Hart Fisher on Marvel and the Most Controversial T-shirt in Comics History
In 1995 Hart had a few hundred “Marvel Can Suck My Cock” t-shirts made up and managed to sell them all quite fast at Comicon that year. For those of us with bad memories he discusses the feeling in the air at the time amongst the indie-comics community.
by Hart D. Fisher
The Marvel Can Suck My Cock shirts were a specific response to Marvel’s business practices. This was when Dark Horse, Caliber, First Comics, Eclipse and the other indies started taking a bite out of Marvel’s sales figures. Then Image was formed and frankly, the powers that be behind Marvel wanted to punish them (Todd, Jim and Rob) for daring to leave at the peak of their success and start their own thing. To crush the competition Marvel came up with this horrendous boondoggle (it really fucked up the industry) of a plan to wipe them from the stands, literally. A comic book store has limited wrack space. They felt that when push came to shove, a Marvel title would always win out in a fight with an Indie for shelf space. So these morons decided to push the comics off of the stand physically by weight of numbers. Marvel nearly tripled their output to push the other books off the shelves, they were looking to bury guys like me with sheer weight of numbers.
A lot of comic book stores got hurt with this move. More than a few stores bought this line of crap and ended up with boxes of sub par comics stinking up the back of those stores. But hey, Marvel got paid, what the fuck do they care? Right? At this time, Marvel was also making noise about Marvel marts and about pulling their books from all other stores. Real stupid short sighted thinking. Just like the greedy idiots that want to erode the window of when films move from the Theater into your home on DVD. If they release DVD’s of theatrical releases in a bid for a quick buck they will kill the theatrical business and when that’s gone, you’re in trouble. This happened in comics. Stores started going out of business for buying Marvel. I knew several personally that got burned. The general thinking amongst many of the indies I knew was the stores that fell for it deserved what they got. I didn’t feel this way. I felt the comic book store owner was my partner in business and without him I was fucked. Marvel did not act that way at all.
I couldn’t say “Fuck You” to the suits in any other way than publicly. I wanted to make it hurt. I wanted to humiliate them. I grew up a died in blue Make Mine Marvel! Bullpen bulletin reading maniac fan. I also felt betrayed by their practices as a fan of comics. By doing something public like this, I could steer the conversation and outrage to the business practices they were perpetrating. You don’t like the comic business the way it is today? You can thank Marvel Fucking Comics and the rest of the lemmings that followed their lead during the distribution wars. My t-shirt was my voice telling them and everyone else, I’m here for a fight and I’m not leaving these wracks quietly. It was a declaration of war. I’ve always felt that you could outspend me, but you couldn’t out think me. And these gimps certainly go tow to tow with me in the gutter.
I took their money away, all of their status, and sold out of 100 shirts in less than one day. I sold the shirt off of my back twice for double the price. Then I heard about John Romita Jr. getting tough with some of the kids that wandered around the booth with their shirts on. I mean, he was getting physically violent and verbally abusive with this one guy from Fantagraphics or Slave Labor. So I went over there and took a walk around the Marvel booth, talked to some folks I knew, and sauntered away with that loud mouth bully sulking but not saying a word to someone he can’t bully.
I fucking HATE bullies.
I sent people over to their booth after that. The Marvel guys all thought my Kill Image comic was pretty funny until the joke was on them. They threatened to sue the San Diego Comicon if they didn’t kick me out of the show and make me stop selling the shirts. My publicity stunt changed the language of the booth display contract all vendors sign now because of this. Now there is a clause in the contract that states you can be ejected from the show for doing anything that is derogatory to another publisher OR to comics as a whole. Who the fuck could possibly decide what is derogatory to the comics industry as a whole? Gee, how do you figure that out? You don’t. Now they can arbitrarily throw you out for anything they feel like coming up with. This is one of the many reasons you will not see me at the San Diego show.
The Marvel shirts stirred the scarred little boy/men that ran many of these shows. I know of many people kicked out of shows around the country for wearing their shirt. I’ve had to cover up the word Cock several times on the shirt with Duct tape to keep selling it. One time at the Wizard World Chicago show, right after they bought it out and were running it for the first time they shut me down. Told me I couldn’t sell the shirt. I said no problem. Instead I gave the t-shirt away with any copy of Rectum Errectum (the book is even more crazy than the title) I sold until I got to the head guy at the show and we came to an agreement as to how to sell the shirts and then I sent my mom around the show on foot selling shirts.
If you’re smart enough, you can always figure out a way to make yourself heard in one way or another. You have to fight for your voice. That is what I taught all of my Boneyard Thugs. The fans were fucking pissed about what Marvel was doing. Store owners were furious. They were betrayed. The shirts were embraced for years after that until I got bored doing them. This wasn’t just my voice being raised, Dianna Schutz bought about 6 shirts for her editorial staff and one for Frank Miller. Hell, if you watch Chasing Amy, the Kevin Smith flick, you can see the Marvel Can Suck My Cock on a fan at one of the comic convention scenes, a Bill the Bull shirt made it in there also.
But people were really angry about Marvel then.
Hart Fisher Tells us Crazy Stories About the Boneyard Days
By Hart D. Fisher
Some of my favorite memories during the 1991-94 era of Boneyard Press.
You know, for all the destruction and heartbreak behind the scenes I’ve been revealing, there were also so many great times. I miss all of my friends back in Champaign, so many to even begin listing off (Eric, Dave, Tom, the whole Third Stone crew, Daga Dan, fuck, so many great guys back there).
