Shelly Bond is a force of nature, her massive energy just as apparent in her conversation as it is in the abundant flow of information that makes up her two illustrated illustrative volumes of memoir and editing tips: Filth & Grammar: The Comic Book Editor’s Secret Handbook and Fast Times In Comic Book Editing. Once she discovered comics in the late 80’s, there was no stopping her. Quickly becoming an editorial assistant at Vertigo, she was with the company for over 22 years, eventually running the thing. She then took this vitality to Black Crown, her and husband Philip’s imprint at IDW, before the two launched Off Register Press in 2020. Always having many things on the go, her latest book (Record) Thieves Like Us is "basically that online challenge from a few years ago where people were listing the 20 records that changed their lives". Illustrated by ArtByLid whom Shelly stumbled upon on Instagram and, true to her benevolent nature and mission to keep comics moving forward (more on this below), asked the young artist to collaborate. Bond has also just launched a Kickstarter for the third volume of her autobiographical/editing advice trilogy, i-DOPPELGäNGER: Portrait of the Comic Book Editor in the 21st Century & My Last Days at Vertigo, running until Dec. 15th.
Philip Bond, on the other hand, is more reserved. Despite possessing a great talent and having worked on such books as The Invisibles, Kill Your Boyfriend, and Shade, The Changing Man, to name but a few, he is humorous and humble, his words paying tribute to how great a thing it is to be able to create something with just pencil and paper, or whatever you have at hand. Music is crucial to the husband-and-wife team, and Philip’s current project is Geezer, a comic celebrating the struggles of a London band trying to make it during the Britpop era. Written by William Potter, Bond’s artwork is excellent, packed with plenty of details to be appreciated by all, as well as some delightful Easter eggs for the discerning eye. Issues 1 & 2 are available at Off Register Press now, with number 3 coming in early January.
I sat down with the pair to get the scoop on Off Register, learning the history of its inception, and picking up some great advice and inspiration along the way. What really came across during our talk was the couple’s belief in the importance of artistic creation in its own right, as a very worthwhile endeavor no matter how many people see the results. Listening to the two of them, one definitely wants to get out there and make some comics. – Aug Stone
AUG STONE: So how did you each get into comics?
PHILIP BOND: I always had comics in the family. My dad did and still does draw. He used to do sports comics for British papers like Tiger, which was where Roy of the Rovers started. He used to do kind of factual comic strips – you’d have The Bobby Moore Story, based on photographs but cartoony. That was his thing. So I grew up seeing my dad work and having the run of his studio – the pens and the ink and the bookshelves full of reference material. I was in there right from the beginning. He had Charles Adams’ collections and a lot of early Mad stuff. That was my first exposure to artists like Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Will Elder. I was reading them before I understood how subversive it was. I was more familiar with Superman from Wally Wood’s Superduperman than the actual DC Superman. And when 2000 AD started in the UK in 1977, I was 10 or 11 years old and it was absolutely perfect for me. Everything was laid out. Up until that point, I was just experiencing stuff from my dad’s studio and then in 1977 it was Star Wars and 2000 AD and that was it. It was comics from there on.
SHELLY BOND: I wasn’t the reader in the family. My sister was a voracious reader, my mom was a teacher, and I was a lot more like my father. I liked to do things. So I was a tap dancer, and the only connection I had with comics was that I loved the Peanuts gang. I loved reading Peanuts in the paper but it wasn’t until I went to college that I realized comic books were still being made. I had a screenwriting class senior year and our teacher used Peter Gross’ Empire Lanes as a teaching tool to show us storyboarding. Which, as I look back on it now, is ridiculous. But, thank god he did that, because I had no idea that comics could be printed in black and white and look like small movies. And a year later I was working with Peter Gross when I was an editorial assistant at Comico. So, talk about changing your life because of comics.
PB: I rediscovered comics when I was in college through Love and Rockets. 2000 AD kept us going until our late teens and then we discovered Love and Rockets. That was the time when I ran into Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin, Alan wrote Tank Girl, and obviously Jamie drew it. I knew Alan from quite a bit further back. But when we ran into Jamie that really reinvigorated our comics experience and we started going back to the comics shops to look for Love and Rockets and Hate and things like that.
