February 14, 2010 -- Self-Publishing "Secrets" Revealed, Part Two: Minicomics

In this installment of Comics are Open Source, I should take a moment to explain the title of these columns. I'm a part-time comics creator -- at my dayjob, I make websites. The term "Open Source" is frequently used in software circles, and was coined by a bunch of programmers to describe a specific ideology where everyone gets access to the production and design process. In other words, there are no secrets; no knowledge is proprietary. This process of sharing information allows users to create their own versions of the product, and in theory, these new products have the potential to be at least as good as anything made by the so-called professionals.

This is how I believe comics should be. If the creators who came before me had jealously hoarded their knowledge, I'd have been stuck at square one. Instead, just about every self-publisher I met was happy to share information, helped out wherever they could with encouragement and advice, and was genuinely excited -- as opposed to feeling jealous -- when someone else managed to pull themselves up the ladder.

This week's column features a discussion of the ins and outs of Minicomics with one of these helpful creators, Paradise Valley Comics' Pam Bliss.

THE PULSE: You're one of the few people I know who has done minicomics, traditional "floppy" comics, and a graphic novel.  Having experimented with the full range of print-publishing, why do you prefer minicomics as your medium of choice?

Actually, I've never made a graphic novel.The book in question is a trade paperback short story collection, a very different breed of cat.

I think of myself as a maker of cartoon short stories, rather than the epic-length tales most comic creators seem to favor. I'm sure that's why I prefer minicomics over every other comics medium.Each story, or sometimes two or three closely related stories, can be its own freestanding comic, with its own format,title, cover design, page composition, fonts, paper selection, even printing technique. There's no need to stifle myself with a series, and cram every story I want to tell into some fixed mold.

That, of course, is the other advantage of minicomics: the wide range of creative and editorial choice. If I get a wild idea to print my new comic on cut up brown paper bags, I'm perfectly free to figure out a way to do it. Big comics, tiny comics, fat ones and skinny ones, comics in every color of the rainbow or pure black and white. If you can print on it, fold it and staple it, you can make a minicomic out of it.It's incredibly liberating.

THE PULSE: What's the biggest limitation you've found with minicomics?

Getting "mainstream" readers to take them seriously. Oddly enough, color covers seem to really help with this. Distribution.

Since most distributors won't carry minis, how do you get your work to your readers?  In what ways do you build new readership?

Print a trade. My bound volume has gained an awful lot of readers for my minis.Otherwise, I encounter readers at cons, through reviews, and by word of mouth. I still do a lot of mail order, and I'm planning an all new website to debut at the same time as the new trade.

THE PULSE: You've literally created hundreds of minicomics in the last twenty years.  How do you decide which ones to keep in print?  When do you decide to retire a best-seller?

This is an interesting question, since I never consider anything of mine truly out of print.I always keep a few copies around, plus I have the printing masters on file. So if for some reason there is a spurt of nterest in some obscure old work of mine, I can always print up a few extra to satisfy a sudden demand.

Normally, I quit making minicomics versions of stories that have been reprinted in a trade, and if a mini doesn't sell well, and I lose interest in it myself,then I let it go out of print.

That said, now that I seem to have settled on a specific cast of characters I want to work with for the foreseeable future, I have developed a strong interest in having all their important stories always available to new readers.I'm not sure where this interest is going to lead, but I'm sure I will end up compiling more stories in book form, and committing to keeping key minis in print until they are available in a collection.

THE PULSE: About how much can you expect to spend on an average minicomic print run?  Where do you choose to save money, and where do you splurge?

As far as I know there is no "average" minicomic print run.I usually start with 100-150 copies if I have the comic commercially printed at the copy shop--most copy shops charge a cent or two less per side if you order more copies, so there are some economies of scale involved.

If I'm printing my comics at home, I print however many copies I need, since the costs are the same whether I print one copy or 100. When I'm printing at home, I usually start with 75 copies, which includes the file copies I keep in the studio, a few review copies, and the copies for my subscribers, plus some to take to a small show. If I'm going to a large convention, I try to make sure I have 50 copies of all the newer minis in stock, and 10 to 20 of every comic I plan to display.

