After some time living on the streets of San Francisco, I was offered a job in Berkeley designing for a Magazine. The Publisher was a nice old guy, but was in over his head, financially and more. So this job wasn't going to be a lasting one. From there I moved on to greener pastures, working at Comics and Comix on Telegraph Avenue. It was a great job, lots of good people and lots of fun. I was fortunate to have met many, at the time young up coming comic artists. I sold many a comic to Todd McFarland, and Frank Miller, now who both are the biggest names in the above ground field! This for me was a golden time of learning. The retail aspect, and distribution angle.
Tiring of seeing everyone elses work stacked on the shelves, I decided to try my own hand. I picked up a copy of Making It In Book Publishing, by Leonard Mogul. I remember one of the first lines in it said something like "Don't even think of publishing your own Mag unless you have 50 grand to start with"...well I cleverly replaced 50 grand with 300 dollars and went on my merry way! I approached some cartooning pals in the Berkeley area and asked to get some work from them...John Howard, John Seabury, Lloyd Dangle, Erol Otus and Tom Appleton. I got a pal of mine, Rob Raich to help out finacially and an after hours printer, Sean Condon and started off organizing the first volume. I needed to make the thing stand out, and not following Moguls advice of 50 grand, could only afford black and white printing.
