That’s whether it’s fans amongst professionals, professionals among their peers, or otherwise. So inevitably, this means discovering new creators and new comics in a way that’s different from other cons.

I first met Stephanie Lantry and Carrie Smith a few years back thanks to the online community that is the now defunct Brian K. Vaughan message board, the Cabal. As Conjoined Comics, the quick-witted indie-creators have collaborated to self-publish their own comic, To the Power Against, mini-comic Emogician (which the description should be pretty self-explanatory), and their newest book The Yeti, in a format that is quite unlike the first two. Recently at APE, I got a chance to chat with these two creators.

Joey Pangilinan: How did you two first meet, and come to start collaborate with each other?

Carrie Smith: We had a venn diagram of friends that met in the middle mostly through Star Wars.

Stephanie Lantry: We all knew people who lined up for the Star Wars prequels in Hollywood, and we just kind of knew people involved in that. So it was George Lucas who brought us together. But as far as actually collaborating, we were at a friend’s party one night, and Carrie mentioned one idea she had that might make a good comic.

CS: Well, To the Power Against was actually an idea I had for a novel. But there was so much of it that’s so much more visual. Where there are things that needed to happen in one shot, or one panel. “Would it work as a film? Or better as a comic?” So we just sat down, and got to talking about that, and decided to give it a try.

SL: That same night, we came up with Emogician.

CS: That’s right.

JP: In To the Power Against, the heroine, Catalina microwaves a burrito an extra five seconds than it says on the directions, and because of that, a lot of improbable stuff starts to happen. How did this idea all come about?

CS: I wanted to do a story that was just unusual. The kinds of stories I like to write have people having very real emotions, very real relationships. But I like to put them in situations that are somewhat absurd. That’s just the kind of story I like to do. So the idea of having somebody minding her own business, and going on with her life, and then to have this super power about controlling probability. Well, why not give it to her in a completely ridiculous and improbably way.

The whole thing about her power is that it’s not magic It’s a really improbable string of events. The idea that she was touching something electrical that was conducting this field at the moment when it happened could make sense, but it’s ridiculous, and the implied irony that the universe is getting back at her for cooking that burrito five seconds longer than it said on the directions is just silly.

So it was just finding something to fit in with the whole scope of making ridiculous things happen that we had to christen her with that power in a completely absurd way, and then have her have to react to it.

JP: Emogician. Your mini-comic. Will we ever see the origins of the delightful lead?

SL: An origin of Emogician? Sure.

CS: Aren’t the origins clear? Spoiled suburban child gets job as magician but can’t handle it… Oh, I guess we could do an origin.

SL: It would probably be pretty good.

JP: As far as the Yeti, it’s a unique digest sized book that you guys have put together that is both prose and illustrations. How did this come about?

CS: The genesis of it was something for us was looking for something new to do together, and also Stephanie has these awesome illustration skills. So giving her something she can do in color that would showcase another facet of her talent. The story itself is something I’ve had for several years.

It was a story I’d written for a birthday for a friend of mine, and it was just like, we were doing crappy jobs, and getting down on feeling like all you ever do is work to pay for stuff, and what’s really the point of life or whatever. Oddly enough, it’s our friend who is the model for Xi Chen (To the Power Against) is the person who’s birthday the Yeti was for.

JP: Do you guys have any more plans for this format?

CS: Nothing at the moment. We still have to finish To the Power Against. But who knows what we’ll be doing.

JP: There’s supposed to be a total of six issues of To the Power Against, with two more to still be released. What can we expect?

CS: It’s six issues for this first story arc. But I have at least three arcs planned. There’s definitely some progression that’s gonna happen, for sure.

JP: What was the difference in approach in how you’d draw To the Power Against versus The Yeti?

SL: I grew up watching cartoons like a lot of Warner Brothers animated stuff. I always kind of wanted to do animation, and this is something kind of in that vein. Something simple, and very expressive, and I approached it that way just like the old Chuck Jones cartoons. I’ve always done different styles depending on the project or what somebody wanted as a commission. It’s all generally the same, but I sort of move around different styles.

I’ve done original comic books for about five years, but before that I used to sit in artists alley, and do original sketches and commission work and things. I’ve been doing that since 1994. So I was 13 when I did my first convention in Michigan, selling sketches for a couple bucks. I think I broke sixty conventions not too long ago. I sorta grew up doing that.

JP: At conventions, the issues sell well? What’s the response?

