From The Scoop: Collecting the Past with TwoMorrows
From the February 10 issue of Gemstone Publishing's The
Scoop:
Beginning with The Jack Kirby Collector, TwoMorrows Publishing has developed and launched an impressive series of collector-inspired books and periodicals ranging from the definitive book on Captain Action to Murphy Anderson's biography. John Morrow, one of the two Morrows in TwoMorrows, let the inspiration he drew from the works of the writer-artist Jack Kirby lead to new ways to display the passion for collecting.
Scoop: As far as the comic book industry goes, TwoMorrows started with the Kirby Collector. What did you do prior to that?
John Morrow: After several years as a freelance designer, my wife and I started an advertising/graphic design agency here in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1990: TwoMorrows Advertising & Design. Advertising still accounts for half our workload.
Scoop: What was the first comic you ever read?
JM: Sometime back in the late 1960s. I remember going with my Dad into a book/magazine store in our small hometown in Alabama, and he gave me my choice of anything on the comics rack. I'd never seen a comic book before, and after passing up Spider-Man and Batman, I went for an issue of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Go figure!
Scoop: How long did it take after that to consider yourself a collector?
JM: Oh, probably another couple of years, but I started picking comics up everywhere I could; school Halloween festivals were the best (where parents would donate stuff for the school to sell to raise money--there were always lots of comics if you got there early enough). Pretty soon I discovered several other guys who collected, and we had an informal club of fans.
I really got started with early 1970s DC stuff like Kirby's Kamandi, Justice League of America, Teen Titans. I bought the Marvels coming out in the early 1970s, but the DCs appealed more to me.
Scoop: Prior to Jack Kirby's passing, what were the factors that caused you to stop collecting?
JM: In the late 1980s, after reading Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, I sort of felt like I'd "read it all" in terms of mainstream comics, and I wasn't really into the alternative stuff, so I kind of drifted away. Plus, my wife and I were saving for a down payment on our first house, so I sold almost all my comics for that. (I only kept my most cherished ones, most of which were by Jack Kirby.) But I did manage to wrangle a business trip out to San Diego in 1991, and took an afternoon off to go to the San Diego Comic-Con. I'd been trying to make it out for years to no avail, but I finally got to meet Jack Kirby; one of the most influential moments of my life!
It lasted all of about three minutes. There was a huge crowd in front of his booth, and I'd already waited around all afternoon for him to show up. When he finally did, I was already late for a meeting, so I uncharacteristically elbowed my way through the crowd to the front; I wasn't going to miss my once chance to meet Jack Kirby after all these years! Jack was really gracious, shaking my hand, and asking me things like what I did for a living, and where I was from. It's so cool that I was actually able to meet the man who was so influential in my life while I was growing up, and then became again as an adult.
Scoop: When you heard about Kirby's death, what inspired you to start the publication?
JM: Kirby's death caused me to dig out all those Kirby comics I'd kept, and I spent Spring 1994 re-reading them, and resparking what'd attracted me to Kirby originally. I said to my wife Pam, "I wonder if there'd be any interest in a newsletter about Jack Kirby?" After not frequenting a comics shop in almost six years, I wondered if Kirby was still held in high regard, and if he was even remembered. But I figured, hey, if only 100 people eventually end up getting my little newsletter, it's worth doing, and would be a lot of fun. So I mocked up a sample of the first issue and sent it off the Jack's wife Roz Kirby for her approval. She was all for it, so we tweaked it and sent it out, and waited for a response.
Scoop: What were your first few issues like?
JM: Oh, they were 16-page hand-photocopied newsletters, copied by me at our local drug store, as I fed quarters into the copy machine. The design was decent, since we had the expertise and equipment from our ad agency, but editing a magazine was totally new to me. It was a pretty thrilling learning experience.
Scoop: How quickly did it evolve?
JM: Very rapidly. After sending the first issue out free to 125 people who'd written tribute letters into Comics Buyer's Guide after Jack died, I quickly saw the Kirby fans of the world unite around the project. They started sending in tributes, articles, and copies of Kirby art from their collections. And I quickly learned how useful e-mail and the Internet (which wasn't that widespread at the time) could be in furthering the Kirby Collector.
Scoop: What were the early reactions to it like?
