to hotel and crash out. Saturday morning we went out to breakfast with some of the other artist-guests, Bob McCleod and June Brigman (and her husband Roy), who took us to a neat pancake house where we pigged out on huge apple and cinnamon pancakes the size of pizzas, and heard lots of inside gossip about Marvel Comics (Bob and June both work for Marvel). They're also very nice people, and I'm glad we got to meet them.

Then it was back to the convention to set up our table at 11:00 AM, and from that time until about 6:00 that evening we sold books and did sketches. There were almost no breaks; I think we easily made as much money sketching as we did on the books. We would charge $5 for a simple pencil drawing, and another $5 if the person wanted it inked in. Lots of people asked for sketches of the turtles with other characters; we ended up doing Elric, Dr. Strange, the Thing, Cerebus, Nghtcrawler, Wolverine, Daredevil, and Opus, among others. It was fun but stressful, with all those people standing there watching us draw. Everybody seemed happy with their sketches, though, which was nice.

That evening there was a seafood buffet in the hotel's restaurant for all the guests of the convention (paid for by the convention organizers), and Kevin and I of course attended that. The food was plentiful, and we proceeded to pig out on shrimp, fried chicken, roast beef, crab legs, etc., topping it off with ice cream sundaes. Quite enjoyable.

Oh, I just remembered that before that dinner I was shanghaied into being one of four judges at the costume contest. It was relatively painless, but kind of embarrassing.

One of the biggest geeks attending this convention turned out to be one of the big-time ______ Comics writers, ______, who writes ________, _______ and others. Partly because of the mammoth success of _______, his ego has swollen to monstrous dimensions, and he can't open his mouth without sounding incredibly arrogant and obnoxious. I'm glad that we didn't have much to do with him. The funny thing was that every other person here who knew him expressed the same opinion of him, but he was totally oblivious. I hope that I don't get that way if the turtles become mega-successful.

Sunday turned out to be pretty much the same. We sold books and sketched until around 3:00, when we took off with Bob McCleod to the airport. Our flight wasn't until 5:45, but we wanted to make sure we didn't miss it! As it turned out, the woman who was driving us to the airport  missed the exit, and we were lost for about twenty minutes. And if I hadn't pointed out to her that we had indeed passed what looked like the airport several miles back, we might have been lost a lot longer. The flight back was pretty uneventful… more yucky airline food and lots of disgusting cigarette smoke (we were unable to get two seats in the non-smoking section). But coming over Hartford and into Bradley Field at night was pretty cool… seeing all the lights from high up was neat. I wouldn't mind doing it again.

As you know, we have another trip scheduled for April 6, this time a shorter one: We'll be in Amherst for a signing at Norm Witty's comic book store. If you can squeeze in a few moments to get there and say hi, that would be great. I don't know what our schedule will be exactly; we may be going back to Sharon right after the signing.

After that trip, who knows? Just about an hour ago, I got a call from some guy out in Michigan who wants Kevin and I to attend a benefit show for a children's hospital there. We might go… I'll have to think about it some more. We are seriously considering trying to get out to the San Diego convention in late July of this year -- it's probably the biggest in the country. But a lot depends on how things are going at that time."

       [I note with some incredulity that at the time this letter was written, cigarette smoking was still allowed on airplanes. The staggering stupidity of this practice  -- fortunately now long-gone -- always astonished me. It stands as one of the most moronic thing I have even encountered. And the idea that you could have a "smoking section" and a "non-smoking section" on the same aircraft, where the entire passenger compartment is essentially ONE UNINTERRUPTED METAL TUBE, is simply brain-bendingly inane. -- PL]

Snippets #28: May 12, 1985

     This one is from a May 12, 1985 letter to Mom and Pop:

     "The last shipment of TMNT #3 went out Friday, for which I am grateful. I am so glad that we will not be doing that anymore, and that our new printer will be handling all the handling. I hope that our new printer will prove to be more reliable than our old one, with whom I am very disgusted.

     What's going on with Turtles? Well, we're working right now on the artwork for issue #4, which should go to the printer around June 10. They are already working on the Raphael special issue, which should be shipping in the next few weeks. Then we are working out a deal with this guy from Windsor, CT to do a limited edition of button sets. And the game is still in the works; just before Kevin left for his vacation, we signed and sent off the contracts for that. I think pretty soon we'll have to start working on the artwork for that game.

