Happy to Lose the Race to the Bottom

How many times has a client asked me, "I got a lower quote, would you like to beat it?"

I got the call today from a long time client. They have been truly wonderful for almost eight years, giving me lots of interesting T Shirt printing work and paying on time. It's been a productive, win-win relationship.

They have some new talent to promote, new shirts to print, and some new management in the mix. It's always tough to keep an account when management changes, but I always try.

I do not let my clients dictate the price at which I will work. I am selling quality and service, and I do not compete on price. Thus, every time I am asked to win the race to the bottom of the price barrell, I politely decline. That's what I did today.

There is nothing more corrosive to a small business operator like myself than trying to win the race to the bottom. If you win, you lose, because you will be pissed off as you work, to say the least, and when you account for all the extra time, materials, hassles and details of doing top quality work, you probably are LOSING MONEY on the low fee deal.

So, no thank you, I do not care to beat my competitor's price--or to let a client dictate the terms under which I do business. If a competitor wants to work that cheap, that is their problem. My condolences to them for winning the race to the bottom.

Cover Gallery

Greetings fellow humans. For the sheer heck of it, I have posted a gallery of comic book covers from my checkered career.
Kids, these are truly strange and wonderful comics books. In the course of creating them, my quest was frankly to establish what contact I could with the wholly other. And to rearrange the neurological furniture of the reader, natch.
Should you want to get ahold of any of these beauties, drop me an email.
love,
Steve

Cat Suit available as PDF file

I've posted a link to my new comic book Cat Suit as a PDF file on my website. Here's the web page with the PDF link:

http://www.stevelafler.net/lineart.htm

I couldn't be more pleased to give away my new story for free! More people will read it that way. Hell, it never hurt Jerry to give away all that free music, did it? It's not like he was all, "Boo Hoo, poor me, I'll never be a rich rock star this way!"

Hey, did I mention that Cat Suit is a bad ass great mo fo of a comic book? No? Trust me, it's fucking hilarious! Okay, be that way, go download that sucker and see for yourself.

And just in case you forgot, this Tuesday night April 17 is Manx Media night at the Press Club in Portland, 2621 SE Clinton St. at 7 pm. Chicago novelist Ben Tanzer will be reading from Lucky Man, and I will somehow contrive to perform the contents of Cat Suit.

Manx Media night at The Press Club

Readings from Steve Lafler's Cat Suit and Ben Tanzer's debut novel Lucky Man in Portland.

Chicago writer Ben Tanzer will read from his debut novel Lucky Man and cartoonist Steve Lafler reads from the first installment of Cat Suit at The Press Club (wine bar/café), 2621 SE Clinton St., on Tuesday, April 17^th at 7:00 p.m. Both books are published on Lafler’s Manx Media imprint.

In Cat Suit, cartoonist Lafler takes on the super hero myth for the first time in an Alternative/underground comics career that has seen the Dog Boy comic book series, Buzzard comics anthology, the Bughouse graphic novel trilogy and the recent 40 Hour Man.
Lafler asks, what kind of whack job would put on a skin-tight suit and head out into the city after midnight? What pathology, what perverse proclivity are we dealing with here? Is he fighting crime? Hell no, he’s just going clubbing—and he’s frankly perplexed when the bar flies & drunks want to pick a fight with him.

The guy is question is Manx, a costumed cat man. He can't figure it all out, so he goes to Dr. Grippo, a sultry lady shrink from Eastern Europe (a divorcee, she has a crush on Manx!)All heck breaks loose when Manx reveals to Dr. Grippo that he has fallen for Delia, a hottie he picks up on one of his late night excursions.

Lucky Man follows four friends from their final days of high school through their first couple of years out of college.
It is a story about friendship, growing-up and trying to move on. Interwoven throughout are explorations into dreams, the Twilight Zone, and The Greatest American Hero. There are drugs, road trips, breakdowns, violence, and adultery.

Ben Tanzer lives in Chicago where he shoots pool, dabbles in social work, compulsively watches High School Musical, and spends quality time with his wife and young sons. He has had work published in Rated Rookie, Clamor, Punk Planet, Abroad View, Opium, Thieves Jargon, The Truth Magazine, Third Coast Press, 20dissidents, and Caketrain.

Tanzer and Lafler will be on hand to sign books after the reading.

For further information send Steve an email.

Lafler & Beaupre on KPFA

On Monday April 2, I will be on KPFA 94.1 FM Berkeley at 3:00 p.m. talking with Denny Smithson on the Cover to Cover book show. Stephen Beaupre will be joining us by phone to chat about 40 Hour Man, which Mr. Beaupre wrote, and I drew.
You can listen live over the web at www.kpfa.org