A Visit to Huautla De Jimenez

My visiting father in law expressed interest in visiting Huautla de Jiminez, the remote mountain town in the northeast corner of Oaxaca famed for it's magic mushrooms. I've been living in Oaxaca for 2.5 years, and of course I'm well aware of Huautla and it's sacred mushroom rituals. I have been in no rush to get there and gobble down magic fungus, as I approach them with respect and a wee bit of caution these days. Past experience with them has generally been wonderful. I consider that the 'shrooms themselves have a sense of humor and important information for human beings. This being the case, I figured I'd get to Huautla when the time was right, no rush. David inquired as to whether we might visit Huautla, and my wife Serena offered to keep the home fires burning with the kids, so the adventure was set.

Early last Saturday morning we set out in the Toyota RAV4, headed north on the Cuota, the super highway toll road towards Mexico City. After about a couple hours, we exited and headed back south a few miles on local roads to a town called Teotitlan before turning east towards an imposing range of near mountains, climbing steeply from the valley floor.

I gulped when I saw these hills, as I noticed the ribbon/shelf of a roadway winding precariously up to the ridge. Yup, guess where we are headed! It was vertigo inspiring to say the least driving up out of the valley, but rewarding—once at the top, in the space of twenty meters, we traversed the ridge and were greeted with a splendid vista, ridge after ridge of rugged green hills bumping across the landscape to the east.

In the city of Oaxaca, we are at the start of the dry season; things are getting brown and dusty pretty quick. But after cresting the ridge out of the dry valley last Saturday, we were clearly in a more temperate zone. When I saw all the verdant mountains, I was hopeful that we might score some fresh mushrooms, even though we were going in the off season.

David and I chatted and listened to some Bluegrass as we negotiated more than an hour of tight curves up against sheer drops. We spied a verdant valley below spotted with houses around a small village, watched over by undulating peaks, some of which were planted, while the sides of some of the hills were terraced with farms.
At long last we rounded a bend and came into sight of Huautla de Jimenez, a sizeable town that looks like it was spilled out of a giant bucket down the side of a mountain, dripping into the valley below. Huatla itself is on the north side of a great bowl formed by a loosely connected ring of mountains, facing south and covered with green, a moist wonderland.

The town itself seemed to have been designed by a Mexican Dr. Seuss, narrow switchback streets bounding up hills, clogged with people, cars, market stalls and stores. We hoped to find one Ines Cortes, a curandera who is famous for conducting a sort of folk Catholic healing ceremony utilizing psychedelic mushrooms.

After a surreal few moments of asking directions, driving up and down impossible narrow, insanely steep streets, and being forced to back down at least one, we found the house that Ines and her husband live in. David exclaimed in wonder at my ability to drive under these conditions, and the amazing feat we performed by finding Ines in this rabbit warren of a town on a hillside. Me, I've learned that if you are just a bit patient in Mexico, everything happens in due course.

Ines' husband invited us in, the door was ajar and he was peeking out as if he was waiting for us. They rolled out the welcome mat with an easy grace. We discussed the prospects for a ceremony that day, only to find that no fresh mushrooms were available, as it was the off season. Ines offered us the opportunity to do the ritual with dried 'shrooms, but warned that we would not experience visions. We were game to give it a try.

The ceremony was set to begin that evening at 10 p.m., so David and I poked around Huautla and then took a siesta at Ines' house. We rested in the cozy ground floor room where the ritual would be held. Ines has a gorgeous improvised altar at one end of the room, festooned with every Mexican chotchke you could possibly imaging, with pictures of various versions of Christ, the saints, the virgin, and other mythical images and photos of people.

Ines and her husband had left David and I alone to their house while they tended to business, so after we awoke from our fiesta, we sat in the cozy room, with it's earthen floor, and chatted about anything and everything. There was a dull light and a candle burning as we talked, but suddenly the light went out. It seemed an auspicious moment, seeing that we were about to knock on the door of the unknown. Minutes later the candle burned out and we were left in near total darkness. We chatted more and noted that the whole adventure, the drive through amazing emerald territory and the plunge into darkness all seemed very surreal and psychedelic.

I took a walk to the roof, up on the third floor, to use the bathroom there. It was twilight and the fading green of the valley was subtle and stunning just the same. A half moon smiled from straight above and cast a shadow at my feet. Jupiter, Venus and Mars blinked from their corners of the sky and I watched in delight as twilight waned and the stars poked their heads out one by one. I felt relaxed, happy and ready for the ceremony.

Inis and her guy came back and jokingly asked what happened to the lights. David and I both wondered if they had turned them out on us for fun, a little test. They got the lights back on and Ines made ready to begin. She gathered a quantity of herbs and set them on her splendid altar, then lit an incense burner that was filled with copal.

She began praying and chanting in both Spanish and Mazateca, the local indigenous tongue. She blessed both of us by name and brushed us with herbal leaves.
The preliminary invocation done, she handed each of us a little bowl brimming with dried mushrooms and poured a small amount of water from our personal bottles over each, instructing us to eat them. I looked at the 'shrooms and thought, “Shit I'm in trouble, this is the biggest pile of 'shrooms I've ever seen!”. It reminded me of the time in Summer '79 when I finished the thick remains of a mushroom milkshake that I'd split with friends. My eagerness that day saw me on the up escalator a mere 15 minutes from ingestion, traveling too fast to the outer limits. David mumbled similar sentiments about the quantity, and I said, dude we just gotta go with it, trust Ines.

We ate 'em up, and they tasted pretty bad. I really wish she did not put the water on them, it sort of made them f-r-e-a-k-y nasty, I woulda done better if they were just dry!

Regardless, we got them down in good order and settled in to wait for the boost, the beckoning to almost literal other worlds, and the A-HA moment provided by mushrooms: “Oh yes, now I finally see, this is how it REALLY IS!!!!!!!!!!!! I always knew it, I just forgot! The knowledge of the ages under my big dumb nose the whole time, and I never noticed! Etc., etc.”

I could go on about time and simultaneity, and other matters the mushrooms have whispered cosmic joke about into my psyche, in the past, but I'll wait on it, that's for some future post.

Ines continued to chant, and gave way to improvised blessings, songs, and banter. To say she made us feel welcome and at ease is a huge understatement. Here is a women who well knows what the mushrooms reveal, and she offers them in the spirit of healing, calling them “little saints”.
David and I were content and affable as we waited, chatting and feeling profoundly relaxed.

At one moment in Ines' song, I felt a wiggle in my gut and stood up, approached the altar and stretched out my tall frame, reaching for the roof. A quick shimmer worked from my center to my top—I was knocking on the door to “the other”, ready to tumble in. But the inner light dimmed, and I lay back down to relax.

Ines reminded us again what she had said that afternoon, that we can't expect visions from dried mushrooms. I freely admit that David and I both hoped to trip out anyway, but alas it was not to be. Still, we went to sleep content, open and relaxed, having had a most interesting day and evening.

The following morning, our hosts served us a flavorful breakfast of local coffee and eggs with a mountain root vegetable folded into them, and hot tortillas.
We headed back to the city of Oaxaca perhaps slightly disappointed at not finding the fresh mushrooms, but I can guarantee you I will visit Ines again in the rainy season!

Food on the Road

Tuesday night. First day's drive over, somewhere in New Jersey. With the wind chill, it's bloody zero degrees out. I'm pumped to be setting out on my road trip to Oaxaca, but on my plate is -- nothing! So the task is to put something on my plate. The old boy's gotta take on some nourishment.

I leave my warm, slightly downmarket fifty nine dollar hotel room and hit the all American strip mall strip to see what might be the least offensive meal I can find.