It's hard to define the unit cost of "a minicomic" since there is really no such thing.An eight page quarter page mini, made from one double sided photocopy, can cost as little as 10 ¢ a unit (5¢ a side in bulk on cheap white paper from a copy shop with low prices) to about 78¢ a unit for a full color mini assembled from full priced color photocopies, which currently run about 39¢ a side at most chain copy shops. A large half page digest, say 28 pages with a color photocopy cover, can cost as much as $1.50 a unit.The costs of home printing vary widely, depending on your printer and its ink or toner costs, but I find if I "pay" myself 7¢ a side for black and white, there is always money in the kitty for my toner and a wide range of cool paper.

Oh, and never pay the copy shop to cut, fold, or staple your minicomics.Invest in a good paper cutter and stapler and do your production in house. It's quite easy, and fun in a Zen like way. The few cents a sheet that copy shops charge for these simple tasks really add up, and can make a major difference in how many comics you can afford to make.

Pam Bliss has always been interested in combining words and pictures to tell stories, and she's been making minicomics since 1989. Most of her stories have been set in Kekionga, Indiana, the perfect Midwestern small town where anything can happen, and combine elements of mystery, romance, superheroics, historical drama, comedy, philosophical reflections on the nature of the universe, and anything else that crosses her mental sightlines. Plus naked werewolf jokes.

February 03, 2010 -- Self-Publishing "Secrets" Revealed, Part One: Print-on-Demand

When I first started work on my comic, ten years ago, my journey down the road to Self-Publishing received an enormous push-start from several professionals, including Mark "M'Oak" Oakley, Carla Speed McNeil and Jim Ottaviani. I realized what a huge gift of time and firsthand knowledge these creators were giving me, and I vowed that if I were ever in a position to do so, I would return the favor. In the intervening years, I've set up a Self-Publishing Resource page on my website -- it's neither as comprehensive nor as frequently updated as I'd like, but it's a start.

In the same spirit, I present this six-part series of columns on Self-Publishing, and since my own experience primarily revolves around traditional offset printing, I decided to enlist the help of my fellow Self-Publishers. The first five columns are interviews with individual creators, focusing on five major facets of Self-Publishing: Print-on-Demand (Layla Lawlor), Minicomics (Pam Bliss), Webcomics (Spike), Single Issues (me) and Direct to Graphic-Novel (Jim Ottaviani). The sixth and final column is a roundtable in which all five interviewees will answer the same questions, and hopefully provide a nice wide perspective of answers.

In this, the first column, we'll discuss Print-On-Demand -- a relatively new option for Self-Publishing -- with Icefall Press' Layla Lawlor.

THE PULSE: What are some of the companies that offer Print-On-Demand services? How did you find out about them, and what led you to choose the company you used?

There are quite a number of Print-On-Demand businesses (henceforth abbreviated POD), with more showing up all the time. Since most or all of them operate largely over the Internet, and they change frequently, perhaps the best way to find them is by doing a Google search for "print on demand" or "print on demand comics". And don't forget about printing businesses in your own hometown. Nearly any digital printer with bookbinding equipment will be capable of doing POD for small runs of books. Whether they will actually want to is a different story, but I've generally found that small printing places are happy to give me price quotes when I explain the project to them. Although the online printers that specialize in POD are usually cheaper, the cost of shipping can be substantial, and it is also easier to deal with a printer in your hometown if problems arise.

Whatever you decide, always shop around, getting price quotes from at least five or six different companies before you settle on one. Also look very carefully through their terms of use. A reputable POD publisher will not try to claim any rights in your work. Any rights that you grant to them must be temporary, non-exclusive, and only what they need to print your book. IT's especially useful if they have lists of books that they've printed, as that will allow you to do some behind-the-scenes checking and ask a few people if they were happy with the service they received.

Personally, I prefer POD websites that have a book cost calculator. This will allow you to enter your page count, book size and other information, and return a price quote without having to contact their sales department. This lets you try out different sizes and numbers of books to see how it affects your final cost. Some places, for example, have bulk discounts; others can be very cheap for some sizes of books but not for others.

Lulu is the company that I eventually chose. They are wonderful to deal with; I've generally gotten orders within about a week to a week-and-a-half of ordering, and everything is very professionally packed and printed. You can order books in any number, from one to several hundred. If you want to, you can also sell your books from Lulu's website without needing to deal with storing and shipping. They also have a lot of different options for sizes and kinds of bookbinding, even hardcovers. And they're a large enough business that I'm reasonably confident they won't go belly-up tomorrow, always a danger when dealing with small online companies.

Comixpress is well known, widely used and respected in the small-press comics business. The downside to this is that their turnaround time can be very long because they get booked up quickly.

