Jeff Krell & Jayson: 40 Years of Turning Life Into Story

In this episode of Ink vs Algorithm, Mookie sits down with cartoonist and writer Jeff Krell, the creator of Jayson: a comic strip turned graphic novel universe that started as pure survival and evolved into a living, breathing archive of identity, humor, and cultural change.

Jeff didn’t break in through some polished pipeline. He got rejected, ignored, reshaped, and edited into existence. A local paper cut his work in half and ran it anyway. An editor forced him to rethink storytelling structure from the ground up. Underground comics cracked open what was allowed, and suddenly there were no rules except the ones he chose to keep.

What followed was a long experiment in character-driven storytelling. Jayson and his orbit of friends, which were often pulled straight from Krell’s real life, became a vehicle for catharsis, comedy, and eventually something more controlled: a way to step back, look at the past, and reshape it with intention.

The conversation hits hard and true about what it means to be an indie creator: 

• Why most creators are lying to themselves about “doing what you love”
• How underground comics gave more freedom than today’s “inclusive” mainstream
• Why characters get more interesting when you stop protecting them
• How cartoons became a way of saying things you can’t say directly
• And why self-publishing isn’t a fallback, but a way to control your own destiny 

Jeff also shares a blunt throughline: if you’re waiting to be discovered, you’re already losing. Krell built his audience one conversation at a time, throuigh conventions, hand-selling, face-to-face, and then watched the algorithm catch up later. His career success is less about nostalgia, and more about sheer endurance. 

JAYSON is about what happens when you keep showing up, keep drawing, keep writing—even when nobody’s paying attention—and then one day, you realize the work outlasted the noise. If you care about storytelling, comics, or just figuring out how to keep creating without losing your mind or your voice, then Jeff's story will inspire you. 

The Guest

Jeff Krell created the long-running gay-themed humor strip “Jayson,” which debuted in the Philadelphia Gay News in 1983 and enjoyed long runs in Gay Comix and Meatmen. Since 2005 Krell has been publishing original “Jayson” graphic novels including “Jayson Goes to Hollywood” and “Jayson Gets a Job!” In 2023, in collaboration with Sue Bielenberg, Krell debuted the all-ages Jayson spinoff “Arena Takes Manhattan,” a career girl humor comic starring Jayson’s sidekick Arena Stage. Krell also translates comics for famed German cartoonist Ralf König. 

His Work

http://ignite-ent.com

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0988357429/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to Ink vs. Algorithm. I am your host, Mookie Spitz, and I'm thrilled to have on board Jeff Krell, celebrated writer and cartoonist of the series, Jason, J A Y S O, and welcome aboard.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Thank you, and thank you for spelling it.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

That's very important, right? So if you want to find it, find him on Amazon. And I can't wait to dig into your story. How you started writing Jason, how it came to evolve, comic strips, graphic novels, maybe even one day what? Uh a Netflix mini-series, at least on Hulu, right?

SPEAKER_03 0:55

Stage and screen. Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Stage and screen. We all aspire to that. Let's dig in.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

Well, thank you for having me, Mookie. It was so nice to meet you last weekend.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Was it already last weekend? It really was, wasn't it? Time flies. WonderCon. It was. The Anaheim Convention Center. What a wonder it was. Indeed, it was. And I saw you there and I said, Hey, Jeff, Jason, talk Jason. Jeff, be on the podcast, and here you are. Tell us a little bit about yourself, about your writing.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Okay. Happy to talk about that. Um, I I was uh I woke up this morning and I was thinking, well, wow, I've been doing this for 43 years. Uh where does the time go? And and so I've been doing it for so long with the same set of characters, really.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Um that did you start when you were one year old?

SPEAKER_03 1:58

No, here's what happened is uh I was uh just like my character, uh who is who is based on me back in the day. Uh I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, Dutch country, uh, grew up gay, had to leave um because whatever was out there had to be superior to what I was experiencing. And I got into the University of Pennsylvania, and uh so I was the first person in my family to graduate from college, and not just college, but the Ivy League. And so I thought, well, that's the American dream, that's what you're supposed to do. And then people hand you jobs and things. Uh and I studied what interested me, which was uh German and communications, double major, uh, found out that that was a road to pre-unemployment or well, underemployment. I always worked, but uh I had some dreams about working in uh international marketing or advertising, uh, and uh those dreams were quickly shattered. So, what happened in the six months after I graduated, I retreated uh and started creating a comic strip. Uh, I created the comic strip that I think I'd always wanted to read but never saw. Um, I grew up uh much more with Archie comics and with teen humor comics generally than with the superheroes. I read a few of them, but I like humor and I love the whole genre of teen humor comics. Um, and Archie is is like the last uh publisher standing that's still doing it uh in any meaningful way. Um so uh but I I certainly at that point uh never seen any gay characters and or seen myself represented. Uh I always said I that I felt represented by Sabrina, the teenage witch, because she she lived in Riverdale with the with the other kids, but she had a secret. It was certainly the family-friendliest among them. Um but I still I love that style of storytelling. Uh so it it made sense if I was gonna tell my story and the story of my friends, that I was gonna do it in that style. As as uh I'm uh when I started doing Jason and uh and the critics started piling on. Um, first of all, they they all told me I wasn't doing gay right or whatever that means. Um, but also uh and I I love this one, one critic described me as a writer who sort of draws.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Well, that's ironic, especially with the popularity of South Park now, right?