I end up, of all places, at the local Applebee's. It's sort of a sports bar on steroids inside. The cute little Jersey gal who seats me has the most elaborate combo of mascara and eyeliner I've ever witnessed. She's overtly overly friendly, as per the Applebee's training videos, no doubt, but I just want to say, "How the hell did you get all that stuff on your eyelids?!". She shows me to a tiny high table with a tiny high stool, bares her teeth one last time and sprints away, spouting salutations as she goes.

Now I'm confronted with a high tech panorama of sports programming on six or seven enormous flat screen TV sets. A quick scan of my tiny round table turns up some sort of small digital box, giving me the ability to turn up the volume on the TV of my choice (each is tuned to a different station, of course). Football, basketball, ESPN, more ESPN, CNN, FOX "news", and more. I'm a bit tired from the road, trying to grok this new digital wrinkle, when my waitress arrives and begins pitching her script at me.

She is by degrees more earthy, warm and genuine than the amazing eyeliner/mascara hostess girl, in fact she's a sort of robust Amy Winehouse (only sober). My new best friend, she runs a dizzying sales pitch by me to drink and eat enough to stagger an adult rhino, and get it pretty drunk too. I plead with her for a few minutes to look the menu over.

Everything on the menu is bigger than my head. By a lot. I'm hungry, but fuck I'm only one guy! Allow me to insert a little aside here. I've been living in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico for a bit over two years. I might be biased, but I believe Oaxaca has the best food in Mexico. The plates are meticulously put together -- a lot of thought goes into creating the right combo of foods on your plate, complimentary items that enhance each other. They are beautifully served in portions that are filling but not overwhelming. The cost is such that you can always order more if you need to.

For example, take La Biznaga, a Oaxacan/fusion restaurant in central Oaxaca, about a half mile north of the zocalo (the town square). I like to order a salad that includes red leaf lettuce, a garnish of fresh seasonal veggies, and some grilled salmon. It's delicious and filling, but not overwhelming. Sometimes it's enough. If not, I can always order a Sopa Azteca to go with it, a tomato based tortilla soup with avocado in it that is truly delicious. It has a strong flavor of tomato and peppers, but still there are a bevy of delicate flavors competing for my attention. I'm no professional food writer, I'd be lost trying to identify the complicated flavors of the Sopa Azteca at La Biznaga. Every sip of the hearty soup is pleasing to the depths of my soul, no lie!

Back to Applebee's in New Jersey. Now, I know it's not fair to compare a chain restaurant/sports bar in the U.S. to a hipster, slightly upscale restaurant in Oaxaca. But I can't help it. I'm already doing it! Let us continue.

Amy Winehouse's sober sister comes back to take my order. I inquire, "Can I get this here spinach/shrimp salad without the bacon?" Her look says it all. She's thinking "Dude, with your skinny ass, I should double the bacon on this salad"! Since she is wicked nice, she does not say this. She will bring me the salad, but she is gonna leave the damn bacon on it. Fuck!

OK, so I can pull the bacon off. They bring the salad. It's actually really delicious. Que sabrosa! The shrimp is huge, plentiful, and grilled. It occurs to me that the fixation on serving piping hot food in the U.S. is a sort of fetish. I've been eating lots of lukewarm/room temperature foods in Oaxaca. OK, it seemed weird at first but it sort of grows on you. Now, I dig it. What the hell, maybe I've gone native.

Time to eat the shrimp/spinach salad! I put the bacon aside as I'm able. I'm sure I ate some. Yes I am a vegetarian, but I just thanked the immortal soul of the poor pig and probably ate a few morsels of his big butt.

This damn salad was still like five times the size of my cabeza (head)! I was ready to slide off my chair and take a long nap after eating the son of a bitch. So, sober and friendly Amy Winehouse returns, to offer this nugget of wisdom: "That wasn't very much food, you need coffee and a dessert!"

I didn't, but I tipped her twenty percent, so she would know that I loved her.

Burn Your Crotch

I was bummed to hear about the attempted airplane bombing in Detroit on Christmas Day. Not only is it a very, very bad idea in itself, to say the least, but it punches up the level of hysteria a notch or two.

Who needs it? I was flying just before Xmas, and the alert level was already "orange", whatever the hell that means.

So what is the deal with the suspect, a kid from Nigeria named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? He wanted to blow himself up, and take a plane load of people with him. This is seriously antisocial behavior. But he messed up! It did not work.
Me, I'm suspicious. This guy has an engineering degree from a top London school. Can't he make a damn bomb that works?! I'm thinking maybe he didn't really want to blow his sorry ass up after all.

But what then? Maybe Al Qaeda gets pissed at him. "What the fuck, Umar, why are you still alive? Since we can't trust you, maybe we should just lop your head off!"
So the kid needs a cover story. He's thinkin', "Yeah baby, I'm a bad ass engineer and I can blow shit up anytime I want, but, um, I don't want to die today. Or kill 300 other people either."

So he gets this great idea... "I'll fake it! Yeah!"
Umar Farouk slips into the mens, and like, defuses the bomb. But, he still wants to look cool to Al Qaeda, so he decides to set off the fuse anyway as if he was really gonna do the deed.

Umar is thinkin', "Yeah man, I'll just pull the fuse, and it will like, practically burn my dick off! But no one will get killed, and I will have still look like one bad ass terrorist!"
It works! Everyone thinks Umar Farouk is a real player, but down at Al Qaeda HQ, the brass is thinkin', "Dude, if you want to burn a dick, can't you just make it Dick Cheney???!!!?"

Peter Kuper's New Oaxaca Book

Peter Kuper, noted cartoonist and illustrator, has released his Diario De Oaxaca, his sketchbook journal of his two years in Oaxaca. This is a gorgeous compendium of accomplished drawings and sketches, visual reportage on the vibrant culture and natural beauty of Oaxaca.
Kuper also documents the popular uprising against the despot governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz in 2006, and the impunity with which the government killed more than twenty people, including American journalist Brad Will.
In a recent talk in Oaxaca, Kuper pointed out that the government is still stonewalling the facts of the Will case, lying through their corrupt teeth about it.
Diario De Oaxaca is available from PM Press.
It should also be in bookstores and comic shops for the Holiday season.

New Steve Lafler Store

I've just updated my online store. Featured items are 40 Hour Man, Self Employment for Bohemians, Bughouse, Tranny and the El Vocho T-Shirt. Now there's some unusual and wonderful items for Holiday shopping!
I will publish my next graphic novel El Vocho in 2010, then reissue my whole catalog of comics on my Manx Media imprint, and it will all end up in the store.

Judging of Peers

To be free, don't waste your energy and intent judging others.
Likewise, don't attach their judgments of you to your energy and intent.

Wednesdays are for New Comics

I've posted roughly half of my next graphic novel El Vocho, and will keep posting until the book is done. I just hatched a plan to post each Wednesday, trying to impose some semblance of a schedule on this thing.
Hey, today is Wednesday! I just posted El Vocho episode #35.

El Vocho T-Shirt

You may or may not know that I'm posting my next graphic novel, El Vocho, in blog form as I work on it. I've posted 34 episodes so far, about 50 pages worth of comics.
I just created an El Vocho T-Shirt that is available from Cafe Press. Vocho is the knickname for the VW Bug in Mexico, pronounced "Bocho", with a sort of soft B.