Ka-Blam is a relatively new comic POD business that I have heard good things about. They are known in particular for doing affordable color printing.

THE PULSE: You've done both "traditional" offset printing and Print-On-Demand graphic novels. What led you to pick Print-On-Demand for your two (three?) most recent projects?

I went with POD for the second Raven's Children book because I didn't expect to sell very many of them. Living in Alaska, I'm not doing conventions right now, and I did not plan to solicit it through Diamond, since my orders for the first book were very low. Basically I was just going to be selling the book off my website and through a few local stores, so there was absolutely no benefit to me to pay for printing up 2000 copies, and then find a place to store them, when I probably wouldn't sell more than a couple hundred at most. This was the mistake I made with the first book: I vastly over-estimated the number of copies I could sell.

THE PULSE: How did the print quality and turnaround time differ between the two finished products? Did readers respond differently to the Print-On-Demand version than they did to the offset version?

The POD version actually looked a lot better! This is mostly because it was printed on heavier, whiter paper, with a glossy finish on the cover. For the first book, I went with the cheapest options, and it really did show; after seeing how nice the POD book looked, I will definitely be willing to pay a little extra for better paper if I do another offset press run. And I've gotten compliments on how nice the book looks.

The turnaround time from Lulu.com was incredibly quick. This was, in fact, one of the reasons why I chose them; when I ordered from them, they were actually even faster than the 3-5 business days that their website gives as their approximate processing time. When I had my first book done, it took about a month from the time I sent the files until I received the final shipment of books. Did you find any limitations to Print-On-Demand that you didn't have when offset printing?

Honestly, I much preferred the POD process from a customer standpoint. Of course, I also know quite a bit about setting up files for reproduction, since I do newspaper prepress for a living. Everything was automated; I set up the files at home, preparing them according to the detailed specifications on the website, uploaded them and was ready to go! The only thing that most POD places don't offer, compared to traditional printers, is a proof copy of your book to check for mistakes -- a particular concern is files that are corrupted in the upload process, which takes awhile even over broadband as you're dealing with huge files. I worked around this by ordering a single copy of the book just to look at it and make sure everything was okay before making a larger order.

Since I'm ordering the books in small batches, if I need to change anything before I order the next batch, I can do it! Small text corrections, for example. It was pointed out to me that the bar code on the back is not in the newer 13-digit format, so I'll be fixing that the next time I order a batch of books.

THE PULSE: About how much does it cost to set up a black-and-white Print-On-Demand book, and how much can you expect to pay per volume? How does that pricing structure affect your ability to sell your books through bookstores and distributors?

The price depends on page count, as well as on other factors such as shipping, whether your POD printer charges a setup fee, and other factors like what kind of binding you want to use. My second Raven's Children book was 200 pages, and including shipping (which, since I'm in Alaska, is killer expensive), I ended up paying about $8.80 per book. The first Raven's Children book, printed in bulk quantities with an offset printer, cost me only about $1.70 per book! You can clearly see that I'm not going to be making a comfortable living off POD even if I sell a ton of books. However, I only had 100 copies of the second book printed, so it still cost me much less (total) than the 3000 copies of the first book. You can do the math here: for less than $1,000 I got all the copies of the second book that I've so far been able to sell, whereas I spent about $5,000 to print far, far more copies of the first book than I could sell.

It's hard to turn a profit on POD books, however, when you sell them through stores. The usual rule of thumb is that distributors pay about 40% of the cover price of the book, which means that I would have to set my cover price for Raven's Children #2 at $22.00 just to break even! Clearly I'm not going to be able to ask that much for a 200-page standard-sized paperback graphic novel. So the book is really only economical for me to sell off my website. I sell a handful of books through a few local stores and a small in-state distributor, but due to the steep wholesale discount, I'm actually losing money on those books -- the books are basically advertising for me, because I'm certainly not making a profit on them. Usually, you can only make money on POD when you sell the books yourself, so that you can keep the entire amount of the cover price and make a profit without pricinig yourself right out of the market. But this means that your market will be limited strictly to the people you can reach from your website or from conventions.

Layla Lawlor was born and raised in Alaska, and she presently lives north of Fairbanks, AK in a log cabin -- with Internet access, of course! She has published two volumes of the Arctic fantasy Raven's Children and produces Freebird, a weekly humor strip on Alaska life for Fairbanks' local entertainment guide. Her first foray into science fiction is Kismet: Hunter's Moon, a completed webcomic that will be available as a graphic novel in summer 2007. She posts updates on all her projects at http://community.livejournal.com/icefallpress.

