VERY BAD PUBLISHERS Part VII

“I created the first graphic novel,” he announced. These words actually came out of this man’s mouth.

It gets better.

“She doesn’t recognize me because of the beard!” Tom announced as I approached.

No, I wouldn’t have recognized Tom in a lineup. I barely knew this guy. I hadn’t seen him in many years. The only reason I knew who he was was because he was the only person in the diner bouncing up and down and calling my name, while announcing “It’s Tom!”

So, that made it easy to figure out who it was, see.

And Tom brought his kids. He informed me he had relatives about an hour away, and he brought the kids because he knew I wouldn’t mind.

You know, I like kids. I really do. Kids are wonderful small people. Kids are also wonderful small people who have absolutely no business in a business meeting. I hope I was able to pick my jaw up off the floor before the kids took my look of horror personally.

“Why, you look as pretty as ever!” enthused Tom.

During the Donning days with actor Sanada Hiroyuki at an event in New York. People always think you’re rich when they see pics like this, and a couple of folks at this concert kept fingering my jacket because they wanted to know if it was silk. It totes wasn’t. It was super cheap and I got it at the mall. Go me.

Tom was far too familiar for my taste, and I don’t mean I thought he was flirting. This was simply an inappropriate comment from a stranger. This man I barely knew was glad-handing on all cylinders. From his behavior you’d have gotten the impression we were the bestest of buddies who had lunch every day.

Then Tom lurched forward, and revolted at the thought that he might try to hug me, my hand shot out for a stiff and formal shake that was so militaristic I appeared ready to thump my armor and shout “Integritas!” unto my Centurion.

Tom’s smile faded a tad, and then he introduced me to Mr. Disney who looked like a normal bloke.

I considered leaving right away. After I was declared as pretty as ever, I had no appetite. I didn’t even want my free lunch, which was going to cost me, I was sure.

There’s no way to make this long, ridiculous story short because it was one hell of a long hour.

A very important lesson for anyone in publishing, or any other business for that matter: don’t insult your potential client by making it clear that you have no freaking idea who they are, what they do, or what their history is, especially after you have made the extraordinarily tacky semi-social faux pas of assuming a false sense of familiarity.

Mr. Disney didn’t say much at first because good old Tom was engaging in a giddy rush of narrative about our happy lives together. All of it was news to me.

“I was your first publisher!”

“No you weren’t. You weren’t even my tenth publisher.”

Tom was a bit taken aback to be contradicted like this, and plowed forward, insisting he was my first publisher. Apparently, he had a lot of emotional investment in believing he had discovered me, like I was a continent, or an exotic fruit. Actually, I was published by DC Comics first (Who’s Who and Amethyst), and Marvel hired me months before Tom’s company did (Swords of the Swashbucklers by Bill Mantlo). I also had credits elsewhere that predated my involvement with Tom’s company.

“Well, I published your first graphic novel.”

Actually, no. A Distant Soil was published previously as well, and even though it would not see book format for years, technically, it was still my first graphic novel work.

Tom was getting a bit pissed. He insisted he published my first graphic novel because a book was a book and a comic was a comic. Tom couldn’t understand why I was being so contrary. He liked me. We were friends.

“We are not friends. I don’t even know you. I haven’t spoken to you in years,” I said.

Tom insisted we were good buddies. “Don’t you remember how you would come into my office and sit down and talk?”

I recall only one instance of sitting down in Tom’s office to talk. It was about 18 years prior, and it lasted a matter of minutes. 

“I have never had a substantive conversation with you in my life. I do not know you.”

I decided to order something to eat after all because I had found the least sociable thing on the menu: a blooming onion. They’d be taken aback every time I opened my mouth, and not just because of what I was saying.

I wasn’t going to win any awards for my diplomatic conduct, but I wasn’t going to sit there and let this guy misrepresent me or his relations with me to anyone.

Another example of his misrepresentation:

“I created the first graphic novel,” he announced.

