I’ve been receiving several inquiries from friends and colleagues who have heard that I’ve left Dabel Brothers Publishing.

Yes, I have left, for good. Yes, I’m mildly annoyed about it, and yes, it was because I chose to, and not because I was forced to.

I’ve had enough inquiries that I’m going to tell the story. But I’m not one to air dirty laundry, and I won’t be explaining the intricate details of this company. Pretty much everything here is public knowledge already. Instead, I’ll offer a brief survey of the experience, and it will be my final word on the matter.

In August, 2002, my then-friend Mike S. Miller introduced me to Les Dabel, who had just started a small comic book company called Roaring Studios that was already in trouble. It had published two books — The Rift and Waterdogs, and was about to go under. Mike had been hired on as the artist for their licensed project, The Hedge Knight, and I was hired on to handle the book’s PR. My first job — to write a letter to the guys working on the other books to let them know their books were canceled, and to write up a press release about The Hedge Knight. We also had several other projects on the horizon: Marshal, North and South, Fatal Sword, Hymns, Legacy and Roaring Monthly. To show you how idealistic we were in those days, check out this press release I wrote for the Roaring Monthly:

Roaring Monthly gives readers the opportunity to see their work on the shelves in professional publication.

Some have called it crazy; others have called it brilliant.

But whatever critics may think of Roaring Studios’ upcoming Roaring Monthly, one thing is for certain - it is most definitely going to happen.

“We got off to a rocky start with Roaring Monthly, and even thought about canceling it for awhile,” said Les Dabel, Vice President and New Business Director of Roaring Studios. “But the more we thought about it, the more we realized that Roaring Monthly is an important part of what we stand for because it gives us a chance to give something back to the fans who have supported us over the last year.”

The basic concept of Roaring Monthly is simple - each month, readers of Roaring Studios’ regular books (Legacy, The Hedge Knight, Marshal, and others) are given the opportunity to fill out a form found inside each issue that will give them a chance to be featured in Roaring Monthly. There is no limit to the number of entries readers are allowed to submit each month, and there are no stipulations about who can be featured.

“Basically, we want to give any reader the chance to see his or her work in print, regardless of talent,” Dabel explained. “Proceeds from the book are split between the winners. It might sound like a risky venture, but in putting together the first issue, we’ve already been surprised at the quality of the submissions we’ve received.”

Roaring Monthly #1, which will feature the work of eight amateur creators (featured on the Roaring Studios website at http://www.roaringstudios.com), will debut on July 3, 2003. Though the book may eventually become a monthly staple, it is planned for a quarterly release for the rest of the year.

“We really want to give Roaring Monthly a chance to succeed, so we’re going to take it slow at first and let it build an audience before we start to pump it out on a monthly basis,” said Dabel. “The important thing to remember here is that readers have a monthly chance to win starting in May when Legacy #1 debuts.”

“And who knows?” he said after a pause, his mind switching gears for a moment. “Besides offering a service to the fans, Roaring Monthly might also become our primary method of scouting new talent for future Roaring Studios projects.”

More information about Roaring Monthly, Roaring Studios and other projects can be found at http://www.roaringstudios.com.

Ah, it’s always fun to look at your old writing. And by the way, this concept wasn’t bad; it just wasn’t thought out. If it were set up similar to a vanity publisher’s model, it might actually make money. But that’s another topic for another time.

So, I continued to generate buzz for the Dabel Brothers, despite the fact that our publisher, Image Comics, kept telling us not to. It wasn’t that they wanted to do it for us; it was that they didn’t believe in the book and thought we were wasting our time. They thought our original title, Legacy, was going to fare better. (It didn’t; it was garbage. But more on that in a moment.)

Now, to be fair, the current administration at Image is much different that the administration running the show in 2002, and I think they’re a great company. But it was frustrating in 2002 to realize what a lack of vision that they had.

The Hedge Knight debuted, and it did okay. Between the two covers we produced, I recall selling around 6,000 copies per issue. We switched publishers between books 3 and 4 to Devil’s Due Publishing (they had just left Image and convinced us to go along with them), and we actually had a weird circumstance occur where issue #4 came out a week before issue #3.

Meanwhile, our original book, Legacy, was selling around 2,000 copies per issue, and needed to die. In the comic book industry, it’s better to end a series than cancel it, so we tried to figure out how to wrap it up. I was the editor on the book, and struggling with the writer, who seemed intent on writing Legacy as a fanfic that brought Star Wars and Final Fantasy VII together into one book. He solved the problem for me by leaking some news about a license we were pursuing, and was kicked out. I rewrote the script for the third issue and created a fourth, but a production error led to us using the original script instead of mine on issue 3. So, my debut as a comic writer came with Legacy #4, where I killed off all but two characters and ended the story. To date, I’m pretty sure I’m the only writer in the world of comics who started his career by intentionally ending his series.