Publishing: Book Trade vs. Print on Demand

Here is an interesting side note on my book publishing activities.
In 2006, I published 40 Hour Man, written by Stephen Beaupre and drawn by myself. We pressed about 1400 copies. To date about 800 have been sold. I worked hard to promote it, sending out 100 press copies, traveling to to the San Diego Comic Con, the Bay Area, Chicago and NYC. I did seven or eight radio interviews and left no stone unturned. The book was distributed by a book trade distributor. To date, it has not broken even. I'm pleased that it sold as much as it did, but would like it to sell more.
This week, I published Self Employment For Bohemians as a print on demand title. No traveling, no promo copies, no print run. Just viral marketing and manufacturing on a per order basis by a reputable POD house. So far one book has sold. I realize a profit of about three bucks plus from this. So the book is in the black.
Draw your own conclusions!

Self Employment For Bohemians: The Book

I've compiled a collection of the most pertinent and pithy entries on this blog and published it as a book. Part entrepreneurial primer and part swashbuckling memoir with lots of hilarious anecdotes, Self Employment For Bohemians is available for $12.00 plus shipping.
The book offers a lot of nut & bolts advice for freelancers, wound up with tales of my adventures in cartooning, publishing and running a wholesale custom T Shirt shop.
Just like the header on this blog says, if having a regular 9 to 5 job is your idea of a living death, this is the book for you!

El Vocho updates

Today is the fourth day in a row that I'm posted new comics to my El Vocho blog. El Vocho is the name of my upcoming graphic novel, a love story/thriller with a green energy angle. I've been previewing the book on the blog to see if I can't generate a little buzz for it before the print version appears next year. I hadn't posted new material for a few months, as I've been more focused on production than posting.
Earlier this week I had a little fire set under my butt by the great comics news site Comics Reporter -- two days in a row, CR posted links and info to El Vocho and my traffic spiked. The standard blog wisdom would be that you build audience by posting new material on a regular basis. So there you have it.

Foilhead Fashionista

Two people have emailed me since yesterday regarding the appearance of a funny hat in New York during fashion week on a male model. The hat, from designer Thom Browne, looks just like the foil hood that my character Gerald Forge wore in my college comic strip, Aluminum Foil.
Gerald appeared with his side kick Benb for four years in the Massachusetts Daily Collegain. The strip was so popular in it's hey day in the late Seventies that the foil hat became the default Halloween costume for the tripping masses at UMass (yup, the late 70s saw Halloween become a three day psychedelic bacchanal at the UMass, Amherst campus).
Was Thom Browne even alive then?! Who knows. But I got a huge kick out of seeing Gerald's doppleganger on the runway. The only thing missing was a GIANT DOOBIE OF STINKY BUD!

Conservative Dopes Duped Again! Anti-Healthcare March

I quote from "internews UK" as follows:

Thousands of people have marched across Washington DC in protest against government spending and president Barack Obama's healthcare reforms.

The protest on Saturday stretched for blocks across the US capital, bringing together a number of groups organised by the conservative Freedom Works Foundation.

So, what is the "Freedom Works Foundation"? A buncha lobbyists funded by big biz? Something along those lines no doubt. Once again, regular folks who identify as "conservative" have been duped by lobbyists and big business to do their dirty work for them. This reminds me of the masses of working class and lower middle class folks who went over to the dark side to vote for Ronald Reagan. They were fooled into identifying with the ruling elites, cloaked in the myth of the "rugged individual". These regular folks voted conservative, against their best interests as the rich plunder the treasury with tax give away legislation, military spending and other programs that help the rich and leave the rest of the population scrambling for health care, jobs, housing, education and the basic services that a just government should foster.
You can't fool all the people all the time, but man it's sad to see regular working folks played for suckers by slick rich vampire lobbyists and entrenched fat cat scumbags who have not worked an honest day in their life. Sure, the fat cats work hard, but it's all about beating the life blood out of the masses.

You Can't Do That

One of my favorite early Beatles numbers is “You Can't Do That”, a splendid burst of churning guitars (it's as if the Talking Heads based their first two albums on this one song!) wherein John Lennon lets loose with a snarling, jealous diatribe at a girl who entertains other suiters besides him. It's an almost perfect Rock & Roll song—short, to the point, emotionally potent, if not a bit too angry. The two guitars interweave so as to enhance and bring to a boil the tension the narrator feels. George never really takes a formal solo so much as he pitches the rhythm to the bursting point, giving vent to the Lennon's frustrated, angry young man.

You Can't Do That. It's a great four words, a message we've all given or received, to and from family, friends, co-workers, lovers and enemies. Often it's not spoken, but implied in a million subtle and not so subtle ways.

About a year ago, I started playing guitar in earnest after occasionally noodling around it with for almost 30 years. I'd owned a couple, played friends guitars, even sat in with buddies for some atonal plucking, but I'd never really dug in and applied myself before.

As a career cartoonist, I've devoted most spare moments of my life to slapping ink on paper with passion and gusto. I've put out plenty of comic books and graphic novels and gained a certain notoriety. All my life it's been pretty clear to me that I came to the planet to write and draw comics. However, due to a confluence of forces, I was utterly compelled last year at the age of 51 to embrace singing and playing in earnest.

I've been playing in a “Oaxacabilly” band of expats here in Oaxaca. We get together Thursday nights and play country, blues, rockabilly, rock & roll and yes some sappy pop ballads too. The biggest fun for me is singing and playing my own tunes, of which I've written a few. The words come easy for me, the chords I just grab from basic blues and country blues progressions.

Which brings us back to You Can't Do That. I'm intensely naïve and the king of the faux paux to boot. So it was surprising to me that my friends and family, among others, have less than no interest in hearing me caterwaul and hack away at the guitar! Who woulda thought?! And so it is that I realize, here I am, just another mid-career indie cartoonist with a musical penchant, doomed to croon away in my garage. Well, there is the Thursday night band, and the fact that I'm having an insane amount of fun with this music stuff. All in all, I can't complain, but I have learned my lesson—I ain't gonna go outa my way to make anyone listen to my tunes! Except of course, anyone reading this blog can go ahead and play the video to Ballad of the Bug by clicking on the link here, and heading over to You Tube for a listen. It's a song I wrote with my pal Todd Spiehler, and hell I think it's good--but I would, wouldn't I?

40 Hour Man: The Afterlife of a Graphic Novel

I'll start this post with the hard sell, my 2006 graphic novel 40 Hour Man (actually drawn by me, written by my genius buddy Stephen Beaupre), is available as a Print on Demand book for a bit under eleven bucks on Lulu. The link here will take you to the buy page. It is also available as a FREE download.
Here is a quick description of 40 Hour Man: Is it a career, or a series of really lame jobs? Stephen Beaupre (author) and Steve Lafler (cartoonist) pose this timeless question in Forty Hour Man, a hilarious saga of one working stiff's three-decade journey into the minimum wage heart of the American Dream. It's all here - from scrubbing a steakhouse floor with a toothbrush to going bust in the Internet boom. Every bad boss. Every crazy co-worker. All the more shocking because it's true!

The availability of this title via Lulu is the latest development in the life of a small press title in the post print era. I'll briefly outline the trajectory of it's distribution, it's an object lesson in the difficulty of being a print guy like me in the post print era.
First, I tried to get 40 Hour Man listed in the Diamond Comics catalog. Diamond said no, the book was "not visual enough". Strange, as every book I've put out since the mid 80s has been sold through Diamond. And, every graphic novel I've put out has exceeded Diamond's sales minimums. Go figure, but Diamond is trying to pare down the amount of stuff in the catalog, and is run by bean counters (this is the nicest thing I can say about the company as a whole, but I do appreciate how much of my output they have moved in the past).
I got a break of sorts when the book was well reviewed in Booklist, the American Library Association's review rag, and another when it was picked up by book trade distributor Biblio (a sort of junior varsity book trade distrib). This combo of breaks added up nicely, with 3 - 400 units moved, many to libraries. Through a variety of marketing ploys, I was able to move another couple hundred units.