These words actually came out of this man’s mouth.

By now, I got the picture. He had sold himself to Mr. Disney as the Father of the Graphic Novel. He claimed he had created them, published the first ones, the best ones, the best selling ones. He did it all.

And boy, was that Colleen a buzzkill, because I sat there right in front of Mr. Disney and told him Tom was wrong. Tom had not created the first graphic novel. Tom hadn’t even created the first graphic novel in the same decade as the first graphic novel. Tom hadn’t created anything. He worked for the New Age publishing division of the old publishing company and appeared to have nothing to do with the GN line. I barely had any dealings with him while I was there and Tom had no active involvement that I could see. Moreover, it seemed to me that creators create graphic novels. Publishers don’t. Tom had created nothing.

In addition Tom told Mr. Disney that he had been the first to get graphic novels into retail bookstores and into libraries. Not even close to true. I named several books published in the 1970’s that outsold Tom’s publications. (Conveniently, no one seems to remember Raymond Briggs whose books sold millions, whose works were adapted into animated classics, and whose GN’s were in retail stores around the world, because if they had to remember Raymond Briggs, they’d have to remember they weren’t first at something.)

In fact, I had been inspired to create A Distant Soil in part because of a graphic novel I had seen in a library. The book was dated 1978. It was Samuel R. Delany and Howard Chaykin’s Empire and it also predated any of “Tom’s” GN’s.

And you know, Byron Preiss wasn’t dead yet, but if he were, he’d be spinning like a top.

Things went downhill from here, and we were already pretty low.

“So,” asks Tom, “Are you still with Donning? ”

WTF?

The ex-publisher I helped sue? The one that shut down its trade line sometime in the 1980’s? The one with whom I haven’t done any business in 15 years? That ex-publisher?

Tom continued his downhill hurdle. “Are you still doing that thing?”

“What thing?”

“That thing. What was it…Distant Star…Distant Soul?”

File under: add insult to injury

Have you ever felt a pristine, powerful rush of hostility in your head that is so pointed and stunning it simply shouts location of your future aneurysm?

It was at that moment that I knew I had no psychic powers.

You see, in all the books and movies, whenever someone first finds out they have psychic powers, it happens in a rush at a peak emotional moment. I was having a peak emotional moment. And if I had any latent psychic ability at all, that man’s head would have split into a thousand shards and the remnants of his cranium would have flown apart like leaves.

This man who had just spent a half hour claiming he was my good buddy, who had just sold himself as my first publisher, who had sold himself as the creator of the graphic novel, as the publisher of my first graphic novel, as Mr. Glad-hand the Artist’s Friend, the man who was a partner in the company that had helped consign me to grueling poverty, this book to which I had dedicated so many years of my life for which he was trying to take credit while never having paid decent money for it, that sonofabitch couldn’t even remember the damned book’s name.

If you really want to insult someone, make absolutely clear that while trying to take credit for everything they have ever accomplished in their lives, you have no freaking idea what they have ever accomplished. He was trying to get me to do work for him some 18 years after our last encounter, and it never occurred to him to take five minutes to look up my resume on the internet. He had no idea that I had hundreds of credits and plenty of work to do in future that wouldn’t require his involvement.

Now, this yuckster wanted to know if I was still involved with a publisher with whom I had had an extremely acrimonious split, a good deal of that split, I believed, because of good old Tom.

But wait, it gets better.

Tom then began to take the opportunity to reminisce about the bad old days. After determining that I was not still involved with Donning, he started to spill his guts about it. 

According to Tom, he had helped bring Donning down. Yes, according to Tom, he was the Big Hero of the lawsuit. In fact, in Tom World, he had engineered the whole lawsuit, and drawn all the creators together and gotten them to sue his ex-partner.

He claimed he had quit Donning because of the horrible treatment we creators were enduring, and that he told the creators about the secret contract sale because he disapproved of it so strongly. It was him, all him. Why according to Tom, he had even personally called me up and contacted me about the class action suit and brought me into the deal.