JM: Amazing! People were just so jazzed by it. I've still got boxes of letters we received that first year from everyone from fans to pros, all wishing us well with it, and offering to help any way they could. I think we went through six or seven printings of those early issues, each time hand-copying 100-200 at a time, thinking, "Surely this'll be enough to last awhile," but thankfully they kept selling as more people discovered it.
Scoop: When did you feel you really hit your stride with it?
JM: It had to be issue #6, our Fourth World issue. That was my favorite Kirby series, and I killed myself making it as good as possible. At that point, our circulation was getting high enough that hand-copying wasn't an option any longer, so I had to bite the bullet and pay to print 1,000 copies, and hope they'd eventually sell. We weren't going through Diamond at that point, so we had to sell them one at a time to individual customers. But after blowing through 1,000 copies of #6 and #7, we took the jump of distributing to comics shops through Diamond, and adding color covers with #8. Stores started carrying it, and circulation increased considerably.
Scoop: From there you expanded to other publications. Could you give us a brief chronology of how they started and who was involved?
JM: Jon Cooke was assistant editor on the Jack Kirby Collector, and we decided there should be a Kirby Collector for all the other artists we liked, so Jon came up with Comic Book Artist magazine. We got Roy Thomas to resurrect his 1960s fanzine Alter Ego as a back-up in CBA, and it was so popular that we spun it off into its own magazine, now up to issue #57. From there we published Draw! magazine with editor Mike Manley, and Write Now! magazine with editor Danny Fingeroth, focusing on how to draw and write comics, respectively. Most recently, we launched Back Issue! magazine with editor Michael Eury, and it's now our best-seller. Along the way we published books on comics history, starting with the All-Star Companion by Roy Thomas (spotlighting the history of the Justice Society of America), and it snowballed to where we're currently publishing ten or more trade paperbacks each year, in addition to our five regular magazines.
Scoop: What have been some of your biggest successes?
JM: George Khoury's two books, Kimota! The Miracleman Companion and The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore were both top sellers for us. Our "Companion" series continues to do well, as does our Modern Masters volumes, which spotlight the best artists working in the field today.
Scoop: Have any of them surprised you? If so, which ones?
JM: I think the biggest surprise for me was our reissue of the 1971 Kirby Unleashed portfolio. We completely remastered it, rescanning almost every piece from the originals, and tracking down some unseen work to add to it. I expected a fair percentage of our usual loyal Kirby Collector readers to embrace it, but sales definitely exceeded what I expected. Also, our two DVDs to date (How To Draw Comics, From Script To Print and Modern Masters: In The Studio With George Pérez) have done well, so we'll definitely be doing more DVDs in the future.
Scoop: How has the reaction been to your collected editions?
JM: Very positive. Particularly on Collected Jack Kirby Collector volumes, since those early issues were in low supply, so a lot of readers that discovered us later couldn't get copies. It's just a lot more economical way to keep that material in print, rather than reissuing individual issues.
Scoop: How has your own enjoyment of comics changed as a result of this process?
JM: I've been exposed to a lot of material I wasn't previously aware of. In particular, I now have a collection of Captain Action figures, due solely to working on our book on the history of Captain Action with Michael Eury. I just got hooked!
I collect mainly to read, not to sell. So most of my comics are real "beaters", in far less than mint condition. But I'm particularly fond of my old Star-Spangled Comics copies that feature Simon & Kirby's Newsboy Legion. When I discovered that strip in reprints in Kirby's 1970s Jimmy Olsen run, something clicked, and I've finally been able to collect the entire run (albeit in really ratty condition).
I still love the work of a lot of current artists: Frank Miller, Walter Simonson, and George Pérez to name a few. Will Eisner's passing really hit me hard, knowing I wouldn't be seeing new work from him any longer. But probably 70% of what I buy these days is older material. I've started getting interested in old Charlton material: Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, and others.
Scoop: What are your current favorites in your collection?
JM: It's not actually my collection, but I get the most joy looking over Kirby art that's sent in by our readers, and from materials loaned to me by Jack's family for use in the Jack Kirby Collector. The man did so much work, it seems like there's always some new Kirby art to see, over a decade after his passing.
Scoop: What seems to elicit the most feedback from your readers?
