Sunday, July 18, 2010

Blast from the Past #322: Card for Joan Vinge

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I met the science fiction author Joan Vinge at one of those UMass sci-fi events for which I did poster artwork back in the 1970's. As I recall, she was the featured guest at one of them, and I got to meet her and chat for a while. She was at that time expecting her first child (I think it was the first, anyway), and I did this drawing for a card that I made for her when she had the baby.



The friendly sea creatures with the baby are my interpretation of the author's "Mers", key characters in her book "The Snow Queen", which I read after meeting her and liked very much. -- PL

3 comments:

Brookslyn said...

Hi Peter,

This is a bit off topic, but recently I've been wondering about what the print runs were for Vol 1 of the TMNT. Do you have a break out by issue number? I recall seeing something in the late 80s /early 90s of print runs on some of the Marvel titles, actually published in the book, being in the 200-400k for an issue. I recently came across a used bookstore that had 50 copies of Fugitoid #1 (oversized) which I thought was really bizzare. Was there a huge print run for that?

Thanks!

PL said...

"Brookslyn said...
Hi Peter,

This is a bit off topic, but recently I've been wondering about what the print runs were for Vol 1 of the TMNT. Do you have a break out by issue number? I recall seeing something in the late 80s /early 90s of print runs on some of the Marvel titles, actually published in the book, being in the 200-400k for an issue. I recently came across a used bookstore that had 50 copies of Fugitoid #1 (oversized) which I thought was really bizzare. Was there a huge print run for that? "

I know that data is floating around out there someplace, but if memory serves, Issue #1 had 3000 copies of the first printing printed, 6000 of the second printing, and 15,00 of the third printing. Beyond that, I can't recall.

As for Fugitoid, I seem to recall that a distributor at the time (not sure if they are still in business) ordered something like 12,000 copies of the book, which we dutifully printed and shipped... and then agreed to take back most of, even though technically/legally we were not obliged to. I think that helped produce a significant overstock of that book. -- PL

Brookslyn said...

Peter,

Thanks for the info. I found a website that has sales data (not actual print run) from diamond back to the late 90s and I saw that the recent TMNT sales were in the 3000-4000 range.

BTW, just a thought that came to me last night - I stopped collecting comics around 94 when I went off to college and just started reading them again a few years ago. I've started to fill in my TMNT collection and I have to say, as much as I like the art and stories what I really look forward to is the letters section of every issue. In a way I think your (and the mirage team) responses are even more interesting because of the decisions you've made and shared the last few years on this blog.