SB: That was the stuff that I was reading too, which was incredible if you really think about it. I’m still convinced that this is why in life you are supposed to meet certain people. You are running on a parallel track. Even if it’s only one or two people that are a lot like you, they’re out there, they’ll find you, maybe thru music or comics or magazines or football or soccer, whatever your passion is. But I do find it interesting that things really kicked up when Deadline happened.
So let’s talk about Deadline.
PB: Our real route into comics was right towards the end of college, ‘87 or ‘88. One of the staff at our college knew Brett Ewins, the 2000 AD artist, friend of Milligan and McCarthy, that gang, and she invited Brett to come down and do a lecture Jamie was at and I missed [it] because ... well, I don’t know why ...
SB: You were playing with your Star Wars action figures.
PB: I was probably in my bedroom listening to The Smiths and just being lonely. So at least Jamie and Alan went to this thing and they struck up a friendship with Brett. And it just so happened that right about the time we were leaving college, Brett and Steve Dillon were starting up Deadline magazine – and this is something that’s going to come around as a motif – they’d had their time at 2000 AD and decided they wanted to do something themselves. They’d had some success, they’d made a name for themselves, and they had a couple of rich friends, I guess, and decided to make this magazine that was gonna be all about comics and music. So they invited me and Jamie and Alan to come and be a part of that first issue. Steve and Brett both had stories in there which had central male characters and they needed female characters. But rather than going to actual female creators, they got us to do some female characters and that’s how Tank Girl came along. The story I did, Wired World, was about a couple of girls as well. That was our route into real comics. And I say ‘real comics’ in that we were just doing comics the same as we did when we were in college, it was all photocopy and glue and scissors and just slapping everything together, and having a wild time being creative. When we were doing Deadline we didn’t work with scripts, we made it up as we went along [laughs] ... and it showed.
SB: In a good way.
PB: In a good way, maybe, yeah.
SB: To me it was just so Punk Magazine. And we needed that. Every decade somebody needs to kick comics up the butt. Or raze and rebuild, which is what my plea is right now. But the coolest thing of all is that you started with Deadline, a group of people who were telling their own stories. And it’s not unlike what we’re doing now. So we say it’s a motif but I think Black Crown was really when the two of us cut our teeth. We’re so grateful to Chris Ryall of IDW because without him ... I mean, I think we would’ve gotten here eventually but I don’t think we would’ve had the bravado to be like "Screw everybody, screw the industry, we’re in it for the art form, let’s go!"
Tell me more about Black Crown. How did that come about?
SB: This is also part of the third volume of my graphic memoir trilogy. Dealing with leaving DC. I always say to people, for the record, I was with DC Comics twenty two and a half years and towards the end, I could see the end coming. So one of my messages in that third book is always anticipate the worst and be ready for it. Be ready to pivot. What was so great about working for DC Comics in the '90s was that Jenette Khan was a great champion of comics and women in comics. She and Karen Berger had a great relationship and of course Karen hired me, so I always felt protected. I always felt like I was there because people cared about what I was doing, and I was encouraged to think outside the box. I’d say 80% of the time, whatever I pitched Karen was approved. I was lucky, cause there were a lot of people in our group that didn’t have that synergy or that connection. But I worked for it.
I started at DC with editing credits under my belt, but they would not pay me as an editor. In fact, they only had a position open for an assistant. So I had to take a pay cut and a title cut if I wanted the job. And I also had to relocate in two weeks. I did. And in a corporate environment you have to work twice as hard than any other type of environment to get ahead. I was riding shotgun to Karen on all of her books. She was running an imprint and I was editing her books and also trying to show her that I could edit my own books. So those years when I say it was all comics 24-7 is why I lived around the corner from the office. I got up in the morning, made comics, stumbled home at night when I couldn’t see any longer, went to bed, got up and made comics. That’s the only way that I earned those steps up the ladder.