Sadly, Biblio was not doing well and was bought out by Atlas Books, the distribution arm of vanity press printing giant Bookmasters. Bookmasters is the type of company that looks good on the surface to a small publisher, they can handle production, printing and distribution under one roof, and are well organized. However, they are not really in the book distribution business; they are really in the business of squeezing every damn cent they can out of the small publisher. I'd say they are corporate predators, looking to nickel and dime unsuspecting green publishers with odious charges for every thing they can think of. Their warehouse staff does not cut a fart without charging you 40 cents for every book you have warehoused with them. In short, Atlas/Bookmasters SUCKS.

OK, so I cut and run from being distributed by Atlas. So where does this leave a fine title like 40 Hour Man? Enter Lulu.com, a decent POD outfit. The Print on Demand field is getting crowded, and like Atlas, many of these firms charge high fees for services rendered. I like Lulu, as I can still make a buck and get a good quality book out there.
I like offering the free download, it just makes sense. Hell, the Grateful Dead let the tapers set up to record every show, and got rich and famous. With the print version of 40 Hour Man, I'm adding a $1.00 fee to production cost for me. Mr Beaupre and I both put a fair amount of coin into bringing this title to the public, maybe we can get enough back to buy ourselves a pizza some day!

Six Days on the Road

"Six Days on the Road and I'm gonna make it home tonight", the opening line from a really cool song. I like the Taj Mahal version, just a rippin' blues reading of a great road/trucker song. Been trying to learn how to play it, a basic blues in E really, shouldn't be too hard, but how to lay down the rhythm?
I start with that country blues twang and before you know it, you're chuggin' full tilt Texas blues boogie style, and it tends to get away from me. Played it with my pals the Bodega Boys a couple months back on a night when we actually had bass and percussion in the house (well, on the patio by the Bodega anyhow), and I slammed that Texas boogie rhythm style pretty good 'cause the bass and percussion guys were doing all the counting, I could just rip without thinkin' too much. Later on, in the comfort of my own garage, I couldn't keep a lid on it without the bass & percussion team putting down that bedrock to jam on.
Anyhow, the wife, kids and I just logged 2705 miles in six days, driving from the city of Oaxaca to Santa Rosa, CA. That last day was a bear, close to 800 miles from Phoenix to Santa Rosa. I just kept humming that tune, "Six Days on the road and we're gonna make it home tonight". Done!
The heart of the journey was highway 15 from the heart of Mexico, cutting across the state of Michuacan, gorgeous & green in the Mexican rainy season, up the west coast by Mazatlan then past Guaymas and Hermosillo to cross into the US at Nogales. We made good time cause the kids stayed happy. Max, almost 8, is a good traveler, but Genevieve (almost 4) is a screamer! But she came through this time, her bubbly effervescent joy intact. We found three hotels with pools on the way and threw in a lunch on the beach in Mazatlan.
Sure, we had to bribe a cop in Mexico city and we saw hundreds of sullen looking Mexican soldiers in troop transports heading towards Guadalajara, but overall it was an upbeat trip.
Again, that last day was a butt buster, but we had to finish the trip; otherwise I could not, in all honesty, have been crooning the "six days" tune all that last day!

Hellbilly Steve

Hey, it's true, I just haven't been posting stuff here lately. Why the hell not, ya lazy bum? Truth is, I am hard at work on EL VOCHO, my next graphic novel, and I'm not paying attention to much else... EXCEPT MUSIC!
I've gone to Oaxacabilly Hell and I love it. This video is but a hint, hell we made it on a Monday during daylight hours fer chrissakes, next one I promise we'll make in the wee hours after a shot of Mezcal... but anyhow, you get the idea.

Lucky Man available on Lulu

A couple years back I published a great debut novel by Ben Tanzer on my Manx Media imprint called Lucky Man.
The book did well and garnered some sterling notices out of the gate, and I was able to place it with a half decent book trade distributor, Biblio. This distrib went under, sad to say, and was eaten by an unscrupulous vanity house that really sucks (Atlas Books/Bookmasters... avoid like the plague!!!).
This rendered Lucky Man unavailable.
I'm happy to say that Lucky Man is now available on Lulu.com in a revised edition with a new version of the cover for $16.00.
It's a gripping coming of age novel with a finely drawn ensemble of characters than Tanzer visions in his own unique voice, of course I highly recommend it!

Lucky Man, ISBN 978-0-9769690-3-7

BugHouse Graphic Novel at Daedalus

My best known graphic novel, Bughouse, has become available from Daedalus books for the incredibly low price of one buck. Bughouse was published in a variety of formats -- the strip first appeared in my long running comics anthology Buzzard. Feeling the groove with the material, I began publishing Bughouse as it's own comic book in '94 and it ran for six issues before I collected it all as a graphic novel in October '96, under my old Cat-Head Comics imprint. The burst of creative energy I hooked into with this material was downright thrilling.
Top Shelf partner and all around comics enthusiast Brett Warnock suggested an expanded edition, and they published it in the summer of 2000. Top Shelf went on to publish a trilogy of Bughouse titles with Baja in 2002 and Scalawag in 2005.
Rather than write a new description of the book, I'm gonna quote from the Daedalus blurb, as they got it right:

In this first novel from the Bughouse series, Jimmy Watts turns from a wiseacre Catholic school kid into a gifted saxophone player. He pulls together a band with his friend Slim, elopes with a sexy bug named Julie, and tries to find inspiration while going on and off the bug juice. Populating his graphic novel series with anthropomorphic insects, Steve Lafler tells the story of the jazz band Bughouse, playing in a Manhattanesque setting in the early 1950s. Junkie musicians, crooked cops, and double crosses are all part of this "insect noir" ensemble piece. Tenor saxophone maestro Jimmy Watts leads his talented band of bugs from the swing era into the uncharted maelstrom of Bop, looking for a new sound while fighting the temptation to be consumed by addiction to a substance known as bug juice. "I love Bughouse. I'm fond of the little bug-creatures that inhabit it," said Phoebe Gloeckner, creator of A Child's Life. "Steve Laffner has created an alternate universe. His insect characters are not particularly cute (well, some of them are), but one can easily empathize with their meaty human struggles with addiction, ambition, love, power, greed, and lust."

Okay, so they spelled my name wrong in there, I must admit to getting a kick out of that.
In any case, this here is a chance to pick up my signature book for nothing. I'll admit that it does not please me that the book has suffered such an ignoble fate, but it's just not something to take personally.
Top Shelf publishes a lot of stuff, and has the resources to promote only a small fraction of the titles they publish. The book biz itself is facing what some call "The death of print", so it's a tough market and has been for awhile, even with all the talk of the graphic novel being the dynamic growth genre. Certainly Top Shelf put forth good faith efforts to sell my book, it's just that the serious promo was reserved for the Craig Thompson, Jeffrey Brown, James Kolchaka and Alan Moore books.
My contract with Top Shelf actually expires this June. It was a pleasure to work with these guys and put out a trilogy of books. However, come June, I am free to market and package my Bughouse material anew as I see fit. I'll be sure to blab about any Bughouse developments here in this blog as they happen.

One Magic Night at the Mezcal Still

When I moved to the city of Oaxaca some 19 months ago, if you told me I was gonna to hang out on Thursday nights with a motley assortment of ex-pats playing bluegrass, country blues, old timey and rock & roll, I'd have been dumbstruck. For one thing, as a very casual guitar player of many years, I'd have told you I simply don't have the chops for it. Well, these fine fellows, also known as the Bodega Boys, are not only indulgent of aspiring musicians, but some of the guys are fine teachers to boot. So it is that I find myself many a Thursday evening by Tony's (Don Antonio's) bodega in San Pablo Etla, a village a few miles out of Oaxaca city, with my near vintage Epiphone guitar in hand, ready to pick, grin and party with the Bodega Boys.

