My life in comics

In 1981, at the tender age of 9, my father took me to the first Colorado Comic Art Convention. It was a tiny gathering of comic book fans (especially by today’s comic book convention standards) with Kirk Alyn (who had played Superman in a 1948 serial) as the headlining guest, but for a kid whose experience so far with comics had been picking them off of the spinner rack at the local grocery store, it was a revelation. I came away with a handful of comics, including and old Marvel  Human Fly (I don’t recall what issue, and sadly it’s long gone from my collection) and a copy of Fantasian, a local fanzine about comics put out by the group who had put on the convention.

I liked Fantasian enough to beg my mother to order me a subscription, and I waited anxiously for each quarterly issue to arrive. Starting with #8, the second issue of my subscription, they changed their format from a folded broadsheet to what has become known in ‘zine circles as the “digest,” consisting of a number of standard 8 ½ x 11 inch pages folded in half and stapled along the fold to form a 5 ½ by 8 ½ inch pamphlet, usually with a colored cardstock cover. Beyond the content of those treasured fanzines (also now sadly missing from my collection), I was absolutely fascinated by this format. The size of it was comfortable in my hands, and even the texture of the photocopier toner on the colored paper covers was magical.

Fast forward to 1989. I was in my last year of high school, an aspiring comic book artist and extremely fortunate to be spending time with a lot of very creative people. One of those was Bruce Young, a writer who had self published two issues of Blue Heaven, a moody conspiracy comic with art by Mark Brooks. I got involved as the artist for the third issue, and while the experience of drawing the ten page story made me wonder whether drawing comics was really for me (something I’ve grappled with ever since), the actual production of the book was inspiring. As long as you had the content, it was fairly easy to produce a good looking publication for very little money using a photocopier and some creative folding and stapling.

Jumping ahead to 1994, I had written and drawn a short comic story, but was unsure about publishing it by itself. Luckily, over the years I had managed to surround myself with an army of talented artists, and was able to put together enough material to fill a 28 page publication. The two people who were most important to this effort were my brother Jason, who had been willing to work a lot harder than I was to become a first rate cartoonist, and Paul Schiola, a fellow I met who worked at the local photocopy store and had published several issues of Cutthroat, a collage art ‘zine. Jason provided me with pages of material, drawing the stuff I didn’t have the time or the energy to do, and Paul offered production expertise, and I’m sure he gave me a deep discount on the photocopying.

The result was End of the Line Book One, a 28 page digest format publication filled with rough but well-intentioned comics and artwork. We printed 50 copies and gave them away at coffee shops, art galleries, comic book stores…anywhere we could think of. Armed with printed proof of my intentions, I found that it was easy to persuade writers and artists to contribute, and I frequently found myself acting as a bona fide comic book editor, pairing writers with artists and guiding the creative process.

All told I published four issues of End of the Line, plus a Halloween Special (the only issue that ever had a cover price) and a reprint collection of Jason’s comics. I went on to put together a new first issue, designed to be printed “for real” in the standard comic book size with a color cover, and distributed though the normal comic book distribution channels, but I lost interest in the idea before I could get funding for it. This was eventually published as a 32 page digest called “the unnumbered issue.”

A few years later, thinking my publishing days were behind me, I stumbled into an opportunity to take over Fandom House, a mail order business focused on selling minicomics. Dennis Pimple, the fellow who had started it, was ready to move on to other things and was willing to give me his mailing list and entire stock of minis and small press comics for nothing, and it seemed like a logical escalation of what I had been doing with End of the Line – now, instead of helping comics artists get their work into print, I would help those that had printed their own work find an audience for it. Plus I would get to read tons of minicomics in the process.

Well, I wasn’t able to retire on it, but I did managed to publish two yearly editions of the renamed Makeshift Comics Catalog, and I filled a fair number of orders. I was even invited to speak on a panel at the 1996 Alternative Press Expo in San Jose (one of my fellow panelists was Brett Warnock, who would go on to found Top Shelf Productions). More importantly, it gave me the experience and confidence to open a retail comic book store a few years later, which of course had a superb selection of minis and small press comics.

In late 1997, soon after completing the second Makeshift Comics Catalog, I was working at Pablo’s Coffee in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Pablo’s regularly lent their walls to exhibitions by local artists, and it occurred to me that a showing of the local comics talent might be fun. I worked with Denver’s Squidworks cartoonist cooperative group to get some original comics art to hang on the walls, and put together a digest collection of all the work in the show, titled Pablo’s Comics Extravaganza. The show and book were very successful, and were repeated twice per year for the next five years.

At my retail store I hosted numerous cartooning events with Squidworks, jam sessions where cartoonists both professional and amateur would work together on collaborative comics. The results of a few of these events formed the basis for the February 2001 Pablo’s show, and I returned to producing the accompanying anthology after a two year absence. Hosting the jam sessions also led to my store being one of the official host locations for the first 24 Hour Comic Day in 2004. Cartoonists all over the world, including 10 at my store in Denver, attempted the 24 hour comic challenge, to individually create a 24 page comic book in one 24 hour stretch. I published digests of the eight completed comics, and even managed to create one of my own for the event, which made it into the 24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2004 book.

By 2008 I had closed the store and moved to Portland, Oregon. I attended a three day workshop given by Matt Madden and Jessica Abel as part of PNCA’s Graphic Novel Intensive, and had a great time in the class. I was even able to embarrass Matt a little by bringing in Terrifying Steamboat Stories, one of his early minicomics that I had carried in the Makeshift Comics catalog. Myself and some of the other students decided to keep in touch, and our monthly meetings led to INTENSE: Tales From the 2008 PNCA Graphic Novel Intensive, a collection of our work which we published in December 2008. We managed to get the book into most of Portland’s comic book shops, and we even did a show of the original art at a local coffee shop, which brought back memories.

I wrote and drew a four page story for INTENSE, the first I had done in many years. Galvanized by its (relative) success, I even created a short minicomic to sell at our table at the Stumptown Comics Festival in 2009. I’m still not sure if drawing comics is for me, but I sure do seem to love publishing them.

– Jefferson Powers

Image credits: Fantasian #8 cover by Francis Livingston. End of the Line #1 cover by Paul Schiola & Jim Bob Cook; #3 cover by Jefferson Powers; Halloween Special cover by Heather Reynolds. Makeshift Comics catalogs designed by Jefferson Powers. Pablo’s Comics Extravaganza Jam Issue cover by various artists too numerous to mention. INTENSE cover by Jesse Bazata, with Tales of the Sufis minicomic by Ezra Ereckson.

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