[Trouble with Comics: The Group Blog of Comic Book Galaxy] Five Questions for...

[Alan David Doane]

When Chris Ryall first started writing for Comic Book Galaxy nearly a decade ago, I don't think either of us ever quite dreamed where his interest in comics was going to take him. Chris has to be the comics internet's greatest success story, going from weekly columnist on Comic Book Galaxy in its early years to the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of one of the most prolific and best-selling comic book companies in North America. I'm thrilled beyond words for Chris at how he's built his career over the last decade, and grateful to him for taking the time to tackle the Five Questions.

Alan David Doane: When you and I first worked together on Comic Book Galaxy nearly a decade ago, you weren't working in comics yet. Can you tell me when you became interested in comics, and how you went from writing about them to being the publisher and editor of IDW?

Chris Ryall: I can tell you I became interested in comics when I was 4 or 5, when an older neighbor let me read his copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #130 (which sounds like the start of a disturbing story, but isn't). It was a Steranko cover, and you saw all this crazy shit on there--a giant rocky guy, a guy with a stretchy arm, a guy made of sand, a guy on fire. I was 5 -- I was helpless to resist (the comic, I mean -- not my neighbor. It really wasn't that kind of story!). So I've been into comics since I could read, and had aspirations to write them but not to realistically pursue a career working for one of the publishers. The chances just seemed so remote, you know? And I was never too caught up in fandom, but I did hang at Brian Bendis' Jinxworld board back, what, 10 years ago? And got to know some really great people on there, many of whom are now doing nice things in comics. So it was there that I met you and Chris Allen, and started writing reviews and other such things for the Galaxy site. That got me to know people like Steve Niles, and indirectly at first, Kevin Smith. It's too long a story to bore anyone with here, but I started working for Kevin, running his pop culture site, Movie Poop Shoot. Which turned out to be good experience for this gig. When Niles called me up and asked me if I'd consider moving from LA to San Diego and taking the just-vacated Editor-in-Chief gig at IDW, I was currently working as an advertising copywriter and running the site for Smith at night. And it was being the editor-in-chief of that site that helped land me the gig here more than my actual job experience.

When Kevin asked me to run his site for him, I had no idea how to go about running a Web site. So of course I said yes. And when Niles asked me about the IDW gig, I had no idea how to go about being the editor-in-chief of a comic publisher. So of course I said yes. And luckily, both crapshoots seem to have worked out. I stopped running the site in 2006, but just finished my fifth year at IDW.

IDW has a hugely diverse line of comics, and new areas seem to be expanded to all the time. I remember the early days of IDW being mainly horror books like 30 Days of Night and such. Can you tell me how the company's publishing plans and philosophies developed?

When I started, we were very much considered "the horror publisher." But even then, we were doing things like CSI comics, about to kick off comics based on Joss Whedon's Angel, and did a number of art books and other things. So the perception at large was that we only did horror, but there was already some nice diversity in their approach. And that has been my goal since, to continue to diversify and offer up nice alternatives to superhero comics. Even the few superhero-type comics we've dabbled in, like Savior 28 or even reprinting good books like Love and Capes, have a worldview different than the normal capes comics.

The thing that really changed the way we operate here was signing on to do Transformers comics. Some of the hardcore horror comics fans viewed that signing as a real betrayal, like we were turning our backs on them. Which wasn't the case, but in an increasingly conservative and shrinking business, having some big titles with name-recognition behind them, especially projects that then became big movies, was just sound business.

Now, I think we offer one of the widest, if not the widest, slate of comics and books of anyone out there. And our audience is definitely fractured now, but not in a bad way. What I mean is, fans of the old Library of American Comics newspaper strip reprint books know us as the publisher of those books. They don't care about Transformers or Angel. And so on down the line. I've had people say they don't know what IDW's identity is, that we do so many diverse things, they can't pigeonhole us as this or that. Which is the whole point.

IDW is hot on the heels of Marvel and DC in terms of sales these days, can you tell me in what way that changes the game for the company and its creators?

