The Beginning Of The Beginning - Prologue To #0 - Part 2

By Randy Zimmerman

As I type this we just distributed FLINT COMIX issue #49.  Our next issue is a touchstone issue, #50, and I really want this blog to have a good foundation laid and well underway before that issue comes out, so that means more groundwork, history, and explanations.  Hopefully my publishing partner will be contributing soon, giving his side of our beginning, but for now I need to complete my side.  For that you'll need to scroll down and read part one first, and I wholeheartedly suggest you do, just so you're not totally lost reading this part.

Before advancing I need to add a couple of internal notes to part 1:

*While I was working at the Front Page Bookstore job I got to meet a number of people, mostly hardcore comics readers.  This is where I first met my publishing cohort, Theo (Ted) Valley.

*Before I was first getting printed and was working for Arrow Comics (getting Tales From The Aniverse printed and as Art Director), I got divorced from my first wife and spent about five years on my own.  After being fired from the Front Page Bookstore job (officially for being 3 minutes late, UNofficially because I was repeatedly mouthing off to my boss- I REALLY deserved to be fired), I started working for a growing chain of comic shops (they went from one to three back down to one locations within a period of about five years due to bad business decisions and life changes on the part of the business owner).  It was while the business was in their final stages that I met and dated my current wife, who was/still is a huge comic book fan (I promised I would NEVER remarry unless my wife was REALLY into comics), and understands and has lived through a large number of my self publishing and business ventures.  As I type this it is barely past 25 years since our first official "date" and 22 years of marriage,  Both on the same date, April 29- our 24 year old daughter's birthday is April 19 because she couldn't wait the extra 10 days to be born (and neither could Mom wait as she spent that last 10 weeks of gestation in the hospital because her water broke WAY too early).

*So, by this time, I've sold, produced, help printed as ARROW COMICS, sold retail again, freelanced, produced and printed as WEEBEE COMICS, married again, worked in a t-shirt shop, produced and printed as MASSIVE COMICS, stopped, studied, printed AGAIN as ARROW COMICS, switched t-shirt companies, printed as ARROW MANGA while printing as Arrow Comics, then stopped, switched employment to the co-owned All-Star Screenprinting and Graphics, printed as ARROW BOOKS and ran afoul (again) with the direct market distribution system (AKA Diamond Distributors) and was done with it.

NOW, ON TO PART 2...

While working for All-Star I read a Flint Journal article mentioning that there was a new alternative paper starting up in town called The Uncommon Sense.  I had tried MANY years before to get cartoons printed in the Flint Voice (which later became The Michigan Voice), a political newspaper started by Michael Moore, but had no luck.  This time I KNEW I had to contribute.  I tracked The Uncommon Sense's Editor/Owner, Matt Zacks down, and after a bit of convincing got him to run my work.

As of The Uncommon Sense #2 I began running an editorial/superhero comic strip called The Spark, and after a few issues I was given the (non-paying) title of Cartoon Editor and helped Matt coordinate the comics and comics talent for the paper.  During this time we also created a "Regular Joe" superhero called Citizen Flint who used duct tape and a scooter to fight crime.  Telling a political/editorial opinion via comics was always a lot of fun, in fact I also started a single panel cartoon at this time called "Zimmtoons" that was an absolute blast to do.  Some months we were jammed up against a deadline (mostly me waiting until the last minute), and I continued a bad habit of starting stories without really knowing how it was all going to end, but they were FUN to do.

After a few years of working on the paper, and being a guest at the Motor City ComiCon on a regular basis, it quickly became apparent to me that local folks were getting to know me more for working on The Uncommon Sense than all the YEARS I spent trying to self-publish or break into comics.

After I discontinued Arrow Comics I tried, once again to break into the mainstream end of the business.  Though I did meet a couple of really respectable editors (both at DC) who treated me good and offered and did the best that they could with me, there was still no luck in landing a professional gig.  Marvel, on the other hand, was a whole different story (with one small exception), but mostly not only were they non-receptive, but some of my pitches were to use characters that Marvel owned, that they had NO idea who they even were (they have since gone through and screwed up almost all those previously mentioned characters), OR I was told they were "third or fourth tier characters they were not interested in pursuing".  I knew some of the references were obscure, but to not even know the product you were responsible for nurturing just blew my mind.  After a couple of years of banging my head against a wall I realized I was only hurting my own head.  Now I had stopped trying to work in the direct market all together.