SPEAKER_03 4:40

Yeah, well, um, I think uh I've I grew up with Archie and with Peanuts also, and I think what Charles Schultz did was so amazing because it was deceptively simple. Um, and what what he spawned was a lot of uh writers who don't draw very well who thought that they could do it as well as Schultz, um, because his drawings were so simple, but uh but he knew his craft. I I can't say that for everyone today. I can't you know what? I can't say it for myself either. Um, I was imitating the styles of the greats uh who drew for Archie Comics, and I did my best. Uh, and that's that's the way I wanted to tell my stories. So what happened was um I created uh this world of characters that were based on myself and my friends at the time, who uh were f newly minted college graduates. Uh Jason's best friend was named Arena Stage. Uh, she was based on my best friend in college named Andrea Jartman. Uh there were three main characters when the strip started. It was Jason and Arena and his ex-boyfriend Walter, who was based on my ex-boyfriend, Scott. Uh, and Scott had already taken up with someone else named Steven. Um, and I was so pissed about that that I just called him Stephen. I didn't even change his name. Just so people would know. So uh I created, uh I wrote two 12-panel strips, uh, and they were configured like three across, four down, uh, to fit on a magazine page. Because I thought if I'm gonna get this published anywhere, the only place I know that is publishing gay comics was The Advocate, uh, which is uh and still is, I guess, a big uh uh LGBT uh magazine. Uh so I uh I drew uh two of the 12 panel strips and I sent them off to the Advocate, and I never heard anything, never heard back. Um so uh but I liked where I was going with this, and I thought there's uh I was living in Philadelphia after I graduated from Penn, and there was uh a uh a very well-regarded, uh one of the oldest um continuing uh gay publications, a weekly called the Philadelphia Gay News, or PGN. Uh it continues in it in web form these days, but it was you know, like everything else, it was newsprint back in the day. And so um I took these, uh I got a meeting with the publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News. I showed him my 12-panel strips, um, and he liked the idea of an original cartoon that was locally created, uh, and he didn't have anything like that. Uh, but he said all he wanted was six panels. So he took the first um six panels of the 12-panel strip uh and said that he would run that. And I said, Well, it doesn't have an ending. And he said, Ah, it'll be fine. And I I guess it was because it ran for a while in the Philadelphia Gay News, and so that that's how I got my start. Um, now the publisher liked what I was doing, the editor did not, uh, and the editor did everything in his power to get rid of me and succeeded after about a year. Uh but so I had but now I had uh a pile of strips, a pile of six-panel strips. And um along the way, I acquired a new roommate uh who was into underground comics, uh, which I didn't even know existed. I grew up with the mainstream, I was reading Archie. Uh, and then I found out in the early 80s that these things called underground comics, uh like Robert Crumb and Aileen Kominsky, uh, and um and the women's comics, uh like Pudge Girl Blimp. Anyone remember that fondly? Um they were being uh published and they were uh and they were lawless. Uh they were outside of the rules of what you could do and say uh and be in comics. Whole point. Yeah. Um it was very freeing. So uh one and one of those publications was Gay Comics. It was published by Kitchen Sync. Uh, and uh through my roommate, I became aware of this whole world that I didn't know existed, including Gay Comics. And there were uh four issues that had been published by then uh by Dennis Kitchen. And uh so I I got them and I thought, well, this might be a good place uh for uh initially I just wanted to resell the strips that I had done because I didn't get paid very much money for them. Uh so I bundled them up and I sent them off to the editor uh who and the editorship had just changed hands. I don't know if you know much about the history of gay comics, but the first five issues, I believe, were edited by Howard Cruz, the late great Howard Cruz. Uh and then uh he passed on the editorship to someone named Robert Triptoe. And it was Robert Triptoe who received the package uh with my six-panel strips in it. And he liked them, but he he did something that changed my life. He did a couple of things. Um, he took a look at them and he said that uh he he he liked the characters, he liked where it was going, but uh he didn't want to just uh reprint the strips and asked me if I would try my hand at stories. And uh I th I I hadn't thought about that, but um I had just come back from my five-year high school reunion back in Lehighten, Pennsylvania, uh, to which I had taken Andrea Jartman. Uh and I thought, well, that could be a premise for a good story. Uh we get to meet Jason and Arena and see their relationship and also see where Jason came from. So I wrote this story uh called Jason Goes Home, and it was seven pages long, and I sent it off. Well, I didn't I didn't draw it up yet. Robert asked me if I would just like doodle it first because he wanted to see that it worked. And so I I wrote and then doodled a seven-page story, like storyboards, uh, sent them off to him. He photocopied it, cut and pasted it, made it into a