i thought i broke this story originally! hell, Rich e-mailed me before he printed his column last week.

*grumble, grumble*

hehe.

I meant you had no choice but to do a follow-up, especially after your own potential bias was called into question. Of course, your allowing Fortier an open forum to blast Dub without a single question afterwards still had the whiff of pro-Speakeasy bias to it. Not even a sarcastic mention of what kind of car he drives? You’re slipping.

Chuck said: Please understand that it is frustrating to keep quiet as long as I have, but I will go back to the quiet mode and look on to greener pastures.

I’d say “quiet mode” is what allows publishers like Speakeasy to end up in situations like this, scooping up starry-eyed creators with little business sense, who believe the PR hype and don’t do their own due diligence, finding out the truth the hard way, and often doing so too late to keep from getting burned. In the end. it’s a lose-lose situation for everybody.

Also, when I say I have learned a bit more about the comic world today, I mean about how it works. I find no fault in my post going up here even if I wish it hadn’t. I wrote it…so there it is. If I didn’t want it, I shouldn’t have wrote it. Lesson learned.

Please understand that it is frustrating to keep quiet as long as I have, but I will go back to the quiet mode and look on to greener pastures.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Chuck

vs

“it’ll be interesting to see what his follow-up is this week as he certainly can’t ignore the story now.”

I have never ignored this story. I kicked it off in the first place.

“In the end, he’s slyly wrung a bit of promotion for his own Speakeasy project, The Flying Friar, a one-shot graphic novella that won’t have to worry about subsequent issues going the online-only route.”

I was originally worried about a series being cancelled mid run, or, say, the third issue never coming out. That’s why I went for the done-in-one model.

“Be interested to know what his pre-order numbers were/are and whether or not he’ll have to front the printing costs for it, or if his pitchman duties balance the books.”

I believe the latter.

Because nothing good ever comes of that from the people doing the discussing. Ask Pete Rose or that guy that had sex with Paula Abdul.

Chuck’s little fart over on the Bendis Boards seems more like an attempt to promote his books. Whereas everyone else is trying to turn this into a teaching experience in their own way, the only message here is a) don’t give money to your publisher and b) his book is being looked at by another publisher.

I wasn’t trying to lead you down the path of taking a shot at Fortier. And I respect the fact that you don’t feel compelled to air your dirty laundry or take cheap shots at Speakeasy (assuming you have any or want to). I think Fortier should have taken that same high road, no matter how teed off or attacked he feels or how truthful his comments were.

The sad part is that it’s now gotten to the point where I’m surprised when these discussions don’t go public.

I’m not saying anything about Fortier on this one. Josh said our official statement in Guy’s interview and I don’t want to confuse it at all.

What I am saying is, we all made a choice when we signed on. And we can’t say it was a good choice or a bad choice looking at the situation now because when we made that choice things looked different.

Did we have any real indication that we would be where we are right now? No. But did we have any hard proof? Not really, and we (as in H&B) went into it as a business venture knowing that there was an adding risk but for hoping for a better pay-off.

Chuck sounds like he went into it viewing Adam as his friend and Speakeasy as his investment – you don’t invest in a publisher, a publisher invests in you.

And, if the publisher doesn’t invest what you feel he should invest – you handle your business behind closed doors and don’t scream to the masses about fairness. What’s it going to do for you except potentially break your NDA, tarnish your name as a business man and a level-headed publisher and get you in legal trouble? The people he’s preaching to don’t care about him or his book, they care about the drama. Even Guy, who’s posting this and showed his journalistic saavy already, did he follow it up with some questions about On Bitter Souls? No – because it’s a non-issue.

And now, if down the line I’m the editor at some company I’d be reluctant to take Chuck on because I don’t know how much he’s saying here is true or what he’d say out of vengeful spite.

That’s all I’m saying, nothing about Adam or Speakeasy. I just think it’s a shame people in this industry don’t know how to own-up to their own decisions.

I had a whole big thing written out here, but eff it, I’m too lazy to want to debate this this morning. I do concur on the party $$ bit Jason said too, that one seems like tough teets to me.

I hear you, and to a certain degree, I’m with you. He got a raw deal, but it was largely a result of a lack of business savvy on his part, something I have no sympathy for when it comes to creative types. You can’t be so hungry to get your shit out there that you let yourself get taken advantage of. It’s not like there isn’t a million similar cautionary stories out there to learn from.

“This has a serious detrimental effect on profits, and means that many printers can no longer look at publishing comic books in the same light.”

I think Fortier was partly referring to the printers themselves, too. Short run comics are not a highly profitable venture to begin with, and Quebecor is a huge company so when margins get tight, I can see where smaller publishers can take a hit, either in costs or prioritization. Even Image has had several titles experience printing delays recently, and I wonder how much of that is the need to gangprint enough 5,000 run titles to make it cost-effective.

Kurt said: “Fortier waded hip-deep into ‘shut your mouth’ territory”

Also known as Mike S. Miller/Alias territory. The “smartest man in comics ™” really came off sounding like a bit of jerk there.