CS: We do alright, actually. We get a lot of people who come back who’ve read the first one, or the first two, and they’re like “okay, I need three and four.” So it’s nice to see a lot of the same faces. We do alright. It’s not like we’re Stephen King, but its not that bad either.

JP: Well what would you say is the hardest part about keeping up with the demands of being independent comic creators?

SL: The hardest part is finding time to fit it in our daily schedule. When you’re publishing it yourself, you gotta get that money from somewhere, and that usually means a day job. Some people are really lucky, and make enough money with it, that that’s what they do. Penny Arcade is a good example. They just started doing it, and started making money at that, and it’s all they do now.

Some are lucky in that they have a related day job, then there’s some of us who have day jobs totally separate. The biggest challenge is finding the time and the energy to put into it at the end of the day when you’ve already worked nine hours somewhere else, and come home. It’s like a second job. It’s worth it, though. It’s something we enjoy enough. Hopefully, it’ll pay off at some point.

CS: I think it’s slightly easier for me to find time to do stuff, because I can sit there and write an entire script in a couple of days if you commit yourself to a whole weekend of drinking coffee and banging it out. And you can also have a little notebook at work, and just put down ideas. So you can crowbar your writing in. For Stephanie, it requires more space, more supplies, more physical exertion.

I think the biggest challenge we have is just finding the time to complete all the physical labor of putting together a book, and manage to pay the rent at the same time. I feel like if we didn’t have to go to our day jobs, we’d be cranking these out once a month, for sure.

JP: How’s the collaborative process between you two?

SL: When we first started, she had never written a comic before, and there are some writers who write specifically comic book scripts. They set up the panels, and angles. Some writers are super specific. But Carrie had only done prose and screenplay types before, so I told her to go with the screenplay. The interior/exterior shots to give me some basic directions, and I’ll figure it out from there, because I had a better sense of how to lay out a page, and how that has to work.

So we’ve pretty much stuck with that. She just kinda give it to me in almost a screenplay form, and some stage directions, and if there’s something really specific she wants, she’ll put that in there. But as far as the layout, the flow, and all of that, I’ll handle the rest of it

CS: Yeah, I’m not gonna say that someone looks over their shoulder at such and such an angle. I’ll just say something explodes, or so and so gets stabbed in the face with a fork.

SL: That has not happened, yet.

CS: Of course, now I feel it’s gonna have to happen. But I just try to leave it stripped down, and going in the right direction so she can work with it. But that’s knowing you’re doing something that’s absolutely collaborative. That won’t make sense until two people have worked on it.

So it’s just a different mind-set. But for the Yeti, it’s two complete interpretations that are of the same story. You can look at a series of Stephanie’s paintings, and go “oh, that’s about a Yeti, and so on, and so on…” So she’s told the story in her way, and then there’s the prose.

But when you know that all that you’re getting is the prose, you have to obsess over every single word. Like is this gonna make someone anxious, is this gonna make them see the color blue, is it gonna make them see something huge, or small, or whatever.

Like I said, with Stephanie, I could just say something explodes, and she’s gonna do the leg-work that I have to do with vocabulary when I’m by myself.

Recently, October saw the recent release of The ACT-I-VATE Primer by IDW Publishing, featuring new and original stories. While at the Isotope, I discovered Haspiel is as gracious and as nice as I could have imagined just sitting and talking with him as he signed and sketched a head shot of Harvey Pekar in my copy of The Quitter.

That night talking generally about the unique positivity that courses through the comic industry, Haspiel signs my Pekar sketch advising me to “never quit.” It’s good advice.

Needless to say, I was excited to sit down and talk with Haspiel again on Sunday as APE was coming to a close.

Joey Pangilinan: How did you come to start working with Harvey?

Dean Haspiel: Here’s a long answer to a simple question. I grew up reading superhero comics. My dream was to become a penciler and draw for Marvel. I didn’t know there were other comics that could be non-superhero or not published by DC and Marvel. I started to expand my horizons and got hungrier for the medium.

In the early ‘80s, I discovered American Splendor, at a place called Soho Zat in lower Manhattan, which had a lot of alternative and underground comics, and I discovered a whole bunch of different types of works.

So, there I am reading the Fantastic Four, and suddenly I come across semi-autobiographical comics and stuff like Yummy Fur by Chester Brown, and it just blew my mind. I started out being a fan, like most people are, of Harvey Pekar, or whoever else they admire.