six-page story with better pacing, uh, and sent it back to me and said, draw it this way, and I'll publish it. Uh so he's the first person who really taught me about story structure. Uh, because I wrote it, I just wrote the story and I I wrote until I filled a page in in comics and just continued. And some some uh writers do it that way, and it can be done, but it's uh it's much better for the reader if you structure each page with a beginning, middle, and end, uh uh, which he taught me, uh, because then you end on a good joke or you end on a reason to turn the page and continue reading. Uh so that was very instructive for me, and it also helped me later uh when I I tried my hand at syndicating the strip because then I could tell stories, but each page stood alone and then and made people want to read next week and uh come back. So uh that was uh Jason Goes Home was published in issue six of Gay Comics. So I guess these days I'm kind of considered part of the first wave of of gay cartoonists. I was actually I caught the very end of the first wave, I think. Um but so that was the beginning of uh uh what turned out to be two two very good relationships for publishing, because I started uh I got a birth in every issue of gay comics after that, and started thinking about what else, what other stories I want to tell. And shortly after I started doing that, another uh a publication, uh a series um or what turned into a series of gay male comics anthologies called Meat Men, uh, unfortunately titled. Um, but there was the first gay superhero was named Meat Man, and so there's an actual there's a reason for the title. Um and uh the uh the publisher uh contacted me and asked me if I would do stories for him as well. So between them, I I got to tell a lot of Jason's stories. Um so the first one was public the first I went national then in gay comics in 1985 with issue six and continued to run in gay comics and and in Meat Men for uh well, Meat Men was 21 volumes, I think I did. Uh and uh so a lot of stories over a lot of years, uh ending probably in the early 90s is is when uh uh all of this sort of uh had its last gasp. So I want to tell you a story about how uh the publisher, Winston Leyland, of the Meat Men series really opened up my notions of storytelling. Uh he'd been going along and publishing it uh volume after volume of the Meat Men series, and then he got to volume 12 uh and he informed me that it was going to have a science fiction theme. And my first response was, Well, I'll see you in volume 13 because I'm not really a fan of science fiction. Um no shade, but it's just most I think a lot of it is just hokey and not done very well. Uh but then uh he uh he begged and he pleaded, he said, Oh please. Uh and I thought about it, and I thought about uh, well, you know, what what don't I like about science fiction as well as uh how did how did they handle this uh in the archie comics, right? Because the archie comics were primarily comedic. Uh, but once you trust your characters, you can take them anywhere. And there were some Archie stories that were dramatic. There were some that were, and they did science fiction stories, uh, and uh and you know, they did uh dream sequences and fantasy stories. Um, and it's like once once you know who your characters are, you can take them anywhere. So I said, well, what if I take these characters as they are and plunge them into a science fiction uh plot and have them react just as they would, just as I would. Uh the story became uh Jason visits Planet 69, uh, and I had such great fun doing it. Uh, and it helped me really explore the characters a little more by putting them in a different situation. Um, and so when Winston came along again, and because it and that did very well for him, uh, he decided to do another one in volume 15, and I was right there. I'm like, oh, okay, I've got stories, I can send my characters anywhere now. Uh, and so ever since then, uh because there are kind of three eras to Jason. There was the era during which I did strips and stories for whoever would publish them, and then the era of self-publishing dawned, and uh so I started publishing my own graphic novels. Uh and so since then uh I always make it a point of including a science fiction story uh in each volume because they're fun and it g it gives you a rest from from reality. And also, I'm sure you've discovered this as a writer, it's it's it's a way to comment um on society, it's a way to comment on your characters by by putting them in unfamiliar situations. So, um questions for me before I go on.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

So, just to summarize a little bit, it sounds like you've been using your comic strip, character Jason, as in ways a catharsis and an extension of yourself emotionally. You took biographical details, your lover, your friends, and they became characters. And the comic strip has evolved with you and your life and what you've seen of the world, and I think that that's really cool. And you know, back in the 80s, it was still a very restrictive environment for gay people. You have the AIDS crisis in in full bloom as well, there was stigmatization, there was uh homophobia. Uh, how how has it evolved in a way where you feel much more comfortable and empowered as uh as a gay writer? And do you think your writing has helped you? And and do you think that kind of gay writing has helped society become more open and more welcoming of the gay community?