I don't think I can describe the Bodega Boys any better than they can describe themselves, so here I respectfully quote from their myspace page as follows:
The Bodega Boys define all styles, yet are no styles. From Johnny Cash to Bob Dylan, The Beatles to Bluegrass, Hillbilly to Hellbilly, The 50's to the 70's, Acoustic to Electric, The Bodega Boys go where no cumbia, mariachi, or trova group dare. The Bodega Boys line up is continually changing and the set list will forever be a work in progress. On most nights the line up includes Don Antonio as "Toby Juan Adobe" on Vocals, Guitar or Mandolin, Johnny Rico as "The Playboy" on Guitar, Mandolin or Harmonica, Dengue John as "Alpine Elvis" on Fat Bertha the Bass and Washtub Bass Hall Of Famer, Mr. Bill Blackson as "Black Bill" thumpin' along on the one string. These days you may also find swingin' Bodega Boy Mississippi-Boston-Berkeley Brian as "The Hammer", UK Chet MATT-kins CGP on the 6120, Jazzy Jeff as "Jefe Jeffe" and Esteve as "The Red Headed Boy".

All I really need to add is that these guys are called the Bodega Boys because they play under the stars at Don Antonio's Bodega, that is to say his storage shed/workshop, which is on his fantastic country estate that includes a Bed & Breakfast guest house. Come Thursdays, the Boys set up on the patio in front of the Bodega and have a go at it.

Understand, this is all a prelude to my description of last weeks session. Instead of a regular evening of music by the bodega, Don Antonio had something more amazing yet up his sleeve. You see, less than 100 meters from the bodega, up a winding path, is the site of his Mezcal distillery. Mezcal is a distilled spirit made from agave (a.k.a. maguey) cactus. It's production and consumption is principally associated with Oaxaca. Smokey, smooth and sweet, it is not to be confused with Tequila, which is made only from Blue Agave. There are many variants of Mezcal, depending on the agave used, and of course on the distillery and the skills of those involved.

Just before this particular Thursday evening, Don Antonio sent a message to the Bodega Boys that he would be transforming Shi Shi to Mezcal, and advised that it would be a magical event. Now I'm the farthest thing from an expert on the distillation process, but I believe that he was referring to the third and final round of distillation that creates his top grade of mezcal.
I arrived fairly early in the evening to find the maestro at work with only one other observer at the still. Don Antonio actually has two stills, one the standard Kentucky/Tennessee metal barrel still, and the other a classic ceramic Oaxacan still. Each set up was slowly dripping hot mezcal, perhaps a quart every thirty minutes or so.

As the Shi Shi goes through the stills and comes out as mezcal, Don Antonio collects it in large glass jugs then transfers it to smaller bottles. He runs a test on each bottle for it's alcohol content and marks it with the pertinent information.
Within minutes of arriving, I'm offered a jicara (a small cup made from a gourd) with a taste of the latest bottling. It's hot and sweet, different from any mezcal I've tasted, slightly sour instead of smokey. It reminds me of hot sake while being something completely different—it's delicious, seductive and very much to my taste. Don Antonio checks the alcohol content of the bottling and it's 46%. Asked to guess at the content, I'd guessed 30 - 35%, as it's so smooth. Wrong!

Over the next half hour, the Bodega Boys and several friends trickle in to the site of the still, in jovial spirits. For many it's the first time visiting an active distillery—all us first timers are very curious about the project. Don Antonio is a great host, somehow managing to explain bits of mezcal and distillation lore and history to the assembled company while staying completely focused on the task at hand: running two stills simultaneously. Some of the Bodega Boys, such as Dengue John, Johny Rico and Jefe Jeff, are old hands at this and they pitch in, assisting with both the chores and explanations.

All the while, our gracious host is passing samples around from various stages of the days work. Needless to say, an early bottling of more than fifty percent alcohol is popular and draws enthusiastic comments.
Small jicaras are passes around with hot fresh mezcal, but the real treat is the communal jicara. Don Antonio fills a large jicara with a good six or seven shots of mezcal and instructs the assembled to pass it around. Some have a sip, break out in a big smile and pass it, while others thoughtfully linger over it for a bit.
Me, I'm driving a good ten miles back from the campo to my house in Oaxaca city later in the evening, so I stick to the odd sip of the latest batch rather than downing shots. It is easy to lose count, and the mezcal works it's magic on me to some degree. Ultimately I keep a grip on my consumption and wits so I'm able to make it home safe and in good order... but not before strapping on my Epiphone for a few tunes with the Bodega Boys!

Somehow or other, in the cramped space around the two stills, we squeeze in Don Antonio, Johnny Rico and myself on guitar, a visitor named Garth on mandolin, Dengue John on stand up bass with Bill Black and Jefe Jeff ringing the proceedings with the two wash tub bass attack. Despite working and sampling all day, Don Antonio tunefully croons some of his favorites and handles his vintage Guild guitar with aplomb, notably Folsom Prison Blues and They're Gonna Put Me in The Movies. He never misses with his signature song, The Ballad of Thunder Road, about Appalachian bootleggers. It's a rollicking tragic country romp of a tune, immortalized in a noirish Fifties movie starring bad boy Robert Mitchum. Clearly, Don Antonio loves this tune and relates to the renegade bootleggers that it chronicles.
The boys roll out two or three tunes at a crack then refocus on the matter at hand: Fresh hot mezcal! After all, we can make music any Thursday night, tonight is about creating a different flavor of magic.

Bored? Try This at Home.

This illustration of straightforward seduction will appear in the next installment of my ongoing web comic El Vocho.

Copyright 2009 Steve Lafler

El Vocho Marches On

Last spring, I started posting a graphic novel in progress, El Vocho, as a blog. The premise is that art boy meets science girl, they come out swingin' but fall in love. Along the way, the pair collaborates on the ultimate clean/green energy engine that runs on - you guessed it - air!

I thought I'd post the latest entry here also, to bring a bit more attention to El Vocho, but I also wanted to display it here because I drew a truly wacky thingamajig in the last panel. It is, ostensibly, an art piece by my character Eddie, but in truth, it shows that I was a big fan of both Dr. Seuss and Jack Kirby as a kid. I hope you enjoy this.







©2009 Steve Lafler, all rights reserved.

T-Shirts 2009: Organic, Bamboo & Hemp

T-Shirt season is just around the corner, and I've updated my offerings for custom wholesale screen printed Tees.
Check the Manx Media website for catalog links to Organic, Bamboo and Hemp T-Shirts from Onno Textiles, and of course there are plenty of Organic choices from American Apparel. I can source these shirts for any screen print job, along with the usual old school cotton Tees.
The Onno Textiles shirts are super nice, but a bit pricey. The American Apparel stuff is, of course, a fitted look for the young & beautiful (young & geeky?) and is priced just a bit more than their regular Tees.

With the Obama era here, and calls from all quarters for clean & green industry, I'm starting with baby steps in that direction with my screen print business. I should note that many jobs, especially on white or light color shirts, can be printed with water base ink that is somewhat cleaner/greener than plastic based inks.

By the way, that's a picture of my son Max, it's an American Apparel T, not organic, but I just felt like stickin' a pic in with this post! It's from our small but gorgeous back yard when we lived in Oakland.

