Store appearances & more McFarlane vs. Twist

Originally published November 24, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1410

Assorted stuff:

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I have more or less sworn off appearances at comic book stores. There have been a few fun times here and there, but most of them have been… how shall I put this… less than rewarding.

There was a store in Long Island, for instance, which had me come out for a signing. The weather was crappy. So when no one turned out, I was assured by the store owners that it was because of the foul skies. “No one wanted to come and stand out in the rain,” they told me. “We’d love to have you back another time and hopefully the weather will cooperate.”

Well, I returned six months later, and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. Not a cloud in the sky, temperature in the 70’s/80’s, birds singing. And naturally—you guessed it—no one showed up. Whereupon the owners said, “Well, the weather was so gorgeous, people didn’t want to stand around in line in a comic store; they wanted to go to the beach.”

Then there was the store where exactly eight people showed up, and one of them stayed for the full excruciating three hours telling me every story idea for every character he’d ever had in the Atlas line from decades ago. Then there was the time that a guy came up to me, told me he hated everything I’d ever written, and then stood there challenging every person who came up to me with something to sign, saying, “Why do you like his work? It’s all crap.” He kept it up for half an hour, the store owner doing nothing, until I ran him out of the place myself. And then there are those wonderful, feel-good questions, such as, “Who are you supposed to be?” and “I thought comics were drawn. What does writing have to do with comics?” and “Do you have a bathroom here?” and, my personal favorite, “Why do your stories suck so bad?”

There have been some pleasant experiences here and there, but by and large they’ve been… somewhat lacking. The worst is when I do out-of-town appearances, because this is the usual pattern: A retailer is enamored of my work. He thinks it would be stupendous to have me in his store, because he’s convinced that all his customers share his viewpoint. He goes to some expense to have me out there (I don’t charge appearance fees, but there’s airfare, and hotel if it’s an overnight stay—some retailers want me to bunk on their pullout couch in their living room, which ain’t gonna happen, guys—plus the money involved in placing ads in local newspapers, printing fliers, that sort of thing.)

And more often than not, these efforts draw little-to-no customers, because comics come out on Wednesday, and that’s when fans go to the comic book store. But I’m there on a weekend, and if I were a hot artist or Neil Gaiman, people would make the extra effort and turn out by the carload. But I’m not, I’m just me. Retailers see people lining up for my autograph at conventions and think that will translate to in-store appearances, but it doesn’t. This used to give me a serious kick in the old ego, but I’ve gotten so used to it that my ego is pretty much shatter-proof by this time. What does get me, though, is the look of frustration and disappointment and embarrassment in the face of the retailer, who has spent time and money in an event that didn’t have the turn-out he’d hoped it would. Being Jewish, naturally I wear my guilt on my sleeve, so I wind up feeling like I’ve let the retailer down. That I wasn’t sufficiently popular to pull people into the store. And the retailer will invariably tell me all the things he did to try and get people to show up, unaware that presenting this litany of futility isn’t helping matters and—in fact—is only making me feel worse. It’s psychodrama that I simply don’t need, which is why I’d sworn off appearances in any store beyond easy driving range, and turn down all such invitations. If it’s a store nearby, fine, because at least the retailer hasn’t had to cover any of my expenses, so the inevitable guilt I feel when I walk into a store and there’s crickets chirping isn’t so palpable.

So when the folks at Dark Horse called and told me that Stephen Jahner, a retailer in Lansing, Michigan , was ready, willing and able to crawl across cut glass in order to have me come out to his store, it took a month to convince me. “He’s a big supporter of Dark Horse,” they told me, “He’s a big fan of Spyboy,” they told me. If Spyboy doesn’t succeed, I sure won’t be able to say it wasn’t promoted: Dark Horse has done more to push that book than all the efforts of Marvel and DC for all my titles combined in all the years I’ve been working for them. So I felt as if I owed Dark Horse something for all that support. And Jahner was absolutely insistent, completely convinced that people would be turning out in droves and I wouldn’t have to sit there in a big pool of guilt because I’d let down yet another retailer. Plus another freelancer whose work I respect vouched for him.

So this is it: My last shot at an out-of-state store appearance. Saturday, November 18th, I will be at Capital City Comics and Books in Lansing, Michigan from 3-7. Sunday, November 19th, I will be at Apparitions Comics in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from 1-4. If this thing tanks, the only way you get me out to a store again is in a body bag.

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So Todd McFarlane seems to have dodged another bullet when the judge set aside the Tony Twist verdict… not disputing that Todd had cost Twist money with his venomous portrayal of Twist as a mobster, but instead saying that it was okay because Todd hadn’t meant to. “The question is whether the defendants intended to cause such injury by using plaintiff’s name,” said the judge. The jury punished Todd for being oblivious of the damage he could and did do, and a higher court judge turned around and rewarded him for it. John Byrne commented that, while not claiming to be psychic, he could practically hear the judge thinking, “It’s just @*%#* comics!” He may very well be right.

The question now is whether McFarlane is going to realize that he had a close call and watch his step… or whether he’s going to feel so empowered that he’s immediately going to reintroduce mobster Tony Twist and have him start suing the police for harassment

In the meantime, we’re left at least with the ironic notion that Todd McFarlane basically pleaded ignorance… and was convincing enough to win doing so.

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When we were down in Florida, my elder daughters, Shana and Gwen, went on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Such a drop usually prompts people to either put their hands over their head in best roller-coaster style, or else grip onto the handrails in front of them for dear life. My children, of course, disdain such clichéd reactions. See if you can pick them out in the photograph that snapped them during mid-drop.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, yadda yadda, so forth, Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)