Fan Mail From Some Flounders

(In case you don’t get the joke, the header is a reference to a gag from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. Hey! Don’t you judge my childhood!  😀 )

Anyway, as we here at The ’Warp get ready to debut Lorelei: Sects and the City—our fantastic Mature Readers graphic novel that features art by Eliseu Gouveia (Pandora Zwieback, A Princess of Mars) Steve Geiger (Web of Spider-Man) and Neil Vokes (Fright Night), which is about to go on sale—I thought the time was perfect to show off some of the reactions I’ve received about our favorite soul-stealing succubus over the years—from big-time professionals, no less!

In April 1993 StarWarp Concepts released Lorelei Vol. 1 #0, with art by David C. Matthews and a cover by Vampirella’s Louis Small Jr. The prologue to Lori’s origin story, it introduced an exotic dancer named Marlene, her grouchy strip-club boss Forry (based on a comics retailer whose shop I used to frequent), a grinning sociopath named Paul, and a mysterious man named Arioch (think Boris Karloff in his later years). It was more moody and character-driven than horrific—and Lorelei didn’t appear in it at all, beyond the cover—but I was so proud of producing my first full-sized self-published comic that I wanted to share it with people whose work I admired. I mailed out comp copies to a handful of pros, and the first response I got was this:

Dear Steve –
Thanks for the gratis copy of Lorelei. It’s not really my taste, so I don’t know what I can say either pro or con.
Good luck, anyway.
—John Byrne

That’s right, in 1993 I was bold enough to send a copy of Lorelei #0 to one of comics’ major players—the guy who, in the 1980s and ’90s, was one of the top-tier artists of the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and Superman. I don’t remember how I got Byrne’s contact information, but I wasted no time in taking advantage of that knowledge. And I got a laugh from his note, even if he didn’t care for the work. (I used to joke with friends that I should have taken out a full-page advertisement in comic-industry magazines: “Lorelei. The series that leaves John Byrne at a loss for words.”)

And he wasn’t the only one I heard from. That same year I also sent copies of Lorelei #0 and #1 to Dave Sim, creator/artist of Cerebus the Aardvark. I knew nothing of fear!  😉

I’d started reading Sim’s long-running blend of fantasy, politics, theology, drama, and satire a few months before I sat down to formulate my plans for the Lorelei comic. At that point, Sim was publishing the multipart “Jaka’s Story,” in which Cerebus was reunited with his lost love, a dancer in a tavern. I was so taken with Sim’s leisurely pace and character-driven plot (the arc ran for 23 issues) that I decided to apply that approach to Lorelei’s origin story: it was to run for twelve to fourteen issues. So who better to send the first two issues to than the man who inspired my crazy plan—and he liked them! Getting that letter definitely made my year.

Unfortunately, despite encouraging sales figures for the series—Lorelei #0 sold 2,500 copies, #1 sold 5,000—I eventually canceled the series with #5; it just wasn’t making enough money to support itself. Still, I was pleased with what I’d been able to accomplish in six issues—a lot of indie comics these days can’t sell 5,000 copies, and that number puts me above the sales figures for current mainstream comics like DC’s Batman Beyond Unlimited #1 (4,094), Archie’s Archie #632 (4,765), and Image’s Savage Dragon #179 (4,614). [Figures taken from ICV2’s “Top 300 Comics Actual: April 2012.] And mine was a black-and-white comic!

Tomorrow, I’ll show you responses from a couple of pros that really bowled me over, after I’d revived Lorelei for another go in 2002.