The “Welcome to the Nation Motherfucker” photo shoot was a full on blast. I had all the thugs come over to my place by the railroad tracks with their favorite toys and we did a full photo shoot barbecue Chevy rodeo. We were drinking, riding the hood of Johnny’ G’s big ass beater around the dirt, being full on knuckle draggers, grilling up steaks.
There was one guy just walking by and when he saw all of the guns, assault rifles, us, shit man, he just ducked his head down, staring at the ground in front of his feet as he walked. You know he was just thinking “don’t look, don’t look, just don’t make eye contact.” God that makes me laugh.
There was a time a buddy of ours, I called him Chemo for his fucked up hair cut, and it was his birthday. He gave himself up to us blindfolded. I mean, he was nervous, but he gave himself up to whatever we had planned and we were fucking with him in the car so bad. I’ve got it all on videotape. I’m planning on posting it on my YouTube channel.
The best is when we got to my buddy Nick’s tattoo shop (Mark of Cain), and Nick’s just revving his gun. rrrrrRRRRNNNNNN. rrrrrRRRNNN. While we laughed and laughed, Chemo’s just shitting his big black boots. It was a hoot. He didn’t take the blindfold off until the tattoo was done either. That’s trust and some will their man,
I loved the bunker comradery that comes with intense life and death situations that were a regular part of my life then. I was a bouncer at a Rock Club in town (Mabel’s) and working there, that could lead to a sucker punch in the mouth from behind to a knife fight on Halloween night. For a couple of years there was a gang problem in town. It was an initiation for the black gangsters to group up and put a white guy in the hospital. It got so bad that the police posted officers on the rooftops downtown with binoculars. I almost got jumped by nine guys in front of the bar one night but I faced them down until the cops showed up.
It was a crazy time, like living through a war. My friends were dying in gunfights, drug overdoses, suicides, fucking brutal, but when we were all together, none of that shit mattered. You drank, you celebrated life with your friends. You clung to whatever ray of sunshine there was because that’s all you had.
I was very poor through ‘93 and ‘94. There was a time where I was literally fed by my friends who worked at places like Lox, Stock and Bagel. When the manager would go out, I’d slide in, get a big lunch, then take home the old bagels and cream cheese for me and my dogs. I was an insane broke motherfucker with absolutely nothing to lose. When I found out that I had lost my first court case with the Dahmer people because my cocksucking lawyer didn’t show up, I literally put my head through my bedroom door.
When I found out from the police that Michelle had been raped before she died, I ripped the new bedroom door apart with my bar hands then rampaged through the whole house in an incoherent rage. My friend Eric was sitting in my easy chair when it happened, when I came out of my rage and saw him in the chair, his face was white.
“I wish I never saw that.” Was all he’s ever said of it.
SUICIDE – Pencils: David Brewer – Inks: RENFRO
I was a wreck and my friends got me through it. My mother was alienated and repulsed by this new person her son had become. My family was up in Chicago and they were kidding themselves about my mental state. But all the locals in town, the metal heads, the people the college kids looked down on, those were the motherfuckers that had my back rain or shine.
The local metal bands, the wrestling fans, the bikers, the bouncers, they came out in support of me when no one else would. When I was at a bar there was always a drink in my hand from a friend. When someone came to town and needed a place to stay they crashed at my place or me theirs. There were many black nights and I had many friends to walk me through them. My friends and the poetry are what kept me alive. I miss them.
I was the first person to publish Dimitrios Patelis in America, an immensely talented Greek artist who I clicked with right away even through he drove everybody else nuts with his confidence in his art. Dimitri was living in Chicago alone, he’d just split from his chick, and he was working at a Harold’s Fried Chicken shack. I knew his birthday was coming up and she’d just come over and taken their stereo so he had no tunes.
No more banging chicks in the ass to Zodiac Mindwarp? Fuck, I couldn’t let my little buddy go down like that. I bought him a big ass boom box and sent it up to him at work just in time for his birthday. The phone call I got from him when he got it, yeah, that was a good day.
I loved getting to work with my heroes in the business. I loved working with hungry new talent like Guy Burwell or Duncan Rouleau, Albert Holaso, William Harms, Eric Perukin, Lance Polin, Stephen Elliot, Dimitri Patelis, Brad Moore, Kyle Hotz, Mark Beachum, Nelson Danielson, Will at Avatar, Wayne Allen Sallee (I don’t get to see him often, but I love this guy like a brother), Vincent Locke, That maniac Buzz and his troll buddy Nelson, Garry Way (another young thug I’m proud as fuck of, and you guessed it, I published him first. His last album with My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade, it really helped me get through some tough moments last year during my wife’s chemo therapy and that’s saying something. Next time I see this kid, I owe him a big fuckin’ hug.), Big B Mark Bernal who walked me through the comic business, Carol B (who helped me start the company), I mean, so many fucking people and so many good times,
Facing down the cops and all of those protesting assholes at the Dahmer cue, that was a shining moment. It was supposed to be a bloodbath with the KKK in full strength, the cops asked me to get out of town that weekend. I hate the fucking KKK so I wasn’t going anywhere. Third Stone played, I had all of my friends backing me, a keg, free watermelon for everyone, yeah, that was a great day.
The conventions and the fans. I love the conventions and the fans. For every douche bag comment in the press or on television, there’s been ten fans who’ve come up quietly to tell me how my work affected their lives, got them through bad times. That carries me a long way. The fact that I turned my idols in comics into friends of mine, to go from reading Cry For Dawn
-hdf
