IT WAS FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY...LARRY YOUNG ON FIVE YEARS OF AiT/PLANET LAR

[MattBrady]

by Chris Arrant

Five years is a long time in the comic industry. At first it may not seem like much, but think about how many series, publishers and creators made a big splash, and slowly dwindled away within that kind of time frame – just 1825 days…260 weeks.

For every series that has been popular and sustained, there are scores of casualties in the comic industry. For a small press company to survive and excel in five years is testament to the driving forces behind it, and the output they publish.

Originally formed as a vehicle to publish Larry Young & Charlie Adlard's Astronauts in Trouble: Live From The Moon, AiT-PlanetLar has gone on to be a clearing house for some of today's hottest talent, including Warren Ellis, Brian Wood, Matt Fraction, Becky Cloonan, Kieron Dwyer and more. The first book released by AiT-PlanetLar was the aforementioned Astronauts In Trouble: Live From The Moon #1 on March 17, 1999. Fast forward five years and many series later, Larry Young & Mimi Rosenheim have carved a niche in the ever-changing American comic book market through the publication of original, creator-owned books. Although five years as an independent comic publisher is an admirable feat, don't expect a ticker tape parade.

"Well, there’s nothing planned in terms of parades down Main Street or anything," Young explained. "Just another day of Making Comics Better. DEMO #5 is due in-shops that day, so I’ll probably go down to the Isotope and have a beer with James Sime, Brian Wood, and Ryan Yount."

Although AiT-PlanetLar started out as a two-person operation, as their operations expanded there was a need for additional personnel. That's where friend and Isotope regular Ryan Yount comes in. "Ryan's been with us for over a year, and his contributions in production and pre-press and trafficking has freed me up to concentrate on other areas of our business, " Young said.

AiT is also aided on the design-front by another friend and AiT contributor. "Brian Wood’s like a Mission: Impossible guest star. Sometimes you run a covert operation where you need some help. The strong guy, the cute girl, and the master of disguise can’t get every job done by themselves, so sometimes you need to make a call and get the electronics expert in, you know?"

Based in San Francisco, the staff of AiT-PlanetLar are regular at James Sime's Isotope Comics, and often have signings and other in-store events here. This friendship and business relationship between the two has also yielded other rewards.

"Manny Bello is a customer at the Isotope, James Sime’s comic shop, and I was in there one day when Manny was showing James his portfolio, I took one look at it and offered him the Hench gig on the spot. Sometimes it’s just that easy," said Young.

The 'Hench gig' he's talking about is the upcoming AiT-PlanetLar OGN written by Adam Beechen, coming out in June 2004. Described by Beechen as "an exploration of the very fine line between hero and villain", it's the story of an average guy who falls into the unlikely career choice of a henchman for super villains. While Beechen’s name might not be familiar in comic circles, he has had a successful career in animation, with writing credits on TV shows such as Teen Titans, Jackie Chan Adventures, and X-Men: Evolution.

"Adam’s been a pal of mine for over ten years; when I first moved to San Francisco,” Young explained. "I didn’t know anyone, and one night I couldn’t sleep. I decided to write a postcard to everyone who’d written a letter in the letters columns of the comics I’d bought that week. Adam had a letter in Cerebus that was just the funniest story about Gary Groth, so I wrote and told him so. He wrote a long letter back and we became pen pals. When he moved to L.A. in ’94 or ‘95, Mimi and I met up with him at a San Diego con, and had just the best time. He’s an extremely talented writer, and I’ve long offered to publish anything he wanted to write for us. He pitched me Hench, and I told him I’d find him an artist as soon as I could."

Adam Beechen and Manny Bello are relative newcomers to the comic industry, but AiT seems unhesitant to actively seek out talent, regardless of experience. While some might see drawbacks, Young doesn't think so.

"From my point of view, it’s no different. If you’re enthusiastic about your comic book and are working hard to make it the best it possibly can be, it doesn’t matter to me if you’re a newcomer or a veteran. You wanna be Making Comics Better, this is the place."

'Making Comics Better' is the motto and mission statement for AiT-PlanetLar, and Young & company go to great lengths to hold true to that statement. Although it may not be widely known, AiT-PlanetLar was among the first to publish 'behind the scenes' script & production books with Making of Astronauts in Trouble and Public Domain: The Channel Zero Design Book. They were also among the first to actively aim & primarily publish Original Graphic Novels (OGNs).

"I always like to do the new thing, to invent new categories, and the like," Young said. "We did the script book because, at the time, if you wanted to read a comic book script, there was only Alan Moore’s From Hell script and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman script available in print. If people wanted to talk about comics scripts, you had to say 'Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Larry Young' in the same sentence, and that’s nothing but good in terms of bringing attention to your company.