The King is Dead, Farewell Lux Interior

Just heard the sad news that Lux Interior, singer for the Cramps, has died of an existing heart ailment.
If rock and roll ever had a king, Lux was the man. L-U-X was another spelling for the word FUN. This man rocked. He defined psychobilly to it's core. He was bad ass and very, very funny. We'll never see another like him.
All I can add right now, the most fun I ever had in my life was my first Cramps show, at the Warfield in San Francisco, on the Summer Solstice in 1990.
Lux strode onto stage in his patent leather jump suit and black high heel pumps and announced, "I heard there were some BAAAAAAAAAAAD people her tonight!".
What followed was not a rock and roll show, but a full on pagan bacchanal, just a shit-kicking affirmation of life in all it's punk rock, hillbilly glory.
I jumped into the pit and lost my mind in an ecstatic, cathartic rumble. I lost my car keys and bruised my arm. Who cares? Maybe I was aided by a couple shots of Jack, but hell it was Lux, Ivy, Nick Knox and Candy Del Mar rippin' the joint.
Fare thee well, Lux, I'll miss you big time.
My condolences to Ivy and family. Ivy you are, hands down, one of the finest guitar players on the planet.

Marketing for the Self Employed (an update)

Make the Phone Ring

Okay, you work for yourself providing a product or service. You need the phone to ring. You need queries about your product or service in your email in box. You need a clientèle.

Cover your Bets.
I started the Oakland, California version of my T-Shirt printing service in the spring of ’87. For seven out of the next ten years, I maintained a part time job to insure that I could make ends meet. It took time to build a clientèle that could support me. Chances are, you are jumping into self employment with minimal capitalization, so it’s incumbent upon you to insure some level of income.

Marketing plans & scams
It has been my experience that intuition supplies one with plenty of ideas about how to attract potential customers. When I started freelancing t-shirt printing as an undergraduate, I simply copied up fliers (a.k.a handbills) a couple hundred at a time and papered the bulletin boards of the University of Massachusetts campus with them (and the phone poles, and just about any other surface I could drive a staple into). It was cheap and it worked. I lived for years off of my staple gun. I mean staple guns; actually wore a few out. I took care to design fliers that communicated my message in clear simple terms, including the command “Call Steve for a quote”.

A few years back I gave up the fliers method for a couple reasons. First, there were fewer places to hang fliers. As fliers became a more popular marketing technique, they caused more trash everywhere. Cities, universities and what not became smart about eliminating places where lots of messy handbills could be posted. When I started the biz in Oakland in the spring of ’87, I was the only screen printer posting fliers on the UC Berkeley campus. It brought me a ton of business from dorms, frats, clubs, sororities and the like. Within a year, five or six screen printers started a literal wall papering of campus with fliers like mine. I had to hang twice as many to get half the jobs, and it became a low ball market. Who wants to work cheap? Not me! I’ll also mention that it had become a pain in the ass to truck all over town hanging handbills. It just ain’t that much fun. Occasionally, someone would give me a hard time for trashing up their neighborhood, and who can blame them?

From the very start, I also used what has been my number one selling tool, direct mail postcards. Again, I’ve always taken care to craft a postcard that delivers a clear message: “I do high quality custom T printing at reasonable rates, call me up right now for a quote” was the gist of it. I have usually generated my own mailing lists from local weekly newspapers (go after the advertisers and event listers), the local “business to business” yellow pages, the regular yellow pages, and directories from this industry or that. Collect addresses of companies or organizations who you would like to do business with. I’ve also bought mailing lists from data base compilers… my experience is that these lists don’t produce calls or email queries as well as lists you produce yourself.

Therefore I recommend crafting a postcard that hammers you message home, creating a mailing list and sending those suckers out. Wait two or three weeks and mail it again. Do another version of the card and mail that to the same list a few times. Advertising is a process, not an event. You have to repeat it. Keep your message consistent and it will sink in.

You can target lists at specific industries or categories. You can offer special prices at your slow times. Hone your message and drive it home. It works. Be patient.
Another marketing tool I’ve used from the start is advertising in weekly or university newspapers. You can do a classified or small display ad. It’s expensive and slow to work, so be realistic in your expectations for response. I have done campaigns with small display ads in a local tabloid. The response is not great, but it keeps my name and logo consistently in front of a focused audience. With newspaper ads (and print ads in general), be sure to budget enough to run the ad at least five or six times. Again, advertising is a process, not an event. I’m investing 3-4% of my profits consistently into advertising and marketing expenses. Often higher. Do remember to continue marketing when you are busy and flush with success. You don’t want to find yourself low on cash, with no work and no prospects one fine day, only to realize you’ve done no marketing for 21 months.
At the beginning of my career, I used classified ads in weeklies and college papers with a measure of success. These days, craigslist and other online listing sites have taken over the classified function. It's a good way to generate leads and interest, but be aware that it serves a lowball market, you will hear from price shoppers who may not be thinking about quality or service (yet!).

Your intuition will inform you of methods to reach your potential clientèle. I’m a cartoonist who has always been in love with print media. I naturally think of marketing solutions that involve print in one form or another. In this era of digital media, a 21 or 22 year old entrepreneur is going to think of digital based, web based, or maybe blog based ways of communicating their message. Without working too much at digital marketing, I’d say that most my business communication is via email in any case, that’s just the norm in today’s climate of commerce.

Google Ad Words
I've experimented with Google Ad Words as a marketing tool. It delivers a lot of requests for quotes. I have gained some new clients from Ad Words. I recommend a cautious approach to Ad Words, it's easy to spend a lot of money fast with. Start slow with a small budget. Experiment with the wording of your ad and track results. I used Ad Words when I lived in Portland, Oregon form 2005 to 2007. I kept my campaigns focused on the Portland market, as people there are very big on buying local. I had budgeted for a six month newspaper ad campaign in the local weekly Willamette Week when I moved to Portland. I believed it was a good way to introduce my service and message to that community. I sunk several thousand dollars into this campaign. I did get several clients from the campaign, but in retrospect it was clear to me that the money would have been much better spent on a carefully crafted, Portland focused Ad Words campaign.

Over a six month period, I'd invested more than $600.00 per month in a small display ad in Willamette Week. It was a relatively successful campaign in that I averaged perhaps five quote requests per week. However, when I switched my ad budget to Ad Words, a slightly smaller budget got me four times the quote requests! You can see that small business ad dollars may be more effectively spent on new media than old school print media. The funny thing, I've been a print guy all my life, I have ink for blood. But I can't argue with results, and Ad Words kicked ass on Willamette Week!

One caveat, I noticed that the responders to Ad Words were more likely to be looking for a low ball price. The people who responded to my Willamette Week ad had likely seen my clever ad and logo for weeks, and came in for a quote with the confidence that I was a quality shop that would do right by them. I am not a low ball shop, I am selling quality and service and I do not compete on price. I have no interest in working cheap, in “winning the race to the bottom” as I call it. Thus, the Ad Words responders might have been less likely to actually do business with me.

In the long run, the most effective on line marketing would be to create a weekly blog pitch or news letter, and build a list to send it to. People could sign up for your news letter at your website or blog. It would be labor intensive but cost little. It's always been my experience that elbow grease works better in marketing than throwing money at the problem.

There is no right way or wrong way to get the word out about the wonderful gift you are ready to offer for a fee, there is simply the truth that you need to consistently put your message across. If something doesn’t work, dump it and move on.

By the way, as usual, I’ll tell you I’m no huge expert on this. Just sharing what works for me, and a bit of the thinking behind it. I might even recommend looking into some of those books on guerrilla marketing. Do a web search or something. No doubt here are a million people on the web selling marketing schemes. Look out for snake oil salesmen!
Finally, I’ll mention that from time to time I’ve done a campaign of ads, mailers or whatnot that utterly failed to garner even one phone call. Hey, at least it was tax deductible!

What Really Works?

I’ve been running the current version of my business for twenty years. With all the marketing that I do, at least two thirds of new accounts come from recommendations. So the moral of the story is do quality work, be friendly and deliver a solid value. Never give up! Soldier on and do your best.

