A Graveyard of My Own by Ron Goulart

Author:Ron Goulart [Goulart, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Crime
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

The distant sailboats were small white triangles on the Sound.

“I never have been out on one of those things,” said Mack Gruber.

He and Bert were sitting on a wide flagstone patio behind the sprawling white mansion. Beyond the gently sloping acre or so of grass was a low brick wall. Then a drop down to a slice of sandy beach a hundred feet below. After that came the quiet blue of the Sound.

Bert looked away from the water and back at the two pages of artwork the cartoonist had brought out to show him. “This looks pretty good,” he said truthfully.

Gruber was still watching the sailboats glide across the calm water. “All my own work. Penciling, inking, lettering,” he said. “And I wrote the damn thing, too.”

“You plan to show this to DC or Maximus or—”

“Hell, no.” Gruber laughed. “Going to publish the dang thing myself.” He moved his deck chair some, leaned toward Bert. “I didn’t vegetate while I was in the goofy farm, Bert. I kept up with all the developments in the field, subscribed to the Comics Journal, Buyer’s Guide, Comic Reader and read every page, every line. Now, in the past few years there’s been, as you probably know, a real growth of what they call the alternate press. Independent publishers, kids a lot of them, who don’t have the overhead or the pigheadedness of the big outfits like Kreative Komics. Doesn’t cost that much to print, say, fifty thousand copies of a comic book and then deal directly with comics shops or the distributors who cater to them. There’s hundreds of these comics shops around the country, more springing up. Sure, some’ll go down the drain and lose all their money. Most will survive, though. You sell your comic book outright, for thirty or forty percent of the cover price, and you don’t have to worry about returns. Guys like Jack Kirby are working for outfits like that and seem to be doing okay. I’m nearly as well known as Jack, and since my dear sister is going to bankroll me, I’ve decided to produce and distribute Ms. Tique myself. A feminist superheroine ought to do dang well about now.”

“Anything done this well ought to sell.”

“You can sell on the artwork alone once maybe, Bert. But I’m aiming for six issues a year, year after year,” explained Gruber. “Followed by spin-offs, albums, novelizations, T-shirts, even a movie or two.”

Bert set the originals on the metal-topped table between them. “When’ll you be ready to start?”

“I already have my printer lined up. I’ll have the whole thirty-two pages of my first issue finished in about three weeks,” Gruber said. “But, you know, Bert, I don’t think you dropped in this afternoon for chitchat about Mack Gruber’s sensational comeback.”

“I’ve gotten interested … involved is maybe a better word … in the murders of Beau Jassminsky and Dolph Tunney.”

“Second-rate artists, both of them,” observed Gruber. “Dang lucky they got themselves steady jobs. Tunney drew some Captain Thunderbolt stories when it got to where there was too much for me to handle.

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