"Then, forward thinkers like Warren Ellis were touting graphic novels as the natural evolution of keeping work in print. AiT/Planet Lar jumped in feet first, and for a year or two there, you couldn’t talk about graphic novels and trade paperbacks without mentioning my company’s name, too. Also good, for the spotlight on our comics. It’s an old marketing trick; if you invent your own category, you can rule it because you have no competition, and when others get wise to your success, you’re already entrenched as a category-leader. You see this all the time in the real world."

Coming in April from AiT-PlanetLar is Larry Young's Planet of the Capes, illustrated by Brandon McKinney. Although AiT has published books involving superheroes before, this is the first to squarely approach the popular genre. In a previous Newsarama interview, Young explained that write something unless he could bring something different.

Larry Young is also the author of True Facts, a "how-to" guide regarding self-publishing comics. Originally written as a series of online columns, it has proven to be quite a success and is valuable to many aspiring comic creators out there.

"The reason I did True Facts is because there are a lot of hopeful creators of comics out there, and I’m pretty visible and approachable and am pretty successful in getting stuff done," Young said. "So folks would send me emails asking for help, and I found out that I was getting the same sort of questions over and over.'How do I write a press release', 'who do I talk to at Diamond', 'how do I get my comic printed', stuff like that. So I figured I’d just write a series of columns and they were well-received enough that Bri Wood and Mimi convinced me to collect them all in a portable, easy-to-read format. And even today, it’s our fourth best-selling book, so I guess they were right to tell me to print ‘em."

Another area in which AiT-PlanetLar is on the forefront is online marketing and outreach. With a comprehensive website and an active role in many online comic message boards, Larry Young has positioned himself and AiT-PlanetLar as being very approachable and available. And while the advent of the internet has proved to be "easier to get the word out,” there has been criticism from some in the online community.

"It’s like anything; if you extend your hand, you never know if someone’s gonna shake it or spit in it," Young said. "But every time you flip a coin, it’s 50/50 whether you get heads or tails, and how many times heads has come up before doesn’t influence the odds on the next toss, right? So, I’m going to keep extending my hand, and be warm to the folks who take it and not bother with the folks who don’t."

Another tactic that AiT-PlanetLar has used to increase awareness of its' books is Brian Wood Month. Intended to highlight the work of one of AiT's signature creators, it’s now an annual event during the month of Wood's birth in January.

"The Brian Wood Month originally started out as kind of a good-natured joke between Bri and me," Young confessed. "January 29th is his birthday, and one year I realized that we could relist his books and put out some neat new stuff by him in that month and it'd be my birthday present to him to devote a whole month of our energies to him as a creator and comics brand-name. If you remember the ad for that first one, it was mostly a picture of him, with his titles available, and funny little quotes sprinkled around it, tweaking his 'subliminal messages' bit from Channel Zero. Silly stuff like 'It seems all my money's spent on chicken and cheese; ten dollar comic books, and girls who say please' and 'happy birthday, mr. president; happy birthday to you.' Stuff like that. Just to make him laugh.

"Originally, he was sort of against it, because he really is sort of a shy kind of guy and he thought it'd be perceived as too self-serving, or something. I convinced him not to worry about it, because if it worked, we'd be geniuses, and if it didn't, I could take the hit for him as it really was a bit of a goof on the company's part. But it was wildly successful, and for this third annual BWM James Sime from the Isotope in San Francisco scheduled a month-long party with event after event structured around it. So the joke is ending up being on us, I guess, as it really is a big deal for some fans, and Brian still is a reserved sort of guy… but in the spotlight all month. But there are tougher things to endure than a decent crowd of people asking you for your autograph all day long for 31 days straight."

Wood’s also responsible for one of the newest titles coming out from AiT-PlanetLar, the aforementioned DEMO by Wood and Becky Cloonan. It’s a series of twelve stand-alone stories about the consequences of being born with superpowers, while avoiding the traditional clichés of code-names, costumes and the baggage they carry. And while AiT-PlanetLar is primarily known of publishing in the OGN format, this change polarized some of its audience who saw, and prefer to see AiT as a company that only publishes OGNs and trades.

When asked why some comic readers have such a hard-line approach, Young was unsure. "I couldn’t say. It’s probably a different answer for each fan. When Baxter-paper books and trade paperbacks first starting coming out, I didn’t like them as they didn’t fit in my long boxes. I was emotionally invested in that storage system, you know? It wasn’t a comic to me, if it looked like a book. Sort of ironic when I look back at that, but I think that there’s a certain kind of person or a certain age or temperament that is not going to like change. As a businessman, I’ve tried to be an innovator… always out there pushing the envelope of whatever I’m doing. And historically, innovators have always been targets. People who challenge the status quo make others uncomfortable, because they’re pushing the 'different'.