Then years later, my friend Josh Neufeld was bold enough to write Harvey a letter and got a gig drawing one of his stories in “American Splendor.” I used to have a big brother thing with Josh, and tell him I was a better artist all the time and, when that happened, I thought “if Josh could get a job drawing for Harvey, then I know I can.”

So, I sent Harvey a bunch of my artwork thinking it would blow him away. But I never heard back from him, and I kind of felt insulted and hurt. A year later, Josh and I created a two-man anthology called Keyhole, kinda like our own Eightball (a comic series by the great Dan Clowes).

I did a story in Keyhole called America Dilemma, which was my two-page story about feeling hurt that Harvey Pekar didn’t hire me, much less, acknowledge me. I got that published, and mailed that to Harvey, and again — heard nothing. So twice now, he ignored me and I didn’t understand why.

Then I get a phone call a couple years later from a guy saying he’s Harvey Pekar, and he wants to give me a job drawing a one-page comic. I didn’t take him seriously.  I thought it was somebody pulling a prank. I kept asking, “are you sure you’re Harvey Pekar?” Finally, he says, “You don’t believe me? Go fuck yourself,” and he hung up the phone.

Then I thought that ended a little nasty. So, I called Josh and he asked to describe the conversation, and I told him the guy kept saying “don’t you wanna make some bread, man?” I thought that someone had read Pekar and just repeated the things that he says in his comics. But Josh tells me, no, “that’s really him.” I realize I f*cked up. I ask Josh for Harvey’s number and I give Pekar a call later that night and apologized.

Then Harvey asks “What do I gotta do to prove to you that I’m really me?” And I said, “Give me that job.” And he did, and that’s how I met Harvey Pekar.

JP: You said that you wanted to work with your friend Jonathan Ames for the longest time. What writer or artist that you’ve yet to work with, would you like to?

DH: I almost got to work with Mark Waid on something. I’d love to do something with Peter Milligan, Warren Ellis, Brian K. Vaughan, and J.M.DeMatteis. Outside of comics, there are other folks in other mediums that I would love to collaborate with. But, what I’m trying to focus on now, is trying to get more work where I write and draw my own stories.

I feel like I have a bunch of stuff that I want to say, but I wanna make a living at it, too. So even though I’m doing my own stuff at ACT-I-VATE via Billy Dogma, and Street Code at Zuda, I’ve two or three screenplays I’ve written, ideas for graphic novels. Also, I can’t claim I’m writing a novel, but I’m typing a novel right now.

Right now, I’m developing a modern Frankenstein story with one of my favorite writers of all time, a guy named Tim Hall (who does Uplift the Positivicals at ACT-I-VATE), and I hope to be able to draw that story someday soon.

JP: Billy Dogma is obviously something very special to you. How hard or difficult it might be to put something so personal out there?

DH: They say, “Write what you know.” So, the well that you tap into, you’re not necessarily making stuff up. You’re actually revisiting the stuff that happened to you or something that’s occupying your mind. The good thing is that, as I get older, I can look back at what I’ve been tackling in my personal stories, realize the trends, and discover that I’ve been writing and drawing all the same stuff all my life. In some weird symbolic way, I’m exercising and exorcising my experiences and my ideas.

The difficult part is shaping that stuff, turning it into something that can be entertaining, while imparting some kind of wisdom, or something that’s heartfelt and poignant. There is no formula to a successful story.

I think Hollywood is famously known for trying to do that. Trying to take another idea and befit it to a current trend, or fall back on formulas. Saying “This worked the last time, maybe it’ll work again.”

There are certain formulas that people gravitate towards. I guess it’s a combination of trying to be real while trying to provide a sense of escapism.

JP: ACT-I-VATE seems to push everyone involved to bring his or her “A-Game,” so to speak. For you, what makes ACT-I-VATE so special?

DH: ACT-I-VATE is community for me. ACT-I-VATE is a sense of family. I love my family, but I didn’t choose my family. You can choose your friends, and then your friends become family, too. I’ve definitely met artists here at APE who are shy and introverted but don’t necessarily have the skills to parlay their art beyond the page. See, my mother was deputy director of the New York State Council of the Arts.

She practically becomes the mayor of any town she lives in. And, my father is a writer and very extroverted. Combined, they were a force to be reckoned with. At an early age, I was encouraged to speak my mind. Shelley Winters was my godmother and she was infamous for speaking her mind. A lot of the stuff we do as artists, as storytellers, is to reveal our vulnerabilities and connect with strangers.

