Very Bad Publishers Part VIII

Enter Son of Tom

These new installments of Very Bad Publishers consist of letters between me and Tom’s son, and info I found that I didn’t have access to when this conversation first took place.

And a lot of baggage I didn’t unload the first time around.

The old blog where these comments first appeared is long gone, but I archived it. These archives are no longer publicly accessible. I don’t think it would be fair play to repost them in their entirety here.

However, I can post excerpts and address them, adding notations and information from diaries and articles.

Tom’s son was understandably upset that his dad got roasted on my blog (I was surprised he read it, but then, the posts went viral and got 500,000 hits so I guess the news got around,) and I have to compliment him on his polite address. That kind of civility is rare, and much appreciated.

The last two installments of Very Bad Publishers were first posted in 2009.

And then the publisher of Donning died.

I don’t think the posts had anything to do with that.

The publisher (we’ll call him Sam) had been with the company for decades, but Donning was actually co-founded by Tom, and another partner. Sam came along some time later. While I was given the impression that Sam was booted with the demise of Donning’s Starblaze line back in 1988 or so, in reality he stuck with the company for decades. When Donning asked me to come back and help them with their trade line to move inventory in the early 1990’s, I did not see Sam in the offices and no one mentioned him.

It must have galled him to have to call on me to help him with something he should have known how to do without enlisting an author who’d sued him.

After Starblaze folded, Donning reverted to the company it was before: packaged books, regional and company histories for hire for set prices, most sold to corporations and libraries.

It is actually a solid business model, and they probably should have stuck with it in the first place. There’s no fame or glory to be had there, but it is what it is. Donning was completely absorbed by Walsworth, its parent, now an $85 million concern.

Pictorial histories aren’t as glittery as science fiction tales and graphic novels, but they are usually more profitable.

There isn’t much to be found about Sam on the net outside of obituaries and another lawsuit with an author who, according to Donning, dragged out a job, demanded numerous changes, and drowned the production in red. So Donning sued. Sam declared the creator was “the worst experience” he’d ever had with an author, and here I thought that was what he’d said about me.

I feel diminished.

My only other notable encounter with Sam and his immediate circle was with his daughter who had been a reporter. She wrote a story about me for a local paper in which she falsely stated that a fan letter to me was written in crayon.

This never happened.

In all my years of working in comics, I’ve never gotten a fan letter - even from a child - written in crayon.

But it was the kind of thing that people outside of comics like to push: how weird and lowbrow people in comics are. This was especially common decades ago. Now people are instant experts after seeing a Marvel movie, which may sound like gatekeeping, but I don’t pretend to be a Jane Austin superfan after seeing a Pride and Prejudice movie.

At one local convention, a TV reporter showed up to shove her microphone in our faces, asking us basic civics questions, like “Can you tell us what the First Amendment is?”

The segment never aired, because we all knew what the First Amendment was. And the Second Amendment. And the Nineteenth Amendment.

Gotcha event averted!

Another local reporter tried to convince me to lay on top of my display table at a show so I could sprawl across my comics to better display my figure.

I declined.

I realize a lot of people do that sort of thing, and no judgment, but I have never done that sort of thing.

As for Tom, he died in 2019, ten years after this correspondence.

And here we go.

I’m “Tom’s” son.

In some ways, she’s right about him. He’s a new-age dreamer, not very practical, and an extremely nice and well-meaning guy. And he brings the kids all kinds of places. (They’re great kids. I was almost out of college when he had ’em. If you ever get a chance to obtain new baby siblings when you’re a grown-up, I highly recommend it.)I’m a rational realist, so I poke fun at him about psychic powers as much as Colleen does. I keep telling him he needs to get his head around practical matters, and so while loyalty prevents me from agreeing with Colleen on her observations about marketing savvy and how much time they remember spending together in the 80’s, I won’t publicly disagree with her on those points.

However, like a lot of “nice guys” in business, he succeeds on personal relationships, and honoring his word, and often does business in an informal way at first…

I acknowledge that Tom’s son is not only being very polite here, but has every reason to be loyal to his dad, and to set me on fire if he wished.

Which he didn’t.

I can’t fault that loyalty, and have nothing but praise for his good manners.

But reading these comments with fresh eyes, I’m stuck by the landmines in them, the principle one being “…he succeeds on personal relationships…and often does business in an informal way…”

At this juncture, I’ve been in publishing as many years as Tom had by the time he died, and I’m two decades younger than he was. So, while I respect that Tom believes he did what was right for him and his authors, I have a wider range of experience as an author working for publishers. He was usually in the position of power as the publisher.

Business relationships built on personal and informal foundations almost never end well for creators, in my experience. In fact, every major problem I have ever had in publishing has been when boundaries crossing leeched into professional matters, and that’s why things went south with both Teh Crazy and Donning.

Every single major professional problem I ever had in my entire career stems from my connections to this circle of people.

Every.

One.

Never, ever, ever prioritize nice feelings and handshakes over what is written on the document in front of you.

