The Art of Independent Comic Book Publishing with Unshaven Comics - Interview 31

Show Transcript

Chris Saunders (00:01.486)
Testing, testing, I am good.

Frank (00:03.411)
Yeah, one, two, three.

Chris Saunders (00:06.062)
That grumble came through loud and clear, Mark?

Frank (00:08.644)
Excellent. Love it.

Marc Alan Fishman (00:11.537)
Yeah, same. Hello? All right.

Chris Saunders (00:12.995)
All right, sounding good, sounding good. All right, excellent.

Chris Saunders (00:22.854)
Welcome to Nerdpreneur, where we have fun conversations with people making money with their nerdy passion. As always, I'm joined by my co-host, Mr. And today, we have a very special guest. His name is Mark, and he is from Un-Shaven Comics. Mark, welcome to the show.

Frank (00:32.231)
Hello.

Marc Alan Fishman (00:41.992)
Glad to be here.

Chris Saunders (00:43.64)
We're excited to have you on here. So Mark, what is your nerdy passion?

Marc Alan Fishman (00:49.969)
Independent Comic Book Publishing.

Chris Saunders (00:53.806)
That I didn't. OK, so you make your own comic books. Is that kind of that?

Frank (00:55.28)
Alright.

Marc Alan Fishman (00:58.001)
Yes, yes, I am an artist, author and the business guy out of the three of us.

Chris Saunders (01:04.119)
So there's three of you in this partnership, this unshaven comics.

Marc Alan Fishman (01:08.017)
Yes, depending on how we sit at cons, we are either a Venn diagram or an addition problem. So there is one dedicated writer, one dedicated artist, and then I do both and then also do kind of the marketing businessy stuff. And then the other two guys, like we're all equal partners, we're best friends, have been for 30 years. So they just know that I'm a control freak and I wouldn't allow them to make any decisions.

Frank (01:15.023)
You

Frank (01:37.327)
On their own, at least.

Marc Alan Fishman (01:39.068)
why they're not here.

Chris Saunders (01:39.214)
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I think we got the right of the the trifecta there, the right side of the triforce to talk to you about the business stuff. So so you're saying this comic book business, it's possible as an aspiring nerdpreneur to actually do it and have it be successful, because I've heard that building and creating your own comic book is pretty hard to do and find it be successful. So you're saying, yes, there's a way to do it. Awesome. Do you think it's transferable to other people?

Marc Alan Fishman (01:44.616)
Yes.

Marc Alan Fishman (02:03.836)
Absolutely there is.

Chris Saunders (02:08.086)
Is this something we can dig into with you and find out if people can actually learn this and and it's a skill.

Marc Alan Fishman (02:14.675)
100%. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a weird, we are among many. And I think back of the 15 years that we've been doing this, would say solid 80 % of them are still doing it with us at the same time that we started or in some form or fashion. So absolutely.

Chris Saunders (02:35.47)
I wanted to ask because I think some people might think this but like how important is being a good artist versus being a good business person like versus being like a writer, you know, like there's got to be all these different hats to making a successful comic if you were to break it down into like well, it's about 50 50 between the artistic side and then the business side or is it more like I can make a crappy comic but if I market it great, it'll

go really well. What do you what do you think?

Marc Alan Fishman (03:05.297)
Well, without shooting myself in the foot, right? I can put it this way. If your goal is to make money and whether that means that you are sustaining an actual career or if it's like a side hustle, whatever your financial goals are, better quality is fantastic. But I have seen people whose style far outweighed the product. I've definitely purchased my fair share of independent books where

I've gotten home, read them and really wished I could have got my money back. But then you have to respect the hustle of how they actually sold me because I'm pretty tough to purchase on stuff. And several times that I've made those, it's been based on a promise that did not hit the page. And, you know, conversely, I've also purchased books or know of people whose talent probably

outweigh their business acumen a hundredfold. for those people, like you kind of wish that you could do something for them or, you know, you'd love to see them take off, but I genuinely feel like eventually that catches up to them positively. It really just depends. I've never seen someone like talent themselves out of working in comics, but that's to say, it's a pretty, it's a pretty narrow pie to begin with.