I’ll see someone doing incredible artwork that nobody knows about and I’ll feel like a proud papa if I’ve been able to give someone a place at ACT-I-VATE where people can see their work. People may come to see my stuff but they’ll discover their work, too. I feel really great about that. I feel like I’ve helped someone out in some proactive way.

Meanwhile, people who came to ACT-I-VATE to see/read Michel Fiffe, Kat Roberts, Mike Cavallaro, Joe Infurnari, Jennifer Hayden, or Simon Fraser, or whoever, will peruse ACT-I-VATE and may discover my work. Therein lies an equal opportunity situation.

JP: You have a background in film, who is your favorite director? Or directors?

DH: My favorite director is probably Sergio Leone. There’s a blog called GRAPHIC NYC, run by Seth Kushner and Chris Irving. They asked me to write an upcoming column that reveals my top five non-comics influences, and I’ll expand why Leone is so important to me in that column.

I also love the Coen Brothers, early Scorcese, Preston Sturges is a master. I love German Expressionism for the style. I’m a big fan of Hammer Horror films. I like Park Chanwook, the guy who did “Oldboy,” and a trilogy of revenge films. Then, I look at Bruce Lee.

He might not have been a filmmaker but you know he was leading the way. Sometimes you can cast an actor, a master of storytelling, who basically takes over the production in some beautiful way and commands the medium.

JP: Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels is as actually one of my favorites.

DH: It’s amazing. Have you seen Unfaithfully Yours?

JP: No I haven’t.

DH: Make sure to check out Unfaithfully Yours by Sturges. It’s unbelievable.

JP: You’ve mentioned that Zach Galifianakis’ character in HBO’s Bored to Death is only a loosely based on you, but still, how weird is it to see some part of you on screen?

DH: I don’t feel weird at all. The only thing that’s weird is reminding folks that he’s not me. A Bored to Death episode will air and somebody will say, “Oh my god, they totally captured you.” And, I’m like, “Where? How? I don’t see myself in that at all.” So really, they’ve been fooled or they’re telling me something I wasn’t aware of about myself. For shame.

I know for a fact that Jonathan Ames is not commenting on his friend, Dean Haspiel. He’s created three characters that are derived from his own persona. Meanwhile, some of the background character plot is derived from my life, somewhat. So, defending my true self while championing the show, because I love the show, is an interesting seesaw.

But, I love doing the artwork for it, the experience, getting the attention is pretty cool. Last weekend at Baltimore Comic-Con, someone came up to me, and handed me their headshot and resume because they thought I might be able to get them on the show.

Luckily, I have enough confidence, and enough of an ego to brush it off. If people want to think I’m the Bored To Death character, Ray Hueston, that’s fine. I don’t care, honestly. That’s cool. I dig the show. I dig the characters. I love the stories that are being told. I love Jonathan Ames.

JP: In a blog post, Paul Pope likened the iPhone to a “retarded motherbox,” and mentioned this was born out of a conversation he had with you about Jack Kirby. Of course, both of you are obvious fans of the King. What is Jack Kirby’s biggest influence on you?

DH: What Jack Kirby could do with a blank page is unmatched. He may have gone overboard at times to the point of being absurd but I love Kirby’s comics. When I was a younger, I probably wanted to read stories that were more grounded and plausible. But, as I get older, I love the absurdity of a lot of Kirby’s ideas because they’re all rooted in some kind of emotional truth. He was a big thinker.

In an ironic way, I think the world is catching up with Jack Kirby right now. He wasn’t afraid to jot down his ideas and see what worked. I don’t think it was a case of “let’s throw everything at the wall, and see what sticks,” because I definitely think he had conceptual considerations per idea. The guy was just a bottomless well of ideas, and the fact that he had no fear experimenting in public, on the printed page, week after week, says a lot to me.

Kirby inspires me. There’s some stuff I’ve done in Billy Dogma recently I never would have tried without reading OMAC, or some of Kirby’s Fourth World stuff, or Thor and the Fantastic Four. So many people need to have a fully realized idea before starting their project and I don’t think Kirby ever did. I think for every comic book series he ever worked on, there’s another issue waiting to be done by the King.