Except…that didn’t happen. I never spoke to Tom about the lawsuit. I never spoke to Tom at all about any of this after he left the company. Another author had contacted me about the class action suit and I had contacted David Cherry. There was no communication between me and Tom.

What was really weird about all this was that Donning’s lawyers had accused the class action authors of conspiring with Tom to bring down his company, and here Tom was practically gloating about the fact that that was exactly what had happened. According to Tom, he had been behind it all.

I wasn’t sure I believed his account, however. Not only had I no communication with Tom about any of this, but it was almost a year into the lawsuit before the other class action authors contacted me. To hear Tom tell it, he had been there personally cheering me on. It just wasn’t so.

Moreover, Tom bragged about leaking the story to Publishers Weekly. Well, golly. Was that the same story I had been grilled about by Donning’s lawyers? That story? The one I got blamed for?

Tom had done it all.

Except, I had run into one of the other class action suit authors at a book fair. He told me he had leaked the story to Publishers Weekly. I was the one who got blamed for it, and got grilled for it at the deposition as if I had disclosed the secret location of the Jews to the Nazis. It now appeared that I may very well have been the only person in that company who hadn’t leaked that damned news story.

I found that really annoying.

Mr. Disney was watching these proceedings with some discomfort and I’m sure it wasn’t just because I was eating a plate full of fried onion.

It was time for old Tom to get down to what he really wanted to talk to me about…his graphic novel plans for me. So, when was I going to be able to get the bug book done?

“Excuuuuse me?”

Yessiree, Tom had still not quite gotten it through his head that I was not going to do his massive, epic graphic novel series about the telepathic bugs. He had it all planned out. And could he have it in about six months?

Folks, I am not kidding. I am not exaggerating AT ALL.

“You can’t afford me,” I said.

Tom’s lip curled. These novels were million sellers in Europe, he declared. I should be jumping at the chance to draw them. “Aren’t all artists looking for work?”

Oh brother.

“No,” I intoned, B flat.

He then made some kind of snide comment about my work in the comics field. Real artists worked for book publishers, not losers like Marvel Comics (I told him I was busy doing a project for Marvel). And Tom knew Marvel Comics was bankrupt.

…Yeah, I’m just going to let that one hang in the air for a moment there…

In the first place, it had been years since Marvel had declared bankruptcy, and they had long been out of the hole. In fact, my parents had made a tidy sum buying Marvel stock. My parents are big Marvel fans.

And here I was, talking to a publisher who was running late on his payments to freelancers, and he was gloating about a near-decade old bankruptcy at Marvel Comics. Like, comics artists were probably desperate to work for REAL publishers for REAL money. They’d be beating down Tom’s door the minute they heard the Father of Graphic Novels was back in business, sho-nuff!

I’d noticed a rather creepy air of disdain for comics coming from Tom’s minions for some time and it was out in full force now. The get-rich-quick-graphic-novel-publisher-wannabe had utter contempt for our work to go along with his ignorance of it.

Tom’s minions would sometimes try to induce me to do book covers for Tom because it would give me an opportunity to do real art instead of comic art. Wow, what an irresistible incentive. I want to do a cover for a book about How to Recognize Your Mate Through Spiritual Vibration Therapy. Because it’s so much more intellectual than an issue of of Transmetropolitan.

I was not looking forward to seeing any of these ignorant and profoundly rude people anywhere near our industry ever again.

And there was Tom, trying to use me to get back into comics as a GN publisher, only he was so out of touch with the business, he didn’t even know that Marvel had pulled out of bankruptcy sometime in the latter part of the previous millennium. 

He had his finger right on the pulse, don’tcha know.

“You can’t afford me,” I repeated, meaning every word.

Because a publisher with bad credit can’t afford any artist. 

“And I’m not available for at least two years!”

