Interview From the Tomb

I had almost forgot about this interview from a couple of years ago but it does cover the early days of Caliber as well.

It's a good length and you may have to zoom in on the small print but the interview covers the early days of Caliber as well as the start up of Transfuzion.

http://www.garyreed.net/Deadworld/FromTomb/ReedInterFromTomb8.htm

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Caliber- Branching out

It’s been awhile since I last reflected on the early days of Caliber.  I’ve gotten quite a few requests to continue and so I figured I’d cover a little bit more.  It’s rather funny as when I was going through it, I knew I was busy but in looking back, it’s rather amazing how fast everything was occurring.

After the initial launch in 89, the core group at that time had started moving on.  Guy Davis and Vince Locke got hired by DC, O’Barr went to Tundra where everyone was going because of the high page rates, and Mark Bloodworth was hired by Marvel.  Guy, Vince, and Mark were still involved the next year or so but they were crossing over to the big time and soon would be gone for good.

The next group of creators that formed the bulk of Caliber’s output were Michael Allred, Bruce Zick, Michael Lark, Ed Brubaker, and Jim Calafiore.  Allred did a one shot called Creatures of the Id which introduced Frank Einstein who of course, would become Madman.  Brubaker had his Lowlife comic, Lark brought his Airwaves series and also did the Taken Under serial for Caliber Presents.  Bruce Zick worked in animation and I believe he did some Marvel work, I think it was an adaptation of an animated feature but showed a whole different look with his atmospheric Zone Continuum.  Calafiore did a couple of creator owned projects such as Progeny and God’s Hammer before tackling Camelot Eternal.  There was also Patrick Zircher who worked on a number of different titles as he was starting out.

As I mentioned previously, I had brought in Kevin VanHook and Caliber released our best selling adaptation of Rocky Horror Picture Show.  But we also licensed another property and this was Kevin Siembieda’s Mechanoids from Palladium Books.  Kevin had become a friend as he shopped at my stores so over this period, we did an adaptation of one of his games, he started the ball rolling on adapting some of our comics (such as Deadworld) but never materialized.  I even wrote a role playing game supplement.  It was on Robotech and I didn’t follow Robotech nor did I role play…but it worked out okay.  Mainly the writers just had to come up with stories and scenarios.

Caliber also produced a comic for Troma Films.  It was called Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo.  It was supposed to be a 3 issue series but we only did one issue but I don’t remember why.  I think it was because they wanted to pass out 5,000 copies at Cannes Film Festival and I told them that was not part of our publishing strategy.

At about this time, I was figuring out what to do with Caliber.  We were now in our third year and had put out some significant titles and were attracting some new talent that had an opportunity to showcase their skills.  But I had felt that comics were extremely limited in their appeal.  Having four comic stores at the same time, I realized that the market was bound by its reliance on superheroes.  In order for comics to truly grow into a mass market appeal, there had to be something for everyone.  So, I created a line of comics based on literature, history, and reference.  That was Tome Press.

I loved the Tome Press line and devoted most of my writing over the next couple of years to it.  My problem…and Tome’s problem…was deciding what to do as there were so many choices.  The output was varied, not only in subject matter but presentation.  Some were full comics, others were full prose, and many a hybrid between the two.  We did classic artists such as Mucha, Beardsley, Remington, Currier & Ives to print series based on Dore, Goya, Holbein and others.  There were literature adaptations of Jack London, Jason and the Argonauts, Honest Thief, A Modest Proposal and Pied Pieper of Hamelin, to biographies of notable such as Amelia Earhart, Jeremiah Johnson, and others.  I loved the historical stuff such as Henry V, The Alamo, Russian Revolution, El Cid, the Zulu Wars, etc.  In all, about 80-90 titles were released.  The H.P. Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes titles did quite well and there was a great response to the new translation of Dante’s Inferno that utilized Dore’s classic imagery.

The Tome line continued throughout the rest of Caliber’s days, some 8-9 years more since the launch although production stopped for a year or two.  The sales in the comics market weren’t exceptional but they outsold some of the creator owned line yet we also had substantial re-orders.  Many comic shops would frequently order every few months so the Tome line always had to have large over-printings.  When Caliber launched its internet store, and we were one of the very first, almost all the sales were Tome Press titles.  Later, we worked out a deal with Wal-Mart where about a dozen or so titles were mass produced for the chain and I think we sold 10,000-20,000 of each to them.  We would later produce a Frankenstein adaptation for them that had sales of 80,000 copies.

Those were busy times.  After Kevin had his one year at editor, I didn’t replace him for awhile.  The production team consisted of me and others.  Mark Winfrey and Guy Davis took their turn at production but eventually, they moved on and Nate Pride, who worked at one of my stores, eventually took on a full time role and he remained until the end days of Caliber.  Most of the accounting was done at the stores as it was all one company, but later, Caliber and the store chain would separate completely.   I think one month, Nate and I put together about 20 issues and got them out the door and that was in an era that was all paste up.  The days of computers and design programs were still a way off.

The situation at Caliber was that it was always in flux.   Creators and titles came but so many of the creators were hired away by other companies that I knew we were a pretty transient company.  A lot of people had trouble pegging what kind of company we were and to be honest, I don’t know if I could’ve explained it.  We were essentially a company of diversity and a company of change.  That was just the way it was.

Next time, and I promise it will be sooner than the last update, I’ll talk about the next set of creators that came in and the expansion into even more imprints.

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Caliber Part 6- Growing Pains

The early days of Caliber were before the Internet, so response to new releases was minimal until the next set of orders came in-- unless you had an unusual amount of re-orders but the system wasn’t really set up well for that.  Fan letters were already dying out at that time, but we did get quite a few in the first few years.

So, after the initial launch, I really didn’t know what the reaction was.  We got some fan letters and quite a few submissions but I didn’t really have anything to judge it against.  However, about two or three months  after the launch, Caliber attended the Capital City Trade Show.  At this particular show, publishers were invited to submit one piece for a print and I believe they expected to have the artist on hand at the trade show.  I took Jim O’Barr with me and the print was for The Crow.  Not sure why it was Jim and The Crow versus Vince and Deadworld or Guy with Baker Street.  Likely it was based on availability and Jim and I shared a lot more in common.  We were both from Detroit…we drank, we were both smokers, late night coffee drinkers, etc.  Jim and I got along pretty well in the early days.

At the show, I remember that we had assembled white folders with our logo stickered on the front. Inside were the first Caliber Rounds which was our newsletter, and samples of the new releases.  There were the first issues of The Crow, Baker Street, and Caliber Presents.  Deadworld and Realm were existing titles and our first issues sold out immediately but I had over-printed on the new #1s.  At the trade shows we did early that year, just months after our launch, I gave away about 1,000 of each issue to retailers.