So ... to get back to the main point ... when I knew that Jenette was leaving the company, I could tell that things were gonna get bad from there. And sure enough, there were some new management teams that came in and Paul Levitz eventually left the company and then we saw the writing on the wall. My boss said to me, "I know they’re gonna offer you the job cause you’re the only one who can do it at this precarious state and I don’t blame you if you do it." But I knew what was gonna happen. I knew they didn’t understand Vertigo, I knew they didn’t like Vertigo. I knew that the people in charge didn’t really know how to make comic books the way that we did (points to her and Philip). Cause Philip and I were from the punk D.I.Y. generation – if you don’t know how to do it, well you better learn, or pay someone to help you, and get it done.
So I said to Philip and our son Spencer, "I know this is gonna crash and burn ..." [Philip laughs] "...but if I don’t go, I’ll always regret it." Cause I worked for my entire life to get to a point where I could actually run Vertigo. So I made some “demands” that were reasonable to me as I had some leverage. I didn’t make impossible demands, didn’t have a rider with no brown M&Ms. I had what I felt were things I earned and things that were fair enough. So I think that sometimes when people look at what happened to me and they feel bad, what I’m trying to say through my book is don’t. Because I knew what I was doing, and although things went in a series of ups and downs, I still had a path, and I still have no regrets in how I performed and the things that I did. I worked with Gerard Way to kick off Young Animal, got everything set in place. And I still saw the plank in front of me and knew I’d be walking down it. So I just tried to hold my head up high and continue out my contract, which was great.
The day that I left, I got an email from Chris Ryall from IDW, whose name kinda looked familiar but I would never have been able to pick him out in a line-up. I’m packing my bags, my last boxes, and I get this email that said, "It’s really a shame that DC’s letting go of you. I’ve followed your work since the beginning, even at Comico, and I hope you’re not going to be sour on comics cause we need you in comics. So if you ever wanna continue working in comics please consider working at IDW." And I was like "Wow." I didn’t really know IDW, I thought they were just licensed publishing. Contractually I couldn’t work for six months from that date so that’s what I told him – "Hey, thank you so much. I can’t work for six months but you’ll get my first resume, and I really appreciate that you’re thinking of me."
So we traveled that summer and had a great time. I got to catch up with the family, you know I barely saw my son all those years because of comics. Philip raised our son to be the incredible young person that he is, because I was always at the office. But that fall I sent Chris my resume and he said, "Hey, why don’t you pitch me what you think would be a cool imprint." So basically we pitched him what we considered to be like an indie record label. We wanted to make an imprint that actually had intent, and had logic behind it, not just come up with a clever name and try to be old Vertigo. We wanted to have a backbone and a conceit. What I wanted to do with Black Crown was work with a very small coterie of people, and because we, the company, was only going to be two people ...
PB: Was really only going to be one person, initially.
SB: Well, it was only going to be one person at first but I roped him in. Because I knew in my gut and in my heart that he wasn’t just a talented storyteller who could draw really cute girls and great British gear, I knew he was a great graphic designer. So I had this idea that not only would he do the logo but he would design the whole thing. I had a plan when we set out to do Black Crown and I modeled it after the old Hollywood studio. I thought if we could bring in a couple of our favorite people to work with, like [Peter] Milligan, who is - and I say this and I mean it, really - one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. If he ever saw that in print his head would explode. I never like him to know how I really feel about his work because then I can’t kick his ass. Because I feel like anybody who is working today needs an editor, even if it’s just a tap on the back to say, "Hey, I love that but you told that story twice in the past three years. Can you try to come at it from a different angle?" I feel like everybody needs a second opinion, even me. I had two editors on Filth & Grammar, I had one editor on Fast Times, it’s important.