“Two years! Why so long? We need it in six months!”

From start to publication, a complete color graphic novel in six months…

I tried to make things very, very easy for him to understand. So, I dropped back to the fundamental information. “NO. I don’t want to do this book. I will not do this book. I am not interested.”

Tom’s lip curled again. “Oh…” he gave me a crooked smile.”You just don’t want to draw the icky bugs. You’re just scared of the bugs.”

Once again, I turned inward, to the depths of my soul, and once again, I was disappointed.

His head remained intact.

Still no psychic powers.

The entire luncheon had turned into scientific proof of the absence of psychic powers. 

This publisher of New Age books, this great believer in the supernatural, could not possibly have one functioning neuron producing anything resembling psychic ability, because if he had, one look into my mind and he would have grabbed his kids and run for his life.

And it was then that I realized what the kids were there for: human shields.

I finally lost my temper. “Oh for cryin’ out loud! I’ve illustrated Clive Barker for God’s sake! I drew a human slaughterhouse! Bugs don’t scare me! I don’t like the book! I don’t want to do your book! It’s a stupid book! I’m not doing it!”

“Have you even read it?” Tom demanded.

“NO! I’m not going to read it! You’re not paying me to read it. I don’t like the concept! I’m busy! I have other work to do! Now what am I doing here? What do you want? If we are finished, I want to go now!”

Tom insisted we were not finished. He wanted to talk about GN’s. He and his partner were starting up a new graphic novel line.

And finally we got to the nitty gritty.

The upshot was Tom and Mr. Disney wanted me to hand over my rolodex of contacts and my contracts with my other publishers. They wanted me to spill everything about everything and everything about everyone I knew. 

Tom had heard of big name people like Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman. Tom’s minions had told Tom I knew Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman, and Colleen’s such a nice little girl, she can be induced to hand over the contact info. Isn’t she the clever little woman, she knows all the right people, but she’ll never figure out what we’re up to, nossiree! 

Tom’s minions stuck close to me no matter how hostile I was to the whole idea of working with Tom because what they were really interested in all along was my contacts and my information about the business. I was the only person they knew who was in the GN bizz and they weren’t letting me go. I was going to get them Neil Gaiman! 

And by the way…who else was important that I might know that I could hand over to them? Could I name some names?

Even though he had sold himself to Mr. Disney as the Father of Graphic Novels (I wondered if he’d try to trademark that), the more he went on the more it was apparent that Tom didn’t know jack about GN’s at all. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even know who Neil Gaiman was or what he had done. He simply knew Neil Gaiman was a Big Deal and he wanted the Big Deal. He had never read any of Neil’s books and could not name any of Neil’s accomplishments.

I felt a little less insulted that Tom couldn’t remember the title of A Distant Soil, even though Tom had published it.

I flatly refused to hand over any information. I stated that none of my contacts would be interested in working for Tom. “How do you know that? How do you know that?” Tom was very insulted.

“Look, you don’t know anything about the GN business,” I started.

“That’s why we’re here! That’s what we’re here to talk about!”

Funny. The beginning of the conversation started out with Tom selling himself as the father of the GN industry, the man behind it all. And here we were at the end, and he was finally admitting outright that he didn’t know squat. 

Tom was still operating under the impression that comic book creators could be had on the cheap. 

In fact, at this point, Mr. Disney piped in to say he heard that Frank Miller’s Sin City film wasn’t going to do well. Maybe Frank would be available! 

I fixed Mr. Disney with a stern gaze and said, “I’ll let Frank know you said so. I’ll be seeing him next week.”

You know, I haven’t really spoken to Frank since about 2012 when this pic was taken - these things happen when you’re friends with someone’s ex - though I believe I have the dubious distinction of being the only comic book freelancer to clean his kitchen. I could be wrong.

By this time, the kids were supremely bored, and I ended up entertaining them by doing doodles. As usual, the artist ended up singing for her supper. 