The response at the trade shows was enthusiastic and actually, a bit over-whelming.  It seemed that we had matched up well with quite a few retailers although of course, not all.  So, it seemed that Caliber had gotten off to a great start and things were looking positive for establishing the company.

The thing to remember about Caliber, though, is that it was a creator owned model.  That meant the creators not only owned their titles but also controlled their output.  When you’re working with a lot of artists who have not established themselves yet in the business, well, most of them are going to have real jobs in order to provide some kind of income.  And also with many new artists, it takes awhile before they can structure their motivation, capabilities, and desire to do a monthly or even a bi-monthly book.  The books all started to run late with the second and third issues, and some of them ran real late.

It would be almost 4 months for the next issue of The Crow.  Baker Street maintained a bi-monthly release for the first three issues but then got hit with long delays between issues.  Realm and Deadworld both had the next issues ship relatively close to a bi-monthly but then hit long delays between issues.  Only Caliber Presents had any semblance to a real schedule and that monthly book was shipping about every 6 weeks.  As the first year progressed, the delays increased.  It took over a year to get 4 issues of The Crow and Baker Street got 5 issues out.   Deadworld had three issues ship on time at the beginning but only 3 more issues would ship over the next year and The Realm was even worse.

Even with the scheduling problems, independent companies had a bit more leeway as fans seem to understand the situation of the creators.  There was more of sense of frustration than anger from the fans and being a new company working with quite a few new creators, it took all of us awhile to realize what is realistic versus optimistic.

But it did drive home the point that Caliber could grow with more titles as the monthly output wouldn’t really increase that much.  The earliest expansion from the initial launch was Mark Shainblum and Matrix Graphics.  Matrix was a Canadian publisher that had recently stopped publishing.   Mark brought some of the titles to Caliber.  Northguard was the flagship title and we immediately released a three issue series in addition to a trade reprinting earlier material.  Later we would bring on Dragon’s Star and Bernie Mireault’s Mackenzie Queen.

We had some one shots that appeared and of course, there were no scheduling problems there.  Mark Bloodworth illustrated a fun romp called Cheerleaders from Hell which sold pretty well.  A one shot set in the Realm universe called Silverfawn was released and also The Fugitive which was also a serial in Caliber Presents.  

What shifted Caliber into a much broader expansion was our appearance at the old Chicago Con which at that time, rivaled San Diego as the biggest show. Caliber set up about 5-6 months after our initial launch.  I remember getting an end cap display area and that Vince Locke, Guy Davis, Jim O’Barr, and perhaps a few others came.  It was the first public appearance for Caliber and I didn’t know how things would go.  We seemed to be getting good feedback but now we were at a major show with every other publisher.

The response was near mind-blowing.  We sold large quantities of the titles, maybe even selling out some of what we brought.  But the biggest response was from other creators and newbies trying to break into the business.  It was an exhausting convention and I think on Saturday, I just stayed in the room as I was tired of talking.  I had brought up the submissions that I received during the show and from what I can remember, it was 4-5 boxes worth.

It was at that show that I picked up two titles that I still think are some of the best titles to ever come out of Caliber.  One was Fringe.  It was written by Paul Tobin and penciled by Phil Hester.   Fringe was very rare in that it wasn’t presented as a complete package, I just had the scripts and some illustrations from Phil so it was highly unusual in that I accepted it without really seeing what the final product would look like.

Also at the convention, I met Starlan Baxter and Bill Widener.  They had put out a self published magazine called Nerve.  Each of them worked on their own characters.  Starlan did Mack the Knife about a cartoon world and characters in it while Bill did a futuristic tale of a public persona hero called Go-Man.  Mack the Knife, I instantly got.  It had appeal, it was fun, and Starlan wanted to collect the old material and launch a new series of stand alone one shots.  But it was Go-Man that really grabbed me.  The art, at first look, was not just rough, it was harsh.  I remember starting to read it because at that time, I really did try to give every submission a fair shot (something that just grew to be impossible with 100’s of submissions a month).  Go-Man launched just a couple of months after the convention and as I said, remains one of my all time favorite Caliber series as does Fringe.

I know I met a lot of people at the show and at San Diego Con but a lot of is foggy.  Things were accelerating pretty fast and as Caliber started consuming all my time, I still had my stores and worked from home a few days watching the kids.  Life in many ways was a blur.

By the end of Caliber’s first year, now in the first quarter of 1990, some new titles had joined the original launch.  There was Go-Man and Fringe.  Jazz Age Chronicles from Ted Slampyak had been released from a company no longer publishing and so Caliber would do a new series and collect the previous material.  Jim Calafiore sent in an original graphic novel called Progeny and this was followed by a mini-series called God’s Hammer.  Dutch Decker, a historical piece predating the Spanish American War, was launched.  Kevin Atkinson brought his zany Snarl mini-series to Caliber.  Two anthology series collecting older material were launched with Day Brothers Present and Greg Theakston’s Buried Treasures collecting golden age stories.

Somewhere along this time, I came into contact with Kevin VanHook.  I know that his Frost story was collected but not sure how we actually met (although Kevin might remember---I’ve never seen anyone with a memory like his), and Kevin eventually was the first “official” hire of Caliber as he came on board as Editor.  Kevin came with experience in a lot of areas that I didn’t have so he was a great help.  At first, I don’t think some of Caliber guys liked Kevin as he brought a bit of order to things. Schedules, editing, etc. and this was different from my more hands off approach.  I distinctly do remember though, that after Kevin announced he was leaving, a large group of us drove together to New York for a convention and Kevin got a chance to relax and I think all the guys got a chance to know him on a more personal level and things worked out good.

Kevin, of course, went on to work for Valiant and ended up becoming Executive Editor and VP before leaving to launch his film career where he wrote and directed a number of films, mostly for the Sci-Fi network.  Currently, he’s writing some DC titles also.

The upshot was that Caliber had grown dramatically in the first year.  We ventured into a lot of different areas and showcased an incredible diversity of titles.  As we entered into the year, a deal was signed to do an adaptation of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and that would catapult Caliber into the Top 10 comic publishers…albeit for a very brief time.  By the end of the year, I targeted a new direction I wanted to take Caliber to but in order to keep it distinct, it would be a new imprint and this was Tome Press.

To some in the comic business, Tome was a head scratcher and to others, it was a huge success.  To me, it was what publishing was all about.

