So… I’ve posted a lot about my Lifetime adventures because it’s fun. But what about my career in ART FOR ART’S SAKE? The fun stuff that I really type my soul into and have a lot more control over? (Do you hear my eyes rolling? It’s pretty loud over here.) Well, there’s a long story behind all that. I’ll try to keep it as short as possible. I should, after all, be working. ARRGGGGH, I say.
Those of you who keep up with me regularly have heard the tales of Eibon Press and “Project 51,” “Resurrection Express” and “Metro” and “Shock Festival” and MASTERS OF HORROR and all the other bullet points of my sordid career… but one of the things nobody tells you about when you get into the game of making books and movies is what a fucking rat race it all tends to be. Sure, you can be a dedicated artist with a crazy-ass muse and all that, but you also have to sell a few books and/or movie tickets to have a career. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve seen many of the places people call home in these industries and I’ve experienced a lot of what you have to do to belong there… and most of it just ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. It all kind of comes down to this:
Everybody has an opinion about how you should be an artist.
This is probably well and good if all you want to do is make Lifetime movies, where they give you marching orders that you have to follow OR ELSE… and it’s also probably fine if what you want is to publish big novels through major imprints. But you have to pass muster there too. There are “standards and practices” to consider. You have to do it their way.
In 2016, I co-created a little thing called Eibon Press with my partner Shawn Lewis so that there would be at least one outlet in this whole freaking world where my work would be pure and more-or-less undiluted. Eibon was/is mostly a comic book publishing imprint, and we started it because Shawn and I couldn’t get arrested with something we’d recently come up with together called BOTTOMFEEDER. Even in my perverted career, there have been few things to rival the outright offensiveness of that particular graphic novel project. But the thing is, I didn’t do any of it to be cute. I didn’t do it to make you giggle at what an imp I am. I didn’t even do it for those smug hipster bloggers who (literally) stood in a room and trashed my work without even READING IT as “nothing but gratuitous violence.” No, see here’s the thing: FUCK ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE. That’s my muse talking. He sees through everyone. He speaks truth. He needs to be free and unfettered at least some of the time.
Say what you want, but I will always say this back: BOTTOMFEEDER is, at the end of the day, about something. It’s deeply felt. It MEANS A GREAT DEAL TO ME AND TO SHAWN. Sure, it’s got a nine year old kid smoking crack who gets skull-fucked by a big monster, but so what?
The point is: At Eibon, Shawn and I created a home for BOTTOMFEEDER. One without judgement or censorship. A safe place for bad things. AND, we also had a series of licensed movie comics, which were adaptations of Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBIE, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY and THE BEYOND. Alongside that, we cranked out an absolutely batshit adaptation of William Lustig’s MANIAC and followed it with a sequel that burned the eyes out of all ten people who read it. Um. That was called MANIAC 2. (Creative, ain’t we?) The reason only ten people read it was that our print runs were insanely low. Usually just 1,000 copies of each issue. So I’m exaggerating a little. (OF COURSE I AM! I’M A WRITER!!) More like five or six hundred people may have actually read it. But we worked hard to make these things genuine passion projects, with blood-sweating craft on every page and the best collector’s packaging on the market. Period. As Shawn often liked to say, Nobody does what we do. NOBODY. He was/is right. For six years if you bought a comic book or one of my short story collections from Eibon Press, what you got was pretty unique. CLICK THIS LINK RIGHT HERE FOR MORE ABOUT EIBON. (The only other project of mine I can claim such creative freedom on is “Shock Festival,” which is downright willful in its galvanizing nature.) And I hear you already. “But, Stephen, aren’t those comics based on other people’s films!???” (Um. If you were thinking that, my muse is screaming FUCK YOU TOO… but I digress again…)
The truth is, I took/take the movie adaptation work just as seriously as anything else I ever did… and never mind that we had crazy-original stuff on tap too… and I also got to do WASTELAND 1989, a satire of ROAD WARRIOR rip-off films from the 1980s that became one of my most ambitious and head-trippy projects to date. (See funny gag ABOVE.) And here’s the REAL rub: On these projects I answered to no one but Shawn. And Shawn was a great collaborator because he trusted my instincts as a creative professional. I am the writer AND editor, just like I was on “Shock Festival,” and the end results all sluice into the world on that particular brand of steam, for better or for worse. To do it all, I retired from my career as a novelist in the New York City book publishing scene. I did it because the muse told me to. I supported myself as a writer of TV movies (I still do that) while we shook up the world at this little imprint, which was like having a blood-soaked place to call home.
The “Eibonites” and “Psycho Fans” who supported us were a small but dedicated group of mayhem-seekers, whose hard-earned dollars kept us on the air for six years, as we cracked out issue after issue. We’ve made some new arrangements recently to stay on the air, which has involved a partnership with Vinegar Syndrome, which has been interesting.
In fact, first up at the new Eibon, and releasing TODAY, is the deluxe four-issue box set of LUCIO FULCI’S ZOMBIE. It’s a complete reimagining of the entire presentation, with all new covers, all new Eibon sleeves, over 50 new bonus pages and ALL NEW EXTRAS, including an art card series by Puis Calzada and much more. This will be followed by similar box sets for our other catalog titles.
Here’s a look at a couple of the covers from the new rebranded ZOMBIE release.
We commissioned all-new Eibon Sleeve covers also, and here’s a look at a couple of those:
PAT CARBAJAL proves himself a master of this sort of thing every time he steps up. It’s really great work and I’m damn proud he’s with us.
We’re very happy about this, kids.
I’M very happy about this.
It’s a lot of hard work, more than I have ever done before in my life… but these dreams are worth fighting for. Worth bleeding for. Worth getting pneumonia for. Of course they are. And hey… if you are one of our old-school fans reading this, I’d like to thank you for being there. Shawn thanks you too. BOTTOMFEEDER puts a big bloody smile on my face. It’s why I’m still here.
I invite each and every damn one of you to come and see it happen.
LET’S ROCK!