Well, none of us, DC included, are really hot on Marvel's heels right now. It's basically them and then the rest of us. But to be at a point where we're able to regular compete with Dark Horse for the #3 spot, and to consistently stay ahead of Image, that feels nice. For IDW's entire existence (hell, for most all of Diamond's existence), it's been those four publishers as the top four "premiere publishers." And we're forcing some rules to be rewritten, which is very gratifying. It changes the game in that we got approached first for many projects now, and don't have to prove why we're the best ones to handle a property. It's always a nice feeling when I see something announced somewhere else and I think "oh, yeah, we got offered that first and passed." Unless said project turns out to be a huge hit, in which case I self-flagellate myself for hours...

Chris Ryall tells me he is in this picture somewhere.
Forgive me, but you're the only person I know who's been to the Playboy Mansion. Tell me a story about you being there.

I spent my third time there just two days ago, but it was the lamest of the three visits, I'll say that. The very best story about me being there is one I can't share here, but let's just say if the monkeys in the cages nearby could talk, they'd be able to tell a good story. Although so would whoever was manning the camera bank that night, since we didn't happen to notice the camera right nearby until... um, anyway. But a story I can tell and was amused by was a boxing match that was being held there. Hef and his girls were sitting in the front row, and there was three identical girls on either side of Hef. He kept each hand resting on the bare upper thigh of the girl next to him. The funny part was, whenever one of the girls next to him would get up to go walk around, another would slide in right under her, so his hands were never *not* on a bare upper thigh. It was like the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, except instead of a bag of dirt subbing for a gold idol, it was one tanned leg subbing for another, over and over.

And I don't think he ever knew.

What do you want to accomplish, in or outside of comics, that you haven't yet?

Oh, so many things. First of which is just a never-ending list of creators I'd love to work with, but also so many different goals for IDW, things I'd like to write... I've got lots of plans for the business as long as it'll have me. I did always set the goal for myself to publish a prose book, too, which happened this past summer, but now it's just made me want to do more. I was also able to publish a children's picture book and since I have a 3-1/2-year-old daughter, that was especially nice since I can read it to her and start her comic book indoctrination that much earlier.

My secondary goal in all of this is to be able to keep up my workaholic ways and sleepless nights without either my body or my marriage completely breaking down as a result. I've so far found that equilibrium point and am just trying to be wary of not over-extending...

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For more, visit Chris Ryall's blog and the website of IDW Publishing.

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Posted By Alan David Doane to Trouble with Comics: The Group Blog of Comic Book Galaxy at 9/17/2009 12:01:00 AM

[Alan David Doane]

Tony Isabella is the creator of Black Lightning, the writer of Tony's Tips for Comics Buyer's Guide (and Tony's Online Tips), and one of the nicest guys in or out of comics. He's also a staunch defender of the rights of comics creators, as you'll see in the interview that follows, a thoughtful and eloquent writer on social issues, and most relevant to this discussion, the author of the cool new book 1000 Comic Books You Must Read. My thanks to Tony for taking a second spin around the Five Questions block.

Alan David Doane: Tell me how your new book 1000 Comic Books You Must Read came together?

Tony Isabella: For some time now, having written thousands of columns on comic books, I was trying to come up with some sort of "ultimate" Tony's Tips column in book form. When Krause Publications came up with the initial idea for this book and determined I was the only writer crazy enough to write it, I saw an opportunity to write the book I wanted to write and combine it with the book they wanted to publish. So we have my personal take on the history of the comic book in America wrapped around my comments on over a thousand great comic books.

I have a feeling you easily could compile a convincing list of 10,000. What was the process you used to pare down your list to 1,000?

The hardest part of writing this book was selecting just 1000 comics for inclusion. From the get-go, I knew I didn't want this to be the most "important" 1000 comic books or the "best" 1000 comic books. I wanted it to be representative of the variety that existed in the mainstream from the start of the American comic-book industry with, at least, a smattering of alternative, underground, and manga titles.

I wrote well over a thousand separate entries, but I left out a lot of great comics. Some because we couldn't find good cover scans, some because they got overlooked, some because we already had too many issues of some titles or writers or artists. This project was much more work than any of us anticipated and some decisions were made at the last moment because of that. At the end of the day, it is a book of which I'm very proud. I hope it sells well enough to justify a sequel.