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Caliber Part 5- The Launch

On these missives about the beginning of Caliber, I have always found it interesting that so many people ask me how Caliber started.  I don’t know if other companies always get that as the first question and I’m not sure why it seems to be a special interest with Caliber.  So, that’s my attempt here…just to give an idea of how things played out.  Excuse my tendency to ramble but I think it’s important to understand the thought process I was going through.  I’m sure that I’m forgetting some precise details and perhaps some events totally but I do what I can.

It was in late summer of 1988 when I was formulating the plans for Caliber.  I wasn’t sure of the exact launch date as I had to see how things came together.  Some of the titles came with work already done as Vince’s Deadworld. He hadn’t completed a full issue but there was some Deadworld material that would end up running in Caliber Presents and as a backup in the ongoing Deadworld series.  Guy, on the other hand, had the next two issues of Realm penciled.  At that time, Guy used inkers instead of doing it on his own.

With Deadworld and Realm and my idea for the High Caliber anthology, I figured I needed just one more title to get things rolling.  A big part of the early days was the association with Arrow Comics.  They were almost all local creators and often times, hung out together, usually at Arrow functions.  Although I knew that some of them could deliver quality material, I didn’t want to be just a rehash of Arrow.  There was going to be a perception that the company was just Arrow reincarnated unless I brought some titles to distinguish Caliber.

That didn’t mean I would discount the contributions from the ex-Arrow crew.  Susan Van Camp was planning on doing a Varcel’s Vixens graphic novel.  Mark Winfrey had an idea for a futuristic tale of a cop on a penal colony planet which became Thrill Kill, and Mark Bloodworth and Arrow had 5 issues of his popular Night Streets and he was thinking about continuing it.  

Thrill Kill went to the anthology and both Bloodworth and I agreed that just bringing out the 6^th issue of Night Streets was not going to work but it couldn’t be a new number one because it was in the middle of the story.  So, we pushed it back to release it as a graphic novel to accompanying the reprinting of the earlier issues.  Varcels’ Vixens was later released it as a three issue series instead of a graphic novel.

So, as I was searching for the elusive 4^th title, Guy Davis informed me that he wanted to move on from The Realm.  He had penciled the last two issues quite awhile ago and his art was evolving.  It isn’t too evident on The Realm series itself because he felt he should maintain the same style.  I talked to Stu Kerr, the writer, and he wanted to continue.  So, after Guy’s two issues, the new artist, and yet another local, John Dennis would take over.

Guy pitched me an idea he had for a new series.  It was an alternative world where World War II never happened and would feature a female punk Sherlock Holmes character.  Guy’s plan was to retell all of the Conan Doyle stories but in this new setting and with a different type of Holmes.  The Watson character would be an abrasive punk (as in punk culture).  I felt that it wouldn’t work because fans of the original stories wouldn’t want to re-read the same story with a different “Holmes” type character and non-fans of Holmes might not want to venture into the traditional stories.  We discussed it quite a bit and I felt it needed a lead character that was exposed to that world as the reader was and everything would be seen through her eyes.  

It’s funny, I distinctly remember the first long conversation we had on what would become Baker Street.  It was outside my office in the warehouse of the store and Guy had lots of character illustrations and building designs.  It was obvious he wanted to keep the Victorian atmosphere but in modern times, hence the alternative world.  I remember working on some notes and filling page after page of ideas and suggestions.  I still have all my notes as well as most of Guy’s notes that he copied for me.  Anyway, it was decided somehow that I would co-develop and co-write the series.  Guy’s art had really changed since his last pencils on The Realm but he still wanted an inker.  Alan Oldham was brought in and worked on some of the first issue, it wasn’t the style that fit the story as Alan was more of a clean style and Guy wanted it grittier. The title was also announced in color.  Later, Vince worked on the book with Guy (they were close friends) and eventually, Guy took to inking his own work. 

With Baker Street, I felt pretty comfortable to get things in motion.  Another situation popped up as Vince also wanted to move on to something else.  He didn’t want to be drawing zombies for the rest of his life.  However, he would stay on the book until something came along but his contributions diminished gradually over the next few issues.  

Now, I had to fill the anthology.  Although I was planning to utilize it to showcase other titles, I knew it had to have its own appeal. I must have made an announcement about the publishing line as I started receiving submissions before we even put anything out.  I got a letter from Tim Vigil, who was well known for his Faust work at the time, and he had a serial that he was looking to place.  I think that Vigil’s Cuda series really made people notice Caliber and when we launched, he was our “big gun”.  Vince and Guy had their fans but Vigil was an attention getter.  I still talk to Tim occasionally but I don’t know if I ever thanked him for his contributions.

I decided to develop some regular features for the anthology.  I came up with two serials, each could stand on their own each issue and they would alternate issues.  The first was Street Shadows which told tales of ordinary people in a big city.  There would be “slice of life” tales.  The second was Gideon’s which was a pawn shop that could exist anywhere and at any time.  The hook was that you could get anything you wanted at Gideon’s but there was always an unexpected price.  Sort of a Twilight Zone or O. Henry twist.  I was obviously influenced by Munden’s Bar which was a backup in the Grimjack series.  

What I also figured out about the anthology is that it would have to be a paying gig for creators.  It would be too hard to divide up in royalties and with Street Shadows and Gideon’s, I wanted to keep ownership so that I could continue with them and keep some sense of coherency.  I allowed other creators to play around with them and sort of do what they wanted, but I didn’t want either of those going when a creator left.

There were a few other titles that popped up and some were going to be held for the First Caliber line which was a series of one-shots.  The First Caliber designation was used at the beginning but quickly dropped and forgotten about.   I had Hot Shots by Stan Timmons and Gary  T. Washington lined up and I was real excited when I talked to Justice Machine’s Mike Gustovich about his Cobalt Blue title.  In my mind, Cobalt Blue was the key title for Caliber.  It was a color super-heroish book but still alternative enough and from a well established creator.

What ended up being the initial of the First Caliber line was a movie adaptation.  A local company was putting together a film utilizing local actor who was making a somewhat successful career in Bruce Campbell.  They had signed up Star Trek’s Walter Koenig to star in the film called Moontrap.  My friend, Paul Burke of Stabur Corp. (he did the Stan Lee videos and the Museum of Cartoon Art prints and would later co-found McFarlane Toys with Todd), knew I was starting a publishing company and he connected the two of us.  So, we signed up Moontrap.  I knew I needed an established artist so we got Gary Kwapsiz (Marvel's Conan series) who again, was local, to do the pencils.  But, Moontrap was going to require page rates.  The simple idea of doing creator owned books was expanding into advance payments.

At the time, I felt that if I was going to do it, I might as well take the big gamble.  Baker Street and Cobalt Blue would be color with Deadworld, Realm, and the anthology in black and white.  Moontrap would also be in black and white as it was seen to be more of a promotional tool although I felt I could sell enough copies to cover the costs.

