J.R. Williams is Dog... I mean God!

Anybody who loves comic art and painting, do yourself a favor and check out the work of the brilliant & wholly unique J.R. Williams.

Over the last 25 years, J.R. has been one of the funniest guys in alt comix, and now he's painting up a storm. Well worth a peek.

Build Your Own T-Shirt Press

The first diagram shows how to cut a shirt board/print area into a four foot square piece of plywood. The second diagram shows how to add screen clamps and finish your press. Note that the shirt board area needs rounded corners. Sand it smooth too! Cover the shirt board area with a smooth piece of masonite or pressed board, fasten it to the shirt board with brad nails by the edges, and wood glue.



Here are plans for a 3 color table top T-Shirt press. This is a simple design that can be build for under $200 in materials. It's no substitute for a good rotary press, but it works and it's cheap, a great DIY machine. I've build and used these to print three colors in perfect register.
This press is cut from a 4' x 4' piece of 3/4" plywood. Basically, you cut out the shirt board/print area with a jig saw, screw three sets of screen clamps around the print area, and mount it on sawhorses.
This is a good machine for Punk rock DIY printing, for anyone starting out, for the hobbyist, etc.
IF you have questions about how to build this or how it works, send a comment and I will answer.
Click on the images to see them enlarged.
If you are a graphics person but are unemployed, you can sell screen printing services for up to three colors and print on this machine. It's a great shoe string start up business.
If you do decide to buy a used rotary manual T-shirt press, you'll probably spend more like $1,000. Be sure to actually try any press before buying, to make sure it still prints true and is not completely worn out.

HYPE TIME! It's T-Shirt Season Again

As March approaches, once again I remember -- I'm a screen printer! Yup, I'm still in the T-Shirt business.
The economy is pretty slow, but Manx Media Custom Screen Printing is still whipping out shirts at a semi furious rate. I'm running the office, handling sales, marketing, and graphics, and my long time press operator David Perkin is in the St. Johns neighborhood of Portland, Oregon handling production. David works on the six color manual Workhorse press, a quality machine capable of perfect registration.
Our main clients are Haight Ashbury T-Shirts, where we print thousands of shirts each year for designer David Boyer, whose classic retro hippy designs are the top sellers at the store, and Sarah's Science, the great kids science educator and proprietor of fantastic summer science camps for kids in Oakland and Berkeley. Sarah's summer camp is called This Land is Your Land, and we have adorned many thousands of T-shirts and hoodies with her banana slug mascot.
Other clients we have served include Sony Music Distribution, Margaret Cho, The Residents, Apple Computer, and many schools, clubs, bands, cartoonists and more.
We can handle jobs 1 - 6 color, on any type of t-shirt, hoodie, or sportswear item, and we do runs from 50 pieces and up.
We have plenty of production capability left over for new clients, so email me for a quote, or call me at 503-213-3671.
Happy T-Shirts!
Steve Lafler

Bughouse Makes the Top 100

Bughouse ranked #22 -- top 100 comics of the decade.




Rob Clough, writing for the Comics Journal, ranked my graphic novel Bughouse at #22 in his list of the top 100 comics/graphic novels of the decade.
Well hell, what an honor. Thanks Rob!
Click here to read the list.
Here is the cool thing, it's on sale cheap at Daedalus, click here to buy it.

How to Start a Custom Embroidery Business

How to Start a T-Shirt Embroidery Business

Overview
The market for custom embroidered T-shirts and sportswear is strong. According to Impressions, the decorated apparel industry trade magazine, the industry is recession-resilient. With a commercial embroidery machine and a strong marketing plan, you can start a successful embroidered T-shirt business. You can fill custom orders, and also create your own line of designs.
Step 1
Purchase an embroidery machine. Choose from leading brands such as Tajima or Barudan, known for their reliability. Attend an industry trade show to see the variety of machines offered and to try them. Check on the ISS trade show nearest you (see Resources for a link). Decide whether to buy a single head machine, or one with multiple sewing heads.
Step 2
Set up your shop in a garage, spare room or small commercial space, with an eye towards keeping overhead low. File a business name at your county courthouse and open a business checking account. Consider purchasing liability insurance for your business. Practice with your embroidery machine, loading it with digitized designs, placing T-shirts in the clamp, loading thread and sewing.
Step 3
Create a price list for your embroidered T-shirt services, and include sweatshirt, sportshirts, caps and the range of imprinted sportswear. Components of pricing are cost of blank shirt, 50% markup on the blank shirt, and embroidery charge. A run of 100 T-shirts with a small design could be billed at two to three dollars per shirt for the embroidery charge.
Step 4
Target your market for custom embroidery services, for example restaurants or schools. Compile a list of potential customers for embroidered T-shirts. Contact potential customers via phone and personal visit. Market your services with postcard mailings, blogs, a website, order forms, and business cards. Craft a simple message with a call to action: "Custom Embroidered T-Shirts, top quality at great rates, call now for a quote."
Step 5
Write a detailed work order when a client places an order, have the client sign it and pay half the fee up front. Produce a sample for the client to OK prior to production. Upon sample approval, produce the job. Collect the balance of the fee from the client when they pick up the job. Extend payment terms such as "net due in 30 days" to trustworthy clients.

Have a look at Impressions, the trade magazine for the imprinted sportswear industry. This is a link to their embroidery page.

This article was written for an online client who rejected it. I admit I'm not an embrloidery technician (I'm a screen printer), but I have sold and produced at least $25,000 worth of embroidered hats and shirts in my career.

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!