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jefflewis · Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 1486

I've been sorting through 128 pages of out-of-print comic book material of mine, mostly this is stuff that formerly appeared in two of my self-published comic collections, "Reflections on Tomorrow" #1 (56 pages, from around 2000) and "Reflections" #2 (44 pages, from around 2001). In addition to that 100-odd pages of comics, there's about another 30 pages of short material that's either been out of print or only appeared in various other people's zines and things.
I concocted this whole plan that I was going to take this whole pile of material and make it into two 64-page comic books, and maybe call them "Fuff Minus One" and "Fuff Minus Two" and try to get them both printed in time to have them at the MoCCA indie-comic book festival in NYC on April 6-7...
But when I asked my distributor guy, Tony Shenton, what he thought of my plan he
didn't think it made much sense from a comic-store point of view. He figures the best thing for me to do would be to reprint the first four issues of Fuff, which have been out of print for a few years now. And he also suggests that the best thing for building a comic fan base is to publish more regularly; my current method of just putting something out once in a while when I have enough pages drawn has not been going particularly quickly or regularly!

So maybe I'll find out how much it would cost me to reprint the first four Fuffs first. Then I was thinking maybe I'd use this 128 pages of older material as "filler" that would help me get issues out more regularly. Like, if every new issue only required me to draw 5-12 new comic pages, and I could add in as much of the older material as needed to create a 24-page comic, that would mean I could hopefully get back to cranking out issues a couple times a year like I was able to do for a while. It might be weird to have the new material paired with the old material, but maybe people wouldn't notice the difference quite as much as I would.

In addition to this 128 pages of old stuff from 1998-2002, there's actually a whole lot of other out-of-print comic stuff of mine that I haven't known quite what to do with. There's the 40-page "Tao Jones" comic from 1997, my first real self-published comic, definitely rather amateurish but not TOO bad... there's also the 40-page "Trip to Key West" comic... and the 80-page "Austin Diary"... And the "Scavenger Hunt" volume 1 and "Scavenger Hunt" volume 2, probably about 40 pages total... I thought that putting my out-of-print comics for sale digitally thru Lush Comics was a really good solution, because it saves me the money of having to reprint the comics, and saves me the storage space in my apartment of keeping so many boxes of comics in my closets (and in my kitchen)... but the digital comics thing has just been so small the past couple years (at least for me), it seems like people just tend not to access my comics that way very much compared to the print versions.

I know I'm probably talking about reprinting old comic stuff (or old music stuff) at least once a year, and most of the time I never get around to it! But I didn't publish ANYthing in 2012 (except those Sonnet Youth zines), and it's driving me crazy! I want to be putting more comics out! And I've GOT this huge pile of 128 comic pages right here sitting in front of me! I'm already starting to photocopy/scan it all, so I'll do something with it, darn it... whether it's a big 128-page collection, or two 64 page comics, or use it as filler material to help me do the next bunch of issues...

Dav · Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 11:37 am Post subject:

As a owner of all the fuffs, i sure would prefer that you print your older material, especially since i have read the come to my show, which was really funny and different from the fuffs. I don't know anything about comic book industry but it makes sense that people would like to buy the firsts fuffs before the last ones, i know i would.

As for the digital comic, i had it on my iphone when it got released but i sold the phone and the comics are gone with it.
I was thinking that the low budgect videos would be a nice idea for digital comic, as it's plain pages, maybe with the song playing.
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lauragek · Joined: 26 May 2009 Posts: 165

I was only able to buy the last fuff comics, so I'd love to be able to buy the first ones too! Especially since there's some sequels in the last comics and I never read the original...

jefflewis · Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 1486

Okay, I'm working on it! I'm waiting to hear back from the printing company how much it would cost to re-print the early issues, maybe I'd even get some kind of discount if I re-print Fuff # 1, 2, 3 and 4 all at the same time...

andylips · Joined: 04 Sep 2009 Posts: 75

I'd love to see the Key West/Austin Diary comics in print. I'm a physical collector, i'll probably never get an iphone or whatever it is that you can read comics on, so for someone like me, i'd love them to be printed.

I think that's a good idea (using old 'filler' pages with 12 or so new pages) to crank out new issues more often. I'd love to see the older stuff slowly coming out again AND new stuff at the same time!

Make it happen!
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jefflewis · Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 1486

SO, As an update of a few months later, I DID indeed physically reprint Fuff 1-4, and I think it was totally the right move. Even though all the closets in my apartment (and the kitchen floor) are filled with comic boxes. I'm super glad that I can offer physical issues at my gigs and through stores, of every single Fuff issue once again.
AND i'm also going through with the plan of having older lost out of print material fill new issues of Fuff, I'm currently 99% finished with assembling Fuff 9, with old material and new material, I was hoping to get it to print before the holidays but i still have to finish drawing the back cover, color the front and back covers, and edit the whole thing a bit more (for dialogue changes etc). But maybe if I'm lucky I'll have Fuff 9 in print before my Jan-Feb Europe tour dates. Soon anyway.

jefflewis · Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 1486

Finally did finish editing Fuff # 9 and it's being printed now, I really, really hope I can get it back from the printer before I leave for Europe tour, it's funny to see my old post here talking about it so long ago and now finally being at the final stage with it! Time to start working on Fuff # 10 soon! If I continue this plan to use a lot of the old out-of-print material to fill in issues then it should be a lot quicker to print issues more frequently... well, I'll see how it goes with this one.