Of course, things changed and a key development it the beginnings of Caliber grew from the original intent of creator owned books.  One of my customers at my stores was Jim O’Barr.  He worked for an auto dealership delivering paint and parts, I believe.  He would end up popping up at the different stores.  At that time, we consigned a lot of local artists’ paintings and drawings as well as t-shirts.  We ended up putting up some of Jim’s shirts at the stores.  Most of his shirts were on Batman who was the hot seller those days because of the attention of the upcoming movie.

Jim heard about the comic company forming and asked if I’d be interested in looking at something he was doing.  In talking with him, I found that he had a few things submitted and published over the years.  Again, just like with Guy talking about the beginnings of Baker Street, I have a vivid recollection of Jim first showing me the pages of The Crow.  At the time, I worked at home a couple days of the week to watch my daughters as my wife worked 12 hour shifts 3 or 4 days a week.  Jim came to my house and I remember sitting outside the whole time.  One reason was that we were both smokers and with the kids in the house, there was no smoking except in the basement.

Jim had about 14 pages of The Crow done. He might have had more but that’s all I saw. He explained it was based on a story he read where a girl was killed over a $20 ring.  So, he extrapolated the tale to have the boyfriend killed and to come back for revenge.  There was no mention of any personal tragedy that impacted Jim and I didn’t hear anything about that until years later.

I thought The Crow was a bit rough in spots but I liked the sensibility of it.  I mean, anyone who can bring in quotes from the like of Antonin Artuad (“morphine for a wooden leg”) as well as music and literature…that shapes up to be a cool project.  It was a straight out "revenge from the grave" type story but it had mood and as I said, lots of literary nuances scattered throughout which appealed to me.  Much of what ended up being The Crow was redrawn although there are some of the very first pages scattered throughout.

Jim was a great addition to the beginning of Caliber.  It wasn’t just for his series, The Crow, but he seemed to be excited about being a part of an artist community.  The Arrow crew, especially Guy and Vince, had been published and they were all growing in a lot of directions.  At the store, I had some employees who were also artists.  In the early days, there would be some occasions where the artists would come on Friday night, perhaps have some pizza, play video games, and discuss art.  Sketchbooks were started and passed around and sometimes, we’d all go through the submissions.  

O’Barr jumped in and got involved in a lot of different things.  He did some covers, inked over Vince on Deadworld, and did a preview of The Crow for the anthology.  He worked with Guy on the story of IO which was serialized, but only for two parts.  It was intended to be an original graphic novel but ran in the anthology instead but never finished. The IO stories were done under the name of Barb Wire Halo Studios which was Jim and some friends of his.  I guess Guy was part of it for that story. 

I worked with Jim for the first Gideon’s story which was just a quick introduction to how things were set up for the storyline.  I was pretty open about letting Jim use Gideon’s in The Crow but I was a bit surprised to see it in the movie.  But I didn’t care, after all, it was in the comic and I don’t think it damaged my potential use of the character.

Right about the time I got the printing situated, I got a threatening letter from “Hollywood” concerning the name of the anthology, High Caliber.  A producer was doing a movie with the same name starring Sybil Danning.  He threw out some threats and so I changed the name.  I would learn later that he really didn’t have much to threaten me with, but I didn’t know better at the time and since we hadn’t even published the first issue yet, didn’t really matter that much.  So High Caliber became Caliber Presents. . If you look at the first issue, you can see the “High” whitened out in the ads and indicia.  

Then, Cobalt Blue from Gustovich was not going to happen as Mike got too busy with much higher paying jobs so that book was gone.  Also, by now, it was becoming evident that the cost of doing color books was too high so Baker Street would be like the other books, in black and white.  Looking back, probably the best thing that happened as many of the early Caliber creators, like Guy, knew how to draw for black and white.

So, the early announced titles such as Cobalt Blue and Hot Shots didn’t pan out. Titles such as Night Streets and Varcels Vixens were pushed back.  In addition to Caliber Presents, Caliber was releasing two new titles in Baker Street and The Crow with Deadworld and The Realm carrying over from Arrow.  I had high hopes for the two new series and again, the anthology would serve a purpose even if it wasn’t a big money maker.

We printed the books at Preney Printing who handled Cerebus, the AV line, and Renegade Press.  Kim Preney was a great help in how to structure everything and possibly one of the nicest guys in the business. Since they were right across the river in Windsor, it was just a short ride.  The solicitations went out and then the anticipation of the orders.  I had no idea of what to expect.  Black and white books were suffering from the backlash of the boom and bust a few years earlier. I hoped to keep the Deadworld and Realm audience and Vigil would help Caliber Presents.  Moontrap would have other outlets so the biggest mysteries were the two new series, Baker Street and The Crow.

The actual first release from Caliber, outside of the Pocket Classics, was Deadworld #10 which came out at the end of 1988.  In early 1989, when most of the books were scheduled (I think for January or February), I found out just how long the printing process took and how artists interpret deadlines.  It was more than just a slight learning curve.

I’m pretty sure that in February of 1989, Realm 14 and Caliber Presents 1 debuted and they were scheduled for January so right out of the gate, we were a bit behind. On the February books, The Crow came out towards the end of March and Baker Street was in April, I think.  Not sure when Moontrap shipped but it was around the same time for the film premiere in Ann Arbor.

If you talk to some people, they “remember” Caliber as the company that produced The Crow as their first title and some have gone so far as to say that Caliber started because of The Crow.  People have to remember that The Crow was completely unknown at the time.  On the first orders of the first six titles, The Crow was actually the worst selling.  Deadworld sold about 11,000 copies, Moontrap around 8,500, Baker Street was about 7,500, Caliber Presents and Realm both did around 6,600.  The Crow had initial orders under 4,000 but because it ran late, more orders came in before printing which bumped it up to t 5,300 copies. Deadworld and Realm were printed pretty close to orders but I took Caliber Presents, Baker Street, and The Crow up to a print run of 10,000. 

The response to the new company and the new titles especially was unexpected and with the official establishment of Caliber at trade shows and conventions, I had no idea of just how fast it would take off.

So, even though things didn’t work out as planned originally, the first few months of starting the company were exciting times with a lot of adjustments and learning.  But I was having a blast.

Next time, I’ll talk about the “coming” out of Caliber and the rapid change of a small company growing, perhaps a bit too rapidly.

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Caliber Part 4-The decision

As I said previously, starting a publishing company was not a burning desire of mine. The decision to do so was a matter of circumstances that led to a path that was really never a consideration until I ended up doing it.