Comics were always my field of choice.  I still had my screenprinting business, and I was still working once a month for The Uncommon Sense, and doing commercial art, mostly illustration work on the side, but comics were always my field of choice.

The coolest thing about working for the Uncommon Sense was that once a year, usually around September if memory serves, I was able to do an entire issue dedicated to comics and popular media.  These issues were always the most popular to give away at comic shows (which I was still doing as often as possible).  These comics oriented issues were always well received locally as well, and I totally attribute them to influencing me in the development of Flint Comix. 

When The Uncommon Sense could not make profit, after four years of publishing Matt Zacks decided to cut his losses and move out of the area.  Flint was diving head-long into a worse depression that it was already in, then my screen printing partners also decided to close up shop. It was an even darker time.  I really didn't want to go back and work at another screen printing company (I had offers), I didn't want to start a screen printing company on my own, the technology was again shifting, it still is, to inkjet computerized printers.  Why invest in a business whose technology was going to be outdated, AND I really didn't want to be in, in the first place?

With my two business partners in All-Star heading for Florida, and our client list still tracking me down to do more artwork, or to get shirts printed, I made the decision to fo freelance.  Much to the wife's dismay, and through more money on an already top heavy credit card and invested in a vinyl cutter (all the equipment from All-Star was sold by the partner who fronted the money for the business), and materials to work from home and was soon out trying to find work.  It was nerve wracking to start with, but I always had enough business to barely keep my head above water, that and the wife has had a steady, health insurance paying, job for many years, and still does. 

After a couple of years of commercial work, a little illustration work, studying the market, reading and talking to other folks, etc, it became obvious to me that I needed to do something to get back into the art form of comics. 

I was contacted by Joe "Tornado" Toth who wanted to meet and talk about the comics biz.  His two daughters, Layne and Peri, were doing art that they had an off again- on again printing history that they wanted to do more in and wanted to talk to me about it.  We settled on a mutual meeting place between where both of us lived, and that was The Owosso Taco House.  After a couple of hours over a few Saturday afternoons we decided to do a comic together about our unique meeting place, and The Owosso Taco House Funnies book was born.  We got a few fellow comic artists to contribute work, but over all it was Layne, Peri, and myself that did the majority of the artwork on the book.  Joe and I shared print costs, giving a couple of cases to Benny at The Taco House as our way of thinking him.  We also printed the menu for his eatery for the back cover of the book.  I mention this here because it really reminded me, despite the work and frustration over not getting more artists in on the project, about how much FUN it was just to "do" comics.

So, there HAD to be a way to do comics, have them distributed to folks without all the crazy, ever changing restrictions brought on by Diamond, where we would be out there, on stands, SEEN and (more importantly to me), be seen and read by as many people as possible.  I started brainstorming.

Like I mentioned above, during my days working at Front Page I got to meet a lot of really hard core comic fans and make some good friends.  One of those was Ted Valley (and I'm still hoping he posts to this blog to give his background and side of this story).  ted and I had always talked about doing a project together and it was getting so about every year or two we would get together, compare notes, and perhaps see what, if anything we might do together.  A few years previous we had even visited the offices of The Flint Journal to see about distributing a regular comic with them in the same format as their TV Guide magazine they distributed weekly.  They wanted WAY too much money just to put a book in an edition of their paper (I believe at the time, it was around $6000 per issue.  We did approach them later, when we were solidly looking at getting Flint Comix off the ground, and that price had rose to a $1.25 per individual paper per issue, a price that was WAY too outrageous for us to ever consider.  Back in 2006, right after The Uncommon Sense folded I had began working on the freebie magazine idea again (see the mock cover to the left), but shelved it when All Sat closed and I needed to concentrate on making money.  Seriously, it was one of a number of different ideas I had that I was considering.  This product would still be comic book size, only printed on newsprint and start out as quarterly, but I was still unsure on how to get it printed.

Then, in 2009 my meeting with Ted, and my harebrained ideas began to ring in his head.  What if we actually did this?  What if we chased after ads and just distributed the damn thing ourselves?  Flint was quickly growing into a college town, with constant articles in the paper about the re-renovation of the downtown area, more dorms being built, and businesses setting up and moving downtown.  We could do a college oriented free paper, distribute it downtown and around Genesee County, and have some FUN doing it.

The wheels started to roll and in a warm afternoon in September calls were made from Ted's theatrical company's headquarters, advertisers were verbally committing to being in the paper and Flint Comix began to actually form. 

That's my side of The Beginning Of  The Beginning.  I'll post the history (as I remember it) of issue #0 soon.