Chris Saunders (04:18.211)
Right.

Chris Saunders (04:22.52)
Well, that's the dream.

Frank (04:22.587)
Yeah, we often see people, know, nerdpreneurs that are struggling to get the word out there. that's one of the core aspects and principles of what we're doing this for, of course. So let's rewind a little bit, though, and talk about how unshaven comics got started with you and your two friends.

Marc Alan Fishman (04:40.403)
Sure. So first of all, like I said, we've been friends for 30 years. So I met Matt in sixth grade. We're from a small South suburb here in Chicago. And the way our school system had worked is every kid, depending on where you lived, went to a specific elementary school, K through five. And then sixth grade, we all meet at the junior high school. And then we meet with the other junior high, the neighboring town for the high school.

Well, sixth grade starts and I'm in my new homeroom and I noticed that I don't know any kids in the class really. Like a couple of them were in my elementary school, but most of them were not. And one of those kids was this guy, Matt, and I walked past him on the first day and the teacher had kind of like a introduce yourself questionnaire. And I noticed that he had flipped his over to the back and he was drawing this absolutely sick Viking that had like a one-handed ax with blood.

And I fancied myself an artist and I looked at him like, he is a much better artist than me. I think I need to be his friend. So it turns out he wasn't even a Willow kid from the other side of town. He was actually from a whole different part of the, the, was in Chicago. I was in suburbs. His mom moved down here and he was a new kid. So he needed friends quick. And I jumped at that chance. I was like, well, hi, I am your new best friend. And then literally two weeks later, he's like, this is Kyle. I met Kyle in health class. He is also our best friend.

And they're like, okay. And their love of comics kind of hit my tepid love of the space. Like I knew the cartoons. I just never had any inclination to go to a shop or buy a book. But now I did because, your friends, you you do what they do. Their hobbies become your hobbies and vice versa. So we were kind of known as comic book guys all the way through high school. went, please.

Chris Saunders (06:09.283)
haha

Chris Saunders (06:35.31)
Well, I'm curious because on that question, what was the first comic book you actually went out and purchased? Because it sounds like you were introduced to it through friends. What was the first comic book that got you into it? You're like, I like comics.

Marc Alan Fishman (06:44.369)
Yes.

Marc Alan Fishman (06:47.771)
Okay, so twofold. The first one that I purchased, and this is tragic, is I purchased an adaptation of the X-Men cartoon. I bought a book that was basically just the cartoon readapted back into a comic, which is a type of inception that one shouldn't traverse. But then Matt, for my birthday that year, he and I both have December birthdays, so I met him basically in August, December. He drives his bike over to my house and he gifts me

Chris Saunders (06:56.502)
Marc Alan Fishman (07:17.523)
Prime and The Strangers, both number one issues for Malibu Comics. Malibu Comics would have gone out of business, I think, three months later. But that did not stop me from collecting an entire box worth of Malibu books. And those two I would consider to be my firsts, like real ones.

Frank (07:37.693)
Wow.

Chris Saunders (07:38.062)
I'm actually not even sure. I'm not a huge comic book nerd. I had original X-Men comics, but not the ones you were reading, the real ones. The other ones, yeah. The ones that are a little darker, a little more gritty. But that was the only comic book that I ever really read because I found them in my basement. It was my older brother's. was hand-me-down comics from a different generation. But I think everyone has those early comics where you're like,

Marc Alan Fishman (07:46.226)
Yes.

Chris Saunders (08:07.032)
This is awesome. I really like this. So what grabbed you about comics? Was there anything specific that you're like, man, I love this.

Marc Alan Fishman (08:14.291)
I I think, I mean, I love the cartoons and then by proxy because like, especially with the X-Men, prior to meeting Matt and Kyle, there was a friend of mine in fourth grade, Pat, I remember was heavy into the X-Men lore in the universe. And I would pester him because I wanted to know every character and every superpower. That's like all I cared about. So I knew all the members of X-Force and X-Factor and the first X-Men and then the uncanny X-Men. And I knew their powers.