I opened my first book store in the early 80’s while still a student in college. As I went on to my Master’s degree, I not only kept up my store but expanded to four stores by the time I graduated. The book store, over time, eventually became a comic shop. Two of the new stores I opened were just comics, no books.

I had also started up conventions during those early years. The first two were held on the campus of Eastern Michigan and then outgrowing that, I moved it to Dearborn. The conventions were important to the start up of Caliber as I got a chance to meet a lot of creators, publishers, and dealers outside of the metro Detroit area and gave me a different insight.

While running the comic shops, I kept up on all the comics as I felt it was important for business. I had read a lot of comics as a kid and I enjoyed seeing what happened to all the characters I grew up with. I had devoured all of the Classics Illustrated as a kid and even though comics had branched out to sophisticated story telling in the early to mid-80’s, I thought that adaptations of classic literature must have an audience. I promoted those types of titles heavily in my store, especially when we carried a full line of books as it seemed a natural cross over.

The Classics Illustrated line was gone (it would be resurrected later by First Comics) and so I looked at types of material that could serve as an introduction to comics. I found a small company that did small paperbacks of the classics in comic book format. The art was simplistic (and un-credited) but these “Pocket Classics” were inexpensive and, I thought, a great bridge to turning book readers into comic readers. I bring this up for multiple reasons but it does help to explain the Tome Press imprint I soon started once Caliber was up and running.

I started carrying the Pocket Classics in my stores. They did okay, not great. I struck a deal with them to distribute them wholesale and decided to bring them to the comics market. After all, if I could move a few copies each of the 60 or so titles, so could other stores. I contacted the many comic distributors about providing the copies and was introduced to the world of distribution. The distributors were receptive to the idea of the Pocket Classics; after all, they would just sell what was ordered by retailers so they were taking no risks. So, that introduced me to the distributors and how that worked. But things were developing on another side of things at the same time and though I did eventually distribute the Pocket Classics, I held off for a bit as I saw them as a tool that could help out another entity… Caliber Comics.

At my main store, I used to bring in guest artists as shops tend to do. Arrow Comics, which had launched during the black and white boom and headed up by Ralph Griffith and Stu Kerr, were frequent visitors as they were local. Most of their creators were as well. Vince Locke lived right down the street from the store and other creators such as Guy Davis, Mark Bloodworth, Susan Van Camp, Randy Zimmerman, Mark Winfrey, Jason Moore, were all relatively close. I also had a cable TV show which was primarily manned by my store manager, Chet Jacques, as well as a radio show. The Arrow crew made appearances at both.

After the black and white bust, many of the publishers had to quit because of mounting unpaid invoices from the distributors. Arrow was one of them. Although I never knew what happened to all the money that Arrow did make when things were going well, I do have to give Ralph and Stu credit for taking care of what they could with Vince and Guy. Both were owed money for work they did on Deadworld and Realm respectively. In lieu of payment, Ralph and Stu transferred the rights to their titles to Vince and Guy.

So, now Vince and Guy had ownership of the first real comics they ever worked on. It was a case of “now what?” They came to me and asked if I could help find a publisher. They knew I was familiar with most of them, primarily from the trade shows which were common back then. Instead of conventions with fans, the trade shows brought together the publishers and retailers. I always found them to be a great benefit, not just from talking with the publishers but also other retailers.

I did talk to a few publishers to see if they would be interested. But this was right after the bust part of the boom-bust of the black and whites so there wasn’t much interest in taking on titles that had already run their course. The new approach was to do high production color comics to compete directly with Marvel and DC and any holdover black and white titles were exceptions that would surely die out quickly. However, I knew that both Deadworld and Realm were not titles thrown out during the boom to jump on a trend…they had each developed quite a core following. Sure, they both started off a bit derivative but they were finding themselves.

With everything going on at the time, finding a publisher was not foremost on my mind. Randy Zimmerman, who probably played as key of a role as a non-owner could in Arrow, launched a new company called Wee-Bee Comics. He took on Deadworld and released a trade collection and also continued The Realm with issue 13. But Wee Bee ended as quickly as it started.

I’m not exactly sure how it finally came together but I found myself telling Vince and Guy that I would publish the books. Not only that, I would start up a whole publishing company. When that decision clicked on, I can’t recall. I’m sure that I didn’t contemplate it for long but I probably looked at it as an extension of the business. Stores, TV show, radio show, conventions…what’s one more thing?

Once I made the decision, there were quite a bit of details to work out. First, I needed a publishing office. I had a very large store…to give you an idea, when I moved out of there, a major drug store chain moved in. I don’t know what the square footage was but it was huge. The warehouse in the back was also enormous and that’s where I had my personal office, room for 100’s if not 1000’s boxes of back stock ( I had recently bought out all the back stock from one of the major distributors who was closing a branch office). I also had a portion of the store that was sectioned off. We used it as a video arcade but by that time, video games were dying off. I moved the games to another section of the store and utilized that part as the Caliber area. It held a couple of desks, drafting table, a conference table, and all the other equipment we needed.

Before I went further, I wanted a name for the company. I felt I needed to give this new company an identity before I started talking more about it. I looked at a lot of names and I set some parameters up for the name. First off, I didn’t want it to sound pretentious. I also wanted to get away from something too generic. I always hated when companies went the opposite of being too lofty and instead went with something too irreverent…you know, such as Dandy Don’s Big Monkey Comics. . I wanted a name that sounded fine as a small press company yet could also fit a much larger company. I felt it was important to keep the name simple yet be able to build a motif around it. I liked the play of being quality as in high caliber…and I felt that I could utilize the weaponry part of the name. It’s kind of funny as I used to get people asking me if the company was Caliber Comics or Caliber Press. It was both; it sort of flipped flopped on a whim. But the trademark is for Caliber Comics.

I had already decided that when I solicited the titles, I was going to include the Pocket Classics as part of the line. For one, I thought it legitimized the company a bit more…gave us more weight as we were bringing known quantities along with the new comic material. I felt stores would pay more attention. I actually talked to the publisher of the Pocket Classics to see if I could reprint the books under the Caliber masthead but that proved to be too expensive. If I just distributed them as is, it was a sure profit.

For financing, my stores were doing well enough that I could funnel everything through there. I think for the first 3-4 years, everything ran through one single company. Caliber was not really a separate entity but just a part of the Reader’s store system. I get asked how much it cost to start Caliber and I usually joke that it was 18 cents as that’s the money I had in my pocket at the time.

So, I had two titles to start the new company plus the distribution deal of the Pocket Classics. I know that the strategy for a lot of companies is to start out small and slowly grow but I felt to make an impact, I had to have a solid lineup of multiple titles. I already had Deadworld and The Realm but I figured I could add to these since both of these were known quantities so if I added two titles, it really would be just two new comics.