Back to the story though. We wanted to have a mix of veteran talents like Milligan and new talents. I found Tini Howard’s work through her story in The Secret Lives Of Geek Girls. It reached out and grabbed me by the throat. I didn’t even know if she wrote comics but I didn’t care. Because to me, it’s a spark. Whether it’s someone’s cadence in prose, or whether it’s someone’s dialogue or the way they work towards the page turn. I knew I wanted to meet Tini, and sure enough she was hired to do a short story for Young Animal, but they hired her for her first DC job to do a wordless story. Which I thought was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard in my life, because Tini was all about sharp wit and banter. The last thing they needed was to ask a new writer to write a story that had no words. That to me was her schtick. That’s how she was eventually going to write a female protagonist, which she did for us in Assassinistas. Pairing Tini up with Gilbert Hernandez was an incredible moment. I had said to her when I read Assassinistas "God, I bet Gilbert Hernandez would love this book." And she said, "You mean someone like Gilbert Hernandez?" and I said, "No, I mean Gilbert! Let me call him." She was like "What?"
So we put together that line knowing that we would have a very small group of people, but they weren’t just gonna be our friends. The worst thing in the world I think is to come out with an imprint that looks like it’s such an exclusive club, no one can join. Cause who would want to read it then? And we weren’t about this snob culture. I’m always about paying it forward. Because I appreciate the people who held the door open for me, who gave me a chance. I am all about paying your dues, and thanking the people that helped you out along the way, whether someone bought my book, whether someone bought me a cocktail ... That isn’t done enough in comics, or actually in life, in business – kindness. And you should never forget who got you in the door. Even if you despise them now.
That was actually one of the things I wanted to ask you, Shelly. Your work has become almost philanthropic, you really seem to want to bestow your knowledge on to people. With Filth & Grammar, Fast Times, and even your A-Z tips in October on Instagram you’re constantly imparting what you know about working in the industry for other people to learn.
SB: And I don’t do that out of arrogance at all. I do it because no one else is doing it. I’m not the only person with an editing career over three decades. I’m not a public speaker by nature, but I was asked to teach at Portland State University by my first boss in comics, Diana Schutz. She designed a comics editing class and taught it one semester before she realized she didn’t want to teach anymore. So she reached out to me and said, "Hey, you wrote this great book, why don’t you teach from it?" And the reason I said yes is because she asked. ... She thought enough of me to reach out, and she backed my book, I thought was really cool. That’s why I did it. And I like [teaching]. I tell my students it’s just as hard to break in as it is to stay relevant. And that’s why I’m doing this. I enjoy it but I also do it because I wanna continue making my own comics. That’s what Off Register is really all about.
I find it appalling that there aren’t people with boots on the ground helping the next generation. One of the reasons why I’m making comics education material or comics-making material and why I’m hiring young people to make it with me is because I want other people to follow my lead there. I’m not the only person who has worthwhile tips on making comics. In fact, if you talk to some of my former assistants they probably don’t even use any of the methods that I’ve taught, because they’ve come up with their own, and good for them. Your editing style should be wholly and uniquely your own. But the reason why I had Imogen Mangle work with me on the sequentials for Filth & Grammar, and the reason why ArtByLid, my 25-year-old partner in arts crimes on From A-Zine on Instagram, is I don’t wanna just talk the talk. I wanna say to people, "Hey look, I’m doing it and I’m not just hiring this guy [points to Philip] to draw for me." I want someone who I think is talented, who maybe needs a push. Maybe needs some help with perspective, needs somebody to tap them on the back and say, "Hey, you’ve drawn everything from the same angle, let’s try a different angle and maybe a different figure size so it’s not the same from page to page." Those are the things that aren’t being done in comics. I’m convinced that the real art and craft of editing is lost because of how people are chopping off from the top. The corporations are just saying, "Who has the biggest salary? Oh, the person who worked for 25 years who is now a Senior Editor. Ah, we don’t need that person." So the craft isn’t being handed down like it was. I think. Maybe I’m wrong.
My whole selling point is that Filth & Grammar is 80% how I make comics – things I’ve learned, people who I’ve learned things from – and 20% my life as an editorial ingénue coming of age at DC Comics at the height of Vertigo in the '90s. Fast Times is the opposite ratio. It’s 80% a love letter to New York City – living the high life there, going to clubs, hanging out at St. Mark’s Place, going comic book shopping – and then 20% editing tips. I wanted to use those two ratios so people would know and could decide, "I have no interest in making comics, I think I’d rather have Fast Times." It’s a little bit more lively, it’s more antics. I wanted to make sure that I distinguished between the two. But that leaves i-Dopplegänger sort of on its own, and it’s still finding its way. Right now it’s just a postcard.