February 03, 2010 -- Comics Are Open Source Interviews

A few years ago, I did a series of interviews for The Pulse with my fellow self-publishers about how they each made their own comics, on the web, with photocopies, with single issues, and with full-blown, offset-printed graphic novels. The originals have since vanished down the memory hole, but Jen Contino was kind enough to allow me to reprint them here. I'll be adding a new one every day or so, to give them a permanent home. The information is, of course, a few years old, but the majority of the advice is still quite valid.

January 12, 2010 -- New look, new url

A few years ago, a domain name speculator bought the FieryStudios.com sitename and -- if I recall correctly -- tried to get me to buy it from them for an inflated price. I waited them out, and a couple weeks back it became available again, so I snapped it up for the next ten years. Take that, jerks.

To celebrate, I finally took some time to spruce up the old thing, and good heavens, what an embarrassment. Tables, bad code, quirks-mode-inducing DTD declarations, and some code snippets that I swear go back as far as 1998. Yes, I've had a website for going on twelve years. You kids get off of my lawn.

Anyway, it's up now, and should be reasonably bug-free. Shout if you see anything wonky.

October 15, 2009 -- Well, here's a first.

Yes, you read that right. Heinrich Uhrmacher, a fictitious watchmaker who fictitiously died in 1685, just got un-fictitious junk mail from Google. Google's never written me before. Should I be jealous?

January 09, 2009 -- Steampunk Crafter Public Service Announcement

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to cast blame on any eBay seller, any crafter, or any manufacturer. I'm sharing this as a public service, because I was really taken aback by what was shown to me this evening. I'm not posting this to encourage the kind of 11 o'clock news paranoia so often raised by this kind of information, but rather to raise a healthy level of awareness in my fellow hobbyists.

As many of you know, I make Steampunk Jewelry for fun and sometimes profit. I buy old watch parts off of eBay, glue them together into new and interesting shapes, and make them into pins and necklaces and earrings. Back in October, I won an auction that contained a bunch of old military watch faces. When they arrived, I looked them over, and after fiddling with them for a bit, and even preparing some of them to be made into jewelry, I noticed that several of them had greenish paint on their numerals. Huh, I thought. I'll bet that's the infamous radium paint I've heard so much about.

I didn't pay it much mind. After Googling a bit, I decided they were probably risky, so I segregated the suspect faces into a plastic bag and stuck them inside an Altoids box. I made up the rest of my jewelry, and took it to a local show. I sold a few pieces.

Fast forward through the holidays. I was making up a care package for a buddy in Alaska, because I had promised her a pin for Christmas. I picked out a hair barrette for her that I was particularly proud of, and noticed that the center dial had slipped under my radar: It too had greenish paint on the numerals. I hemmed and hawed a bit. Is it risky? Is it safe? Am I being paranoid? More Googling. More wibbling. (Side note: I grew up on a farm, around pesticides and cow manure and axle grease. I'm a little less paranoid than many people about "toxicity".)

I finally gave in to my suspicion and contacted the DEQ and also sent an email to a friend of mine who's a Chem professor at Western Michigan University. He directed me to WMU's Radiation Safety Officer. After an exchange of emails, the Radiation Safety Officer graciously agreed to come over to my house after work and check my jewelry supplies with a Geiger-Müller meter.

Turns out it was a darn good thing he stopped by.

The faces that I thought had radium paint were definitely giving off minute levels of radiation -- not enough to be immediately harmful, but definitely there. We surveyed my entire batch of watch parts and found a bunch more faces and parts -- plain metal parts the casual observer would never suspect -- were also radioactive. Old movements that probably had radium faces on them -- but without the faces, there was no way to tell. Tiny wristwatch hands with a pinhead-sized dab of paint on them turned out to be giving off as much radiation as some of the full-sized faces. Faces with so much of the paint flaked off of them that you could barely see the numerals on them showed as being hot. That barrette I was going to send my friend, the pin that a co-worker was going to get for Christmas, a pair of earrings a friend of mine made for me years ago -- they all had radium paint.

How radioactive were they? Not enough to harm you unless you swallowed one of the radium dials or duct-taped it to your forehead and left it there for a few years. Casual contact would probably not do you much harm; even an inch or two away from the hot pieces, the meter only picked up background radiation. Metal that had been in contact with the hot faces was also largely fine: after I pried the hot movement off of a pin-back, the pin-back registered as normal. Still -- radium has a half-life of 1600 years, so it's not like it's going to go away anytime soon. Far better safe than sorry.