SPEAKER_03 18:04

Well, I sure hope so. Um certainly in the beginning it was cathartic for me, and I was uh what I was writing was a lot more biographical, autobiographical, uh just ripped from the headlines. I was doing this this comic strip for the Philadelphia Gay News, and so every week it was like, well, you know, what am I gonna, what am I gonna rant about, what am I gonna complain about this week uh and try to make it funny? Um so uh a couple of things. First of all, the environments in which I created were for the most part very welcoming. So uh I was I felt kind of freed from the homophobia that was surrounding me, and I didn't really write a lot about that other than with Jason's parents, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

You felt comfortable. You were you were at with with with with a gay paper, and then you were you were at home, so to speak.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

Yeah, so what I was trying to do uh it was character comedy, and some of the characters happened to be gay. Um, I didn't deal a lot with the the oppression in the outside world or homophobia. Um it was uh I I played the relationships at first. It was with Jason and his roommate Galpal Arena. Um we were allowed to call them fag hags back then.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Um also ironic because it it was a lot more fun in ways back then.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

Right. So you were asking about whether it became less restrictive over time, and honestly, in some ways, I feel like it's become more. Um, as as everything has become corporatized and mainstreamed, um, in including gay themes, there's a there's there's a lot more uh pressure to be inclusive and and sensitive. Uh and a lot of stuff that I wrote about in the 80s might be considered problematic now. I mean, it was very freeing in that I was working in underground comics and there were no rules. It's like now, as uh uh I'd say gay stories have become mainstream, but at the same time, uh there's there's uh more pressure to conform uh to certain expectations about what you're allowed to say and how you're allowed to say it. Um a couple of things happened over time. Of course, uh Will and Grace went on the air. Um, and now since I've been doing uh this story with a gay man and his straight uh female roommate um and the fabulous drag queen who lives next door, Robin Ricketts. Um by the night, thank you. Uh uh also based on a real person, uh, and uh that real person has an Irish surname. Uh and so up until the very almost when I had to turn it in, I had called him Robin O. Ricketts, and it just didn't sit well, it didn't work for me, and I just like I cut out the O. Uh, he became Robin Ricketts, and uh he lives in infamy. Uh so by the by the late 90s, early 2000s, when I'd been doing this for a while, that and going to conventions, then I had people coming up and saying, Oh, it's just like Will and Grace. I'm like, Yeah, but I did it first.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

It's interesting the backlash to the backlash.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

Yeah. And now, speaking of which, uh when uh when I go to conventions, sometimes, I mean, people uh my characters are are based on me and my friends, and so I've I've tried to uh expand that universe a little bit. Um, but uh people look at what I'm doing now, and some of them say, you know, where are your trans characters of color? Um that so uh I think there's there's pressure to address all the letters of the alphabet uh in the LGBTQIA M O U S E family.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

And that's kind of ironic. Uh, this backlash to the backlash of woke, anti-woke, now, now MAGA as this counter-strike to the counter-strike. And this idea of censorship and cancel culture is is one of the vestiges of I think the liberal movement that really tried to fix things. So they felt that there were disadvanta disenfranchised minorities, there was bias, racism, misogyny, homophobia. The government had to come in to fix it, and society had to fix it. And with that came a morality policing, which has impacted stand-up comics, writers, cartoonists such as yourself, and you as a gay writer feel it, and it's kind of ironic.

SPEAKER_03 22:54

It's true. I uh I employ a lot more self-censorship censorship now than I did in the 80s. Uh when I was because uh pre-AIDS, uh gay men and lesbians didn't get along. And I wrote about that. Uh I wrote about the AIDS crisis. Um I wrote about uh uh Arena Stage, who was based on Andrea Jartman, my friend from college, uh she uh it was important for her to have uh friends all over the rainbow. Um it's as if she made friends because they checked a box.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

She was your identity politics friend.