And this is another tip that I’ll share with you - I always say to people when you’re working on something that’s deeply personal, if you’re working on it for like five or six months and you just feel like you’re not making any progress – even though you are – put it aside for something else, but always put something in print that reminds you that you’ve come this far. So I had to shelve i-Dopplegänger for financial reasons – I got a freelance job that I wanted to take and I wanted to take a break from this – but I made 50 postcards and I keep them by my desk to remind myself that I’m not done yet. So I recommend that. You don’t have to print postcards, xerox it at the copy shop. Just for yourself. Make 10 copies, not 50. Do what you need to do. Just so you remind yourself how far you’ve come and that it’s not over.
i-Dopplegänger will be from where Fast Times leaves off, 2000-today. Filth & Grammar’s subtitle is "The Comic Book Editor’s (Secret) Handbook." I use subtitles because I think that you need to sum up the heart and soul of the book for the person who’s gonna buy it. And i-Dopplegänger’s subtitle is "Portrait Of The Comic Book Editor In The 21st Century."
So what happened with Black Crown coming to an end?
PB: Again it’s something that’s kinda of come around a couple of times. When Shelly was let go from DC, really the first thing we did was go out for a walk and she had to tell me she was being let go from DC and she said, "I have no regrets about this. I am really happy with this." It was all about moving forward. So it’s the same thing with Black Crown. We knew it was going to have to end and –
SB: We made the most of it as it was crumbling. We not only had a stable of really talented writers and artists and colorists and letterers. We had a house letterer, Aditya Bidikar, who is now an artist in residence with Tiny Onion. That was great, we got to work with one person on all the books. It kept it all close, wasn’t a lot of this back and forth. But that had to end after a while because our books weren’t making money, they cost too much to make. And at that point we were offered I’m sure very nice people who lettered at IDW but they didn’t like working with me because I expected things a certain way. So, with Philip’s help, I taught myself how to letter. And cut my teeth on it because we had to. And believe me when I tell you I sent my lettering samples to Todd Klein, number one letterer in the universe, and Clem Robins. They gave me some pointers and then I just went and kept doing it. No one has any excuse in my book. What you don’t know how to do, you either fake or you teach yourself.
PB: [laughs] It’s all been about saving money. We’ve ended up creating Off Register in order to save money, really. Just by doing everything ourselves now. With Black Crown we gradually started learning more and more of the production stuff because we were either dissatisfied with what IDW were doing or we were frustrating to them. We took over more and more of it until eventually we were just sending the entire book straight to the printers.
SB: Big difference from leaving DC to leaving IDW. No regrets either way, but the way that IDW let us go was super classy because of Chris Ryall. He told us six months before they had to shutter the imprint, which gave us time to get our life together. So we knew we weren’t gonna have an income coming in and Chris agreed that I could Kickstart Hey, Amateur! Which was a pretty decent Kickstarter for us. It was an anthology book, and I said, "Look, we’ll do the hardcover," and they would do the trade, so that way I would be working on IDW time a little bit but they’d get something out of it. To me that set-up a business model for a lot of companies where you can have the hardcover – boutique, little more expensive, people splash out for it if they have the money – but if they want the collection which is half the price in the trade paperback format they could get it as our last offering through IDW. I feel like we set up a lot of “procedures” that worked for us. And we just kept with it. We’ve been having the time of our lives doing Off Register Press. It is the best. We work 24-7. This is why we’re on our third cup of tea at 12:30. We are wiped out, but we couldn’t be happier. It’s the greatest thing in the world to know that you’re married to your favorite artist and one of the best graphic designers of the 20th and 21st century.
PB: You’re really overselling that.
SB: I am, but it’s the truth.
PB: No.
SB: It’s the truth.
That’s awesome to hear that you’re enjoying it so much cause it does seem like a hell of a lot of work.
