A criminal defense lawyer by day, Jeff Mason has an alter ego as the publisher of the independent graphic novel imprint Alternative Comics. He founded the company in Gainesville, Fla., in 1993 to publish Indy magazine, a publication about comics that was revived early this year. In 1996, he started publishing comics, too—the company's first graphic novel was James Kochalka's Quit Your Job, released in 1998. Kochalka has become one of the flagship creators of the company: his new children's title, Peanutbutter & Jeremy's Best Book Ever!, is "selling like crazy," Mason reported, and his not-at-all-for-children (but extremely goofy) book Fancy Froglin's Sexy Forest, published last summer, has sold 1,500 copies in the bookstore market.
Now, 2004 is set to be Alternative's biggest year so far. Besides PB&J, the company has already published a new volume of Sam Henderson's ridiculous Magic Whistle series and the anthology Hi-Horse Omnibus, collecting work by cartoonists from the minicomics underground. Due in a few weeks is Allison Cole's Never Ending Summer, an arty, two-color graphic novel concerning "friends going through a summer filled with relationships, boyfriends, family, parties, drinking... all that good stuff," Mason quipped. Also look for Rick Smith's comics travelogue Baraka and Black Magic in Morocco and the second volume of the Rosetta anthology.
Also in the pipeline: Damon Hurd's The White Elephant and a new volume of Hickee, the anthology of comics by animators edited by Graham Annable (Grickle and Further Grickle), as well as Adam Sacks's eccentric, charming debut graphic novel, Salmon Doubts, in which fish philosophize about their existence as they swim upstream to spawn. And Mason predicts that his top title for the year will be multiple Harvey Award—winner Nick Bertozzi's graphic novel The Salon—a full-color hardcover, due in November, about Picasso and his circle in Paris in the '20s.
The roughly 30 titles on Alternative's backlist continue to sell over time, especially the Kochalka titles, Sara Varon's Sweaterweather (Varon is also doing several books for Scholastic) and Joel Orff's quirky Strum and Drang: Great Moments in Rock 'n' Roll.
"We publish books that we think will sell forever," Mason said. "I' m really dedicated to publishing books that I want to read and want other people to read, and I try to hit all my price points so that everyone's getting a good deal."