SPEAKER_03 23:43

Exactly. And I and I wrote about that. Uh and uh I got I I got a lot of criticism for that because uh and my editor at the time really defended me. Uh and and he he said uh to the critics who complained uh that I was holding up a mirror to of a gay culture that uh doesn't like its own reflection.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

You had angels in America, which was the aspirational archetype, if you will, of the gay future. And that was, you know, and and loved. But any kind of criticism or self-reflection didn't always go over too well. People don't like that that mirroring.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

So, yeah, a couple of things happened between from the 80s to the 90s. Uh, is so I uh I told you about my uh my foray into science fiction, uh, and it really freed me to tell all kinds of different stories, and the characters also over time started taking on lives of their own that were very different from the people who inspired them, and those people were no longer in my life. Um, so I I felt whenever I got a chance to revisit the strip and the characters that they lived in my head. Um, and the best stories were the ones where I just threw an idea at them and they just channeled it and uh and I wrote the story based on how they reacted to it. Um so I just uh I think as as the 90s wore on and we were still dealing with AIDS and we were dealing with uh political correctness, uh I I just uh just started having more fun with the strip, and just uh I mean it was always microcosmic. Um the the characters hardly ever strayed out into the real world anyway. Um so uh I mean it's very much structured like a sitcom, uh with uh basically one set, two sets ultimately, because Robin Ricketts, the drag queen next door, uh bought the building, uh, became their landlord, uh, and made over the bar downstairs in his own image. Uh it was actually based on a real bar at 13th and Pine in Philadelphia called Dirty Franks, originally. In the early strips, you can see that. Um, then Robin bought it and he he turned it into a uh uh a drag bar uh with a performing stage called Dietrich's with D apostrophe T-R-I-X, where he headlines as Marlena Dietrich. Uh except he doesn't shave his mustache, so we know it's him.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

So that's that's the 90s, and then how how did things evolve into the new new millennia? Because you had some changing around. We have our first black president. You've got gay marriage becomes legal, you have a lot of legislation that's being mandated to protect gay rights, whether it's in the workplace and elsewhere. And uh, and things were looking good, better, I think, for the gay community, with some of the caveat that we've been mentioning that the morality police also started to uh sure to do their own dirty deeds, which had their own repercussion leading to cultural backlash.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

Hmm. Well, so so how I deal with that is mostly not to deal with it. Uh what what I'd like to believe that what I'm trying to do is timeless. Uh, so I try not to deal with the cultural issues de jour so much anymore, but just tell a good character comedy. Oh so but what happened in what happened in the early aughts uh is I started self-publishing and I started by publishing collections of the work I had done for others in the 80s and 90s. So I have two best doves called Jason with a why, best of the eighties and best of the nineties, uh, and I started taking them to comic book conventions. And people who knew me back then or knew my work from Meet Men or Gay Comics, um, or the the brief period during which I syndicated it to uh various gay publications in local cities, um they uh they were happy to see it all collected in one place. But the I the negative feedback that I got uh was so when are you gonna do some new stuff? So uh but the those two collections were well received, uh, and there was one critic who who said who wrote a whole survey of the strips and stories that were done by uh gay and lesbian creators during that era, and and he declared that that this is the one strip that stands the test of time, which is what I wanted. Uh so uh having learned how to self-publish, then uh and also having dabbled in screenwriting, uh, where I I enjoyed a larger canvas and I was telling one story over two hours or 120 pages, uh, I decided that uh I instead of doing strips and stories, that I was gonna uh do graphic novels. Um but because people were used to my stories being told in six-page bytes, I told the stories in chapters that were all self-contained, just like a story, but all built to something. And so the first of those was called uh Jason Goes to Hollywood. And that was because in the early aughts I moved to Los Angeles and uh had a lot to say about uh people who live there.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

That's a natural evolution from the the pan the six-panel strip to a graphic novel, and then dividing it up into these smaller chunks so you kept the spirit of the strip, contextualized it in a larger story, and then you you explore a new modality.

SPEAKER_03 30:03

Exactly. And what what's what was gratifying for me uh when uh people who didn't know my work would come to the booth and say, you know, I had several books at that point. I also translate for a German cartoonist, and I had that pile as well. Uh so they said, Where should I start? And with Jason Goes to Hollywood, I brought the characters into the 21st century and I told one complete story where you didn't need to know all the history of the last 20 years. And any any history you needed to know was embedded uh brilliantly in uh the uh somewhere in the subtext or uh uh somewhere in the establishing dialogue. So uh I would invite them to start there, and because it was broken up into these chunks, I said, just you know, take it home tonight and and read the first story, and just you know, read one a night. Uh and I had people come back the next day and said, I've read the first story and I couldn't put it down, I read the whole book.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Well, that's the best criticism you can get, right? Just keep turning, keep yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

And sometimes when I got people hooked with that one, then sometimes I could say, now you can go back and read the history, and I would sell them more books.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

You've got your strips, then you did the collections, the best of eighties and the best of nineties, then you've evolved into graphic novels with bigger stories with the same characters. To your point, you don't really need backstory just because a good story is a good story, right? And uh, and then what was next?