PB: I think half of making what you do enjoyable to read is having fun making it. We’ve re-tapped into that. For me it goes back to like the old Deadline days, or pre-Deadline days, of making stuff. Just laying stuff out on your bedroom floor and slapping stuff together in the best way you know how. Like a sandpit of creativity. I saw that again when we did Black Crown and I got to dabble in getting back into production and seeing how enjoyable that could be if you took this kind of punk cut-up aesthetic. I feel we’ve come back to our roots again, of making stuff purely – well, not purely for ourselves – but primarily, for me, I’m making the book that I wanted to see in the world.
SB: Philip and I are both honest about what he can achieve in a finite amount of time. He is drawing around the clock because with a book like Geezer, he has to have that freedom to put 16 different pairs of trousers and different concert t-shirts in the background of every club scene if he wants to. We are investing in him for the long haul on this book. Even if it doesn’t pay off financially, we know that this is the book that both of us love to pieces. It was written in 2020, edited in 2020 and 2021, it’s being drawn now and he’s able to get an issue out a year and that’s okay with us because we have big ideas for the collections.
PB: Financially we’re in a complete hole but creatively we’re very rich.
SB: On fire, some would say.
Let’s talk some more about Geezer. Where did the idea come from?
PB: [laughs as Shelly hides her face behind a clipboard] Actually, the idea came from Shelly, basically. So again, this goes back to Deadline magazine. Around 1990 I first met Will Potter, the writer of Geezer. Will was in a band at the time called Cud. Cud is everywhere in Deadline. If you look at the early Tank Girl things, every picture of Tank Girl she’s got a Cud badge somewhere on her. They were friends of ours and Will wrote and drew a story for Deadline as well. He was into comics back then too. And during the Black Crown days Shelly stumbled across Will somehow.
SB: I was Kickstartering Femme Magnifique in 2016. It was the first thing I did after DC. And Will tweeted at me, and asked why it was so expensive to ship Femme Magnifique, which was a hardcover, to England. And his handle was willcud.
PB: Shelly asked me if this willcud was somehow related to the band Cud. And I said yeah, absolutely, that’s Will Potter.
SB: And I went behind his back.
PB: So Shelly went behind my back and got Will to write a pitch, a version of the story of the band Cud for Black Crown Quarterly. And in the end, we did four episodes.
SB: I need to say this, I knew exactly what I was doing. However, I thought that if I talked to Philip about it, he would shoot it down because it would mean pressure [Philip looks skeptical at this]. Yes. So I had Will send me the pitch and I said, "Philip, I got this great pitch. You gotta read it." He read it and said, "I love it, but I wanna draw it." And I was like, "Duh, that’s what I wanted."
PB: That was her plan all along. We should say, by the way, that the Cud story, which ended up being called Rich and Strange, was printed in Black Crown Quarterly. As part of the Geezer 3 Kickstarter we’re putting that together as a single issue comic book. So you’ll get the Cud story as well, as an add-on. Rich and Strange was the one thing that made me feel like I was working at Deadline again. That was so much fun to work on.
SB: And he designed everything for Black Crown. Such incredible design work there.
PB: So how did Rich and Strange become Geezer?
SB: I think it was because you had so much fun working with Will, and Will and I wanted to keep working together.
PB: So again behind my back, Shelly and Will cooked up this idea for a sort of secret history of an imaginary British band from the '90s who wove their way in and around real people and real venues and real events. And again, when Shelly showed it to me, I was like, "Don’t let anyone else draw this, I wanna draw this book."
SB: And I mean who else was gonna draw this book? There was never any question in my mind. So yeah, we believe in it so much. It’s a great story and Philip has great plans. He always wanted to do a 7” single size comic. And he got to do that and he’s gonna do other things relating to size and format.
PB: From a wider perspective, I feel like being the age we are, you start thinking, "How many projects do I have left in me?", and this is definitely one of the ones that I really wanted to do. It’s gonna run for five issues and it’ll be the longest thing I’ve produced in my comics career.
SB: And the best.
PB: I’m really proud of it. Really, really happy with it. It’s a really cool book. And in the end I think it’s gonna hit on some interesting things ... it’s gonna give you the feels.
