moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Henry Vogel) (06/29/85)
I asked Henry Vogel to write up a quick bio about himself, since he will be
posting to net.comics (via myself or Jerry). I'm very happy to have someone
who is actually in the comics field on the net (especially one as helpful as
Henry), and I thought a short bio would be a help to those unfamiliar with
Henry's involvement in comics (like moi).
His mailing address is at the bottom of the article, but if you have
problems mailing to it, I'll be happy to forward mail to him...
"I can tell a Moriarty when I see one. This crime is from
London, not America."
Expect the Unexpected.
He does. ---> Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.
UUCP:
{cornell,decvax,ihnp4,sdcsvax,tektronix,utcsri}!uw-beaver \
{allegra,gatech!sb1,hplabs!lbl-csam,decwrl!sun,ssc-vax} -- !fluke!moriarty
ARPA:
fluke!moriarty@uw-beaver.ARPA
==========================================================================
A LITTLE BIO INFO ON A REAL, SEMI-SORT-OF-ACTUAL-ALMOST COMICS PRO
Hi, I'm Henry Vogel and if you don't like this article, it was Jeff Meyer's
idea so blame him. As you may have guessed if you read my previous posting, I
write a comic called the Southern Knights. The Knights are a super-hero team
based in Atlanta (we bill them as the South's only resident team of super-
heroes). Onward...
I'm not exactly sure where to begin so bear with me if I ramble a bit. I'm
not someone who has been a comic fan all of his life. If I could have gotten
the things, I'm sure I would have been, but Clemson, SC had no place where
one could regularly find comics until 1975. By that time I was a freshman in
college. On a whim, I picked up Stan Lee's Origins of Marvel Comics and Son
of Origins at a local bookstore and then, after reading the books, convinced
them to begin carrying comic books. Fortunately, a newsstand run by a comic
reader openned soon after that and my supply problems were solved. For the
next six years I read comics and convinced several - including my future
wife - to give them a try (she became a comic fan, thank God - I'd hate to
have to try to justify the cost of comics to an unsympathetic wife).
In 1981, I returned to college and met David Willis. We tried to set up a
comic club at the college. It flopped but we got the idea of publishing our
own comic book out of it... A little advice to prospective comic writers and
publishers: do your best to make sure one of your one of your partners in
the venture is a good artist! I created and write the Southern Knights while
David helps with plot ideas and letters the book. Neither one of us can
draw. So we had to hire an artist and, quite frankly, anyone you hire will
not be as dedicated as some- one who has a large financial stake in the
book.
Looking back, I'm amazed we made it as far as we did. When we began I knew
absolutely nothing about writing comic books and there were times when our
art was not so hot, but enough people kept buying the book that we stayed
afloat. Our first major crisis occured the day the printer finshed printing
our first issue - it was called The Crusaders, then. We got a phone call
from the people at Archie concerning their title the Mighty Crusaders. They
were quite nice about it, but we suddenly had to change our title - just
after our first issue! While I think the Southern Knights is better title,
it took us over a month of frantic agonizing to come up with it (and even
then it was suggested by a friend of David's).
Since then, we've begun to actually get some attention from the comics
world. Don Thompson always gives us great reviews (but what else could one
expect from such a perceptive reviewer like Don). The Comics Journal hates
us (that's when I figured I must be doing something RIGHT) and Amazing
Heroes doesn't have much of an opinion either way on us. Of course, David
Kraft of Comics Inter- view, likes us - he'd better since he's our new
publisher!
There's lots I could say about the joys of publishing your own comic book -
and the pains, too - but I don't know exactly what you people might be
interested in reading (and this is getting rather long). If you have some
questions, just send them to me or post them on the net and I'll do my best
to answer them! Thanks!
Henry Vogel
henry%clemson.csnet@csnet-relay