Just for fun, I thought I'd make a list of how some of my clients came to me:

Sarah's Science, summer science camps for kids and after school science education. Recommended by a friend and colleague in the design/illustration community. Sarah Shaffer, proprietor, is as close to a soul mate as I'll ever find in a client. I do illustration for her too, and we are clearly both from planet bug. Or is that planet slug?

David Boyer Designs, successful designer of Hippy tourist shirts in the San Francisco market. I was already friends with Mr. Boyer, via a mutual cartoonist friend. We've done shirts together since '94 and are still going strong. We owe it all to rich tourists and Jerry Garcia. Thanks Jerry! Goddammit, what I would not give to see you walk onto stage just one more time, Tiger in hand, to rock my soul.

The Residents, legendary San Francisco purveyors of music and satire. Their merchandise person saw my flier in Berkeley on her street! She did not know I'd been a fan for 15 years. When she quit, another merch guy took over and I figured the party was over after five great years of printing eyeball shirts. But no, this new dude, name of Dren, started Astropitch; we went another four years and did massive piles and piles of shirts for such acts as Peaches, Chix on Speed, and Anticon along with many more fantastic shirts for the Residents. Dren then bought his own T Shirt press and took production in house, oh man poor guy I would not wish that on anybody but myself!!!!!!!!

Margaret Cho, brilliant comedian. Fellow cartoonist Adrian Tomine designed a T Shirt for Margaret, and recommended me to her manager for T shirt printing. I did Margaret's shirts from '99 to 2007. She runs a great organization. Honest, efficient and soulful. A real sweetheart, and one bad ass trash talking hot mama. I never saw any entertainer sell shirts faster than Margaret when she was on a roll, her fans are nuts for her. Nothing but fun. Wish I still had the gig, but management changed and I was out.

Apple Computer, I was hired by the chief engineer of a key hardware project to do a shirt for Apple. He was one of my pot smoking buddies from freshman year of high school! Only did one shirt for Apple, as he soon left for another silicon valley company. I got to design it too, did a cool cartoon illustration for the project.

Sony Music Distribution. Shirt & Illustration jobs for Screaming Trees, Alice In Chains, Mike Watt, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash and many others. A Sony Music promo guy, Big Tim, was my flat mate in Oakland, he fed me great jobs for years. Here was an exemplary human being who truly wanted to help just about everyone he met, and it was my immense good fortune to know him.

EMU Cultural Forum. This campus organization at the University of Oregon was responsible for putting on concerts on campus. I did shirts for the security and staff for many shows, including Frank Zappa, The Ramones, Iggy Pop, The English Beat, Bill Cosby, Willie Nelson, The Beach Boys, Kenny Loggins and many more. I wrote them a passionate sales letter about how I would go the extra mile for them, and then some. It worked, and it was huge fun early in my “career”.

SFJCC. San Francisco Jewish Community Center. I cold called them on the phone when I was broke in the spring of '87 to see if I could print some of their summer camp or recreation T Shirts. I hooked up with Jefrie Palmer, a great guy, and produced piles of shirts for them over a twenty year period.

OCCB and Bulldog Coffee Shop. From 1996 to 2005, I printed shirts for a variety of Oakland based medical marijuana providers. I was recommended to them by a good friend who was their lawyer. In turn, I had met this lawyer friend through one of my cartoonist pals. This lawyer dude was amazing, he argued cases all the way to the Supreme Court for the OCCB. The medical clubs had a popular product, to say the least. They also loved T Shirts and sold a lot of them. Early on, I took some pay in trade, but soon realized I had no need for thousands of dollars worth of herb! Okay, a little weed is fine guys, but I actually need $$$ to pay the bills! Lots of fun, but some of those beefy security dudes freaked me out a bit.

Sweet Potatoes, a somewhat big time producer of baby/toddler apparel. One of their production supervisors saw my flier on a phone pole on Fourth St. in Berkeley where their office was then located. They would give us fabric panels to print that were later sewn into garments, large scale production stuff. It was funny because I just had a homemade press at the time, and a spot dryer, I was just this side of fly by night! And here comes Sweet Potatoes, giving me runs in excess of 10,000 pieces. Their production guy, Paul, keeps asking if he can visit the shop. It was just too funky to let him in! When he finally realized how small scale I was, he was a bit horrified, but actually was also impressed at what my staff and I could pull off on our funky equipment. He did split after feeding us jobs for three years, as they started sending production offshore. They invited me to match pricing they were getting from Guatemala. I don't think so!

Okay, that's enough of that. Notice that most of these clients came from recommendations or personal connections rather than from marketing messages. Certainly I've gotten dozens of clients as a result of my marketing. But bottom line, if you circulate, have fun and hand out your card everywhere, you will have all the business you need.

Cartoonist Interviews: An Outstanding New Blog

The emerging artist/cartoonist Austin English, a young man of singualr gifts and inspiration, has started a great new blog entitled 20 Questions With Cartoonists. As well as being a unique, original artist, Austin has a parallel path as a journalist of comics and cartooning, and has distinguished himself there too.

It's my good luck that Austin considers me a worthy subject for his 20 questions, and my answers can be seen here:

20 Questions With Steve Lafler

If you do bother to read it, soldier on all the way to the comments, where I think my best answer is to be found.

Them Old Time John McCain Blues

Remember folks, Sarah Palin is only funny if she loses! I've written a little old time blues ditty to insure an Obama victory, as follows:

Them Old Time John McCain Blues

Go Obama!

HowTo Start A T Shirt Printing Business

NOTE: View the updated version of this article here.

In these times of economic uncertainty, there are lots of unemployed people with little prospect for getting a job, and plenty of young people starting out in similar straights. The current economic mess is pretty rotten, but I believe it is possible to start a successful T Shirt printing business in times like these, because I did it myself!

When I graduated college in 1980, we were in the midst of a deepening recession. It was a cyclical downturn, not as bad as today, but wait! I was living in Eugene, Oregon. The lumber industry was really in the dumps, making the Eugene economy really dreadful. Unable to find work, I began freelancing T Shirt jobs while searching for a more secure position. When I sold my first shirt job, I simply got a down payment from the client for the necessary supplies, and I was off & running (lucky for me, it was an easy one color print!). Here we are 28 years and several economic downturns later. Sure I did great in the boom times, but my T Shirt printing business always put burritos on the table in the down cycles too.

If you have a garage, basement or spare room you can use, you're ready to go. We'll look at screen printing 101 in a minute. First, I will make a radical claim. After investing just a couple to a few hundred bucks in basic tools and equipment, you will be ready to print your first job. I believe a profit can be made from the get go in the Custom Screen Printing business. I direct your attention to my blog entry, The Zero Overhead Model for a description of my business model. Be sure to take a peek also at The Win – Win Deal, a sort of philosophical underpinning to how I conduct my business relationships.

A business is nothing but a web of relationships. I have a business because I have healthy relationships with my clients. They talk, I listen. Sure, you should do lots of marketing, study the various techniques and theories, but I guarantee if you circulate and talk up your business day in, day out, you will attract clients. Be sure to pass out business cards left and right!

Now let's dig into the screen printing overview. Whether you are an out of work fancy pants graphic designer or a DIY punk rocker, one of the best small scale entrepreneurial businesses to start is a T-Shirt printing business. The initial investment can be modest, and a profit can be realized quickly with proper care to details. A screen print on a T-Shirt looks great – screen printing ink is bright and dynamic. I'll mention ink jet printing and digital imaging later, but the thrust of this piece is screen printing (a.k.a. Silkscreen).

