The ups and downs of Blacktab Publishing.
Aug. 25th, 2011 01:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariYou've heard me mention Blacktab Studios, haven't you? It's been a conceit of mine since the late 80s.
One of my favorite comic companies of all time was a company called Comico: The Comic Company ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comico_Comics ). I wasn't big into the superhero genre of comics, and the stuff Comico was putting out was amazing. By 1987, when their Black Book came out, celebrating their fifth anniversary, I told myself I was gonna be in the second one (which would have been 1992).
Sadly Comico dissapeared from the landscape leaving me high and dry. So, during my high school years, I came up with my own company idea: Blacktab Comics.
The name came from when my friends and I would trade comics with each other. In order to figure out whose comics were whose, we put little colored tabs on the plastic comic covers. Mine was black. That tab carried over to the new comics I was planning to put out: The Book of Zand (which I thoroughly redesigned into the more astounding title "The Book of Xand.")
I tinkered with the idea of making comics through most of high school, but it wasn't more than a pipe dream. Then I joined the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, and came into contact with Antarctic Press. I worked for them for a time (in a non-comics capacity, I was a cashier at their comic store), and after numerous pitches (ask Terry Moore about how that went with him) it was clear I wouldn't be going anywhere with them. And to be totally fair: I had some severe illusions of grandeur about my abilities (even today, I don't think I could keep up the schedule and quality of a print comic).
But watching Antarctic Press at work assured me of one thing: No way in hell would I be able to do everything they did (and were doing) to get a comic company off the ground. With Antarctic now far behind me, and my little pipe dream dashed, Blacktab kind of just atrophied away for most of the 90s.
It wasn't until 1997 I had a really good idea: Let's put a comic on the internet. The first inklings of Closetspace appeared on my website in 1998 ( http://www.dolari.net/images/99809.png - right up there near "Current Projects"). At the time, all that link took you to was a drawing of a Victrola, that streamed (illegally) Suzanne Vega's "As Girls Go." But at the very bottom, in tiny print, was "(c) 1997 Blacktab Productions." Blacktab Publishing meant paper. Blacktab Productions meant...whatever the web was becoming.
Planning and doing were two different things, though. I didn't have much space back then (although my webhoster in 1997 is the same one I use in 2011), and download speeds on a 28.8 made serial comics a chore to read. The comic never got off the ground other than a few prototype pics and coloring tests. The name Blactab, however, kept existing as the username of the Dreamhost Guestbook I had at the time (http://books.dreambook.com/blacktab).
In 2001, webspace was no longer a barrier, thanks to ComicGenesis (known then as KeenSpace). I put up both A Wish for Wings and Closetspace on that site. AS I was publishing through Keenspace, I kept the Blacktab name off of them, and published to my hearts content, and eventually moved it over to my own site, Jenn Dolari's Click-o-Rama. At that point, the Blacktab name resufaced, mostly as a joke logo on my then Windows 3.11 based front page.
As the comics became more popular, and print-on-demand services became feasible, suddenly, print issues became a very very popular idea. An "A Wish for Wings" graphic novel idea began being bandied about. A mockup and preview actually exist. And suddenly Blacktab Publishing was a thing again. Take a look at that graphic nivel cover I did. Up there in the top left corner? That was our new logo.
Blacktab Publishing looked to finally be a reality. Unfortunately, as usual, life got in the way, and the graphic novel was never finished (The unfinshed "preview" made for a Houston Comics show is available here: http://dolari.deviantart.com/art/2007-AWFW-GN-Preview-162429951). Again, Blacktab languished until about 2009, when a set of circumstances got Blacktab as close to reality as it ever got.
I was sitting at home, out of work an unemployed (again) and working on comics, when it hit me. I know comic artsts now. Locally, there was Venus Envy's Erin Lindsey and Lean on Me's Jade Gordon. I also knew From Then On Forth's Liz Troub and Grey Matter's Loren Coven. What if Blacktab wasn't a publisher...but a STUDIO of artists? And what if we got off the ground the same way Comico did all those years ago?
When Comico began publishing comics, they created a book called "Primer." It was a standard sized 28 page black and white independent comic you got in the 1980s with a really neat premise. It was broken up into four parts, each showcasing one specific story, which spun off into it's own series.
How could I take that and make it match 2010s sensibilities? What if we followed the same idea, except did it print-on-demand? That would keep costs down. Didn't print issue number two until issue one was paid off? Made sure NOTHING other than the cover art appeared on our websites, so you'd have to buy the book to read it? And allowed popularity to determine which of those mini-stories became their own books?