SB: It already does.
PB: There’s a lot of things in there that are reflective of both my life in comics and Will’s life in music. There’s such a temptation to take the whole thing as a competition. You’re always in competition with all the other people around you. And as you get older and get some perspective on the whole thing, you see that everyone sort of feels the same way. Everyone’s so tense because they all feel it’s a competition as well. But in reality these are your workmates and your friends.
SB: I think the only thing that is truth – and I put this in my book – is that if you don’t put your stories down on paper in print, you are gonna be lost from the history pages. No one’s gonna do it for you. If you have someone doing it for you, you probably have a lot of money and you’re paying them, but why not do it yourself? I always say that the reason I like Kickstarting is because had I wanted to put Filth & Grammer out, I could’ve pitched it to Abrams or Drawn & Quarterly. They would’ve wanted a lot of changes. I get it. And the book wouldn’t be out even now. Cause it would probably take 4 or 5 years till it goes thru the system, till the contracts are done, till the editor gets on board and has a lot of changes, and I wouldn’t have been opposed to that, but I did a book that I that I felt was worthy of my experience in making comics. I got it out in eight months. That was a bloody miracle. I’m still proud of it. We’re going into our third printing soon. We’re not making a ton of money, but we’re keeping it in stock. I always add a little bit to it to make it new. And I give the backers a digital section of anything that’s new so they don’t feel cheated. But yeah, I come from a family business. So I’ve always been encouraged to just get shit done. No excuses. Sometimes I’d wake up in the morning and I’d have terrible allergies and my dad would be like, "Get up, go to school, you’ll feel better." I’d be sneezing and coughing and he’d say, "I have two words for you. Boo hoo. Go to work. Go to school."
PB: Shelly’s work ethic is insane. She never stops. I’m slow, I’m like molasses in comics. Shelly’s probably edited a book by the time I wake up in the morning and had ideas for three other books that she’s trying to pitch to people.
SB: That’s not untrue. When I saw The Clash on Urgh! A Music War and I saw how Joe Strummer was attached to his rhythm guitar like it was a limb, and he was expressing himself, and sounded and looked so bloody cool, that was it for me. I just wanted to make urgent art.
We hope Off Register Press inspires people of any age. Whether it’s a teenager or an octogenarian. All the naysayers, leave ‘em in the dust. Just chart your path and go for it. My best advice, which again I always give my students, is start small and finish. Cause the number one problem for people that want to break into comics is they want it to happen fast and they want it to be something big, like an original graphic novel. Don’t do that. Do a one page comic first, and flex. Then do a three-pager, four-pager, then do an eight-pager. It’s like running a marathon or playing at the Rose Bowl, you gotta start small and work up to it and get the confidence. And break a few bones along the way.
PB: Don’t have that be your goal in the first place. If you start a band because you want to play Madison Square Garden, what does that say? It says nothing about anything. You get in a band because you wanna make some noise. You want to make something. It’s the same if you get into comics because you want some great success [laughs skeptically] or any kind of success, you’re on a losing path.
SB: You can count on one hand the people that made it like that.
PB: Yeah, don’t expect to be a success at anything other than having made something.
SB: And you should be proud of that. And you shouldn’t wait for other people to tell you that it’s good. Even if it stinks, you did it and you finished, get on to the next thing. Cause the next thing will be even better. It’s interesting when you talk to not just this new generation of students, not just college kids, when you talk to people who are our age and they’re like "Man, I’ve always wanted to write something." What’s stopping you? It should be nothing. But there’s so much noise, on social media, and there’s so many people with their feet out that would like to trip you up, because of their own insecurities and their own drama.
PB: I feel there’s a lot of that stuff going on with the introduction of AI into everything over the past few months. People are saying "AI is great cause now I can create at the same level as my heroes." Well, no. You didn’t need that. You’ve got a pencil and a piece of paper, that’s all you need. Do it. Create something and feel proud of it.
The post ‘Screw the industry, we’re in it for the art form’: An interview with Shelly and Philip Bond appeared first on The Comics Journal.
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
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