What is it about supposedly professional people that they think they can just make artists perform at a snap like trained seals? I recall that one of Tom’s minions had the annoying habit of inducing every artist that came into his orbit to “Just do a little sketch. Something nice. A little doodle.” He’d flutter his hands and simper like a twelve-year-old girl. He’d appear at parties, at lunch, at dinner, with a book he had “…for a friend…just a little sketch…” You know he’d already sold the damned thing on ebay.

Next time I meet a doctor, I am going to ask him to entertain me by performing an appendectomy with the asparagus tongs.

Meanwhile, Mr. Disney and Tom had tried to get me to sell my rolodex to them for the price of a blooming onion. I could not believe it. They wanted my contracts with my other publishers just to “…see what they could expect.” Nice.

There is such a thing as a consulting fee and there is such a thing as a finder’s fee. I had no intention of digging up information for them at any price. They could hire others if they wished.

I got the impression that Mr. Disney was a sharp man, but I was absolutely astonished that he had invested millions in whatever Tom was about to do. He could not have been pleased with what he learned at that luncheon.

I was unable to get rid of them with my onion breath, so I announced it was time for me to go. I gave them both a stiff handshake (“Hail, Centurion!”) and walked out, fuming.

Well folks, things did not go well even after the lunch was over, unfortunately for Tom and his minions.

According to the minions, Tom was surprisingly tight-lipped about what had happened at lunch. When I originally posted this missive, the minions were furious believing I had betrayed confidentiality by writing of this misadventure. 

Oh, really? 

Confidentiality? 

Tom’s a client I do not work for, who does not pay me, whom I did not name, who did not ask for a non-disclosure agreement, and who spent the better part of an hour treating me like the once and future hired hand.

Ironic that the publisher of unauthorized books about other people is so concerned about his own privacy. The publisher who requested the private contact information of my colleagues…the publisher who requested the contracts of my paying, respected clients…boy howdy, some people have a lot of room complaining about my breaching confidentiality. 

Unless you have a memory like an elephant for obscure publishing factotums of the 1980’s, you’d have a helluva time figuring out who Tom is (though it’s now easy to find out because INTERNET, and he died in 2019). I have no intention of ruining Tom’s life with these revelations (as if they could). But I also have no obligation not to ever discuss my experiences with him, either.

Despite the fact that they knew of my extreme displeasure with Tom, I heard from the New Age publishing company again some weeks later.

When will it end? 

Sob.

Still not giving me credit for having the IQ of an arthropod, one of Tom’s minions contacted me out of the blue, wondering yet again if they could have a copy of one of those contracts…you know, just to check on something.

Wow, what a sly move! I never saw that coming! I suppose they want the contract to…um…check the spelling? I politely declined.

A short time later, they came back again to ask if I could just hand over Neil Gaiman’s address and phone number? You know, just between buddies?

I wouldn’t hand over any of my dear friends to Tom or any of his minions for any reason. I would suffer the lash. I would throw myself on a grenade. I would stand before a herd of stampeding bison. I would swallow the polonium. The Imperial Japanese Army doesn’t have enough bamboo to slide under my fingernails to get me to reveal the secret location of Frank Miller’s Sanctum Sanctorum.

I’ll never talk.

After this, naturally, their estimation of me went from nice, jovial Colleen to bitchy, stuck up, conceited Colleen. “Who does she think she is?”

Fellas…You’re absolutely right about me.

I think I’m too good for you.

And as an extra special treat, I provide you with this painful, revealing, and yet wonderfully illustrative glimpse into the harsh, sad reality of the independent press of the 1980’s, that “safe haven” from the evil mainstream publishers, the wondrous independent press where creators got fair wages and kept their copyrights to boot.

Yeah, right.

You see, a few years ago, the United States Social Security Administration began issuing annual social security earnings statements. Your social security retirement income is based on how much money you have earned – and paid taxes on – over the course of your income earning life. Consequently, I now have this government document that makes absolutely clear just how bad it was for me in my first decade of comics, thanks in large part to the ethically dubious doings of the independent press.

