I just saw a copy of our old music comic magazine PaperCuts, The Illustrated Lyrics Magazine up for sale on eBay. Some guy named Jeff is trying to sell it for $21.00, marked down from $26.00. It originally cost $2.50.
PaperCuts Magazine was our attempt, around 1986, to sell our records as a “Flexi-Disc Soundsheet© “ thin plastic record insert inside a magazine. Corey Harris was the other artist / guitarist in our band, Womanizer, and he and I illustrated two of our songs in comic book form as sort of a “poor man’s” music video. The first issue had Corey’s song, Mass Murder Man, and my song, Sexist, as the first two-song single. This is another example of thinking outside the box just enough to fail. I didn’t question the decision to have two songs on the disc as “singles” at the time were two sided 45 rpm records. Because I had to have two songs rather than just one the physical size of the disc had to be 7 inches rather than 5 inches. Because the disc was now 7 inches the magazine had to be 8.5 by 11 inches, a standard magazine size, rather than 7 by 10 inches, the standard comic book size. This meant that our sales to comic book stores was limited as their display racks are set up for 7” by 10” and they don’t usually carry magazines. We could get newsstand sales but comic book stores would pay you up front and a first edition would guarantee three sales per store; one for display, one for sale and usually one for the owner’s personal collection. Back in 1986 there were three to four thousand independent comic book stores in America. Whereas a magazine had no up front sales and if you were a little guy you wouldn’t have any leverage with the distributor to get paid. The distributor would send you an affidavit telling you how many copies you sold. You didn’t even get the unsold inventory returned, they’d recycle the magazines and make a few bucks on the paper that would go directly into their pocket. For $2.50 if you got a comic book of illustrated lyrics and rock & roll fantasy comics (see Friday Funnies for example) and a one song record I think you wouldn’t have felt ripped off but I was too indoctrinated in the ways of pop culture to make the call that might have saved the magazine from its eventual oblivion and eBay. Always question your options and then double question your decisions.
Mass Murder Man was eventually turned into an award winning (Chicago International Film Festival) animated music video and both it and the Sexist comic from PaperCuts are featured in our new Rock & Roll Rehab live show.
No comments:
Post a Comment