I don’t think Tom - or his son - considers the difference in the way he treated authors who were his close friends (which by all accounts was well,) and how he - or more precisely his cohort - treated authors who were young and on the menu.

I remember being patronized by Tom and exploited by people who worked with Tom.

I also acknowledge that it is normal that some people may love working with one person while others will swear that same person is the Anti-Christ.

I don’t think Tom was the Anti-Christ. I just think he was clueless.

I’m not sure Tom’s son knows a lot of “nice guys” in this business. Or just how often creators will warn you to run from “nice guys” like they’re carrying Ebola.

He brings lots of agents and publishers and established writers together with aspiring authors in his regional book festival event, which he’s always a big part of.

This is true. I’ve been a guest at that festival. It’s nice. In 2009, I did not know he’d helped establish that festival, which was very small at the time I was first there, but became bigger and more prestigious later.

However, congratulations on this worthy accomplishment.

Son of Tom:

I’m a little mortified at the way Colleen was apparently pestered by people at the new company; still, they’re genuinely good-hearted people there and I don’t think it’s as rare as it ought to be in business for a company’s left hand to not know what the right is doing.

Here’s where things get dicey.

My contact with Tom’s minions boils down to 5 people, of whom one was the primary problem, and who was not an employee of Tom’s new company. Not saying there weren’t other problems, and I can’t even remember the name of one person involved.

But I have baggage.

This:

“…he succeeds on personal relationships…and often does business in an informal way…”

Don’t do that.

I can’t disclose all here, and likely never will. Believe it or not, I don’t want to hurt anybody, not even the guy I’m going to refer to from now on as “Harold”.

Don't ask me who Harold is. It's likely you never heard of him and I won't acknowledge even if you guess.

Harold’s an elderly man. I don’t think he’s in publishing anymore. Almost everything he ever did is out of print, which is not unusual for an author: most books go out of print long before you die. So that’s no knock, just sayin’.

However, in retrospect, I have to wonder how much of Tom’s behavior toward me was influenced by Harold. Harold grossly exaggerated his influence over my life and work to others, pushing himself forward as someone who was largely responsible for my career decisions.

When I broke from Harold, he pretty much told people I would sink without his wise influence.

Which didn’t happen.

When someone is telling a publisher he knows a creator who will do whatever he says and who will also work cheap, I guess that publisher is going to believe it. While I now know that Harold was a major bullshitter, I’ll never know just how much he said to Tom that may have colored Tom’s opinions.

Basically, Harold was in with Tom to recreate Donning/Starblaze 2.0, and helped convince Tom he could get me to go all in, too. Exactly what was said, I’ll never know.

This does not alter the fact that I don’t appreciate the proprietary way I was treated. But I leave this here by way of explanation. Tom may have been misled by a third party.

Son of Tom:

…he sure as hell did stand up for the authors who were getting screwed; that’s why he left the company and started a new one. He didn’t want any part of it.

According to an article published in 1992, Tom left Donning in 1988 because of the secret contract deal of which he did not approve. Nothing was said to me by Tom or anyone connected with Donning about this deal at the time.

Donning sold our contracts to a third party, Schiffer Publishing, for $1.

They sold our inventory to Schiffer at 70-80% off.

Then via a common recurve ploy, they cut themselves in for a larger chunk of the back end revenue stream with Schiffer.

I had no communication with Tom about any of this after he left Donning, and very little while I was there. No one informed me of an impending lawsuit until three years later, and it wasn’t Tom who made the call. That news came via an author named John Nelson.

When I reminded the publisher (Sam) that not only could he not sell my contract, but Donning had signed almost all rights back to me already and didn’t own them, he tried to get me to sign all my rights back again.

Sam proffered that Donning would restore my original contract and all the original royalty structures if I did so.

Ho ho.

Turns out all the Donning book contracts had not been assigned to Schiffer, and they were still publishing, albeit in reduced circumstances. They didn’t shut down Starblaze completely until 1992. If I just agreed to go back to my original Donning agreement, then all would be well, said Sam.

Naturally, I said no. They’d violated my contract, lied, ripped me off. I was out.

“We’re an $8 million company. What are you going to do?” said Sam.

Well, that’s what class action suits are for, Sam.

So while Tom ditched Sam and started his own company, there was no way I could know under what circumstances he left, because I am neither a mind reader nor a time traveler.

After Tom left, until we had a lunch some 18 years later, I saw Tom exactly once: in passing while leaving the attorney’s offices, in the company of a former Donning author who had briefly been one of my editors there.

It’s good to know Tom ditched Donning, but I did not want to be a part of what I considered Donning/Starblaze 2.0.

Tom’s Son

I’ll take Colleen’s word on the he never called me thing; he probably never did call her about the lawsuit/rights issues, but thought he had. He’s an old man; he does that.

I cede that point, humbly. While Tom was only 63 when we last spoke, memory is malleable, and going back over my diaries, I’m astonished at what I remember and what I forget. The experience was a helluva lot worse than I recall, and when writing it all down in prose form recently, it proved a brutally unpleasant task.

