Tripwire’s editior-in-chief talks crowdfunders and anniversaries!
Joel Meadows has been Editor-in-Chief at Tripwire: The Genre Magazine since its inception. Tripwire has weathered the storm of a changing genre-reporting landscape. Joel joins us for a chat about that landscape, the Tripwire crowd-funding campaign for the packed 30th Anniversary book and the challenges of pop culture reporting in both digital and print forms.
Joel, thanks for talking to us. Does it feel like 30 years since you first put out Tripwire as a magazine?
To be honest, it feels like it was only yesterday but when I look at our first few issues and compare them to the magazines we have put out in the last couple of years, they look so primitive!
In that time, Tripwire has moved almost exclusively online, apart from the odd printed special. What made you want to mark this particular anniversary?
I’ve always loved print and even though we have done more things online, we did a print special for our 10th anniversary way back in 2002 and again for our 21st anniversary in 2013. So we wanted to mark it with a special print edition again.
It’s great to see a pop-culture magazine, especially one that deals with comics, in print. When you started the magazine 30 years ago, did you think you'd still be making it three decades later?
I really didn't have a clue! That’s why I don't have many of the features and layouts from the first few years of the magazine now. It was just a bit of fun when it was launched back in 1992 and I didn't expect it to last ten years, never mind thirty!
But here we are, thankfully! What gave you the idea to start the magazine? Was there one particular moment?
For us, there wasn't really an interesting features-driven comics magazine in the early nineties. Comics International did a good job with news (this was pre-internet remember) but we wanted to do something different.
So what was it you were hoping to achieve with the magazine in those early days?
Just a different, more anarchic kind of reporting. To be honest, we upset a few creators in those early years! I prefer to be more mellow about it all now.
Right! Do you have a favourite issue of the magazine?
That is a hard question as each issue has something in it that I am proud of. The 2021 Autumn / Winter print edition is, I think, our strongest print issue to date but I try to strive and make each issue better than the previous one. I know that's an annoying answer!
Not at all. Given the wealth of material in the Tripwire archives, how did you decide what to put in?
It was pretty hard but I wanted to give people a flavour of thirty years of the magazine but also thirty years of comics and genre culture. Of course, there are a number of brand-new features in the book like a look back at 30 years of Image Comics, the rise and fall of DC's Vertigo and a look at the cultural dominance of Marvel movies. I wanted to make it a balance of archive and new material.
I’d say you achieved it! You've also got some amazing art in the book! What was the impetus behind putting some of this in?
I wanted to break up the text features with some nifty art throughout and this also gave us the opportunity to offer some of these pieces as limited edition prints in our Zoop crowdfunding campaign. It also lends the book some extra gravitas including art from the likes of Bill (Daredevil, Batman, Black Panther) Sienkiewicz, Frank (Dark Knight Returns, 300, Sin City) Miller, Drew Struzan (Indiana Jones poster artist, Harry Potter poster artist) and many others.
I know from our conversations in the past that these things take time to create. How long did you spend putting this book together?
The Tripwire 30 book took around six months to put together from its genesis to its commissioning to its completion. As its editor and designer and occasional contributor, it did change shape a few times over the months.
As far as I know, this is the first time you've chosen to work with another publisher in putting out a Tripwire book. What made you pick Heavy Metal as a partner on the book?
We have been working with Kris Longo who works for Heavy Metal, about their advertising on Tripwire and we just got chatting. We did offer it to a few other big, mainstream comic publishers but they were the best fit for it. To clarify too, Heavy Metal has published the paperback but Tripwire has put out the hardcover on our own.
Great to see two venerable institutions of comics working together! What has thirty years of reporting on pop culture taught you?
You do see similar trends coming and going over the years. And you do see certain people whose careers rise and fall and it's the clever ones who can keep their career going if the industry changes and you have to evolve.
Any advice for would-be pop-culture journalists out here?
You need to be very thick-skinned and adaptable. You get people who become your allies but you also end up with people who hate you for no apparent reason. If you stick your head over the parapet, then it is inevitable that you become a target for some people with an axe to grind.
What's been the biggest challenge in putting this book out?
Dealing with a lot of different creators means juggling a lot of egos sometimes but most people have been pretty easygoing. I keep spotting mistakes and typos which I have tried to fix in the hardcover edition.
Is there anyone you would have liked to have featured in the book but didn't get the chance to?
The thing about a book like this is that it could have come out thirty different ways featuring thirty different features or more. So we did want to include a visual tribute to Darwyn Cooke and John Paul Leon in the book but sadly that didn't quite work out.
As you mentioned, you're also publishing a hardcover edition via your crowdfunding campaign. What made you want to offer this version alongside the paperback?
We wanted to offer people a really nice high-quality limited hardcover edition to commemorate the milestone, which feels a little different to the paperback. The hardcover includes a dust jacket and a David Mack Kabuki piece which is not in the paperback.
What's been the toughest thing about this crowd-funding campaign?
At the moment, people are struggling financially, so I did feel a little guilty about asking them to stump up for what is quite an expensive book. Also, as with every crowdfunding campaign, I am always trying to find the balance between reminding people it exists and getting their backs up.
Can you talk about some of the great things on offer for backers?
There are three signed limited plate hardcover editions left out of fifty (signed by Frank Quitely, Bill Sienkiewicz, Martin Simmonds, Liam Sharp, Lee Garbett, Shawn Martinbrough, Andy Bennett), limited edition giclee prints by Liam Sharp, David Mack, Walter Simonson and Andy Bennett; reproductions of Andy Bennett Sherlock Holmes pages and a signed Sherlock Holmes script. We also have some regular Tripwire 30 hardcovers. The campaign ends on Friday 21 Oct, so I would say to potential backers: hurry!
Excitingly, you’ve also written a comic yourself for this edition: the latest Sherlock Holmes strip debuts in the book. What can we expect from this instalment?
I have written the Secret Files Of Oswald Mosley, which debuts a number of new characters, setting things up for hopefully a full-length Holmes graphic novel sometime in 2023.
That’s great news! What do you love about comics? You've been reporting on them for many years now...
There is a visual power and accessibility to comics that continues to connect with me even after all these years. And I am still finding new, cool comic projects and new and exciting comic creators to discover too.
Given how difficult the last couple of years has been for everyone, can you talk about some personal highlights from 2022?
Getting the book out after talking about it for at least eighteen months was pretty nice! Also, hosting another event at New York's Society of Illustrators earlier this month with Klaus Janson and David Mack was pretty exciting too.
I’m always sad to miss your events in NYC. Where will you be promoting the book in the UK? Will we see you at any more cons before the new year?
We are signing the book with artists Roger Langridge, Simon Davis, Frazer Irving and Dan Schaffer at Gosh in London this Saturday 22 Oct. Plus we are set up on Artists Alley at MCM London Comic Expo from 28 to 30 Oct, B-20, plus we are doing a panel at MCM at 11.20 on Sat 29 Oct. Sadly, there’s a delay with the stock of the paperback that’s gone out to the distributor, but I’m pleased to be able to say that you’ll be able to buy the book from Gosh London - in fact, for a short while, Gosh will be the only place you can buy it! Oh, and our table at MCM, of course! The regular hardcover will also be available at Gosh and also at our MCM table. The limited hardcover is only available via our zoop crowdfunding campaign.
Lastly, how can people back the crowd-funder for the book?
The zoop campaign runs until this Friday, 21 Oct, and people can back it here
Joel, I wish you the best of luck and look forward to reading it! Thanks for talking to The Comic Crush.
Thanks for having me again!