"Local Heroes" Boston Globe 8/23/05
It's not just about pen, ink, and paper. Self-publishers of comic books find it takes persistence, creativity to bring their art to life. By Matthew Shaer, Globe Correspondent | August 23, 2005
The irony of Eric Devlin's situation has not escaped him. By day: mild-mannered, tie-wearing, law-abiding employee at a respected mutual fund firm in Charlestown. By night: the tattooed artist behind ''Citizen Elvis," a comic that details the bloody doings of a past-prime, vigilante King of rock 'n' roll. The circumstances are such, Devlin knows, that with the addition of a pair of eyeglasses and a red cape, things could go all Clark Kent on him, and very fast.

''I've got two jobs, basically," he says. ''Someday -- maybe -- I'll get around to drawing a comic about my own life."

As is, he's got plenty of material to work with.

Devlin, 24, and writer Eric Robinson, 28, form the creative team behind Acronym Comics, a Boston publisher that produces a handful of popular books ranging in content from the strange to the inane. (''The three things I hate the most," Elvis confides to the reader during an attack by parachuting ninjas, ''[are] parachuting, Elvis impersonators, and ninjas.")

Here's the rub: These comics, like an increasing number of other local titles being self-published by independent artists and writers, are homegrown products. From initial conception to first storyboard to the fully rendered final version, the Acronym team controls the entire creative process -- for better or for worse.

''We work, basically, only in intense bursts of energy," says Robinson. The pair both have full-time jobs, are rarely able to meet in person -- they correspond mostly by telephone and e-mail -- and finishing a single comic can be a considerable undertaking.

''From pencil to ink, the first book probably took three months to finish -- and the storyboards were already finished," Robinson added. Devlin and Robinson met in early 2003, after Robinson posted an ad on craigslist.com for a comic book artist. A graduate of Ithaca College in New York, Robinson, who had already prepared the initial script for the first ''Citizen Elvis," found the perfect complement to his writing in Devlin's artwork, which is wiry in form but surprisingly emotive. They spoke briefly by e-mail that year before meeting to exchange storyboards and concept art. Weeks later, Acronym Comics was born.

What the Acronym founders discovered, of course, is what every self-publisher already knows: For every reward of the self-publishing game -- control, for instance -- there are at least as many obstacles.

Take, for instance, time -- there's not enough of it.

Robinson, an employee at a framing shop in Allston, and Devlin, the mutual fund firm employee, work days during the week and slot their ''night jobs" into the remaining time. Devlin says he draws on his kitchen table, while Robinson writes in the evening or in the mornings, before he leaves for work. It is something they are learning to deal with.

''I'd love to work for a big publisher, where there'd be more time to concentrate on just the books," says Robinson, who has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to interest the mainstream comic publishing houses in his work.

Tak Toyoshima, 34, the art director at The Weekly Dig and creator of the popular ''Secret Asian Man" strip that runs in that paper, can sympathize. In the late '90s, Toyoshima self-published a book called ''The Couch," which was part social commentary, part humor, and part horror-suspense shtick.

''I figured I'd sell 500 to 600 books," Toyoshima remembers. ''I was stuck looking at 10 boxes of comics. That's when you learn you really have to sell your stuff. In a way, it's all about the marketing."

Amanda Siska, 23, of Somerville, who pens a comic called ''No Soap, Radio," says she had that figured out from the get-go.

''I was losing $5 on every issue," Siska says. ''It wasn't worth it."

After initially sending her book to a local company for publishing, then attempting to sell it at local shops, Siska took her strip to an Internet host, where she could produce and instantly publish her work for free. Since making the transition, four times as many people have logged on to her site (nosoapradio.keenspace.com) than read her comic in print. Siska can now publish quicker (every week), receive more feedback (fans are more inclined to e-mail than to send a letter via snail mail), and hopefully, she adds, reach more fans.

''One of the best things about comics is the freedom to actually get [your] work out there," says Sean Wang, an MIT graduate who went on to draw for the ''Tick and Arthur" series published by New England Comics.

''With movies, it's not unheard of to have a dozen writers contributing to and reworking a single script. With comics, it's feasible to produce a book and personally finance it, which results in a much more pure story," he added.

Wang recently completed work on a small collection of sci-fi comics called ''Runners," which will be released Aug. 30 as a trade paperback nationally, on his own website, SeanWang.com, and on Amazon.com. Wang decided to self-publish ''Runners" after discovering he wouldn't be able to interest any mainstream publishers in a sci-fi title, a genre that typically sells poorly.

''What I wanted was a fun sci-fi book with cool aliens and ships, [and] lots of action and humor," Wang says. ''That was the kind of book I personally wanted to read and it wasn't being done. So I started one myself."

Using a bit more capital than Devlin, Robinson, or Siska -- he makes his living working for a video game company in Northampton -- Wang sends his books to a company in Canada, which publishes and lists them in a giant bible of sorts for the comic industry. From there, stores select the titles that appeal to them. Thus far, it has been a success: Wang sold all his copies of ''Runners" No. 1, and the series has met with high critical praise.

An Allston artist with an equally high profile, Karl Stevens, 28, has experienced the ups and downs of undertaking a personal and time-consuming project in a medium that he says not everyone may be able to accept as ''true" art.

''He said it 'probably wouldn't fit into our contemporary collection,' cause you know, it's a comic," Stevens remembers a curator at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard telling him when the artist asked to submit his new comic book to the collection there. But Stevens, who works in the museum as a security guard, is nothing if not persistent -- a different curator bought and donated the book, ''Guilty," to the Fogg a few days later. It was the third of Stevens's three major recent successes.

In 2004 he won a Xeric grant, issued annually by the Northampton-based creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to comic creators of exceptional talent. Taking a slightly different approach to the self-publishing circus, he was able to use the $4,600 to produce a high-end, artistically superb book, which is based in the hipster paradise of Allston and parodies the lifestyle of that neighborhood's young crowd.

Later, Stevens was recruited by the Boston Phoenix to draw a regular strip for the alternative weekly, and the short rise to local fame for the security guard (he kept his day job) was complete.

''Obviously the graphic novel as a form is getting a lot of attention and is finally being considered art, and I see it as an untapped wilderness in which to create something," Stevens says. ''There really are no rules or boundaries. Which may or may not be a good thing."

For self-publishers like Devlin and Robinson, who as of yet lack grant money or a surplus of capital, the comic form is certainly a good thing, but one that will require a little finessing.

''There's nothing else I'd rather be doing [in terms of] medium," Robinson says. ''Not short story, poetry, whatever." Later, though, he adds that ''it can be difficult, at least, to manage." © Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.


click me to go home.






all content © eric devlin 2006