COMIC LIBRARY INTERNATIONAL
CONTINUES ITS ELECTRIC
( AND ECLECTIC ) PUBLISHING
SCHEDULE IN THE YEAR 2000!
EDITORIAL
MEANWHILE,
JUST OUTSIDE CLEVELAND...
So, there
we were. Chris Yambar and me. Sitting at our table at a small,
one-day comics, cards and collectible show at a Holiday Inn -- just on
the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio. Things were slow. Really
slow. Really, really "look-at-the-pretty-patterns-the-falling-dust-makes-on-our-mug-display"
slow.
Okay.
Slow. But what to do to pass the time until 4:30 when the show ended
and we could, mercifully, get a meal and get on the road? We could
try to emulate the kids from Dr. Seuss' The Cat In The Hat and just sit,
sit, sit sit... (and not even like it, not one little bit). We could
discuss the weather and how the show's work crew thought I looked like
Jerry Springer (it was raining and I don't). Or, I could approach
Chris with an idea that had been rolling around in my brain since the last
one-day slow-fest I'd attended. That could work.
"Trades",
I said without warning. This statement was greeted with an
enthusiastic and resounding "huh?".
"Trade paperbacks.
Y'no, squarebound softbacks... 100 pages or more... books with a spine."
Again with
the "huh?", only more emphatic (and slightly more annoyed).
Of course, I was talking about books like you hold in your hands.
You see, for a long time, the comic book industry has been in a downward
spiral of falling sales and (arguably) less variety of content. In
fact, it's hard for many within the industry to wrap their brains around
the concept that the world doesn't begin and end with Marvel Comics The
X-Men. Comic Books were coughing up a lung, bigtime with no end in
sight, no rest for the weary and, seemingly, no way out!
On the other
hand, trade books like the Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes series were consistently
on the New York Times bestseller lists. The problem didn't seem to
be with the public's disdain for comics (as some insiders have posited).
No, it seemed to me to be a packaging thing. Maybe comics were evolving
beyond their thirty-two page, saddlestiched beginnings. Maybe comics
were somehow becoming something far, far grander in scope than the current
Comics Direct Market could handle -- or would even admit to. My thoughts
on that were "Yowza! Gimme some o' dat!"
Chris took
a bit more convincing, but eventually came aboard (and when Chris gets
"aboard" it's like a runaway freight train -- step aside or get crushed).
Plans were hatched, formats were finalized, topnotch creators were corralled,
cajoled, harassed and bullied into contributing, ISBN numbers were obtained
and countless hours of sleep were lost but, eventually, after almost a
year from that fateful day somewhere outside Cleveland, our new millennium
baby was born (or printed, as the case may be).
To make a
long story a little less long, CLI is the end result of Chris' and my attempts
to "play God" with the comic medium. We've lined up some of the hottest
and hippest comic creators around today and given them their own little
"Eden" to play in (Arthur! Stay away from those apples!).
We hope you
enjoy the fruits of our labor. If so, please write and, by all means,
buy multiple copies... for we are vengeful gods... especially for you folks
living somewhere just outside Cleveland...
GEORGE BRODERICK, JR.
President and Publisher,
CLI |