And then obviously with the Batman, the animated series dropping, I fell in love with that whole universe. know early on, without knowing the super friends or who they were, eventually came back around to figure out, I love Green Lantern. And I actually ended up in between summers from sixth grade to seventh, I did an overnight camp and my bunk mate had comics and he ended up getting kicked out of camp and he left me all his comics.

So as he was being dragged out of the bunk, he's like, okay, I gotta go. So he's like, Mark, here, take my comics. So I read like this whole run of Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern books. And I was like, well, that's my guy. And if you know Kyle Rayner, like he was Spider-Man for DC when they didn't have one. And I still to this day think he's the best Green Lantern they've ever had. And I don't like Hal Jordan, so.

Frank (09:13.512)
Boom.

Chris Saunders (09:21.975)
Wow.

Frank (09:28.4)
Yes.

Frank (09:32.444)
Yes.

Marc Alan Fishman (09:41.947)
seeing that he gets all that love.

Frank (09:42.159)
I think Kyle made Hal popular. That's my take, at least.

Marc Alan Fishman (09:47.187)
Well, it's, you know, it's all those Dan Dodio. mean, we know this guy and like he had such a love for the silver age that he was never not going to make Hal Jordan, Arthur Curry and Wally West matter or a Barry Allen, I should say. And Wally West, Kyle Rayner, like those were my guys because they were younger. They were depicted as being newer into the, I love it when superheroes do that. Like the one, then the young ward gets that like.

gets a shot at the apple, right? One of my favorite Batman book runs was when Dick Grayson took over the mantle of Batman. It wasn't long, but he was such a different version of that character. And I would say better in some cases, because he's somehow a little bit more adjusted. It was really, it was super entertaining. We know he was going to keep it, but you know.

Frank (10:30.277)
Yeah, bit more of a heart.

Chris Saunders (10:35.726)
So before we dive off into the very deep end of endless superhero comics that we could be... But before we do that, you guys started in 2006, I think. What happened in 2006 for you guys to create a comic book company together?

Frank (10:39.673)
Yeah, we got close there. We got right up to the ledge. I gotta say. I was ready to jump into that green lantern pool with you,

Marc Alan Fishman (10:55.763)
Thank you for steering the train back on the tracks. So really what had happened is I went to college in 2000, graduated in 2004, and Matt and Kyle followed me down to Indianapolis. And we were just living in Indy, working. We all had girlfriends. We all had adult money for the first time. So of course it was all going into comics. And this is back when Facebook was still like the Facebook, a mutual friend of ours from high school.

Chris Saunders (10:57.55)
you

Marc Alan Fishman (11:24.763)
reached out to me absolutely randomly out of the blue and said, hey, Mark, my mom is a comic book publisher, or I should say my mom is a publisher, and they translate graphic novels from the United States and then they sell them in Mexico. But they want to do it going the other way this time, and they actually want to do an original book. And I knew this gal, Alexis, from art class. And she's like, my mom asked me to do it. And I tried, and I do not want to do this. I do not like.

I tried it, it is not for me, but I remember you and Matt, and I remember you guys are the comic book guys. So like, you guys must be making comics, right? And I did what you're supposed to do in that situation. I lied and said, we make them all the time. So she said, great, could you guys come up to Chicago and meet with my mom and my uncle and they'll tell you about the project. So, you know, we put on our best sweaters, drove up and met her mother and her uncle who remains the

Frank (12:05.171)
Yeah, we're pros.

Marc Alan Fishman (12:22.675)
scariest human being I've ever met. We met at the bar. Again, we're not old enough to drink or anything, but yeah, we should have been. Anyway, we got to the bar and her uncle sits down and orders as his drink, water and bitters.

Frank (12:39.875)
boy, one of them. Yeah.