     Then we're planning to do another signing, this time at a comic book store down in New Haven. They called us and asked if we'd be interested, and we're doing that on June 8. And we're definitely planning to go to that convention in Michigan, to which we have been invited, on June 29-30. After that, if we can swing it, we may go to the big San Diego convention in August. (We haven't been invited, but it would be fun to go anyway!) Plus we have to work on the Fugitoid book, which is scheduled for August, and issue TMNT after that, and after that the special Michaelangelo one-shot issue in December. So as you can see, we have our time pretty well booked up."

     [When I wrote the following:

     "Plus we have to work on the Fugitoid book, which is scheduled for August, and issue TMNT after that, and after that the special Michaelangelo one-shot issue in December."

     … I think "issue TMNT" was meant to be "issue #5 of TMNT". 

     The new printer mentioned in the first paragraph was Southern Duchess News in Poughkeepsie, NY. Their taking over the shipping duties made a HUGE difference in our work lives. It was bad enough when the print runs were 15,000 to 30,000 or so, but I shudder to think what a horror show it would have been had we kept the old way of doing things when we got to the higher print runs for some later books.

     "The game" was the Palladium Books role-playing game.

     The convention in Michigan turned out to have some special significance to the history of Mirage Studios -- it's where we met Dan Berger and Ryan Brown. -- PL]

Snippets #27: February 25, 1985

       This "Snippet" is from a February 25, 1985 letter to Mom and Pop:

       "AAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

       FInally, I am taking a few moments out of my hectic schedule to try to catch up on some sorely neglected correspondence. I think this is the first non-business letter that I have written in the last two weeks.

       As I think you know, these past couple of weeks have been BUSY, to put it mildly. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that Kevin and I have been putting in 70-hour weeks doing turtle work. Let's see… since Kevin got here on Feb. 1, we've done a lot of stuff. First and foremost was starting work on TMNT #3, which at that time was still in incomplete thumbnail sketches, and lacking finished dialogue. In addition to that, we worked out all the finished dialogue for our upcoming Raphael, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Micro-Series, the artwork for which (25 pages) we have to get done by April 15. Then, last week we got all 30,000 copies of TMNT #2 (second printing) and have been splitting up our time between finishing the artwork for #3 and counting and packing #2's. It's wild… I don't think I've ever worked this hard before. So far we've shipped out 50 boxes (@ 12500 copies), and hope to get all the rest of them out by the middle of next week.

       We are also talking to an outfit called Palladium Books, which does role-playing ames like Dungeons and Dragons. They want to do a book/game based on the turtles, and it looks promising. Kev and I would probably do a bunch of drawings for it, and possibly a full-color cover… yet another project to work into this year's schedule! It would be a fun thing to do, though.

       Sometime in the next couple of weeks, the printer should deliver to us 35,000 copies of the third printing of TMNT #1, and we will start the counting and packing cycle all over again. About 28,000 of these are already sold, and I have a feeling that the rest won't last long. We are going to keep a couple thousand copies in our archives, though, so when we go to conventions we'll have them to sell.

       Speaking of conventions, Kev and I are getting psyched up for the one in Portsmouth, NH on March 16. It's going to be pretty neat, returning to the same con where we premiered the turtle book, but this time as invited guests! And getting our gas expenses paid, a free hotel room, and free tables at the con, yet! It was frantic the last time, and I expect it will be even more so this time. I'm hoping that we will have copies of TMNT#3 to sell there, but I don't think the printer will be able to get them done in time. C'est la vie!

       Having Kevin here is working out fine, though it does remind me that this house, while cute, is still pretty small. We have to get a larger studio; my tiny room here is very crowded when we have both of us plus several thousand comics in it. Every time you turn around fast you knock something over!"

       [That Palladium Books role-playing game was a fun project, and I believe a pretty good seller for Kevin Siembiada's company. But it has other significance in the tale of the TMNT -- its how Mark Freedman of Surge Licensing was able to first notice the TMNT property, and then track us down to talk about an agenting deal. 

       And the rest, as you probably know, is history. -- PL]

Snippets #26: January 29, 1985

       This is from a January 29, 1985 letter to Brad Foster, minicomic publisher:

       "Thanks for all the kind words and congratulations. Rather than watch and worry about when this bubble is going to burst (if it does), Kevin and I are going to try to keep our noses to the grindstone and try to keep producing a book that at least some people will want to read. The success of these first two books still seems a bit unreal to me, like it's happening to someone else… I'm sure you can relate to the feeling of, after years of slaving away at the drawing board and feeling like everything you'd done had gone unnoticed, finally doing something that people actually want to pay money for! It's a nice feeling… I hope it lasts.

