As promised, here is the Q&A with comic writer and artist Brandon Graham about his very excellent comic King City, as well as other bits that I thought were relevant to bring up. Enjoy!
Eric: Hey, Brandon. Thanks for agreeing to answer some questions. King City is one of my favorite comics and I’m pretty excited to talk about it with you.
Brandon: Holla
Eric: The first thing I’m curious about. King City #1 was released shortly before TokyoPop cut almost its entire line. Can you talk about what was going on during all of that? What they discussed or didn’t discuss with you? What you had to do to get it published in all the various formats–posting it online, etc, until (I think) the complete collection was released as a book somewhat recently? Did anyone get pissed that you were releasing pages on your blog?Brandon: I was in a deadline rush to get the book done when TP canceled their American books. I book store chain had closed and returned a huge amount of TP books so they were trying to cut their losses. The whole thing was intensely frustrating, they weren’t into talking to me about doing anything with the book other than putting it on their bad web site. Out of frustration I started putting it on my Livejournal– and that at least got a phone call from them. I think they called to scold me. Luckily at the time my pal Joe Keatinge had put me in touch with Eric Stephenson who is the publisher at Image –Eric was amazing and helped me negotiate a publishing deal with TP over 8 long months of talks.