Marc Alan Fishman (12:40.925)
The power move. So we sit down with them, they tell us about the project and then the uncle just kind of leans forward. He looks us in the eye, goes, you guys have never made a comic in your life, have you? And we're like, no, sir, we have not, but we went to school for this. You know, like I got my degree in general fine arts, got his degree in illustration. Kyle and I each had emphasis in writing. I'm like, trust me, I think between the three of us, we can make this work.

Frank (12:52.37)
Ha

Marc Alan Fishman (13:09.297)
So they agreed and we signed just a very lucrative contract. I'm glad you guys are sitting. We got $500 and one box of books to make our first comic and it only took us 18 months. 54.

Frank (13:20.968)
What?

Frank (13:25.831)
How many pages? Okay, all color? gosh.

Chris Saunders (13:28.718)
you

Marc Alan Fishman (13:30.557)
Yes, yes. Now, hilariously, I will point out the miraculous building of this book is that they told us they wanted the book to be silent, no speech balloons. They just wanted a visual story so that they could publish it and sell it in Mexico, in the United States, and no one would have to read or translate anything. So we did write the story, they did approve the script, we did render that whole book, and I'm not kidding.

two days before it was due, Sylvia, the publisher called me and she's like, something, I feel like something's missing. And I blurted out, it has no words. And she's like, great, could you just throw some in there? So we bought a case of Mountain Dew in Red Bull and I spent all night lettering the whole thing in my basement with Matt and Kyle taking shifts.

Chris Saunders (14:12.567)
Mm-hmm.

Frank (14:15.961)
my god.

Marc Alan Fishman (14:29.499)
making sure I was awake. After one round of editing, the book was done. Yeah, that got us to 2008. We got our box of books, we got our 500 bucks, and we got to our first con to attempt to sell it.

Chris Saunders (14:31.886)
Bye.

Frank (14:43.547)
So, I gotta ask, I mean, are so many, there's gotta be so many lessons in that. What are just a couple of them that you guys collectively say, hey, you know, well, at least we learned this.

Marc Alan Fishman (14:57.435)
Well, first of all, we learned how to collaborate as not just friends, but as professionals. So this is where we started to figure out who had what talents and what. Now I started off saying, I don't want to draw anything. just want to, I know graphic design. That's what I went to school for and obviously writing. like I can help write it. I can letter it. I can color it. I can do all the stuff around the edges, but Matt, you're going to draw.

And he said, yeah, no problem. And Kyle and I helped and we did the scripting and we learned through the process, like how to make comics from scratch. So how to scan, how to professionally color things. We learned about color flatting. I actually trained Kyle to flat, which to this day he will never do again. Because somehow we found a job that we're like, this doesn't require any talent. And then Kyle turned in his first batch and we're like, Nope, that was a lie.

Frank (15:46.759)
Yeah

Marc Alan Fishman (15:56.093)
To this day, we still give him crap because now it doesn't matter when you do color flatting in comic books, means like black and white artwork and you treat it like a coloring book and you just put flat tone on each shape so that a real colorist can kind of come in and do their thing. Well, Kyle literally took that and said, well, whatever random color I can click, I will put into the box. So we had like brown houses with blue roofs, blue houses with brown roofs. And I would stare at these things and just make fun of them incessantly for it.

Frank (16:07.827)
Mmm

Frank (16:21.957)
Marc Alan Fishman (16:26.429)
Can't you just pick a color that appears in nature? It's like you'd.

Frank (16:30.023)
So you guys hadn't, sorry to interrupt you, I just was curious that you guys, you said that this was the first time you all learned of how to really work together and you'd been friends for so long. This couldn't have been the first group project that you'd done together, was it? Really?

Marc Alan Fishman (16:33.639)
Please.

