Yesterday the city of Seattle had a cool visitor from the comics world. John Layman, the writer of the Eisner Award winning comic, Chew stopped by one of Seattle's great comic shops, Comics Dungeon, (where he was once a box-customer), to sign books and talk to fans about his work.
I arrived on the scene early into the event, and was surprised to see that the place wasn't all that crowded. Maybe everyone was too busy watching the Seahawks game or something. Either way, it worked out for the best because the small crowd created a great laid-back atmosphere where folks could just hang out and chat it up with one of the most creative minds in comics.
Everybody seemed to want to know about a Chew TV show. Which I've covered before, but just to keep you updated: Circle of Confusion, who packaged The Walking Dead show and shopped it around to cable networks, has done the same with Chew, they've got a writing staff to do an episode or two, got a director, and basically now just need to go to some of the cable networks and say: "Hey, we've got this sweet show all packaged up and ready to go."
It was kinda crazy how nearly everyone asked him if there would be a Chew TV show. I don't really understand why people have such a desire to see things get adapted to film or television, I prefer art in the medium it was created in, but I guess I'm a fucking weirdo or something. Anyway, I must have heard Layman answer this question at least a half dozen times. The cool thing is, he didn't seem to mind and was more than willing to answer people's questions.
There were a few other cool nuggets that I picked up as well.
Layman also discussed how he and Chew artist Rob Guillory split the money on the floppy issues, basically Rob gets 75%, and Layman gets 25%. The reason being that the work load for artists is a lot bigger at this level, hence the big chunk of the proceeds. However, they split everything else, like sales on trades, 50-50.
Layman also told me that just for special, folks who buy the single issue floppies will get a nice little treat after issue #18. Instead of the next issue being #19, they will instead drop issue #27 in there out of sequence, and then the following month pick back up with #19. That way, folks who buy the single issues get a little sneak peek at what's gonna be happening in the series a year down the road. HOWEVER, if you are a trade waiter, Issue #27 wont be collected in the 4th trade, instead the trade waiters will have to wait until the 6th trade comes out...so, only like a wait of like, a year or two...
Another cool nugget: Also for those who get the single issues, Layman mentioned that like with issue #15, which was the 1/4 mark for the series, they'll be cranking out some special-special covers for the half-way point and the 3/4 mark. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for some scratch-and-sniff!
I was pretty happy to find that John Layman is a totally cool guy, and damn easy to talk to. Hopefully he'll make it to the Emerald City Comicon this year. If you aren't reading this great comic yet, do it. Now is an excellent time to jump on as you can get totally up to speed just by buying the first three trades.
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