Around 2004, The Hedge Knight was doing very well as a graphic novel, so we acquired several other fantasy licenses. I was assigned to Dragonlance: The Legend of Huma as the book’s editor, but wound up having to rewrite the first script and work on subsequent issues when our original writer fell through. I didn’t mind; adaptation work was easy. In fact, the script for Dragonlance: LOH #2 only took me four hours to write — and in my opinion, it was actually the best issue in the series.

I was also assigned to write and edit some short stories that we were adapting from a fantasy anthology called Legends. The first was by Raymond E. Feist (a favorite author of mine), entitled The Wood Boy. The other was by Tad Williams (another favorite author), entitled The Burning Man. Around this time, the Dabel Brothers decided to change the name of Roaring Studios to “Dabel Brothers Productions,” or “DB Pro” for short. They also quietly canceled all their original books except for Marshal and a book called Imperial Dragons, which the Dabel Brothers created and assigned me to write. The entire time, I carefully managed the company’s PR, going on radio shows like The Dragon Page and setting up interviews with all sorts of media sources. Despite some minor hiccups here and there, it was really the time I remember most fondly at the company.

But things soured in late 2004, in a very bad way. We were no longer getting along with our publisher, and the company was broke. Dragonlance was really behind, and one issue had to have three different artists working on it in order to meet the deadline. It looked terrible. In the meantime, none of our other books were ready to ship, and all of them were behind. We soon had a very public falling out with Devil’s Due, and very nearly closed our doors. The only thing that kept us going was a deal we’d struck to produce Robert Jordan’s novel, A New Spring, with a company called Red Eagle Entertainment. It seemed like the one project that would sustain us through some difficult times since it was a mega-popular license.

In early 2005, Mike Miller decided he’d had enough and went off to form his own company, Alias Comics. He immediately asked me to come over and handle their PR, since the Dabels were going to sign on to publish their books through him. It seemed like a really good idea, and I worked with Mike to develop some press for their books. I also made friends with Brett Burner, Mike’s business partner, a San Diego-based printer who happened to be an incredibly cool guy. Things were lining up so well I considered moving to San Diego, because Alias seemed poised for success. But there was something weird in my gut that told me not to commit, not yet. Something wasn’t right.

I’m glad I listened. Alias went on to infamously launch nine different titles in a single month — far more than any publisher should ever attempt. Most of the books (including Imperial Dragons, which I wrote) weren’t that great, and there was no common theme to tie them together. Retailers were particularly annoyed when the second issues of most of the titles were late, and many vowed not to carry Alias titles anymore. Plus, there was a lot of confusion, because there were two comic books called Alias on the shelves — one by Brian Michael Bendis and one based off the television show. Mike and Brett responded by trying to retool the line as all-ages books only, but it was too late; they’d lost their momentum, they’d signed too many books, and the company eventually collapsed on the weight of itself.

I’m not even sure what happened next. The Dabels were upset with Mike for printing some of their books without permission, and Mike was upset with them for lying to him about something. I don’t know what happened, really. I know Alias hired another PR guy behind my back, which really annoyed me since I’d been basically working for free on the assurance that I’d have a salary soon. I know there was a huge exchange of vitriolic emails between people on both sides. And I know that I was eventually put in the position of choosing sides, and felt that the Dabels were the victims, not the instigators. So, I quit Alias, and didn’t look back.

The Dabels decided to self-publish. It seemed like a good idea. They lined up another batch of licensed books, and we got to work. Our first self-published book (Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker #1) debuted in January, 2006. Everyone was pretty annoyed about the fact that the company had yet to make any money, and we were all eager to just get some books out and achieve success.

I was named the Marketing Director, and became a trusted member of the inner circle, and privy to a lot of the inside information. I’m not going to go into the details, but I eventually became aware that there were many, many artists out there who were owed large sums of money. My job was to minimize the damage, and I did my best. I focused on reinventing our brand, and we did well. Most of our books were selling in the 3,000-6,000 range, which is quite respectable. We also knew that they would do exceptionally well in the graphic novel format, since bookstores would carry them.

We also had another rather public falling out with Red Eagle Entertainment over A New Spring. Basically, they tried to stick us with some huge bills that they refused to pay, so we shut down production. It turned into a big legal mess than never got resolved. They went out of business, and we never got to finish the series or release it as a graphic novel, which means we lost a bundle. This is publishing, and these things happen, but it doesn’t change the fact that it sucks.