When I have grappled with publishers about their treatment of their creators, they always protest that they have treated the creators well, paid them fairly, and made sure their rights were protected.

Yet, each time I had major dealings with one of these independent small press publishers, I ended up having to fight – and pay lawyers to fight for – the copyrights I should not have had to do battle over.

And money? Forget it. I’ve said for years I never made any money on A Distant Soil. Until I self published and went to Image in the 1990’s, I barely made a dime. Sometimes I made less than nothing. Literally.

In the USA, an artist does not pay taxes on their business expenses. So, If I made $6,000 in a year, and I spent money on paper, pens, paints, Federal Express shipping, phone calls to my publishers, a drawing board, and rent on studio space (for awhile, I had a small office for which I paid $250 a month), all of those expenses are deducted from my taxes. So, if I had $5,000 a year in expenses, I paid taxes on what was left. Here is what I had left after I deducted my meager business expenses.

As you can see, my income was so low in 1984 and 1985 that I had no taxable income at all. Now, unless you think I had the same accountant as Leona Helmsley, the truth is that this is all the net income I had to live on for the entirety of the 1980’s. I was a teen for part of this time so I had the support of my family, but in 1986, I had $3,816 to live on when I moved out on my own. That’s a whopping $318 a month. I moved back home in 1987.

There were a few years in there where most of my income went to pay attorney’s fees. One year I paid about $5,000 to lawyers. That was almost everything I made in that year. Creators who were paid next to nothing had no money to pay attorney’s fees to collect the money they were due. Funny how that works out for the publisher, isn’t it?

As a matter of fact, if I wasn’t getting small jobs for DC and Marvel in those years, every year my income would have been in the red. Notice that spike in the latter 1980’s? That’s Wonder Woman, Marvel Fanfare, etc…

In an interview, one of my independent clients (Teh Crazy), when confronted with the allegation that their freelancers weren’t being paid and couldn’t meet their rents (like me), responded that he wasn’t responsible for his freelancer’s inability to handle their money.

I present Exhibit A: 1984 and Exhibit B: 1985.

In other words, “WHAT MONEY?”

Without the support of my family, I could never have lasted in comics. I made only enough money to buy pens, paper, pay Federal Express, the long distance phone bill, and the lawyers. I was never paid enough to be self supporting on comics that sold in the tens of thousands and enjoyed multiple printings. I tried moving out and living on my own, but the adventure with my ex-publisher made moving back home a necessity within a year. I could not afford the most basic expenses. I lost 22 pounds in about eight months. The Woman declared she thought I had anorexia.

One last visit with The Woman: I spent those months at the ex-publisher doing slash illustrations for her in exchange for meals, and that is about as sadly hilarious and pathetic as it gets. Last I heard, there was quite a black market out there for these pictures. They’re naughty, that’s for sure, but I’ve gotten nothing but great cocktail conversation out of them ever since. I bet I could draw lots raunchier pictures now that I have become a functioning adult, and actually had sex. And porn doesn’t appear to have hurt Alan Moore’s career any, so there you go…

It’s pretty sad that I was a poor artist drawing slash for food. It’s sadder still to be an editor getting your jollies by inducing your penniless artists to produce your cartoon wank for you.

I’ll never forget the day she barked “All you care about is money!” at me. Actually, she did that a lot. Well, you care about money a good deal when you are drawing slash porn for your editor so you can get a sandwich. At least I don’t have to worry about them being used as blackmail material. Nowadays, yaoi art will get you a book contract.

For a final moment of hilarity, the last time I had a meal in her presence, newly liberated, I declared that I would be paying for my own lunch. No more cartoon wank for me! The Woman then whipped out a gold American Express card and announced “It’s not like I ever paid for lunch anyway. The company does.”