SPEAKER_03 31:40

Well, I'd I'd like to say film and television, um, which hasn't happened yet. But so next for me was uh Jason's roommate, Arena, um, who was based on my friend Andrea Jartman, um, threatened to steal steal every scene that she was in. Um, so in fact, when I when I did my first graphic novel, uh, because all of all of the strips and stories up until that point were just called Jason, or the stories were called Jason verb predicate, right? J Jason does something. Uh Jason gets a job, Jason uh goes home, whatever. So when I started doing graphic novels, uh the first chunk, the first six-page story that was not headlined by Jason was called Arena Does Something, because I needed to give her her her own uh uh her own headline.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

Well, that was the better call-sall of your breaking bad franchise.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

Right. So uh Arena was uh uh I think she's a star in her own right. And uh I promised her someday that I would give her her own graphic novel. So there was this period between the 80s and 90s when Arena left Jason, and you have to read the books to find out why. Um, and she she went to New York and uh went to work for her family's ad agency and moved in with her very different sister, the MBA. So uh I created a graphic novel called Arena Takes Manhattan, uh, which is my most recent publication. And uh it's uh it's uh it's a standalone uh series of stories again, strips and stories, um featuring arena and her sister uh learning to get along and learning to work together. Uh it's a workplace comedy. It's kind of um, I'd say it harkens back to Millie the Model and Katie Keane. Um it's a career girl humor comic. Um, and for that reason, it's also family friendlier because up until this point, the Jason stories that I've done use four-letter words. Uh, characters find themselves in adult situations sometimes. And even though it looks like Archie when I'm at a convention and they're on display, kids come up and they think that that it's it that it's that and that it's for them, and so I have to kind of shoe them away. But now I have something I can give them, or at least uh someone who's old enough to understand the setting, which is the world of ad agencies. Um, so I mean 10 and up. Um, so Arena Takes Manhattan has uh no dirty words or deeds in it. Um, it's still filled with with arch dialogue, which I'm famous for. Uh and uh and it's a fun read. Um, so that's that's where I'm up to. There's going to be at least one more Jason graphic novel in the series before I wind it up. I'm working on that now.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Great. Congratulations. And how do you do the marketing? You mentioned you go to the Wonder Cons and the Con Cons. So you sell books in person.

SPEAKER_03 34:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Subdue social media outreach and engage with people online. Do you do paid advertising?

SPEAKER_03 35:08

How do you start? I've rarely done paid advertising, and I when I've I've done it, I haven't found that it's paid off really well. Um, like it or not, I I found the the best form of marketing is is one-on-one engagement with people at comic book conventions. Uh, whether they're uh fans who don't know that the story continued and that there's new stuff, or whether uh they know nothing about it, but I I I explain it to them and I have them flip through a book and they and they say it looks fun and they buy it. Uh but I also uh I make everything available on Amazon. So if you just search on my name on Amazon, uh all of my books come up. Um so that's the way I sell outside of conventions. I always find uh even if I don't sell a lot of books at a convention, I also have cards and bookmarks and and of course conversation that I have with people. And and after a convention, I see a spike in sales on Amazon because some people just take a card or they they remember when they walk by, they just they do, and and they say, you know, um, because um you've done conventions, so you know um that they always say, Oh, if only I had money, right? I'm like, why are you here? Um but uh so I say, Well, when you do have money, first of all, I say, Well, we take cards. Uh, but beyond that, um, people do uh check me out later online. I have a website, I do need to update it. Um my my publishing imprint is called Ignite Entertainment. Um, so you can find all my stuff there, and it's uh but it's it's mostly a portal, it links you uh takes you to Amazon to buy. Uh so everything is available there. Uh and uh as I as I ease my way into retirement from my day job, uh, I hope I will be able to devote more resources to marketing.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Well, that's cool. It's a nice parallel pathway. And tell me a little bit about the the group that you were embedded with at WonderCon. Because there are a bunch of artists and a cool vibe to it.

SPEAKER_03 37:21

Well, uh, thank you. I can take no credit for that, um, other than being there and part of the vibe, I guess. Uh it's called Prism Comics, uh, not Prism, uh, which people everyone says, Well, no, I don't do those kinds of comics. People do, though. Uh Prism, like uh the thing that that makes the rainbow.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Uh it's a non-profit that's a visual and literal pun.

SPEAKER_03 37:48

Exactly. So Prism Comics has been around since I believe 2004. Uh, I discovered them when I went to what to uh San Diego Comic-Con for the first time, and they it was meeting them that really inspired me to start self-publishing because I felt like there's uh there's an outlet now, there's a place uh where I can uh go to to sell my stuff and be represented, which I didn't feel existed before. Uh so uh Prism is a nonprofit that represents LGBTQIA creators. Uh they don't publish, uh they promote. And one of the things they do for us all is they uh they buy the booth space and they set the set it up and then uh and then arrange signings for us to come in and out. And so we don't have to do all that legwork. It's very nice.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

Do you um do you pay them a fee to facilitate this and they do the organization and then you're all grouped together? Or do they spons your booth too?