Not in a throwing yourself on a grenade kind of way, but wow, what bad memories.

Tom’s Son:

The Graphic Novel stuff I feel she’s not giving him enough credit on, though…Likewise, the “Father of the Graphic Novel” thing is not something he wears spelled out on a diamond-studded lapel pin, though he may have said it dryly to her (I’ve never once heard him say it myself).

None of this is really directed at Tom’s son, who not only seems like a great guy, but who kindly shared his perspective with candor.

This is my perspective for my readers.

Tom and his circle are pretty convinced that they were important in the history of graphic novels, but in the history of graphic novels as recorded elsewhere, they barely rate as footnote. And while Tom may never have said “Father of the Graphic Novel” around the dinner table, “…one of the Fathers of the Graphic Novel” appears in his obituary.

Maybe Tom’s memories of his formative influence in this arena of publishing are shaped by what he lost when he was forced out of Donning, the company he helped establish. That must have hurt. I feel that to my bones, and it’s not something I considered when I first wrote these articles because I had no way of knowing that was what happened.

But the formative influences of people like Frank Kelly Freas and H. Stine, who also had a great deal with do with shaping Starblaze Graphics, were almost completely ignored whenever these matters were discussed with Donning employees and are almost never mentioned anywhere now. So, you know…

And the far more powerful formative influences on comics/graphic novels in the public consciousness via the works of Raymond Briggs, and publishers like Heavy Metal, Byron Preiss, etc, were not only ignored by everyone I knew at Donning, but dismissed as inconsequential.

Whenever I or anyone else had the temerity to point out that the Alien graphic novel published in 1979 sold in major bookstores moving numbers that Danielle Steel and Stephen King enjoyed, that accomplishment didn’t count. It was a the New York Times mass market bestseller for eight solid weeks, decades before other graphic novels even dreamed of making that list. It was a Simon & Schuster trade book. Mainstream. It was published years before Donning ever published a GN. It was one volume that likely sold more than all of Donning’s GN’s put together.

How does Alien not rate?

When Raymond Briggs was raised as an example, he didn’t count because he did works for children, even when he didn’t do works for children.

Donning repeatedly pushed the barmy idea that graphic novels were not for children. They put this out in press releases, in articles. And what sells best now? Graphic novels for children.

The Captain Underpants series has sold 80 million copies.

Donning would have sacrificed a goat for those sales.

Everything was about trying to cement the narrative of being first and best at something. Donning’s contributions were a later piece of what had already been established before they came along, and what was done better by others after they were gone.

This is not a knock, it’s evolution. And in the development of this art form, we can applaud the fact that those who came after did better than we did, even though being left in the past can hurt.

That leavetaking can be a rewriting of history with later generations selfishly ignoring what came before, but it can also be necessary growth. In my opinion, Donning selfishly ignored what came before, and took credit for building a bridge while burning their house down.

It wasn’t until more than a decade after Donning closed Starblaze that libraries and mainstream bookstores finally, truly embraced graphic novels, and that not only had a lot to do with manga, but with superheroes. And I know, I was there.

I’m not saying Donning did nothing. I’m saying that they knew nothing of substance about comics and graphic novels beyond their door, and had no context for what they did do. They probably really did think they were all that, like any small town wonder who goes to the big city only to not quite be able to grasp the big world is full of small town wonders.

Right up there with thinking a full color graphic novel could be cranked out in months, Tom really didn’t know any better.

Why would he?

He never knew better.

I really, truly feel for Tom that he got pushed out of the company he created (and Donning was named after the wives of the founders, that’s a double ow). Horrible. Sam was a total schmuck, and Walsworth behaved abominably.

And I know, I mean I really, really know how it feels to believe you’re an important part of something that leaves you behind. I’ve been in this business long enough to sink and see everyone sail past. But I am one of the lucky ones who eventually learned to sail.

You don’t often get second chances. Or third chances. I did.

But I have also seen this:

Creators who helped push manga into the US market who are not even mentioned or are barely mentioned now and cannot get a decent job working in that market.

Black and white boom comics that sold six figure first issues, then went out of publication at 2000 copies a half dozen issues later. And none of their work is in a single book of history about the medium.

All That in 1984 but not so big in 2004 and reduced to tears when others get pride of placement that they used to enjoy in convention dealer’s rooms.

Early rush to graphic novel contracts in 2004, yowling about how those older creators are just whiners (comics are fun!), realizing it’s not so easy to make a living after a few years at it, and no book contracts ten years later.

Companies that produced even more graphic novels than Donning did, and not a one of those books is in print today.

You have to be willing to face the fact that the world outside your brain gets to pick and choose what is important in the larger context.

Tom’s passing was not noted by comics industry journalists, but this appeared in one of Tom’s obituaries elsewhere:

“His foresight paved the way for graphic novels as a respected (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) literary form.”

I don’t think this should be written about anyone whose last name isn’t Eisner.

More later.