I just saw an old clip from Late Night With David Letterman with guest Jerry Lewis. They were talking about Jerry’s comic persona, the troublesome, noisy nine-year old kid who couldn’t resist stirring up trouble. After Jerry had performed a particularly manic “Hey, laaaaady!” Dave said that the beauty of Jerry’s comedy was its “purity to the intent.” He likened it to (the then popular) Beavis and Butthead animated series: It was a thing that was always exactly what it presented itself to be, a comedic bit of business that never wavered from its purpose.

That phrase, “purity to the intent” struck a cord with me. That sort of creative intent is something I’ve found to be missing in so much of current pop culture. I watch the coming attractions for new movies and am left wondering exactly what kind of movie it’s trying to be. Trailers seem to be tailored to sell to specific demographics rather than to represent the film that’s been made. A couple or three years back, my son and I saw the trailer for a new George Clooney movie, The American, which looked like a great action/adventure shoot ‘em up. But when we went to see it, The American was anything but a great action/adventure shoot ‘em up; in fact, just about every bit of action, adventure, and shooting in the film had been gathered into the two minute trailer. The remaining 103-minutes was a contemplative study of an assassin facing life, love, and his conscience. Contemplative movies, even those starring George Clooney, don’t sell. Blockbuster shoot ‘em ups, especially those starring George Clooney, do.

The book world has more or less adopted the film industry model of shooting for blockbusters, publishing books that stress the quantity of readers over the quality of the writing. “Blockbusters” like Fifty Shades of Gray would have once enabled a publisher to subsidize twenty or thirty titles by lesser known authors that might not break even; today, with all the major houses owned by big corporations expecting the biggest return on every buck they spend, that is less and less likely to be the case.

One of the things that impressed me about Crazy 8 Press even before joining its ranks was the purity to its intent. Here was a group of writers with stories to tell but without an outlet through which to tell them. Some had begun series before the paradigm shift that they hadn’t been able to finish in its aftermath. Others had ideas that couldn’t find homes, and some, like my own The Same Old Story, were stories that we were going to tell regardless of whether or not said stories ever found a home. Nobody tells us what we can or can not publish. To paraphrase The Field of Dreams, we work on the principle that “if we publish it, they will come.” And we’re in it for the long haul; unlike new movies or TV shows, we don’t rely on a blockbuster opening weekend or through the roof ratings to determine success or failure. Our books are in print to stay.

The other day, Crazy 8 Press announced it would be publishing Hey Kids, Comics: True Life Tales from the Spinner Rack, a collection of essays by various and sundry comic book fans and professionals (including fellow Crazy 8 author Bob Greenberger and myself), edited by Robert J. Kelly. Talk about purity to the intent! I don’t recall how many years ago I wrote “An All-Star Collection of the Greatest Super-Stories Ever Published!” my piece for the collection, but I know at the time I did it, publication of the book was nothing more than a vague and distant hope. It didn’t matter, though. It was one of those stories I wanted to tell and I told it, even if all it ever ended up being was an entry on Rob’s or my own blog.

Science fiction. Fantasy. Mystery. Humor. Non-fiction. Crazy 8 will do them all, and as different as any one project is from any and all the others that we’re publishing, they all share one common bond: That of being exactly the things that we’d intended them to be from the start, pure to the intent of their authors.

Hey Kids, Comics: True Life Tales from the Spinner Rack will be available in print and digital editions in September.

For the longest time, readers have been wishing out loud that the Vidar Saga, which I wrote back in the 1980s, was available for e-readers. Well, the long wait is over.

It took 28 years, but The Hammer and The Horn–my first book ever–is available in e-book format from both Amazon and Barnes and Noble with a new cover from up-and-coming Brazilian artist Caio Cacau. And as soon as we can, we’re going to get the other two books in the trilogy–The Seekers and The Sword and The Fortress and The Fire–up as well, with Cacau covers of their own.

You see? Patience IS a virtue.

By Robert J. Kelly

“Hey Kids, Comics!”

Growing up, there was no newsstand, supermarket, department store, or convenience store that escaped my laser-like gaze, hoping to see those three words (and exclamation mark!) on display. Those words mean comics are for sale, which means I would be walking out of that newsstand, supermarket, department store, or convenience store with at least one of them in my hands.

Back in 2007, I created a blog based on those memories, betting that there were other people out there that had similarly powerful experiences centered around their love of comic books. It didn’t take long for the stories to roll in, from all walks of life, about how comics profoundly affected their lives. As I read the each new story, I found them so compelling that a thought finally occurred to me: “These would make a great book.”

Hey Kids, Comics!: True-Life Tales from the Spinner Rack features all-new stories of four-color obsession: Paul Kupperberg (Kevin Keller) takes us on a tour of DC’s classic 80 Page Giants. J.M. DeMatteis (The Phantom Stranger) talks about the time he headed out onto the cold New York streets, sick as a dog, just to get some Marvels from a nearby newsstand. Author Alan Brennert (Palisades Park) shares how a Dennis the Menace comic book helped guide his future. Master Cosplayer Roxanna Meta tells us the story of how she found love at a comic book shop. Sholly Fisch (Super Friends) reveals how a Marvel Treasury Edition almost got him killed!

These are only a tiny fraction of the funny, sad, embarrassing, and in some cases unbelievable true-life adventures that are contained in this book. Comic book legends, best-selling authors, Emmy-nominated TV writers, journalists, bloggers (even a real-life physicist!) share their stories and vintage photos of comic reading, collecting, obsessing, making Hey Kids, Comics!: True-Life Tales from the Spinner Rack a must-read for comics fans of all ages.

On a more personal note, I pitched this book to dozens of publishers and book agents, all of whom turned it down because they didn’t believe it was “marketable enough.” They all thought that comic books were too obscure a subject for a book like this, and that people wouldn’t be able to relate. I don’t think that’s true. Obsession is universal—everyone has something in their life that affected them in a profound way. For many of us, it was—and continues to be—comic books. With films and TV shows based on comics raking in billions of dollars and millions of fans, I think now is the perfect time for a book like Hey Kids, Comics!: True-Life Tales from the Spinner Rack. Read it and don’t be surprised if you see yourself in its pages. I know I did.

 Hey Kids, Comics! will be released in print and digital editions in September,