SPEAKER_03 38:54

They have a they'll they'll do it in a couple of different ways. Uh they can have they'll do booth partnerships uh where you pay a fee up front uh and then you uh keep 100% of your sales, um, or you can do signings and then they take 50%. Uh but either way, uh it's absolutely worth it for the work that they do. And they also, for the last, I believe three, four, I think this is the fourth year, uh, they do something called QCon in West Hollywood, uh, which I've been uh uh participating in from the start. And that's that's one of the few places where I have my own table.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

So you you collaborate and partner up with Prism most of the time you're out, then is that is that right? Sure.

SPEAKER_03 39:42

They don't do the East Coast so much because the the uh uh the principals uh it's all volunteer, uh but most of them and most of them are based on the West Coast, and the and the book inventory that they maintain is on the West Coast as well, and in and around Los Angeles. So uh they stopped doing New York, they stopped doing East Coast conventions. There's um another organization there called Geeks Out uh that has a presence in New York, and so sometimes I partner with them as well.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Do they have a digital presence? Do they do digital promotion to Prism, or is it mostly just in person?

SPEAKER_03 40:21

Uh, they have a website and they have they had for a long time an online store where they also sold our stuff.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

They could resell your stuff, maybe, or sell their bags.

SPEAKER_03 40:32

They shut that down, they were gonna redesign it. Um, I I don't think they ever finished. I think they lost their web mistress or something. Um, I um I used I used to sell a lot that way, and I I I gotta um I'm going to QCon in a couple of weeks. So I'll talk to Ted Abenheim about that. I'll see what what's what's happening with the uh with the Prism Online store because it used to be a great place. Um I hope that they I hope they bring it back.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

Do you have any advice for younger cartoonists that you could uh whether gay or straight or in between?

SPEAKER_03 41:11

I'd I I do. First, I mean I'd say don't give up your day job. Uh here's the thing. Uh whoever said do what you love and the money will come uh needs to be shot at dawn.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

Yeah, Scott Galloway, the uh the podcast pundit, um former agency guy, NYU professor says exactly the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

I I I love him. Uh I discovered him on Smirkanish, uh, and I think he's great. Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Realistic about what your capabilities are.

SPEAKER_03 41:47

Well, that's the thing. If I mean, if if you're dying to create something, then create it. Um because uh it'll feed your soul, it'll make you a better person. Uh, but don't assume you're going to make a living at it. And while you're pursuing it, make sure you do have a way to make a living to support your art. Um, because your art probably won't support you. That's not a reason not to do it. Uh but uh understand its place.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

Many guests that I've had on the podcast, a lot of writers and creators I talk to, almost all of them have day jobs. Even famous writers, award-winning writers, have day jobs.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

So that doesn't preclude people from actually living their dream, they just need to live their dream when they have time for it, rather than having all that disposable time, let alone disposable income, to really indulge themselves.

SPEAKER_03 42:44

That's exactly right. Um, if if you're dying to tell a story, then then tell it. Yes, don't wait. No, let it let it out. Um and great is the enemy of good. Um, good enough is and uh any artist will tell you this, they'll look back on their early work and wish they could redraw it all, right? Um but you can only move forward, and you're only you only know that now because you learned and you grew, right? And you and and you that'll only happen if you do the work. Yeah, don't wallow in self-pity. Uh, and don't and and don't be discouraged by the idea that you're not gonna make a million bucks at it.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Um so though those are two really good best practices. What what else can you give young young artists?

SPEAKER_03 43:30

Well, the other thing I would say is I I'm um I'm I'm a grateful guy for a lot of reasons, and uh I think that I'm I'm grateful that I never did this full time. Um and that I I would always uh I've never had writers block because I'm just uh I'm I'm brimming with ideas and have finding the carving out the time to write it down and then draw it, uh, or or work with. uh other artists as I did to some degree on the the arena book um is uh it's such a gift to give yourself that time uh that if it's not fun why are you doing it? I always I always worried that if it became my full-time job then it would become drudgery uh and something I had to do and other people are telling you how to do it. Well that that's always true. I have to say I mean along the way when I was doing the strips and stories I had a very supportive editors and publishers which makes a huge difference. And I and and they even they paid uh because sometimes you know you oh I'm gonna be published and then then you're fighting to get paid for two years right yeah that's uh another reason to to self-publish well then you can not pay yourself exactly if you're gonna be broke and be broke and happy and creatively empowered have fun out the middleman enjoy it and the last line on the spreadsheet is your own personal happiness and self-satisfaction as a creator that's right something nobody can take away from you and nobody otherwise success in this realm is is not economic for me success is in creating something that I'm I'm that I'm satisfied with um that I feel is is the best that I can do and I can't wait to put it out there.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

That's a terrific sentiment and probably the best advice to give young people because they feel all this pressure I need to have a career I need to make money I'm not I'm not quite sure about my own skills and I need to build those up and instead of just sitting on my ass and doing it I'm overthinking it I'm a perfectionist. And then nothing really gets done so how are you gonna run if you can't even crawl yet best way is just to to hit the ground and go for it.