In fact, I had an idea to take his creations or co-creations and do the very next issue of his run on the title. For example: There were eight issues of Kirby’s OMAC, and I want to do that ninth issue of OMAC. He created such a universe…a galaxy of ideas. I can always be entertained by a Jack Kirby idea or drawing. Even a bit of dialogue can be magic, very cosmic in a true sense. He’s hard to qualify for me, because I feel like I’m still learning from him.

Jack Kirby is a magnet for personal expression and ideas. I keep getting drawn to him. I can’t qualify what draws me to Kirby, which is a compliment. It means, I’m still steeping in his oeuvre (to use a fifty dollar word). I can’t get enough of Kirby.

Luckily, there are so many pages of his work; it’ll probably last through my lifetime to indulge Jack Kirby. Thanks to Jack Kirby.

On October 17th and 18th at the Concourse is the annual Alternative Press Expo (APE), and for the seventh year, James and his staff will be handing out the Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics at their 8th annual APE Aftermath on the 17th. But this year, James is also having comic artist-extraordinaire Dean Haspiel for an in-store event on Friday the 16th, the night before APE is officially underway. Recently, I had a short talk with Sime about these events, his store, and well, comics.

Joey Pangilinan: What makes selling comics so fun for you?

James Sime: Well, it’s the greatest job in the universe. I love comics, and I love people. And I love that every time someone comes into the store,  I instantly have something in common with them. Even if they don’t already read comics, they’re interested in reading comics.

They’re like “Well, that looks neat, I’ll go in the front door of that place.” I love that I have that instant connection with people through comics. But I was freaked out that first day. It was terrifying. I was terrified the first three years.

JP: When did you know you had a good grasp on how to run the store?

JS: I always thought that long before I owned a comic book store, that what I wanted to do with a comic book store would be awesome. I always thought comic book stores should have an art gallery, it should have a lounge, they should throw events, they should have tons of community stuff to support. If you make some little book in your basement, they should be excited to see it. I always thought one of the big problems about comic stores is that I thought they were kind of unfriendly to new readers and women.

I’m from the bar industry, and the old bar adage anywhere there is five women twenty-five men will find them. And I was like “Why isn’t somebody making a comic book store for women? Women love to read. They love comics. What’s wrong with them?” So I made a comic book store for girls, and boys, too.

JP: Is that the biggest carry-over lesson you learned from life as a bartender to now as a comic store owner?

JS: I loved bartending, and learned a lot of different stuff working in restaurant industry jobs. Before I did this, all my money that I made waiting tables, or bartending was all tips, so if you sucked at your job, you starved to death, and you lost your apartment. I loved that. I always thought that was fun. I was an independent contractor. I loved that. But as much as I love booze, and loved that job, I like comics way, way, way more. So I just thought somebody should do what I wanted, nobody would do it, so I started it myself.

I never owned a business before, I didn’t know anything about the actual running of a business, but I hoped. I just crossed my fingers and I hoped. And I figured that if I made a big enough of a noise, and I bombed, that someone else would rip off my model, and I could move to their city, and I could shop at their store. And if I didn’t bomb, then I would have the best job conceivable, in the universe.

Like I can’t conceive of a job that’s cooler than this.

JP: What gave you the idea to give out the Isotope Award?

JS: I was looking at the awards in the comic industry, and I carry a ton of mini’s, and I love mini’s, and was like, “there’s no award for mini-comics?” It just seemed like such a slap in the face to what I think is not just the ground floor for the art-form; it’s the cheapest, it’s the easiest, it’s the fastest, but it’s also a ton of people start off making mini-comics who end up doing huge books. And like, “why is there no award for mini-comics, and I was like f**k it, I’m gonna do my award. If no one is gonna make that award, fine. I’ll make my own.”

I consider them my Miss America for a year, and do whatever I can to get their book pressed, and them interviews, and their books out to reviews, to under publisher’s noses. Just anything I can do for those boys and girls. I love it because it supports something that I love, and I also think it’s really sweet. I’ve made wonderful friends with these people I would never have met otherwise because they’re toiling away in their underground, and nobody knows who they are because nobody has ever seen their book.

JP: How excited are you going through all of this year’s mini-comic entries?

JS: There’s some really good stuff. There’s some stuff that really surprised me a lot. I think me and the judges are gonna have a really hard time. I’m really excited about the judges that I have this year. For the people who either win or don’t win, these are the people in the comic industry that you want seeing your comic. There’s Tom Spurgeon, who writes Comics Reporter.