And thus, was "Project Primer" born. A 28 page comic, broken into four parts, each allowing four artists to do whatever they wanted in their 7 pages.
I was going to do Segment 1, a story called "Manpower" (Quick synopsis: man gets pulled across the universe to fight in a war that may never had needed to exist). I had no expectations of Manpower ever getting to a position of being popular enough to spin off into its own comic, so I devised it to be an ongoing series inside Primer itself - something to keep you buying the book, no matter what happened in the other artists segments
Erin Lindsey was assigned Segment 2, although we never determined what story Segment 2 would be.
Segment 3 was given over to Pazi and R. Ashfeather, and would most likely have been one of their low-energy world stories.
We never got around to assigning segment 4, although I'd put some feelers out to several local artists.
"Project Primer" was always it's working name - the trademark was owned elsewhere, and I'd considered a few other names ("Blacktab Showcase" being the one most thrown around between Erin and myself). However, I got wind of Comico's publishers resetting up their own online comics place over at CO2 Comics ( http://www.co2comics.com ). I welcomed them to the world of digital publishing, told them I was a HUGE fan, and they actually gave me permission to use the name Primer for the book.
Holy crap, it was gonna be called "Primer."
Once we'd have put Primer #1 together, every red cent of publishing Issue #1 would have gone back into making Issue #2. Any money above that would be split between the four segments equally. Eventually, after four issues, we would take the most popular segment, and spin it off into it's own book, creating a second line. That segment of Primer would go to a new artist to establish their story, and four issue after that, spin another comic off from the most popular. After eight issues, if a segment of Primer was unpopular, we would end its story and open that up to a new artist.
It could have really gone somewhere.
As usual, though, life got in the way. Erin became more involved in her paying job, which was far more lucrative creatively and monetarily than a small 7 page segment in a comic, and I began a new job which ate up most of my time (so much, in fact, that I had to put AWFW on reruns, then eventually completely on hiatus). We never got an artist for Segment 4.
In the end, Blacktab Publishing officially existed only in the warranty contract I had for my Dell laptop, and most of my creative work remains at the Click-o-Rama (and at the Ashfeather's Deninent site ( http://www.deninet.com )), and it seems the Primer book, and Blacktab Publishing is dormant again, sitting in the back of my head. Sometimes I think it's dead...
...but it's been dead before.
She'll come around. One day.
One of my favorite comic companies of all time was a company called Comico: The Comic Company ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comico_Comics ). I wasn't big into the superhero genre of comics, and the stuff Comico was putting out was amazing. By 1987, when their Black Book came out, celebrating their fifth anniversary, I told myself I was gonna be in the second one (which would have been 1992).
Sadly Comico dissapeared from the landscape leaving me high and dry. So, during my high school years, I came up with my own company idea: Blacktab Comics.
The name came from when my friends and I would trade comics with each other. In order to figure out whose comics were whose, we put little colored tabs on the plastic comic covers. Mine was black. That tab carried over to the new comics I was planning to put out: The Book of Zand (which I thoroughly redesigned into the more astounding title "The Book of Xand.")I tinkered with the idea of making comics through most of high school, but it wasn't more than a pipe dream. Then I joined the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, and came into contact with Antarctic Press. I worked for them for a time (in a non-comics capacity, I was a cashier at their comic store), and after numerous pitches (ask Terry Moore about how that went with him) it was clear I wouldn't be going anywhere with them. And to be totally fair: I had some severe illusions of grandeur about my abilities (even today, I don't think I could keep up the schedule and quality of a print comic).
But watching Antarctic Press at work assured me of one thing: No way in hell would I be able to do everything they did (and were doing) to get a comic company off the ground. With Antarctic now far behind me, and my little pipe dream dashed, Blacktab kind of just atrophied away for most of the 90s.
It wasn't until 1997 I had a really good idea: Let's put a comic on the internet. The first inklings of Closetspace appeared on my website in 1998 ( http://www.dolari.net/images/99809.png - right up there near "Current Projects"). At the time, all that link took you to was a drawing of a Victrola, that streamed (illegally) Suzanne Vega's "As Girls Go." But at the very bottom, in tiny print, was "(c) 1997 Blacktab Productions." Blacktab Publishing meant paper. Blacktab Productions meant...whatever the web was becoming.
Planning and doing were two different things, though. I didn't have much space back then (although my webhoster in 1997 is the same one I use in 2011), and download speeds on a 28.8 made serial comics a chore to read. The comic never got off the ground other than a few prototype pics and coloring tests. The name Blactab, however, kept existing as the username of the Dreamhost Guestbook I had at the time (http://books.dreambook.com/blacktab).