I wanted an anthology. I felt that was a great way to find new talent and put them on short projects to see how they worked out. Fanzines had already passed by this time and that’s where a lot of artists got a chance so I figured that if I did an anthology with a fanzine mentality, it could work. Even if it didn’t sell that well, it was a way of trying out new people and not having major risks involved. I added a preview to each issue so it would have some promotional value and I wanted to put in an artist sketchbook feature, not only to fill up pages, but sort of push the different artists. I quickly found that I was getting so much material, I didn’t get the sketch book in until later issues.

With the anthology, at first called High Caliber, I now had three titles. I was looking for a fourth. I was thinking that perhaps I could do a series of one-shots, sort of an extended anthology, but felt it would be too early for that. The line was going to be called First Caliber but I realized that I had to have an ongoing series or at least a 4-5 issue mini-series.

Again, working on royalties, I couldn’t pay people up front. I had budgeted for some advertising, the printing costs up front…but there was no way I could…or wanted to, pay up front for creators. The only exception was for cover artists on the anthology.

I called a meeting of some local artists to let them know that I was starting the publishing company and wanted to see if they would want to be involved. I can’t say for sure who was at that very first meeting but there were frequent meetings and I know that the attendance was varied. The earliest members of the pre-Caliber meetings (I think) were Vince and Guy, of course; Mark Bloodworth, Randy Zimmerman, Dirk Johnston, Alan Oldham, Mark Winfrey, and I think Sandy Schreiber who did some inking on The Realm. I can’t remember if Jason Moore and Susan Van Camp came or not. Of course, I am probably missing some people or perhaps mis-remembering who was there…but these were essentially the people that I was structuring the company around and most were from Arrow except Dirk who was a customer of mine and did some illustrated prints.

Once I announced to the group what the plans were, and I laid out some concrete plans….I was surprised by just how fast those plans unraveled and what became Caliber Comics spun out of a bit of serendipity, luck, and risk.

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Caliber part 3

First off, I decided to just start numbering the posts specifically dealing with Caliber so I didn' t have to think of names for the post titles. So, obviously, this is the third with the first two immediately preceding this one.

It’s interesting to see how the current call to action regarding creator owned comics is sort of repeating what happened at about the time that Caliber started in the late 1980’s. The circumstances aren’t the same, of course, and the world back then and today are so vastly different from each other that the only similarity that can be correlated is the creator visioned stories.

Following the explosion of creator owned titles from both the black and white boom (and subsequent bust) as well as from the entry of publishers such as First, Comico, Pacific, Eclipse, etc., there was a general surge in creators wanting to do their own material. What soon developed however, is that many of the companies slanted towards creator owned titles developed by established creators, those who had proven their skills at Marvel or DC, or moved towards licensed properties. But still, there were a lot of creator owned titles that emerged and held their own at the time.

But there were a lot of potential creators who found themselves wanting to create but there were only so many companies out there. Many of them were still either mystified about the whole publishing process though and so it left self-publishing, as led by Dave Sim, as an unlikely option for many.

So, companies like Caliber came into demand. I won’t go so far as to say they were needed, but it was obvious that Caliber and many others such as Antarctic, Slave Labor, Fantagraphics, Cry for Dawn, etc., provided the right service at the opportune moment. A burgeoning growth of creators looking to get their stuff published but not wanting to deal with all of the publishing duties. As publishers, we filled a void that opened as so many creators found the business side of things a bit daunting.

Compared to today’s world, it was quite a bit more intimidating. You have to remember that there was no internet back then. Access to information was done by mailing and phone calls and the use of fax machines was considered progressive. Computers had not yet taken over yet and if you wanted an editorial or text page, you had to go to commercial printers which were quite common but expensive. Having a copy machine in the office was way too costly so the arrival of Kinko’s in your general area was cause for celebration.

Putting together the books demanded quite a bit more time than today. Now, when I send a book to be published, I upload the completed project from cover to cover on a ftp and that’s it. Back then, we had to sort through original pages, typeset any text pages, usually have the logos drawn by hand, and so much more. This also applied to advertising and promotional material. A lot of labor intensive design work diminished dramatically after the arrival of Corel and Photoshop and I was dejected when I found out that PageMaker was being incorporated and then phased out later.

There were about 15 distributors, most of them regional, and the giants of Capital City and Diamond, weren’t so gigantic back then although they were the two largest. In order to get a title out, you submitted to all of the distributors and usually with different terms depending on payment structure, quantities, shipping, etc. Having access to retailers was done primarily through the mail so it was very expensive to send any kind of promotional material. It was the same with the press as that also required the physical mailing of press releases. I don’t want to get all nostalgic and spew out “back in the day” scenarios but the incredible ease of today’s world in communication goes beyond just a paradigm shift, it is essentially a whole different world.

One of the aspects that helped Caliber succeed was that I was organized in terms of finances and accounting. That primarily came from my background with my retail stores and running conventions. From the outset, there were spread sheets made up and we adopted computers almost as soon as they became viable. (Yes, I do remember the Commodore 64.) I also remember using the computerized spread sheets and not sure if Lotus 1-2-3 was our first but we used it for quite awhile and I remember a bit of resistance of switching when Excel came along. The first defacto Caliber employee was one of my store employees, Kathy, who took on more hours to handle the Caliber number crunching while she was a business student in college. For some reason, I have kept just about all the records for Caliber…I guess for nostalgic reasons. But it does come in handy occasionally when I want to research something. Now, just because things were organized doesn’t automatically mean that money wasn’t a problem. Like most small businesses, it was always a concern, especially towards the ending days of Caliber.

I am always quite surprised how lackadaisical so many companies were about their accounting systems. That is true even today. I was once asked to be a consultant for a comic publisher by a lawyer who was involved in a lawsuit to see if I could make any headway in understanding the company’s accounting system. Since I was a publisher and a creator and therefore, experienced both sides, they were more or less looking for some standard practices. I was stunned at the ineptness of the publisher and frankly, not sure how they manage to continue.

So, how Caliber was set up was that we would publish the material but the creators owned everything completely. There were usually a set number of issues that we contracted for but it still involved primarily a handshake deal. If someone got hired by Marvel or DC, obviously I’m not going to expect them to continue (and that happened a lot). Conversely, if sales were suffering, I wouldn’t expect a creator to continue on their book and not make any money and they didn't want to. Again, back then, there were no other avenues to find sales outside of conventions and that was a really tough road to go so most creators gladly opted out if their sales were low.

