MEGAZEEN #2

    There's no pressure with a first issue. It comes out when it comes out. But once it does, if you want to keep it going, the second has to follow rather quickly. The indy world is full of first issues but few second issues or beyond.

We loved Megazeen#1 so much that we refused to allow it to languish like Cross Press did, so before the first issue even made it to the printers we began throwing around ideas for the next ish. There was a lot of rethinking going on. As Crossett wrote in his editorial, "Talk is cheap, starting a revolution is expensive."
But where money seemed in limited supply, passion was not in them early days.

Drew Pocza had become a kind of "third Beatle" back then, joining us in our nightly planning meetings on MSN IM and kicking in a graphic design for the cover of issue 2. His opinions mattered a lot to us, so much so that he merited an interview in this issue. Also interviewed in this issue was James Kochalka, whose work had influenced Crossett heavily. Some questioned our motives behind interviewing someone who was not a believer. Think about it. Don't make me spell it out.

We bowed to some of our critics in three areas. First, gone from this issue were the music reviews and interviews. Readers were far more interested in comics and comic news, and could read about music anywhere. Secondly, the font size on the editorials increased to a point it was legible. Seriously, you could go blind reading MZ1. Finally, the comic page count increased to 16 pages, more than half the book now.
One VERY cool effect from having already turned out an issue was that, suddenly, artists came out of the woodwork to be in our book. With the exception of my Johnny Crouton contribution, we had a whole new crop of artists this issue.

We recruited this newcomer kid by the name of Jamie Cosley, whom we discovered on the net. He'd done this crazy comic called Nippy Wallaboosh for Blindwolf Studios. I don't think Jamie missed an issue since. My daughter actually learned how to read by reading Jamie's bound book, "Big Honkin' Bugnut". Jamie and I have become great friends over the years. I laugh when he thanks me for including him in Megazeen- sometimes I wonder what Megazeen would have been like without him, and I don't like the idea at all.
We became INTERNATIONAL at this point too, taking in an English translation of a strip by Veli Loponen from Finland. Years later, Veli would translate one of my strips into Finnish for his own comic.
We also welcome in the fairer sex with MakotoTsukai's "Double Cross" and Shaina Widmer's "Idol Time". Shaina came from the Nate Butler pool. Makoto contacted us to submit her and we really loved her raw talent.

Finally, there was a guy who I felt we really had to have in this book. My best friend and brother-in-law Tom Hall is a brilliant writer with amazing comic timing, and I talked him into presenting his "Life of Fred" comic to Megazeen. From that point, Tom became the fourth Beatle. He also co-scripted the Johnny Crouton installment this issue, and he and I went on to work together on many projects together.
Now, if it seems like all was running smoothly, be sure that it was not. This was the point that we stopped being polite with each other and started getting real. This was the point that the creative differences between me and Crossett started to surface. It was inevitable. We're two very different guys. And while there may have been more, I can recall three problems that we bickered about.
One was that there was an artist that called himself Brother Jim or Brother Greg or Brother SOMETHING, I don't remember. Crossett seemed to like some of his online work and asked him to submit a strip, which he did. There were some problems with it. First of all, it sucked. Bad. It wasn't funny, it wasn't drawn well, it had no depth and it was about as racist as you can get without using the n-word. Further, the main character in Brother's comic looked so much like Tom Hall's Fred that it would have been confusing. Crossett tried sticking by the guy, who got all cocky and showed his true colors. In the end we got into agreement on that one.

Another issue was that Joseph, for some reason, wanted to review a comic Tom had done years ago called "The Fart-Hand Book." It is a VERY funny book. But I couldn't see why we'd want to review a Fart comic in a Christian magazine. Further, Tom wasn't crazy about the idea- in his mind, The Fart-Hand Book was old news, artistically weak and now worth reviewing. We ended up scratching the idea.
In hindsight, now that I have a few years on controversy under my belt, I can concede that Crossett may have been right on that one. I tend to make a bigger deal about things than they really are. And this was a good example of me still not quite understanding what Megazeen was. If you want to see what the big deal is, head over to the website http://www.geocities.com/farthandbook and see for yourself. I reading it right now and laughing my doopah off.

The biggest issue came up when MZ2 came back from the printer and was all screwed up. Apparently, the wrong copy had inadvertently gone to the printer, and the most obvious casualty was that Tom's 2-page comic became one page printed twice. While we tried to remedy this with an insert, the damage was disappointing. There were also a few typos, the worst of which was crediting Tom Week's comic to Tom Hall. We never heard from Tom Weeks again.

Live and learn. But, hey- we made issue 2.

And before it even went to print, we were already discussing the tenth issue.

Oh, buy it here.