That’s right, she gleefully informed me that Donning had been footing the bills for the meals that bought the cartoon wank I drew for her. My favorite sandwich was French Dip, so I drew porn for roast beef au jus.

Positively Machiavellian! She had her publisher pay for me to draw her masturbation source material in exchange for soup and sandwich.

Everybody got screwed!

But enough comedy hijinks.

In the wake of the ridiculous luncheon with Tom, and the sloppy attempt to hijack my rolodex, I closed off contact with Tom’s minions shortly after I got the interesting news that I had been wrongly informed about Mr. Disney from the beginning. He had not, in fact, invested millions in Tom’s business. He’d simply been scoping out the company and that luncheon was a fishing expedition. In the end, he never invested at all. This caused a severe strain on Tom’s finances for which I was partially held to blame…if only I had been a nice artist and done the book about the bugs! If only I hadn’t scared rich Mr. Disney away!

Did Tom really believe himself to be the Father of Graphic Novels? Did he really think he was my buddy? Did he really believe he was in no way responsible for what happened at the ex-publisher? Did he even know what had happened at the ex-publisher? I’ll never know what the heck he was thinking, because unlike Tom, I don’t believe myself to have psychic powers. But then, I don’t believe Tom had psychic powers either. The man was denser than a singularity.

Whatever went down at Donning, whoever was responsible, I did not get the impression that Tom’s new publishing venture would be an improvement. And as offended as Tom’s minions may be that I wrote about what happened, it’s been quite a while since I first posted about the luncheon fishing expedition and Tom’s company doesn’t appear to have collapsed in flames. It’s a couple of years later, I am no longer in touch with them, but the company remains. In what shape, I do not know. I sincerely hope the creators are being paid and paid fairly.

And now, my final warning to all you young author and artists out there: your lawyer may not be able to help you avoid the landmines you’ll find in your contract. I had a lawyer. I had several, actually. The sad fact of the matter is most lawyers cannot tell you what your contract will do for you, or more precisely, to you. They can only tell you if the language in the contract is legal. They are not your agent. They are not your manager. They may have no frame of reference whatsoever for what your publisher will do with the otherwise perfectly legal language in that document you are about to sign.

Please be aware that much of what was in my ex-publisher’s contract was perfectly legal. While I believe they deliberately misrepresented themselves to me and set out to defraud me by explaining my contractual agreement to me one way before I signed it, and then enacting it in a completely different way after I signed it, the fact is I could not prove this belief of fraud.

Do NOT listen to your publisher’s attorney (many young creators do). Do NOT take your publisher’s word for anything. Anything they say to you, if you don’t have it in writing, is worthless. They can lie through their teeth to you and unless you’ve got a document to prove it, the only thing you’ve got going for you is on that contract. If the contract is interpreted one way before you sign it, and another way after you sign it, well, too bad for you. You’ll have a hard time making your case with verbal evidence.

With Frank Miller and Diana Schutz, shortly before I signed my first contract with Dark Horse. Where I still am. It took years before my first book with them was finished - Troll Bridge, written by Neil Gaiman and adapted by me, and Diana had already left by then. I always felt bad about that, she really babied me along.

I’m not saying all publishers are liars. Obviously, I have been very pleased at companies like Image and Dark Horse. However, there are plenty of companies out there that will take advantage of young creators. Don’t take their explanation for the interpretation of the document as the legal definition of what is written in that document. Make them spell it out.

It wasn’t until the publisher violated the explicit written terms of my agreement that I was able to terminate the contract and get away from them, and that took several years of work and a lot of time and money.

You know what they say. A smart man learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

Please learn from these mistakes.

I wish you great success, and lasting joy in your work.

But don’t go away, yet.

Because when this was originally published and republished on my old blog between 2006 and 2009, it ended up going viral and got about a half million hits.

Interesting people showed up to discuss things.

Interesting things.

And then…a few weeks ago, I found my diaries.

Stay tuned.