What good comics have you read recently?

Via trades borrowed from my local library system, I've been reading some truly great comics: Barefoot Gen, Fables, Ex Machina, Usagi Yojimbo, and others. Some of these are stories I'm rereading and others are stories I never got around to reading when they were originally published.

Having borrowed thousands of mainstream comics from a good friend, I'm catching up on things like Spider-Man, Captain America, Black Panther, and Daredevil. Much to my delight, I found some done-in-one Spider-Man stories, one by Paul Jenkins and the other by Marc Guggenheim, that are shoe-ins for my sequel to 1000 Comic Books You Must Read.

My pal Thom Zahler's Love and Capes is my favorite current super-hero comic. I'm also enjoying Marvel's 70th anniversary specials and the first volume of the Essential Sub-Mariner. The Sub-Mariner feature wasn't a favorite when it ran in Tales to Astonish, but, in rereading these stories, I discovered they combined into one heck of an exciting movie serial style adventure.

You caught me in a super-hero mode this week. It's the equivalent of comfort food after dealing with some demanding, even frustrating work and household projects. Once I get back into the groove of writing nigh-daily reviews for TONY'S ONLINE TIPS, which will happen after Mid-Ohio-Con, I plan to read as many and as many different kinds of comics as I can.

You've been an outspoken advocate for comics creators for many years. If you had your way, what changes would you like to see in the way Marvel and DC treats its freelancers and employees now that they both are facing serious changes at the corporate level?

I'm pretty far out of the loop when it comes to the Big Two. What I have always believed is that treating freelancers and employees fairly is not just the right thing to do ethically, but the smart thing to do from a business standpoint.

I'd love to see DC/Warner stop screwing around with the Siegel estate and come to an agreement that both parties can live with. My understanding is that DC had actually accomplished this, only to have Warner refuse to sign off on it. Ironically, DC/Warner has probably paid out as much or more in legal fees than they would have paid had they cut the deal back then...and, at the end of the day, they will still have to write some big checks to the Siegel family.

There's a reason no one is creating the next Superman or Wolverine for DC or Marvel. The rewards for doing so simply aren't there at the present time.

In 1976, I was way too trusting to get my Black Lightning deal in writing, but that deal -- a partnership between DC Comics and myself in which each party was supposed to have an equal voice in business and creative decisions -- would be an excellent model. If DC had lived up to that agreement then and since, I'd be the company's biggest booster now.

Finally, I know you and I see pretty eye-to-eye on politics and social issues, but I am wondering what you think of the Obama era to date and the current political climate in the United States?

While I don't regret voting for him in the slightest, I am disappointed by Obama's reluctance to do some of what needs to be done. I commend his attempts at bipartisanship, but it's time for him to realize they failed. The Republican leadership cares about winning back their power and that's all they care about and that, in turn, makes too many Democrats quiver in their boots and fail to do what needs to be done for fear of losing their power. When the Democrats fail to do what's right, it emboldens the worst elements of the right.

We need universal health care in this country. We pay more for our health care and get less bang for those bucks than just about every other industrialized nation on the planet. A more efficient system will pay for itself and deliver more and better care to everyone.

When it comes to the military, there's no reason to continue the absurd "don't ask, don't tell" policies of past administrations. We have ample evidence from our own history -- the integration of our armed forces after World War II -- and from other nations that openly gay men and women can serve in our military without adverse effects on that military.

We have to figure out how to curb the excesses of Wall Street, the old industry, and big business to stem the loss of jobs overseas. We should reward companies who keep good-paying jobs here, who keep their profits here instead of in tax shelters, and who rein in the salaries of their executives...and penalize companies who don't do these things.

Vote for me!

Whoops. I guess I got carried away there. I'll settle for being named Czar of Comics.

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Buy 1000 Comic Books You Must Read from Amazon.com, and you can also read ADD's previous Five Questions for Tony Isabella by clicking here.

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Posted By Alan David Doane to Trouble with Comics: The Group Blog of Comic Book Galaxy at 9/23/2009 12:09:00 AM