Les Dabel approached us with a new license called Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, and told me it was my job to make it our top book. I was assigned as the editor and the marketing manager, and I got to work. My wife, Stacie M. Ritchie, had landed the job of writing the book, and we worked together like crazy, creating interest on fan forums and working hard to promote the book. Stacie even allowed fans to send her books for signatures, since they were so thrilled to have personal contact with someone working on the project. But that’s part of the reason the debut issue of Anita Blake was a runaway success — the marketing was focused and relentless.

But just before we shipped the book, Les informed us that we were going to be signing on with Marvel Comics in a publishing agreement. It was a dream come true at the time — we felt as if our hard work had paid off and we’d finally arrived. Marvel treated us very well, initially, but as the relationship wore on, things started getting weird. Les claimed that he was being told to fire all of his support staff — particularly me. (I had gotten into an email exchange with a few of their people who simply did not understand our product.) Money wasn’t rolling in like it should have, due to the way the contract was written. I began to suspect that Marvel had picked us up not because they were interested in working with us, but rather because they were interested in acquiring our licenses by shutting us down.

[I should note here that Marvel did not do anything underhanded or illegal; they were simply operating as a business should, and as a publisher often does. If independent imprints can't handle the pressure, they're often crushed by the bigger company and absorbed. It's how the big guys keep the little guys from becoming big guys. We were naive to think it wouldn't happen to us.]

We got out of the agreement — giving up our licenses to do so — and found ourselves once more on our own. We quickly lined up some more licenses, and eventually made a deal with Del Rey Books for publishing and distribution. We needed stability; we were all tired of the cycle we were in; tired of getting our hopes up, only to have a falling out with a publisher. Del Rey seemed stable (they are; they’re great folks!), and everything seemed to be lining up.

And that brings us to why I left the company just a week before our first 2008 title came out.

I’m a busy guy, and I scaled back my work to part-time for the Dabels because, quite honestly, that was all they were willing to pay me to do. I was willing to work for free while they got back on their feet; I’ve always been the first to waive my fees when times are tough. I need money as much as anyone else, but I’m able to make do. My only concern is when something is promised, but not delivered. I don’t like expecting cash flows only to have them appear late, in the wrong amount, or not at all. But they insisted on paying me, so I was happy to accept it.

So, I handled the PR. I wrote the catalog copy. I lined up press. I wrote up marketing plans. I did everything that was asked of me.

And then, one day, the Dabel Brothers stopped answering my phone calls, and stopped returning my emails. It was strange. I was waiting on several things to be approved, and waiting on several issues to be addressed. I’d been getting lots of email from customers who had purchased products from the DB store and who’d never received their orders. Like a good PR manager, I did my best to deal with complaints and to make everyone happy.

And then, one morning, I got a letter from someone recently hired on at the company telling me that I was being reclassified as a freelancer. The tone of the message seemed to be blaming me for low sales of the recently released titles — a goal that was never set and a measurable over which I had no control. After all, retailers were tired of all the chaos associated with the Dabel Brothers. They weren’t ordering because they didn’t have a lot of confidence, something I explained to the brothers frequently.

I’d been with them for five and a half years. I’d stuck by them through all sorts of chaos. I’d been a friend to the entire family, giving my time generously. I’d put my own projects aside to help the company out. And they didn’t even have the decency to talk to me in person. They had to have someone else send the email.

So, I quit.

Integrity’s a funny thing. Once you lose it, you can’t get it back easily. I don’t like working with people who can’t treat their employees with respect, and I don’t like working with people who don’t have the courage to express their convictions to their friends and co-workers. Clearly, something was going on, but no one was talking, and it was decided I would take the fall. Unfortunately, no one consulted me about any of it. No one told me there was a problem. No one even gave me a chance to make amends.

There’s no point on holding on to something if it’s bad for you. I held on to DB Pro for five and a half years, hoping it would blossom into something great. It hasn’t. It probably won’t. But even if it does, I don’t care; it’s just not worth it to be to hold on to something that might succeed when I could be focusing my ability on something that will.

And as it happens, a week before that fateful message arrived, I had dusted off the Army Ant Publishing business plan I wrote last summer and said, “I need to do this.” I was already meeting with a small business advisor by the time the message arrived. He said it was an extremely solid and well-thought-out business plan. We’re working on securing the funding now.

So perhaps the best way to view this is as the close of the first chapter of my comic book publishing career… and the beginning of the next one. I’ve learned a lot from my experience, and I’m grateful I had the chance to be there. But man, does it suck when you get stuck with a knife by someone you’ve stood by for so long.

-SJJ

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