JM: That's tough to say; each of our books and mags seems to evoke a response from different people, so there's always some interesting comments coming in. It's great to announce our latest releases, and see what people will email us about them, or post online somewhere.
Scoop: What have retailers responded to the most?
JM: The ones that are really on top of things picked up on Draw and Back Issue magazines early, and have seen their sales increase steadily. Same with the Modern Masters volumes; we get steady reorders on those. There are a number of larger retailers around the country who stock our full line, and we constantly hear from them about what their customers are saying. It really helps us to have that feedback.
Scoop: What do you look for in a project?
JM: It all goes back to the Jack Kirby Collector for me. Even if it's a project about something I'm not personally interested in, as long as I sense the same sort of frenzied involvement with the material that I have with Kirby, I'll consider it. TwoMorrows wants to only publish material that'll really inspire readers, whether that's a small, niche audience, or the mainstream public. So we'll take chances on a book that may not be a top seller, but will appeal to a smaller, dedicated audience--as long as it's the best possible book on that subject.
Scoop: What does TwoMorrows have coming up?
JM: We've got several Kirby-related projects coming up, including a pencils-only reprinting of Kirby's complete Silver Star series, a new Collected Jack Kirby Collector volume, and a top secret Kirby project for this summer. In June we're releasing Comic Book Nerd, a parody magazine which'll absolutely skewer the fan press (TwoMorrows included!) with hilarious takes on the likes of Wizard, Comics Journal, and even Previews. Everyone who's seen it so far has been brought to tears--literally--from laughing so hard! Also in June, we're got a Rough Stuff Special, which spins off one of the most popular sections of Back Issue! magazine into its own Annual, presenting pencil art from such talents as Bruce Timm, Arthur Adams, Walter Simonson, George Pérez, Alan Davis, John Byrne, and Jack Kirby (of course!). Then there's four more Companion books in the year or so ahead, new collections of sold-out issues of Draw! and Alter Ego, Modern Masters volumes on John Byrne and Gaijin Studios (with Adam Hughes), and plenty more.
• Produced for the benefit of all who enjoy the hobby of collecting, Gemstone Publishing's The Scoop is available free of charge to anyone who wishes to receive it. To view the latest edition, or to sign up, visit The Scoop online by at http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com.
Beginning with The Jack Kirby Collector, TwoMorrows Publishing has developed and launched an impressive series of collector-inspired books and periodicals ranging from the definitive book on Captain Action to Murphy Anderson's biography. John Morrow, one of the two Morrows in TwoMorrows, let the inspiration he drew from the works of the writer-artist Jack Kirby lead to new ways to display the passion for collecting.
Scoop: As far as the comic book industry goes, TwoMorrows started with the Kirby Collector. What did you do prior to that?
John Morrow: After several years as a freelance designer, my wife and I started an advertising/graphic design agency here in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1990: TwoMorrows Advertising & Design. Advertising still accounts for half our workload.
Scoop: What was the first comic you ever read?
JM: Sometime back in the late 1960s. I remember going with my Dad into a book/magazine store in our small hometown in Alabama, and he gave me my choice of anything on the comics rack. I'd never seen a comic book before, and after passing up Spider-Man and Batman, I went for an issue of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Go figure!
Scoop: How long did it take after that to consider yourself a collector?
JM: Oh, probably another couple of years, but I started picking comics up everywhere I could; school Halloween festivals were the best (where parents would donate stuff for the school to sell to raise money--there were always lots of comics if you got there early enough). Pretty soon I discovered several other guys who collected, and we had an informal club of fans.
I really got started with early 1970s DC stuff like Kirby's Kamandi, Justice League of America, Teen Titans. I bought the Marvels coming out in the early 1970s, but the DCs appealed more to me.
Scoop: Prior to Jack Kirby's passing, what were the factors that caused you to stop collecting?
JM: In the late 1980s, after reading Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, I sort of felt like I'd "read it all" in terms of mainstream comics, and I wasn't really into the alternative stuff, so I kind of drifted away. Plus, my wife and I were saving for a down payment on our first house, so I sold almost all my comics for that. (I only kept my most cherished ones, most of which were by Jack Kirby.) But I did manage to wrangle a business trip out to San Diego in 1991, and took an afternoon off to go to the San Diego Comic-Con. I'd been trying to make it out for years to no avail, but I finally got to meet Jack Kirby; one of the most influential moments of my life!