SPEAKER_03 46:01

Absolutely um I don't know if you're a pan a fan of peanuts I think most of us are what what we think of as peanuts really didn't evolve until the early 60s late 50s early 60s. Charles Schultz did that strip in relative obscurity in very few papers for eight or nine years uh and it looked very different in the beginning and the whole the the character of the characters and the character of the strip were very different. But you have to do it and evolve uh until your own style emerges um one of the things uh about peanuts that that is um uh people think of it as uh part of the strip is the way he lettered it right he had a very distinctive lettering style but in the beginning he tried to letter like everyone else right if you look even that evolved until when when we think of the peanuts lettering that didn't even start to take shape until the late 50s early 60s that's a great point which is it evolves with your trials and tribulations as a writer and as you get it out there and as you build up your own momentum.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Chester Gould the daddy behind Dick Tracy he uh he submitted a packet of the comic strip to the editor the publisher of the Chicago Tribune every week for years and he just mailed off a vanilla uh a manila envelope to the he just addressed it to the to the publisher and and editor in chief of the Chicago Tribune and just mailed it and he and his phone rang after years of doing it and they said you know come on in we like it we're gonna change the name from Inspector Tracy to Dick Tracy and you have a comic strip boom like okay so these things do happen but to your point there's no such thing as an overnight sensation. You need to keep grinding it that's right until it becomes what it's meant to be and that's probably the best sentiment of all which is pursue your destiny within it is your character and everything that's important to you don't let the bastards get you down let alone your own pocketbook and if true here and you love what you do then just do it.

SPEAKER_03 48:27

Yeah and also over time you're gonna you're gonna have more lived experience um and you're gonna use that to inform the strip or whatever it is you're creating yeah it's very interesting with a a set of characters who are uh started off in their early twenties when I was in my early twenties uh and now I have uh 40 years of hindsight and the characters are still in their 20s uh my characters have have aged one year for every decade I've done the strip um but it's you know instead of being ripped from the headlines now it's like looking back uh and and and sometimes seeing a train wreck coming but knowing that the character won't avoid it even though you would um because uh because the character is still in his twenties and and you can say look out but they don't listen yes and and that's one of the glorious aspects of it that as you get older you judge yourself less and you're less self-critical in a way that that that constricts your creativity and you embrace your own experiences and even your own failures and those that's right composed into your characters in a way that is really liberating and it infuses your creativity with energy too right in your youth.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

That's right and it gives me some perspective on the characters that I didn't have when I was in the midst of of living their experience um now I can I can look back fondly or and sometimes in horror and I feel I feel blessed too at this point where uh I've had these various uh incarnations in my own life these various phases and some of them been radically radically different so I was a bar manager in Chicago I was a bouncer at an OTB I've done the corporate stootery for years I was an agency guy for years I'm now a consultant so I've done professional and personal things had lots of different types of relationships and when I was living within it I was trying to write too but it's sometimes all one big maelstrom of emotion right and now that I'm a little bit older and I'm kind of chilling and I could look back at a lot of that and I've gained perspective they're they're percolating up in my characters and in my scenarios in ways that are just I feel I have so much that I would just want to get out after living through all that that it's a really it's a real blessing to have all that energy and enthusiasm without the heavy useful judgment and perfectionism that used to be a little bit asphyxiating when I was younger. So it's a cool cool place to be you're in you're in a good place. More writers keep cranking uh you know more mature writers cherish the fact that you have all those lived experiences that you can channel into your creativity and don't judge yourself by the metric of of sales or money if you love doing it and it's coming out just let it out we we we're here right now uh the clock is always ticking and every page drawn or typed is your connection to the world and back to yourself and I think that that's a great place to be so ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between we've had the celebrated cartoonist Jeff Grell will have links in the description below so you could buy his stuff and check him out and thanks so much for making time Jeff like comment share subscribe to Incverse Algorithm where we talk to cartoonists like Jeff poets writers and if you want to be on the podcast you're a fledgling writer or experienced and you want your story told and you want to have a good conversation with Mookie here you go there's a link below for you to reach out to us as well. Thank you so much