Everybody who is in the comics industry reads that pretty much everyday. Then there’s Brett Warnock, publisher at Top Shelf. He also writes Top Shelf’s blog, Top Shelf also has web comics. So just those two judges alone, having your book under their nose is really good for your career, even if you come in last place, it’s still a good move.

The other judges are Eva Volin, a librarian. She buys books for libraries, and also reviews comics online. She is awesome. And then there is Kirsten Baldock, who is also a librarian, who is in charge of the city of Oakland’s adult graphic novel section. And I’m a retailer, I sell funny-books.

JP: What separates APE Aftermath from the rest of your events throughout the year?

JS: I think APE weekend is the most fun weekend for comics in San Francisco. F**k. I think it’s the most fun weekend in San Francisco. It’s all of these people who are excited about their comics, making new stuff coming to San Francisco from all over the country with a head of steam. They wanna go to APE, and have to coolest book at APE, and wanna meet the other people who are making the other coolest book at APE. It’s really community based.

So of course, I wanna throw a big bash in celebration of that, because that’s fun. In my second year, I just decided to do my own award. So that to me, makes it way the best party I throw all year. You get to discover someone new who’s amazing because nobody has ever won that award. It’s like the family of comics. I like it more than anything else.

It’s my biggest party of the year. My biggest, my best, my favorite. At 8, Brett Warnock comes in and does Top Shelf Happy Hour, and he brings in all sorts of his creators that work for his company. And he makes a killer margarita. Kirsten runs my bar for the rest of the event, but that hour is Brett’s time to shine. At 10pm is when I hand out my mini-comic award. Grand ceremony. I’ll have last year’s winner, Jonas-Madden Connor helping me give the prize to this year’s winner to whoever that may be, I don’t know yet.

That’s a rager. That’s a really, really killer party. DJ Bearzbub, who I think is one of the best DJs in the city, is coming in to spin some records. Come meet people, mingle, and talk comics.

JP: You have Dean Haspiel coming in on Friday as well. How excited for that are you? Like you said previously, he almost never comes out west.

JS: Normally, when I have a superstar come in, I know them before. I don’t ever want to have somebody come in who isn’t gonna have fun coming in, or somebody that’s not gonna be fun for my customers to meet. Fortunately, in the comics industry, almost everyone in the comics industry is super nice and super sweet. So Dean, I don’t know Dean. So there’s a little level of nervousness about that, because I don’t know the guy.

But everybody who I know who knows Dean; they love him, and Dean is apparently a bit of a wild man. So I think Dean’s gonna be a lot of fun. Emailing back and forth with him, he’s really cool. I’m super-excited. I love his comics. He’s a genius. He’s gonna be doing some live art.

JP: What advice would you have for new comics creators and new retailers?

JS: For comic creators, one of the best pieces of advice that I have is have a great title, have something that’s easy to talk about, that sounds fun only in a couple sentences. One of the games that I like to play with some of the creators that bring in some of their first work, is I’ll have them leave the store, and I’ll place their comic somewhere in my store, and place it in plain sight, and have them come back in, and ask them “how fast can you find your book?”

And if you can’t find your book, you f**ked up on the cover. Like you need a new logo, you need a new cover design. You need to find those books fast. Instantly. So ideally, you can stand at the front door of my store, and find your comic wherever I’ve hidden it. That’s really, really key for people who are making comics. You want people to be able to recognize your book, you want them to be able to see it, and you want them to be able to come back issue after issue, or collection after collection.

For a starting off retailer: Before you open up your store, ask yourself, “Do you love comics?” because that’s the rest of your life, everyday all the time, comics, comics, comics. And two, “Do you love people?” If those are your two favorite things in the world, you’ll be fine. If they’re not, then you’re gonna give up when the times get tough. It’s a small business. Times are always gonna get tough. You always gotta scratch your way through. You gotta love those things. More than anything else, I think that’s key.

I do lots of events with my store. There’s always something going on, and the reason why I think that’s important is because you can pretty much buy all these comics online. So why are people leaving the house? It’s San Francisco. People don’t have to leave the house. They can stay in the house and just be wired all day. But people leave the house, and they leave the house for specific reasons. And I want my business, every single minute, to be a great reason to leave the house. I want you to be like “I cant wait to get the hell outta the house, and have James and his staff help me find the next amazing thing that I need on my tour of the comic industry.”

I’m not selling oil cans or peanuts, I’m selling comic books. It’s an exciting art form, and if your approach to selling them doesn’t reflect that, then I think that’s a problem.