92615_RAA_LooseCannon_Text_R1_PROOF

trouble wrapping my head around it because it seems so obvious to me… want to make comics? Make comics. Plus, I was starting to worry a little about the column, frankly, because instead of writing it, I really should be sitting on the floor of my office and having a Red Stripe and popping Unbreakable into the DVD player as I assemble the Couscous Express patches and the Channel Zero T-shirts packaging and count them, and box them, and ship them to Diamond Comics Distributors for Brian Wood Month in January. So anyway, about the time I started to think that this is going to be a real ly short column, I heard the distinctive drop of mail through the slot, and along with the resumes that people send me and the checks from distrib utors and the blind submissions I get even though I often make a very big deal about the fact that we don’t accept submissions… along with all of that stuff are a few pieces of mail that’re interesting. Today I got a pack age from Rick Spears, he of Teenagers From Mars fame. I came across their website somehow, and after clicking around on it for maybe three minutes, I hit the "ordering stuff" section just to see what they had. Well, Rick and artist Rob Goodridge certainly had a familiar bunch of offer ings, and the whole thing looked like my apartment from three years ago: posters, badges, a look behind-the-scenes… these guys sure are marketing the hell out of their comic; better, in fact, than some bigger cats. "I have got to send these lads some money," I remember thinking, because I’m not so far away from the guerrilla marketing myself, even now. I know what it’s like to try to get the word out, and a couple of bucks and some priority mail stamps in the mail from someone who has heard good stuff about your work is like Christmas in July when you’re working hard on your comics, yourself. So I opened up the package and, sure enough, there’s the copy of Teenagers From Mars #1 that I ordered a week or two back. But Rick threw in a minicomic of Rob’s manga-influenced sketches, and a few buttons, and a bound copy of the scripts to the first eight issues, as well as a real ly very nice cover letter. And it’s raining a bit here in San Francisco, so I figured I’d put on some water for some tea and kick back and read the issue. I mean, these lads worked on it, so the least I can do is give it a flip through, right? Of course, the first thing I noticed was the cover. Nice big logo: TEENAGERS FROM MARS. All right; that’s certainly evocative and puts an image in your head already… but the art on the cover is of the shoulder of The more things change, the more they stay the same. There’s a reason cliches are cliches, you know.

158