The split was 60-40 of the profits with the creators getting the 60%. On our end, we would provide handling all the production, advertising in other titles, putting together previews and interviews for the press and our in-house promo magazine, Caliber Rounds, and quite a bit of the production. Lettering was an outside cost but we handled most everything else. We would cover the usual advertising which were distributor catalogs for solicitations and some other magazines such as Comics Journal, Comic Buyer’s Guide, and whatever else was out at that time. If the creator wanted to embark on a very ambitious plan, than that was something that had to be configured.

The creators owned their properties with Caliber having no rights beyond the publishing. After the first year or so, I put a clause in about having the collected reprint rights but that often depended on the project and/or creator. Later, as Caliber was repeatedly wooed by Hollywood, we offered creators an opportunity to give up some percentage for exploitative rights if we pushed it through our agents. That, unfortunately, never worked out. I can remember times that the creator’s agent said it muddled things up so I had to sign off. The creators’ vow to “take care of me” never panned out and after the third time, I grew to expect it. The problem was that we couldn’t pinpoint that it was our activity that got the eyes of the interested party. But that’s another story for later.

Again, I feel that the reason Caliber was successful was that it was at the right place at the right time. Creators had a chance to showcase their talents. I realized early on that many of them saw it as just a stepping stone but that was okay. In the heyday of the mid 90’s, we actually had a lot of major creators coming to Caliber. They had already proven themselves but now wanted a chance to do their own creator projects. So, for some, the purpose of Caliber was different.

I stumble sometimes when I talk about the success of Caliber because after all, it isn’t around any more and hasn’t been since for almost ten years (yet, even now, I still get 4-5 submissions a month). But it had a good run with some 1,300 issues and about 75 graphic novels (before graphic novels became the trend). It could have continued even after the disasters that befell us but it was my voluntary decision to close up Caliber and frankly, walk away from comics completely. Not that I was bitter or anything, it just seemed time to move to something else.

I found a few years later that for all its faults, telling stories in comic format is still a great way to do so and I love the medium and potential of comics. I may not like what’s going on in the marketplace or how it is dominated by superheroes, but to throw out a cliché…it is what it is. That doesn’t mean it can’t change, though. I don't, however, know where that change may come from.

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The Idea of Caliber Part 2

The idea to start up Caliber was not to fulfill a dream or to set up a revolutionary new type of company. I mean, Caliber was hardly revolutionary in how it was structured or what it published. I’m not being overly modest here, just honest. Did we publish good stuff?…hell yes…well, most of the time. There are still some cringe worthy titles that somehow slipped through but I must have thought it was a good idea at the time.

I was very careful in the early days about how I touted the company. I didn’t claim that I was setting a new standard, or doing something different…you know, revolutionary. I saw the publishing as an opportunity to put out some good books and hopefully, to make money at doing so. Having great intentions always have to be balanced on a financial end, otherwise, you can’t continue. I let the work speak for itself and promoted the titles because after all, there was no real theme that connected the offerings…something like a shared universe or something.

In fact, when I hear about a new company announcing itself as “revolutionary”, I find myself dismissing the company right from the get go. For one, I hate hyperbole, but usually if a company is spouting off how they’re so different, or unique even, they likely don’t have a firm understanding of the comics market.

I think what drove me to enter publishing, besides the opportunity that presented itself as I will explain in more detail next time, was joining the movement of how comics were changing. I grew up reading comics but as an adult, I had little interest. About the time I started my book stores and subsequently picking up lines of comics in order to get kids into the store---which shows you how much I knew at the time as even back then, adults were a substantial part of the readers---I did start to read them again. It was primarily out of nostalgia…to see what happened to the characters I grew up with. I was quite surprised.

The 1980’s were a dramatic shift in what comics could be. Of course, the Big Two were revamping their characters but I found myself immersed in what was collectively called the “independents”. Sure, DC had Alan Moore on Saga of the Swamp Thing and Watchmen and Karen Berger was putting together what eventually would evolve into Vertigo and Marvel had Frank Miller on Daredevil and the output from Epic Comics. But, it was the independents that illustrated to me that comics were erupting with adult tales and themes and that comics could really be expressed as a viable medium for telling sophisticated stories.

The decade had the launch of companies such as Pacific, First, Eclipse (although officially they started I the 70’s), Comico, and many others. I don’t want to do a history here but there were some incredible comics that came out at this time…Miracleman, Grimjack, American Flagg, Grendel, and far too many to list.

At that time however, most of those titles seemed to be coming from “big” companies…I had no idea of just how small many of them were or how fragile their economics were. And the idea of doing color books on glossy paper just didn’t seem feasible with a limited budget. You also have to remember that the idea of publishing comics was not one that I dwelled on for a long period…again, an opportunity presented itself so this internal debate that I think back on was probably over a matter of weeks, maybe only days.

By the time Caliber started up, somewhere in late 1988 but in reality, the initial publishing schedule was in 1989, the black and white explosion and implosion---the boom and bust---had already passed. So, as a publishing factor, that fact was seen as a negative as many people were shying away from anyone trying to launch a bunch of new titles. You know how it is, a trend can come and go yet you often times have people still trying to jump on a bandwagon that has already derailed. 

But what the black and white boom-bust had done was to bring the mechanics of publishing and distributing out of that mysterious realm that corporations live in. These new companies were providing professionally printed material (and I will grant, that there were many misses as far as content goes…but there were some excellent titles) and had an equal standing in terms of promotability with the well established “corporate” companies. These upstarts were instantly on the same level as far as opportunity goes. As a retailer, the black and white boom was a huge success for my stores. We did exceptionally well with it overall. Yes, I got hurt a bit at the end, but probably not nearly as bad as others. During the heyday, I ended up becoming a de facto sub distributor for awhile as I seemed to have a good handle on what had true selling power as opposed to being just a simple gimmick. I certainly missed out on some but overall, I did quite well with the black and white glut.

Overall, that black and white explosion built on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomena, proved that virtually any one can publish comics and just like my previous experience in opening stores, running conventions, having a TV show, maintaining a radio show, etc., I knew that I could figure it out. One of the mottos that I’ve always had with people was “just do it” (that was before Nike) which means don’t get caught up in what can or cannot be done, just delve into it. If it proves to be something that is too involved, well, weigh all the options and make a decision.