It lasted all of about three minutes. There was a huge crowd in front of his booth, and I'd already waited around all afternoon for him to show up. When he finally did, I was already late for a meeting, so I uncharacteristically elbowed my way through the crowd to the front; I wasn't going to miss my once chance to meet Jack Kirby after all these years! Jack was really gracious, shaking my hand, and asking me things like what I did for a living, and where I was from. It's so cool that I was actually able to meet the man who was so influential in my life while I was growing up, and then became again as an adult.
Scoop: When you heard about Kirby's death, what inspired you to start the publication?
JM: Kirby's death caused me to dig out all those Kirby comics I'd kept, and I spent Spring 1994 re-reading them, and resparking what'd attracted me to Kirby originally. I said to my wife Pam, "I wonder if there'd be any interest in a newsletter about Jack Kirby?" After not frequenting a comics shop in almost six years, I wondered if Kirby was still held in high regard, and if he was even remembered. But I figured, hey, if only 100 people eventually end up getting my little newsletter, it's worth doing, and would be a lot of fun. So I mocked up a sample of the first issue and sent it off the Jack's wife Roz Kirby for her approval. She was all for it, so we tweaked it and sent it out, and waited for a response.
Scoop: What were your first few issues like?
JM: Oh, they were 16-page hand-photocopied newsletters, copied by me at our local drug store, as I fed quarters into the copy machine. The design was decent, since we had the expertise and equipment from our ad agency, but editing a magazine was totally new to me. It was a pretty thrilling learning experience.
Scoop: How quickly did it evolve?
JM: Very rapidly. After sending the first issue out free to 125 people who'd written tribute letters into Comics Buyer's Guide after Jack died, I quickly saw the Kirby fans of the world unite around the project. They started sending in tributes, articles, and copies of Kirby art from their collections. And I quickly learned how useful e-mail and the Internet (which wasn't that widespread at the time) could be in furthering the Kirby Collector.
Scoop: What were the early reactions to it like?
JM: Amazing! People were just so jazzed by it. I've still got boxes of letters we received that first year from everyone from fans to pros, all wishing us well with it, and offering to help any way they could. I think we went through six or seven printings of those early issues, each time hand-copying 100-200 at a time, thinking, "Surely this'll be enough to last awhile," but thankfully they kept selling as more people discovered it.
Scoop: When did you feel you really hit your stride with it?
JM: It had to be issue #6, our Fourth World issue. That was my favorite Kirby series, and I killed myself making it as good as possible. At that point, our circulation was getting high enough that hand-copying wasn't an option any longer, so I had to bite the bullet and pay to print 1,000 copies, and hope they'd eventually sell. We weren't going through Diamond at that point, so we had to sell them one at a time to individual customers. But after blowing through 1,000 copies of #6 and #7, we took the jump of distributing to comics shops through Diamond, and adding color covers with #8. Stores started carrying it, and circulation increased considerably.
Scoop: From there you expanded to other publications. Could you give us a brief chronology of how they started and who was involved?
JM: Jon Cooke was assistant editor on the Jack Kirby Collector, and we decided there should be a Kirby Collector for all the other artists we liked, so Jon came up with Comic Book Artist magazine. We got Roy Thomas to resurrect his 1960s fanzine Alter Ego as a back-up in CBA, and it was so popular that we spun it off into its own magazine, now up to issue #57. From there we published Draw! magazine with editor Mike Manley, and Write Now! magazine with editor Danny Fingeroth, focusing on how to draw and write comics, respectively. Most recently, we launched Back Issue! magazine with editor Michael Eury, and it's now our best-seller. Along the way we published books on comics history, starting with the All-Star Companion by Roy Thomas (spotlighting the history of the Justice Society of America), and it snowballed to where we're currently publishing ten or more trade paperbacks each year, in addition to our five regular magazines.
Scoop: What have been some of your biggest successes?
JM: George Khoury's two books, Kimota! The Miracleman Companion and The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore were both top sellers for us. Our "Companion" series continues to do well, as does our Modern Masters volumes, which spotlight the best artists working in the field today.
Scoop: Have any of them surprised you? If so, which ones?