Marc Alan Fishman (16:48.479)
it definitely was. Yeah. mean, Matt and I, obviously, like we went to art classes together, but there was never any like collaborative piece or anything. And, you know, we were just best friends. And it's not to say like, I think it's just in my own personal nature that I'm never not working. So even like before we had Unshavin' Comics, I was still doing freelance work for friends and...

designing stuff and like we would just hang out on Friday nights and we would play versus the card game and we'd watch movies or talk about what was going on in comics or whatever. this just seemed to be that weird missing piece of the puzzle, you know, however many years of friendship we already had up until that point, like this kind of opened up that like, this, this is right. So like when we got out of that 18 months and the book was done after we finished that first

Comic-Con, we realized two very important things. Number one, we absolutely wanted to continue to make comics. But more importantly, number two, they had to be ours. We liked doing the march. That was the book, The March Crossing Bridges in America. We enjoyed doing that book, but it didn't have any of the things that we wanted to do. It was a tasteful, creative, non-fiction book about an immigration march that happened in Chicago. It was very nice.

But we were all in our 20s. We had a lot of four-letter words and blood and violence to get out of the system. We kept joking that if they didn't want the book at the end, like when we finished it, that we were just going to recolor it and just make it like a zombie thing. Because there's nothing but crowd shots. luckily, they liked it.

Frank (18:17.747)
You

Chris Saunders (18:25.71)
Nice.

Frank (18:26.535)
nice.

Chris Saunders (18:29.238)
Right, right. Well, I'm curious because you've since then worked with these two individuals for 16 years to build out many comics, right? And your roles, it sounds like, are fairly siloed in some ways, right? Like, OK, you got an artist, you got writer, and you do more of the business stuff. You kind of do both. I'm curious from a creative perspective, working creatively with other people, do you

Marc Alan Fishman (18:40.605)
Yes.

Chris Saunders (18:58.796)
all just sort of trust, where's the line of like, I trust this person to do it, but I'm going to fight for certain ideas or I'm going to like, how do you give feedback in an example or in a, an environment like that, that allows it to be healthy, just speaking from, you know, working in partnerships, even ours and also other partnerships we've interviewed, there tends to be some sort of balance that needs to happen and being able to fight for what's really important for the company.

the future or the product and then on the other side to just make sure things get done and not be like arguing with each other. So how do you guys navigate that?

Marc Alan Fishman (19:37.617)
Well, I would say like first of all, probably the first 10 or 12 years worth of friendship actually made it easier because we already know going into something that I'm not going to say something derogatory to Matt about his artwork that I know he can't take. And I would expect the same back from him. If he draws a lousy panel, I'll call him out on it the same way I expect him to do to me. And in fact, the reason why I even do interiors is because he goaded me. You know, he made fun of me and basically said like,

You went to school the same as I did, pal. Learn to draw." And I was like, okay, well, I'll take that criticism because he's my best friend. From our writing perspective, when we're coming up with ideas and things like that, it's a little bit of improv comedy. It's yes and. And the way we fell into that basically is by creating the silos to begin with. So we made books originally where Kyle did the whole script.

And I am not contributing to that other than to be kind of a quasi editor, just to say like, your idea is your idea and I'm going to help where I can, like tighten up your script. And Kyle fell into that role where he's like, I don't, I don't care, edit away, like change the word, change the thing. I'm not going to be hurt by it. Just don't change where the story's going. And again, did the same for me when we started working on the Samornauts where now we're doing something together.

We still figured out a way to silo it. like I have my part of the book. Kyle has his part of the book in terms of scripting. And we in these, when we go to Comic-Cons, we're in the car for 10, 15 hours. You know, there's time to talk. So we, get through these plot things, we hammer it out and it's usually some of the most fun we have. Cause then you get to play that improv game of like, okay, well who are they fighting in this book and how can we make that tie into Canon and.

You know, there's a lot of that. I think like when we reach that idea, when all three of us are laughing, we're like, okay, there it is. You know, and we'll, collectively fight for things that we want, but I think we've all kind of realized, especially after doing it for as long as we have now, if we have a niche to scratch on our own, we're going to let that happen in its own place. Like I'm doing Sam or not to the max right now. And Matt and Kyle have nothing to do with it other than they read it.

Chris Saunders (21:36.974)
Mmm.

Frank (21:37.255)
Yeah.