So, I just did it. I’ll go into more detail next time about the actual sequencing of things but once I got started on the path, I didn’t feel any sense of anxiety. I had limited my exposure by doing something that seemed sensible to me, yet curtailed any massive amount of money to be spent. I decided to do creator owned books ala Pacific, Eclipse, and the others. Now, it wasn’t purely economics that made that decision for me. I realized I had never thought about the comics world and how all of these writers and artists were basically creating characters and not only for a company but they weren’t even acknowledged. I had assumed that authors owned their books, musicians their music, screenwriters their stories, etc…which of course, is not always the case but the idea of creating something and not owning it seemed…well, bizarre. Now, I see both sides and the advantages and disadvantages (as long as people know and are willingly making a choice…usually for upfront money or exposure) but back then, it didn’t sit well. I never even considered the idea of the comics not being owned by their creators.

The structure of the company was based around releasing creator owned comics. As anyone who deals with purely creator owned titles can attest, the outlay in most cases is far less, but there’s a whole set of other problems that accompany that economic method. It really wasn’t even a decision that I had to make, it just was the way it was going to be. I had no interest in starting up a company to launch a bunch of characters that I owned and finding some other ways to exploit them. I wasn’t interested in owning anything, unless of course, I created it. The details next time on what became the initial launch of Caliber, but I wanted to acknowledge certain titles that sort of set the standard of what I envisioned Caliber could and should be.

When I envisioned what kind of titles I was interested in publishing, there were quite a few titles in existence either at that time or just a few years prior. In my head, I saw these types of titles as what I would like to publish. It wasn’t that they were best sellers, because many of them were not, but just the type of material that I wanted to release…to share with others. You know how it is, you read a good book or see a great film, there’s that enjoyment of knowing other people also enjoy it. Again, there were so many great titles coming out in the 80’s but the following are the ones that stood out to me as “Caliber-like” in terms of what I liked and what was feasible (which meant no color).

Renegade Press had a huge impact on me with titles such as Cases of Sherlock Holmes that was illustrated by the Day Brothers and Wordsmith from Dave Darrigo and R.G. Taylor. It isn’t surprising that eventually Caliber would end up publishing both after Renegade faded away. Another title I liked a lot from Renegade was Silent Invasion which also would move to Caliber for a short run. But if I had to pick a single title that epitomized what I envisioned Caliber could be, it would be from Renegade’s precursor, A-V International and that was Puma Blues, from Stephen Murphy and Michael Zulli. It showed how magnificent black and white artwork could be. The story was dense, surreal and dreamlike but powerful. I’m not saying that it propelled me on my path but it was something that I held in high regard and felt that is what independent comics can be.

When I look back over the many titles we did under the Caliber imprint, I think the success rate was pretty damn high in terms of matching what I originally intended.

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Regarding Caliber part 1

In the last year, there has been a growing groundswell regarding creator owned comics. In many minds, the Big Two are just now corporations making comics purely for exploitative purposes and the comics limp along….lifeless even though every year the characters are reinvented.

This movement has coincided with a renewed interest in my former publishing company, Caliber Comics. Part of this interest of course, is the availability of social sites such as Facebook which is a great tool to reconnect with former colleagues. But another part is the desire to go back to the days when creator owned comics had outlets such as Caliber, or Slave Labor, or many of the other companies that were around in the 1980’s and through the 90’s. Of course, today, we have the powerhouse of all creator owned comics in Image yet they are still tainted with a stigma in the eyes of some for the devastation in bringing the market to its knees (an incorrect blame, by the way).

Caliber was a company of the 1990’s although officially it launched late in the 80’s. Over the 11-12 years of operation, it produced about 1,300 comics and 70 graphic novels. It received over 40 nominations in the various industry awards (Harvey, Eisner, Don Thompson) and had 5 nominations for Best New Talent in the Russ Manning Awards.

There was a lot of competition during this time period and getting any kind of market share was very tough. In addition to all the “big guys”, there were many small independent companies also vying for the same market. We seldom made the Top 10 but one month, did move up to #8 in market share.

What I did with Caliber wasn’t anything original and many companies were set up the same. I essentially offered creators a chance to publish their books and mostly it was a simple profit sharing, with the creators getting 60% and Caliber retaining 40%. That profit sharing is sort of the model for companies before, during, and after Caliber’s run. There were some differences, of course, as some companies took more (some took less) and a variety of different aspects factored into the accounting. At Caliber, we handled everything with our 40% including overhead, promotion, and often provided a lot of design work. I’d estimate that over half of the logos used on creators’ books, for example, were designed by us.

I think what made Caliber different was because we were different. There really wasn’t any house style or type of material published by Caliber. There was tremendous diversity within the publishing line and what Caliber published was primarily based on what I liked. However, there were some titles that I was personally not too enamored with but I thought they were worthwhile projects so I published them. I tended to stay away from superhero titles but Caliber certainly published a good many of those, but usually for a specific reason.

The promotional part of the company gets over-shadowed quite a bit. Sure, we did the general ads that ran in publications such as Comic Buyer’s Guide and many other magazines at that time, but we reached out to a lot of retailers directly. We attended most of the distributor trade shows in addition to conventions, and produced our monthly Caliber Rounds. Rounds was a newspaper format hype sheet which sometimes ran up to 24 pages. In addition to solicitation information, we had interviews with the creators, preview art, and anything else to push the titles. We produced promotional trading cards, posters, sell sheets, and anything else we could think of to promote the line. Granted, it was a different time back then and especially with all the distributors, it was easier to get to all the retailers.

One advantage we had was the cross pollination ads in the different books and I used the Caliber Presents anthology to promote artists with the sketchbook feature and we often ran a preview of an upcoming title.

When people discuss Caliber with me, there are a few questions that repeatedly come up. One if why I stopped publishing and as frequently, is how Caliber got its start. I often get asked if something like Caliber could exist in today’s market and recently, a lot of inquiries regarding whether I plan to bring Caliber back.

I appreciate the interest and I plan to go over those questions and more on this blog. I haven’t kept up on the blog as I keep promising myself to do but that’s sort of a sign of the times as blogs have faded with the immediacy and access of sites such as Facebook. But blogs still can serve a purpose of expanding certain areas and so I will give a narrative of Caliber. I don’t plan on doing a sequential history of the company as that just sounds too formal…and frankly, a bit daunting.

Even though I was the owner of Caliber, it is important to note, and I plan to do so, to bring up other people that worked for Caliber as they played key roles. Caliber was not just me although I will take the lion’s share of the credit, of course…but also any of the blame for things that need blaming.

I’m always surprised by the reaction to Caliber by many people and the fondness that so many people remember. That is appreciated more than people may realize. I think what made Caliber unique to some extent was the camaraderie that existed with the creators amongst themselves and with the Caliber staff. I know a lot of them have become very close with each other and I’ve developed some lifelong friendships with some.

Feel free to pepper me with questions about anything and I’ll be glad to answer what I can.

Next time, I’ll start off with the beginnings of Caliber and try to dissuade some beliefs of what was behind it all.

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