       I'm still a little hesitant about spending any of my money on special goodies and treats (because of the lurking fear that TMNT will go down the proverbial tubes and leave me floundering once more) but I do have to take the bull by the horns in this one case and send you the $27.00 for a copy of One Year's Worth. I appreciate your offer of deducting the cost of the TMNT figures, but those were a gift to you. I hope you have good luck in selling the remainder of the OY'sW's. (?)

       Kev and i would love to get out to the fabled and legendary San Diego Comic Con this year, but I'm not sure if our resources will allow it. Exactly when is it, anyway? I don't know if the car we have would hold up on a cross-country trip like that… it's kind of a long drive from Connecticut to California. How do you get there?

       I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens… maybe we'll be too busy with TMNTs and other projects to go anywhere. But it would be fun… I've never been to the west coast."

        [Here we have some more evidence of our -- or at least my -- reluctance back in early 1985 to believe that this Turtle thing was going to continue. At the time, that seemed a sensible way to proceed.

       Kevin and I would make our way out to the San Diego Comicon that very year... and we didn't drive.

       Brad Foster was (and I think still is) a prolific independent publisher through his company "Jabberwocky Graphix", publishing his own and many other artists' work. I believe he was one of Kevin Eastman's first publishers, and I think I drew a couple of things for Brad as well. -- PL]

Snippets #25: January 6, 1985

This one is from a January 6, 1985 letter to Mom and Pop:

       "Whew!!! Finally all the turtles are counted and boxed, the last few UPS pickups are scheduled for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and I can now get back to doing real stuff, like writing letters and drawing.

………

       The biggest and best news here is that Kevin is definitely moving to Sharon on Feb. 1. I don't know if I already told you about this, so it might not be news. Anyway, you know that the whole thing had been kind of up in the air and vague as to when and if he would be moving down here. I was starting to feel that he would soon be so settled into his comfortable apartment and job in Portland that it would be nigh unto impossible for him to overcome the inertia and move. Last week I had a long conversation with him on the phone and expressed a lot of my doubts and misgivings. I suggested that he should try to move down here by the end of January.

        I was pretty bummed out, because it seemed to me that Kevin had lost the impetus that was propelling him to continue Mirage Studios, and it was looking like the whole Turtles thing would go up in smoke, just as it was starting to take off. Well, the next day I was moping around the house when I got a surprise call from Kevin, who informed me that he had made up his mind to go for it, and come down to Sharon. Needless to say, I was quite happy with his decision. He's already given his notice at the sandwich shop (he'll be able to work there through the end of February), and he'll be coming down here on a bus on January 1! Yahoo!!! No we can really start to smoke.

       I'm enclosing a Xerox of a cartoon that appeared in this week's issue of the Comics Buyer's Guide which may be incomprehensible to you, and for good reason -- it is an "in-joke" about current comics. But the obvious reason I am sending it to you is that it features none other than the turtles! As far as I know, this is their first published appearance outside of our book and done by someone other than ourselves. Neat, huh? In that same issue of the Guide there is an ad which speaks for itself; I'm enclosing a copy of it for you."

      [Looking back, I can see how Kevin may have been having second thoughts. After all, this was a pretty big move, away from a comfortable, known life and employment, and a big leap of faith that this Turtles/Mirage Studios thing was going to have "legs". It could have turned out to be the classic "flash in the pan", and then where would he be? Stuck in the wilds of northwest Connecticut, looking for another job.

       In the end, he did make the choice to move to Sharon, and the rest is history. I tend to think it was the right choice... but of course I am biased. 

       Detail note: The timeline in this sentence:

        "He's already given his notice at the sandwich shop (he'll be able to work there through the end of February), and he'll be coming down here on a bus on January 1!"

       ... doesn't seem to make much sense. I suspect I inadvertently flipped the months around, because in another letter dated February 25, I mention Kevin arriving in Sharon on February 1. -- PL

Snippets #24: December 7, 1984

       This is from a December 7, 1984 letter to Mom and Pop:

       "I finally got our second car -- the Hornet -- completely street legal by bringing it to Winsted and passing the emissions test (no, I didn't pass it, the car did). Or course, it cost me $70 in tune-up work to get it to pass, but what's money, right? It is a load off my mind, though. Because I was only eight miles away, I boogied down to Torrington and stopped in at the comic store, where I sold 100 copies of TMNT #2 to Jack, the owner. He's probably going to buy another 100 for himself and 300 for some dealer friends of his next week, when (I hope!) they will be ready. He also said that when he gets them, he will make a big display of them in his window where he usually displays the comics he's gotten in that week.