Marc Alan Fishman (21:58.663)
When I'm done, given them the editing copy to take a look at and they know where I'm going with it. Similarly, Matt's working on a book right now, La Noche de los Luchanots. He's doing that a little bit to troll me, by the way. I'm the guy into professional wrestling and he's doing the luchador samanots. Kind of a dick move, but whatever. I know he's going to build that book by himself and I don't have-

Chris Saunders (22:17.01)
Marc Alan Fishman (22:25.277)
I don't get to criticize. don't get to say, hey, I don't like this DDT. It's like, nope, that's what you're doing. I'm going to trust it. Because again, like I think you said it, it's me hemming and hawing over a panel. Like my day job, I'm a marketing director by day. I can't do that to somebody else. I just won't.

Frank (22:45.669)
Right, there is a level of trust also that I'm hearing at least in what you all, you all trust that each of you is going to further the Samornauts. Is that Samornauts? I said that right? Okay, awesome.

Marc Alan Fishman (23:00.637)
Yes.

Chris Saunders (23:01.454)
They're like astronaut samurais, correct? That are also monkeys?

Marc Alan Fishman (23:04.147)
Correct. They are led by a single immortal kung fu monkey.

Chris Saunders (23:09.41)
Got you, okay, I wondered about that. I've seen the kung fu monkey on a lot of, on the front of the comics. It looked very bad ass, so.

Marc Alan Fishman (23:12.381)
Yes.

Marc Alan Fishman (23:15.891)
We know where we get our money from.

Chris Saunders (23:18.872)
Yeah, right. Well, that's that's what is where where do you get money in as a comic book company? Like, where does that actually come from?

Frank (23:20.531)
So I want.

Marc Alan Fishman (23:26.355)
That's a good question. Now, very specifically to unshaven comics, we are 99.9 % convention-based and we do that for a very good reason. The independent comic book marketplace sucks. For those who are uninitiated, there is one distributor of comics globally, effectively. If you are an independent comic book maker and you intend to get into the local comic book shop that is

Chris Saunders (23:39.659)
Okay.

Marc Alan Fishman (23:55.891)
10, 12 states away, there's one catalog, the Diamond catalog. And Diamond has a couple of rules where you can see very quickly where the problems spark. Number one, you have to pre-sell $5,000 worth of merchandise to get into the catalog. Number two, you have to be able to take 100 % returns. So if I get Samornauts by hook or crook into the Diamond catalog,

And somebody in Walla Walla, Washington buys a Samoranaut copy and I ship it out to them. They put it on the shelf and they forget about it. Three months later, they go, what the heck is this thing? I don't actually want it. They're going to send it back to me. Good luck on how that's going to ship by the way. And I got to take it back. You tell me how to make money in that and I will gladly follow it. But we've, we never really figured that was a good way to do it.

Frank (24:45.384)
Hmm.

Marc Alan Fishman (24:52.541)
to be fair to ourselves, like what may separate us from others in our genres, we're really good at selling at the Comic-Cons. So we are able to sustain. Now, this is not a job for the three of us. And part of that is because there's three of us. We learned very early on there's no full-time jobs in comics for a group like this to just come in. And none of us had desire to splinter off or try to

make it by ourselves. And that was just not in the cards. So we are all convention-based up until this year, and things have kind of changed. And I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit more, but effectively now we're into the licensing side of this and where can Samoranauts go that we ourselves can't handle, but people are now willing to help us. So we're extremely excited about all that happening and we're taking nothing for granted when it comes to that side of

Frank (25:51.281)
You had talked a little bit. mean, yeah, definitely we're to dive into the convention side of things. And maybe this does tie into that in a way, but the three of you and your vibe on your website is unique. It's refreshing in a way that I get a strong sense of your personalities. You're friendly, you're approachable. And I'm wondering if any of that ties in and what else ties in that makes the secret sauce.

of unshaven comics when you guys are at a con and you're wheeling and dealing, what do you think is your team's secret sauce?

Marc Alan Fishman (26:29.971)
Well, I'll tell you tragically, there is one secret above all else. And I may not actually have it on me. You know what? I don't, but I'll describe it. The real secret sauce is a stupid eight and a half by 11 laminated sign that says, can I tell you about our comic book? This literally by happenstance and this is not overnight. This is just one year at a con we were across from a booth that had speakers.