According to the Radiation Safety Officer (and this MIT document),the legal annual occupational exposure of radiation for an adult (people trained in the use and handling of radioactive materials and radiation-producing machines), above background levels, is 5 REM per year. (1 REM is equal to 1 rad times a quality factor for the type of radiation being emitted.) The watch-hand in the middle video was giving off 5 millirads (Beta-Gamma). Since 1 rad == 1,000 millirads that means that you would have to affix that watch hand, radium-side-down, to your skin for about 1,000 hours (41 days straight) for this to start becoming a hazard.

The danger here is from proximity; radium emits radiation, but it's a relatively weak emitter. That means that just about anything (metal, glass, skin, even a few inches of air) will stop its radiation. As you saw in the videos, you had to get the Geiger-Müller meter really close to the objects before the radium registered.

Another danger is that as the radium paint gets older, the binder that holds the paint together decays, allowing the radium paint to flake off and migrate around. Which means if you're handling a lot of radium pieces, and then you wipe your nose, or eat a sandwich, or if you have cuts on your fingers, you're introducing radium into your body, where it will migrate to your bones and hang out, still emitting radiation slowly for years to come.

Exposed radium paint on jewelry is a bad idea -- not because wearing it under normal circumstances would cause heavy exposure, but because the risks associated with handling the piece and allowing the radium dust to spread to other places, or internally. If you're intending to make jewelry out of watch parts, you should be very careful to not collect any pieces with unshielded radium paint, and if you see anything you even remotely suspect is radium, set it aside and get it checked out by a professional. You should not try to scrape or wash off the radium paint yourself. Radium dust can move around easily, so you may also want to have your work areas checked. When the Radiation Safety officer did an inspection of my work areas, we found only background radiation. That was comforting, let me tell you.

The good news is that now all the clockwork crafting supplies I currently have in my possession are clean and have been inspected thoroughly by a professional. The bad news is that I've made and sold a bunch of this jewelry already.

So: If you, or anyone you know, has ever purchased clockwork jewelry from me, you may return it to me for either inspection or a full refund, your choice. Just mail it to me with a note telling me how much it cost, and I'll either have it inspected and sent back to you free of charge, or if it turns out hot, I'll have it properly disposed of and will send you a check, including your shipping fee, for the balance.

I've probably only sold about fifty pieces of jewelry -- I don't have an Etsy shop, but I have sold my jewelry at several comic book conventions, including SPX and Wizard World Chicago. I suspect that only one of my pieces contained a radium watch dial, and I've already contacted the owner of that piece directly. However, I'm offering the buyback/inspection to my customers because I care as much about their peace of mind as much as I do my own work.

Please feel free to cross-post this to other forums and boards, and share this information with anyone you know who is a Steampunk crafter or who makes jewelry out of watch and clock parts. If you have questions about your own materials, do what I did: call your local public university and ask to speak to their Radiation Safety Officer. Alternately, call your state's Department of Environmental Quality: the Michigan DEQ rep was also willing to come out, free of charge, and inspect and remove any hot material -- the WMU Safety Officer just responded first*. A blogger with experience in radioactive materials also offered this helpful link to the Health Physics Society, which has a FAQ and links to help you find health physicists in your area.

The Radiation Safety Officer asked the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality about registering the material and was told that Michigan has exempt quantities of radium for timepieces and it does not require that the pieces be intact. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also has exempt quantities, but does have stipulations about intact or loose parts. If you have questions regarding disposal of radium timepieces (or their parts), you should look into your particular state requirements for quantities. However, it may open an expensive proposition in quantifying the curie content of the materials.

Radium paint isn't anything to be terribly frightened of, but as crafters, we need to be well aware of the risks inherent in our medium, especially if we're intending to sell our pieces to the public.

* I need to give an enormous thankyou to WMU's Radiation Safety Officer for the time he spent inspecting my house and crafts, and for safely disposing of my hot material. He was very kind and thoughtful and thorough and took the time to explain a lot more about how radiation works, and more importantly, how it doesn't work. I totally got my science-nerd fix for the week. Thank you again, sir!