In 2001, webspace was no longer a barrier, thanks to ComicGenesis (known then as KeenSpace). I put up both A Wish for Wings and Closetspace on that site. AS I was publishing through Keenspace, I kept the Blacktab name off of them, and published to my hearts content, and eventually moved it over to my own site, Jenn Dolari's Click-o-Rama. At that point, the Blacktab name resufaced, mostly as a joke logo on my then Windows 3.11 based front page.
As the comics became more popular, and print-on-demand services became feasible, suddenly, print issues became a very very popular idea. An "A Wish for Wings" graphic novel idea began being bandied about. A mockup and preview actually exist. And suddenly Blacktab Publishing was a thing again. Take a look at that graphic nivel cover I did. Up there in the top left corner? That was our new logo. Blacktab Publishing looked to finally be a reality. Unfortunately, as usual, life got in the way, and the graphic novel was never finished (The unfinshed "preview" made for a Houston Comics show is available here: http://dolari.deviantart.com/art/2007-AWFW-GN-Preview-162429951). Again, Blacktab languished until about 2009, when a set of circumstances got Blacktab as close to reality as it ever got.I was sitting at home, out of work an unemployed (again) and working on comics, when it hit me. I know comic artsts now. Locally, there was Venus Envy's Erin Lindsey and Lean on Me's Jade Gordon. I also knew From Then On Forth's Liz Troub and Grey Matter's Loren Coven. What if Blacktab wasn't a publisher...but a STUDIO of artists? And what if we got off the ground the same way Comico did all those years ago?
When Comico began publishing comics, they created a book called "Primer." It was a standard sized 28 page black and white independent comic you got in the 1980s with a really neat premise. It was broken up into four parts, each showcasing one specific story, which spun off into it's own series.
How could I take that and make it match 2010s sensibilities? What if we followed the same idea, except did it print-on-demand? That would keep costs down. Didn't print issue number two until issue one was paid off? Made sure NOTHING other than the cover art appeared on our websites, so you'd have to buy the book to read it? And allowed popularity to determine which of those mini-stories became their own books?
And thus, was "Project Primer" born. A 28 page comic, broken into four parts, each allowing four artists to do whatever they wanted in their 7 pages.
I was going to do Segment 1, a story called "Manpower" (Quick synopsis: man gets pulled across the universe to fight in a war that may never had needed to exist). I had no expectations of Manpower ever getting to a position of being popular enough to spin off into its own comic, so I devised it to be an ongoing series inside Primer itself - something to keep you buying the book, no matter what happened in the other artists segments
Erin Lindsey was assigned Segment 2, although we never determined what story Segment 2 would be.
Segment 3 was given over to Pazi and R. Ashfeather, and would most likely have been one of their low-energy world stories.
We never got around to assigning segment 4, although I'd put some feelers out to several local artists.
"Project Primer" was always it's working name - the trademark was owned elsewhere, and I'd considered a few other names ("Blacktab Showcase" being the one most thrown around between Erin and myself). However, I got wind of Comico's publishers resetting up their own online comics place over at CO2 Comics ( http://www.co2comics.com ). I welcomed them to the world of digital publishing, told them I was a HUGE fan, and they actually gave me permission to use the name Primer for the book.
Holy crap, it was gonna be called "Primer."
Once we'd have put Primer #1 together, every red cent of publishing Issue #1 would have gone back into making Issue #2. Any money above that would be split between the four segments equally. Eventually, after four issues, we would take the most popular segment, and spin it off into it's own book, creating a second line. That segment of Primer would go to a new artist to establish their story, and four issue after that, spin another comic off from the most popular. After eight issues, if a segment of Primer was unpopular, we would end its story and open that up to a new artist.
It could have really gone somewhere.
As usual, though, life got in the way. Erin became more involved in her paying job, which was far more lucrative creatively and monetarily than a small 7 page segment in a comic, and I began a new job which ate up most of my time (so much, in fact, that I had to put AWFW on reruns, then eventually completely on hiatus). We never got an artist for Segment 4.
In the end, Blacktab Publishing officially existed only in the warranty contract I had for my Dell laptop, and most of my creative work remains at the Click-o-Rama (and at the Ashfeather's Deninent site ( http://www.deninet.com )), and it seems the Primer book, and Blacktab Publishing is dormant again, sitting in the back of my head. Sometimes I think it's dead...
...but it's been dead before.
She'll come around. One day.