And they were thumping EDM music into the aisles. And our up to that point way of stopping people to talk to us was just to stop them and yell. Kyle's voice was going and he turned to me and Matt and he goes, can you guys scribble on a sheet of paper? Can I tell you about my comic book? And he just held up just a little sheet of paper that said it. And just that alone stopped people because they see it, they read it, they laugh. And then.

We have worked extremely hard to perfect that elevator pitch to the point that we run a panel on it now, how to pitch your comics. It's the combination of something stupid to stop people. We all acknowledge you are in a row of literal legends to the left of you, other people selling crafts to the right. You've got to stop them somehow. Just holding up a word balloon sometimes is all you need to do.

but being able to back that up with something of substance. To your point, I'm just being modest about this. I think we've always carried dad energy, no matter our age. I think people just stop because we are easy to talk to, we're having a good time. Clearly, people see that we're having a good time at the show, and then it really is that pitch because we've pitched a bunch of different projects over the course of 15 years.

Samoranats is where there was a hard pivot when it went from, that sounds cool to shut up and take my money. So, yes.

Frank (28:34.971)
Really? What is the pitch, if you wouldn't mind?

Chris Saunders (28:35.886)
Cool. Yeah. Can I, so you got me with a, first off, can I just say, I love the sign thing that is so, so cool and so smart. And I think that even if anyone who was just like listening and thinking about how to get more people to show up at their con or to do that, like having some visual like that takes away so much awkwardness to between interacting with nerds who aren't always the most outgoing and excited to chat to strangers. You can have them self select.

Marc Alan Fishman (28:38.163)
So.

Chris Saunders (29:05.772)
from a big group. I just wanted to point out that that is such a cool and smart way to do it and clearly seems to work. So you got me with that. I'm walking up. What do you say to me after that?

Marc Alan Fishman (29:18.035)
So after, mean, literally Kyle will repeat it. And by the way, he is the salesman that like of all the special skills we have, we all bow down to Kyle. That man is the machine. And I'll get into it in a sec, but effectively you come by the table, you see the sign and he goes, Hey, sir, can I tell you about my comic? You say, yeah, sure. And he goes, okay. And he picks up the book, he hands it to you and he goes, it's called the Samoranauts. It's about a team of samurai astronauts led by an immortal Kung Fu monkey.

defending the earth from zombie cyborg space pirates. Now, as you can see, it is a full color print book, over 200 pages of content. Normally it is $25, but here at the show we actually have a special. We're selling it today for $20. Would like to give it a try?

Chris Saunders (30:02.158)
So the eyebrow rays after samurai astronaut led by an immortal monkey, is it always the same? Like, is it always like, you got my attention, sir.

Marc Alan Fishman (30:13.779)
We know it's, we always get into it. Samurai astronaut, I've sat here and monitored people's faces. They hear samurai astronaut and now it's starting to churn. Led by an immortal kung fu monkey. wait, now what? And now it's, okay, I think you have me now, now close it. And we say, depending on the book, of course, they fight zombie cyborg space pirates or transforming demon dinosaurs from another dimension or.

Frank (30:13.807)
You got it from both of us just now.

Frank (30:27.975)
Marc Alan Fishman (30:43.551)
a cadre of evil mutant hive mind socialists. Whatever they happen to be, we have all of these phrases. Kyle's got them all memorized. I don't. But it's that combination of samurai astronauts, immortal kung fu monkey, crazy villain descriptor that seals it because we know that we don't have to get into the semantics. We don't have to talk about anything deeper because they're also flipping through the book.

Chris Saunders (30:48.718)
Hahaha.

Chris Saunders (31:11.31)
and you don't want to give it away.

Marc Alan Fishman (31:12.881)
Well, some people do and we choose not to, but the artwork speaks for itself in this case. And from there, we do make a point to get into like what we're actually handing you. So we let you know, this is a book, this is how many pages there are. We do highlight that it's full color, even though I think that's kind of silly because everything