Here is a list of materials you will need for your first project: Wood (or metal) frame stretched with screen mesh, piece of foam rubber to fit inside frame for exposure process, screen printing ink (Union water base in is good to start with, or Speedball brand can be found in some art supply stores), squeegee, light sensitive emulsion, Light source (a halide work light is good), glass & weights to hold the glass down on the frame, and your design on transparency or film (the design should be positive, not negative on the transparency). Oh, and T Shirts to print on.

A well stocked art supply store can sell you all the basic screen print materials listed above. It is recommended to comparison shop, as the prices may vary dramatically. Also check with your local industrial screen print supplier (under “screen printing/supplies” in the yellow pages or online). If you are serious about setting up a shop, you want to buy from an industrial supplier like Midwest Sign & Screen.
Here are the steps to produce your first screen print project. Clean your stretched frame with mild soap, rinse and let dry for at least an hour. Coat the screen with light sensitive emulsion (check instructions for light conditions appropriate to your emulsion). Coat both sides then scrape away excess emulsion. Let dry overnight. If you didn't buy a pre-stretched screen, you will need to put your screen fabric on the wooden frame, so taut that you can bounce a coin on it. You can use a staple gun, but take care not to rip the screen mesh with the staples.

Put your art/design on a transparency. Either draw with india ink on translucent vellum, or print the design on vellum or other heavy transparent paper on a laser printer. Inkjet printers often do not create an opaque enough image for burning a screen. Warning: Some laser printers are too hot, and will melt vellum!!! If you draw on vellum with india ink, go over your lines or brush strokes twice to insure opacity. I successfully used a HP laserjet for years to create transparencies. It was necessary to use the HP brand cartridges; the generic/refilled ones did not make a dark enough film to successfully burn a screen. You can also send your graphic file to a film output service bureau for your film positive.

Burning the screen: SEE DIAGRAM at top of article. You need to do this step in the dark. I used Ulano Fotocoat TZ, an emulsion you can use in low light, check the instructions for your emulsion. Put your foam rubber on the floor or a table. Put your coated screen frame over it on the inside side of the frame (leaving the flat side of the frame pointing up). Put your transparency upside down on top of the screen. Put your piece of glass over the transparency, and weight it at the edges with books or some other heavy objects. If you have ink cans, they will do fine because they are heavy. Hang your light source about 18” above your screen and turn on for recommended exposure time. Develop with warm water. Spray the screen until the image area is free of emulsion. If your screen doesn't develop, use more water pressure. Blot both sides with newspaper when done developing, to remove excess emulsion. If your emulsion comes off too easily, ruining your image, increase your exposure time. For years I used a tanning bulb to burn screens, it had the power necessary to burn a fine screen, including halftone dots! Later I used two halide work lights, those suckers are pretty hot so use caution!

Let the screen dry. Put over T Shirt and add ink to one side of the screen, creating an “ink reservoir”. Holding the screen frame down firmly, pull 2 – 3 strokes and lift to check your print. Clean screen immediately when finished. You can do multiple prints. If your print smudges, try a finer screen mesh. If insufficient ink gets on the T Shirt, use thinner ink or a more open screen mesh. I used to print one color jobs in my dorm room with no press, just the screen frame and a squeegee, it kept me in beer money and date money!

A word about inks, for years I used a homemade press and waterbase inks (Union brand is good). Most commercial T Shirts are printed with plastisol, a plastic base ink. You will need a dryer to cure plastisol. I recommend an entry level spot dryer, it maybe runs 5 – 600 bucks. Shop around. I was in the biz for a decade before I got one! If your business takes off, you will eventually want a spot dryer and a conveyor dryer.

Injets and digital technology. Yes, you can print backwards on “T shirt transfer paper” with an injet printer and iron the design on a shirt. It's a cool way to go for short run, full color. Also, there are now machines from U.S. Screen that do digital imaging direct on shirts. They are great machines but start at 17K or so, we are talking serious capital. Sure, I want one, but it just ain't in the cards for me at present. By contrast, my 6 color, 6 station workhorse manual printer was a marvel, and it cost only $3600.00 brand new. Paid for itself in a couple months, and it's still running today 9 years later in my buddy David's shop.

The other diagram is my design for a homemade three color T Shirt press using thick plywood, masonite, screws, nails, sawhorses, and screen frame clamps. It's funky, but you can print tight register three color jobs on this rig with practice. You may want to sell only 1 color jobs until your level of craft improves, and you can confidently handle multi color work.

So let's build a press—start with a 4' X 4' piece of 3/4” thick plywood. Cut the shirtboard area away with a jigsaw. This is a lot of jigsawing, start with a fresh blade. The channels should be 2.5 – 3”. The indents at the back of the shirt board are for the material at the bottom of the T Shirt to have a place to fall as to not interfere with the print. Round the corners at the front of the shirt board so as not to catch the shirts as you load them onto the press. Run a 3' long piece of 2” X 2” under the shirt board /press table for support. Bevel the front of the support board, again so it doesn't catch shirts as you load them on the press.

Top the shirt board area with a piece of 1/4” masonite to create a smooth printing surface. Nail down with brads at the edges, out of the live print area. Buy 3 sets of screen clamps from a screen print supply house and mount them on 1/4” masonite too, so they are at the same level as the shirt board area. With this homemade press, you will be making your own screen frames to fit the peculiar size of the press. Painting stretcher bars work pretty good, or just buy 1” x 2” or 2” x 2” wood to make your frames.

There are many fine rotary manual presses for T Shirt printing available, both new and used. I recommend checking the Screenprinters page of industry links of suppliers for presses, dryers, shirts and equipment. NOTE! This is the most important link in this post, it's a virtual bazaar of everything you need to get into this business. Remember too, all the suppliers want to sell you as much stuff as they can. It's fun to get all the latest gear and equipment, but experience tells me that a profitable shop buys only what it needs to produce the work it has.

A note about pricing jobs. I started out as a hungry student who needed to learn how to make a decent print, so naturally I came in at the low end of the price scale in the shirt biz. Once I got the quality thing down, I charged a higher than average fee. There is always a market for quality. Most buyers are looking to push your price down, especially after years of low cost Walmart stuff from China!

Don't work cheap, it will just piss you off. Talk to people in the field to see what the going rates are. A screen printing press should generate at the very least $50 per production hour for a small scale shop, really $100 is do-able. If you can put together 10 - 20 production hours per week you will be fine. There are lots of other business tasks to eat up the rest of your time, believe me.

If you are seriously considering trying a business like this, do not hesitate to email me with any questions. I will answer them as well as I can.
Copyright 2008 Steve Lafler.

El Vocho gets chubby

I just posted a nice chunk of new material to my online comic El Vocho. In fact, I've done 24 finished pages (of course, it gets all chopped up online).
The old school method of publishing a graphic novel in progress, of course, was to issue a series of comic magazines as the work was created. That's what I did with my BugHouse material in the 90s as I buzzed it out.
These days, the economic model is completely different--the graphic novel is the elegant, efficient mode of print packaging (I need sell only about 400 books to get to profit!!!), and the "new media" (?) is here to flog, disseminate and otherwise bang people over the head with your message.
In any case, there is now enough of El Vocho up there to be entertained and amused, and to get a handle on the characters. I recommend digging into the archives on the El Vocho blog site, start at the beginning and read the chapters in order. IF you like it, spread the word!

Anyone who really knows me will tell you I'm a bit the wild eyed zealot, so I will just go ahead and say this: El Vocho will save the world! Or at least, it's a story about saving the world. From what?! From Big Oil, and our horrible addiction to oil, of course! Por Su Puesto.

I hope to complete the book and publish it as a GN by next summer. I'll be in the U.S. for at least a month then and will be looking to get around to promote it.

Steve Lafler