The increasing mainstream appeal of comics has also boosted the sucess of small-press publishers. Marc Arsenault of Alternative Comics shares his insight on the development.
You took over operating Alternative Comics in June of last year. How did that happen and how did you first get involved with the company?
I doubt very many people remember, but I worked in comics for a pretty long time in the 1990s --- mainly at Fantagraphics (as art director) and Tundra (as assistant art director to Mark Martin). After my stint at Fantagraphics I moved into advertising, but still did a few books for them and some illustration work elsewhere. I managed to get a couple of Eisner nominations for my books with Michael Kaluta and Robert Williams. I also did the last five or so volumes of the Vaughn Bodé Library for Fantagraphics.
I had been looking to get back into editing and packaging comic books and graphic novels for some time…mostly with old friends and collaborators like Sam Henderson, whom I had previously published and known since college at SVA (School of Visual Arts). I had made some attempts to find another publisher I could work with, but nothing had come together so I committed to doing Sam's books through my studio's imprint, Wow Cool. Wow Cool has been the name my art, music, video, what-have-you studio has operated under for the last 25 years; and, it has also been a mail-order and publishing company for small-press comics and music that whole time. People involved directly in it include Sam, Tom Hart, Al Columbia, and Lady Starlight --- who has a long association with Lady Gaga. Yeah, weird, right? We also published or did second editions of many early small press books by Jim Woodring, Scott McCloud, Adrian Tomine, Jon Lewis' original True Swamp mini, Wayno, Dennis Worden, Jason Lutes, and the zines Scam, Cometbus and Dishwasher. We got a lot of mainstream press attention in the early 1990s as part of the 'zine explosion' in places like CNN, Sassy and the New York Times.
As you could guess by that, I was already associated with several of the artists that were published by Alternative Comics. Anyway, I was talking to Sam Henderson about picking up some of the back issues of Magic Whistle --- since I had already committed to publishing issue 12 by early 2012 --- and he said I should talk to Jeff Mason at Alternative Comics. I had no idea what the state of the imprint was or what his plans were at the time. After a few emails, and the appointment of Tom Hart as Chieftain (his official job title in the company), it was worked out that Alternative Comics could continue under my direction. It had been four years, at that point, since the last new book had come out from Alternative. While trying to work out the logistics of moving the company to California and getting things back into operation, our biggest printer, Lebonfon (previously Quebecor), dropped a bombshell on us and said we had a month to get all of our books moved from their warehouse in Canada before they would close it, or they would shred all the books if we did nothing. All our safe plans for the immediate future went bye-bye, but somehow we made it all work with the associated customs paperwork and 25-odd pallett-load of books getting shipped to California.
What is your daily role there?
I have to juggle my schedule between Wow Cool and Alternative Comics. Two jobs that certainly overlap, but can be very different. I certainly work plenty of late nights to make it all come together (not least of all while working on things like answering these interview questions at one in the morning!) Being an editor and designer I've been very hands-on with most of the books. It's been a long road of learning how to properly operate a publishing company and sort out things like getting the books properly listed in the various databases out there, like Books in Print, etc. Also , smoothing out the relationships with our distributors so that our books can get into stores and into reader's hands. There's much more to do there than you might guess to make it all work.
How many other people are working with you?
For most of the first year it was just me, my wife Jen, and the artists; but, since shortly after our proper relaunch, and the issuing of digital editions in May of this year, I've had an assistant working with me in the office --- mainly on the new website and the digital books. We also have outside sales reps in the Midwest and the New York City area. Laura Susong has handled the TCAF and CAKE shows for us and dealt with shops out there and Tony Shenton has recently come on board as a sales rep.
Marc Arsenault of Alternative Comics
-- John Hogan