       I had high hopes that the book would be ready by today, but I think it will probably be next week sometime. You know what it's like with printers… they say two weeks and mean three. I stopped in at the printer's yesterday, to get the acetate overlay (which has the book's title and logo on it) so I could make copies of the cover to TMNT #4 (which I just finished drawing) to send to Kevin, and I talked for about a minute with our man Chuck Bradley. He seemed pretty frazzled; apparently they are backed up with work until January. He's not a real easy guy to talk with anyway. He's definitely not as friendly nor as interested as Ken Keller (our former printer in Dover) was. I just hope he does a good job on the cover and binding.

       We've run into a little problem with TMNT #2; namely, inadvertently overselling ourselves! I counted wrong, and we're going to end up shorting our last order by 1100 copies (he ordered 1600). I'm going to try to sell him five hundred copies if he wants them, and I wrote him a letter to that effect. That will leave us with about 400 copes for our archives, where originally I had planned to save 1000. I also wrote to Bud Plant, Seagate, and Westfield Comics (all of whom said they wanted lots of copies) and told them they were not getting any. I feel like a schmuck. but what can I do? I mean, we just don't have the numbers of copies that we would need to satisfy all these guys. Anyway, if they don't feel obligated to get their purchase orders to me tres vite (that's French for very fast), then the heck with them. Tom Flynn of Capital sent his order right after I talked with him on the phone Monday night -- I got it Tuesday afternoon, delivered to the house by Federal Express!" 

       [The comic book store in Torrington which was mentioned in the first paragraph had perhaps the greatest name of any comic book store ever: "My Mother Threw Mine Away". I think I wrote about this place in another blog entry. Kevin and I made regular trips down to Torrington to go to this store and get our weekly fix of new comics.

       A few years ago, while motorcycling down in Connecticut, I discovered that "My Mother Threw Mine Away" had not gone out of business, but migrated to another town. I stopped in and discovered that the same guy, Jack, was still running the store.

       I don't remember all of the details of the numbers snafu referred to in the last paragraph, but I do recall that it was awkward and embarrassing. I can only say that we were still learning the business. There was no Internet for instantaneous communication and attendant records of such (i.e. email), and sometimes -- even with the best of intentions -- things fell through the proverbial cracks. This was, remember, back when we were not only writing and drawing the books, but also hand-counting and packing all of the copies of each issue, then shipping them out in smallish cartons via UPS... which took a WHOLE lot of time and effort.

       If memory serves, even though a few of the distributors did not get exactly what they first wanted, we made it up to them on the next book or next printing with some kind of special deals. Again, I don't remember exactly what happened, so I could be misremembering that too.

       In any event, it was a momentary blip, and as we learned more about how to run a self-publishing company, things kept getting smoother.

       Looking at today's date and the date this letter was written, I just realized that they are separated by almost exactly thirty years. -- PL]

Snippets #23: November 27, 1984

       This is from a November 27, 1984 letter to my brother Don:

       "Speaking of "Turtles", you will note that this envelope contains a small surprise. Aren't they just too cute to live? I got these samples in the mail today, and I love 'em! They also sent us a hand-painted set that looks really nice. It's great… this is quite a unique experience for me, seeing actual toys made from characters that I had a hand in creating. Maybe I can get them to do a Fugitoid figure…!

       Yesterday I finally brought the artwork for TMNT #2 to the printer and told him that we wanted 10,000 copies. Well, last night I got a call from one of our distributors and he informed me that rather than the 1000 copies he originally ordered, he now wants 3000! And maybe more! I told him that I wasn't sure if we would have enough copies to fill that order, and he suggested that he would prepay us so that we could have more printed -- if he could get a 70% discount (as opposed to the 60% discount we usually offer). I thought about it overnight, and this morning I called the printer and asked him if it was too late to up the print run to 15,000 copies. He said no, it wasn't too late, so now we have 15,000 copies in the works. AAAIIIEEEE!!!! In a couple of weeks from now, I'm going to be plenty busy packing and shipping these things out."

       [As you might guess, the "small surprise" mentioned in the first paragraph was one of the first sets of samples we'd gotten from Dark Horse Miniatures of the miniature lead TMNT figures, one of our first (self) licensed deals for a TMNT product. I remember being blown away by how cool those things were.

       And they DID do a Fugitoid figure! -- PL]