December 31, 2008 -- Clockwork Game, Sketchbook Fun

I was scanning and prepping ten new pages tonight, and I thought I'd share some of the better-looking sketches from the storyboard book. Some are from upcoming scenes, and some are just me doodling. (My favorite is stately old Anthon.) Enjoy!

(Click for a larger version.)

December 28, 2008 -- More Self-Publishing Resources

Lately I haven't been very good about keeping up the Self-Publishing Resources section of Vogelein.com, mostly because I'm still trying to figure out this self-publishing stuff myself. The stakes keep changing, as do the ways of getting your work noticed, and it's hard for me to say much of worth on the subject right now -- I'm still flinging spaghetti myself, and as soon as I see what sticks to the wall best, I'll feel better equipped to blog about it.

Until then, I'm going to start linking more often to people who do know what they're doing -- people like Sara Ryan, because she's a really great writer and she writes some pretty awesome comics in addition to her prose work.

Here's a quote from her journal entry, "On Writing and Risk, Redux":

Does being an author carry risks that other fields do not? Yes. Obviously, unless you’re doing, say, reporting in a war zone, the physical risks to life and limb are minor. This is not mining, or heavy machinery operation, or farm work, or firefighting, or combat. But there are other kinds of risks. Friends, family members, and lovers will see themselves in your work. They may be flattered, but they may also be deeply hurt. Either way, you may not have had them consciously in mind at all when you created those characters or situations. Also, as a writer, you spend a lot of time in your own head, which is not always a pleasant locale.

Go read the rest, it's really good. And if you haven't read Sara's stuff, go read that, too.

Also, here's a really nice essay written by Lisa Jonté, on the blog of Lea Hernandez:

It occurred to me that building a good rep is not much different than building a good credit rating. The best advice is to start small. With credit, you would start a small account, make small, (easily paid off) purchases against it and make timely payments. So, by that logic, to establish a good rep you would take minimal jobs (one at a time please!) make only minimal promises and follow through in a timely manner. However, you also have to make a living, no easy balance to strike, but (I think) doable. Perhaps the focus should be on an entire year, not just the next project at hand. Seeing as how we are about to start a new year, I think this is as good a time as any to start fresh.

Good, sound advice in there. Go read.

December 16, 2008 -- Artistic Masochist

Man, I'm an artistic masochist lately. This week's page had four separate crowd scenes in it. Four. I am a real glutton for punishment.

On the other hand, I've really crossed a mental line with the story, and despite the horrendous amount of time each page requires of late, I'm having a real blast. The pages are looking a heck of a lot better than they were, and -- fortunately or unfortunately -- I'm probably going to go back and start tinkering with earlier pages once I get this chapter done.

One of the minor benefits of being a self-publisher is that I don't have to release my book until its ready. This can be as much curse as blessing: one has to know when to stop tinkering and print the darn book already. However, it does give me the luxury of going back and bringing the early versions Kempelen and Anthon closer to their final look. I wound up deviating from the model sheet as I found out more about the characters' personalities, because the changes looked better and rang more true than my original designs. It will also give me the chance to make the entire chapter more cohesive, artistically -- the advancements I've made with page composition and execution in the last fifty pages are really visible to me, and I hope they will be to my readers, as well.

So yeah. Visible improvements (at least, I think so, YMMV) are a good thing, except for my free time.

November 27, 2008 -- BPM Love

Hey, everybody. I've got more BPM love to share!

Here are just some of the reviews so far --

"...Roxy is a fully formed character, complete with self-doubt, determination, and a palpable euphoria when a night of music, dancing, and a great crowd all come together. Highly recommended for older teens and adults." —Eva Volin, ICv2. Rating: 4.5 Stars Out of 5

"...Call it a mashup, call it a remix, call it a day-glo pop love letter to a misspent youth: B.P.M. is brain candy in the best sense of the word." —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"...It is an amazing transformation that unfolds for the reader. Starting slowly, tentatively, Sizer brings the story to a feverish pitch and when the graphic novel is over, the reader is energized, wanting more. Like a good techno set (and yes, they do exist), Sizer elicits the emotions that he wants." —Lee Newman, BROKEN FRONTIER

Plus, there's a new interview with Paul at Comic Geek Speak.

BPM hit stores last week, so you can buy it from your LCS, order it from any chain store, or get it direct from Paul here.

I know I've been talking about this a whole lot lately, but given that between the two of us, Paul and I only produce a comic book about once every two years or so, this is a pretty big deal. Go Paul!

For older news, please visit the News Archives  on the Vögelein site.