JM: I think the biggest surprise for me was our reissue of the 1971 Kirby Unleashed portfolio. We completely remastered it, rescanning almost every piece from the originals, and tracking down some unseen work to add to it. I expected a fair percentage of our usual loyal Kirby Collector readers to embrace it, but sales definitely exceeded what I expected. Also, our two DVDs to date (How To Draw Comics, From Script To Print and Modern Masters: In The Studio With George Pérez) have done well, so we'll definitely be doing more DVDs in the future.
Scoop: How has the reaction been to your collected editions?
JM: Very positive. Particularly on Collected Jack Kirby Collector volumes, since those early issues were in low supply, so a lot of readers that discovered us later couldn't get copies. It's just a lot more economical way to keep that material in print, rather than reissuing individual issues.
Scoop: How has your own enjoyment of comics changed as a result of this process?
JM: I've been exposed to a lot of material I wasn't previously aware of. In particular, I now have a collection of Captain Action figures, due solely to working on our book on the history of Captain Action with Michael Eury. I just got hooked!
I collect mainly to read, not to sell. So most of my comics are real "beaters", in far less than mint condition. But I'm particularly fond of my old Star-Spangled Comics copies that feature Simon & Kirby's Newsboy Legion. When I discovered that strip in reprints in Kirby's 1970s Jimmy Olsen run, something clicked, and I've finally been able to collect the entire run (albeit in really ratty condition).
I still love the work of a lot of current artists: Frank Miller, Walter Simonson, and George Pérez to name a few. Will Eisner's passing really hit me hard, knowing I wouldn't be seeing new work from him any longer. But probably 70% of what I buy these days is older material. I've started getting interested in old Charlton material: Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, and others.
Scoop: What are your current favorites in your collection?
JM: It's not actually my collection, but I get the most joy looking over Kirby art that's sent in by our readers, and from materials loaned to me by Jack's family for use in the Jack Kirby Collector. The man did so much work, it seems like there's always some new Kirby art to see, over a decade after his passing.
Scoop: What seems to elicit the most feedback from your readers?
JM: That's tough to say; each of our books and mags seems to evoke a response from different people, so there's always some interesting comments coming in. It's great to announce our latest releases, and see what people will email us about them, or post online somewhere.
Scoop: What have retailers responded to the most?
JM: The ones that are really on top of things picked up on Draw and Back Issue magazines early, and have seen their sales increase steadily. Same with the Modern Masters volumes; we get steady reorders on those. There are a number of larger retailers around the country who stock our full line, and we constantly hear from them about what their customers are saying. It really helps us to have that feedback.
Scoop: What do you look for in a project?
JM: It all goes back to the Jack Kirby Collector for me. Even if it's a project about something I'm not personally interested in, as long as I sense the same sort of frenzied involvement with the material that I have with Kirby, I'll consider it. TwoMorrows wants to only publish material that'll really inspire readers, whether that's a small, niche audience, or the mainstream public. So we'll take chances on a book that may not be a top seller, but will appeal to a smaller, dedicated audience--as long as it's the best possible book on that subject.
Scoop: What does TwoMorrows have coming up?
JM: We've got several Kirby-related projects coming up, including a pencils-only reprinting of Kirby's complete Silver Star series, a new Collected Jack Kirby Collector volume, and a top secret Kirby project for this summer. In June we're releasing Comic Book Nerd, a parody magazine which'll absolutely skewer the fan press (TwoMorrows included!) with hilarious takes on the likes of Wizard, Comics Journal, and even Previews. Everyone who's seen it so far has been brought to tears--literally--from laughing so hard! Also in June, we're got a Rough Stuff Special, which spins off one of the most popular sections of Back Issue! magazine into its own Annual, presenting pencil art from such talents as Bruce Timm, Arthur Adams, Walter Simonson, George Pérez, Alan Davis, John Byrne, and Jack Kirby (of course!). Then there's four more Companion books in the year or so ahead, new collections of sold-out issues of Draw! and Alter Ego, Modern Masters volumes on John Byrne and Gaijin Studios (with Adam Hughes), and plenty more.
• Produced for the benefit of all who enjoy the hobby of collecting, Gemstone Publishing's The Scoop is available free of charge to anyone who wishes to receive it. To view the latest edition, or to sign up, visit The Scoop online by at http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com.