"So, sometimes a fan’s only response to change is to complain about it… but if it’s a bad idea, it goes away, and if it’s a good idea, it’s the new status quo, no matter what vocal observers of the scene end up saying," Young explained.

And while a majority of the work published under the AiT-PlanetLar is original work created exclusively for the publisher, AiT has also picked up the rights to previously published books, such as Channel Zero (which was originally published by Image back in the day), Johnny Dynamite and Codeflesh among others. AiT-PlanetLar even approached Marvel Comics regarding a collection of Brian Wood's work on Generation X several years ago. While it's difficult to nail exactly why a book would be more profitable with one publishing company than the other, Young does have an idea.

"The same reason Harrison Ford played Indiana Jones instead of Tom Selleck, or that Michael J. Fox replaced Eric Stolz as Marty McFly in Back To The Future," Larry said. "One’s right and one’s not, for whatever reason."

The staff at AiT-PlanetLar also attend several conventions in the California area, and frequently do in-store events in the region, as well as abroad.

"We just finished up the Alternative Press Expo, which is always a blast. Mimi and I are going down to WizardWorld LA to check it out, but we won’t be set up there. We have some meetings to go to in LA, and we figured we’d kill two birds with one stone with that trip. Wonder Con in San Francisco is always a good time, and I have a special fondness for that show, as it was the first con at which I’d been asked to attend as a guest. And of course the granddaddy of all the comic book conventions: Comic Con International: San Diego. Bri Wood, Ryan Yount, and I will be doing a signing at Amanda Fisher’s shop, Muse Comics, in Montana in April, and I’m going to Boston and Maine in the summer or early fall, so we’ll be around."

But Young’s not content with his books just being seen in the comic market – he’s looking to infiltrate other media as well to get the message out. Observant TV viewers might recall seeing some of AiT's books on popular TV shows, including a recent appearance on Law & Order: SVU. While some might mark this off to a happy accident, it's all according to Young’s plan.

"Set-dressers contact us all the time. Couscous Express posters and books have shown up on episodes of Queer As Folk, and independent films sometimes ask for books and t-shirts and the like. But that Law & Order: SVU scene had a pretty good shot of Scurvy Dogs, DEMO, and Sky Ape, didn’t it?"

The American comic market has experienced significant changes in the past several years, from increased saturation in bookstores to the manga explosion in the American market. The graphic novel format, pioneered by Will Eisner, has experienced significant growth with collections of previously published single issues and original work intended for the format. And as all signs point to continued change as time passes, Young's crystal ball is crystal clear when it comes to the future.

"I think people are just going to be reading more comics. When you see Entertainment Weekly, and Variety, and Wired, and other mass-media treating comics seriously as an art form, well, of course that’s reflected in growth. I can’t even tell you the last time I saw a “BAM! POW! BIFF! COMICS AREN’T JUST FOR KIDS ANYMORE!” headline, and that’s nothing but good, if you ask me."

Although AiT-PlanetLar publishes books in various genres, space exploration seems a stalwart with this company. With that in mind, one last question had to be asked: 'who would win, astronauts or cavemen?'.

"While the sentimental favorites have to be the cavemen, the fact is that you’re not going to last that long in just a loincloth when the crazy computer cycles open the airlock. So just because they have those cool spacesuits, I’m going to say astronauts. The clothes make the man."

AiT-PlanetLar's latest release is DEMO #5, which is released this month. Look out for Hench, Big Hat, Planet of the Capes and more in the coming months.

[Howard]

Happy Birthday Uncle Larry!

[Santiago Casares]

Happy 5th anniversary Lar!

[Caleb Gerard]

He doesn't look a day over 4 1/2.

Actually Larry is a regular contributor to our little site Comic World News where he's conducting the talent search to end talent searches (for the time being). Right now Larry's bearded face graces the front page for the site.

Keep on keeping on...

Caleb

[OMAR]

I respect Larry Young for his online personality - friendly and helpful to many, but once you cross him you know you've made a mistake. On Delphi he takes out the trash on a regular basis - in a style someone like me can really appreciate!

[sean t. collins]

Thanks to a generous offer on Larry's part, I'm pleased to announce that I have an exclusive interview with Mr. Young that can be found at my blog, Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat. Enjoy!

Sean

[C-Monkey]

Just in the interest of truth and journalism and what-not... Live from the Moon was published by a company called Gun Dog Comics. Live from the Moon, much as I love it still to this very day (and not just because I have a letter in #3!) wasn't the first series published by AIT/Planet-Lar. And the first couple of issues were drawn by Matt Smith, and Charlie Adlard took over somewhere in the middle. All great stuff, though.

Was Space: 1959 the first thing published by AIT/Planet-Lar? My brain's a fuzzy place lately, so I can't be sure. I'm still waiting for Citizen Dave!

Congratulations, Larry! Can't wait to read Planet of the Capes next month!