CR Holiday Interview #11: Vito Delsante



*****

Vito Delsante is the Events Coordinator at Jim Hanley's Universe, one of a dozen or so leading comic store establishments in North America. He's also a comics writer, having penned various stories, some published and some inventoried, for characters ranging from Scooby-Doo to Wildcat to Albert Einstein, for clients ranging from big comics companies to little comics companies to prose book publishers. He even has a new work on-line. I liked the fact that Vito has experience as both a retail employee and as creator, and the fact that he's at that point in his career where the work in front of him is a mix of gigs scored and interests explored. I enjoyed talking to Vito for this interview just as I have enjoyed talking to him in the past under less formal conditions, and I wish him nothing but the best in his various pursuits. -- Tom Spurgeon

*****

TOM SPURGEON: I was looking at the time line of your career, and am I right in thinking you adjusted the vocational aspects of your life after 9/11?

VITO DELSANTE: It was kind of post-9/11 that it happened. What happened was I was working at Hanley's part-time. I was trying to do the writing and stuff as it came. I was trying to learn the industry at that point and I had a bunch of friends that worked here. I had three friends, actually, and two of them are still here. I'd come in on my lunch hour because the office was on 26th street and Hanley's is on 33rd. I would just walk up here and during lunch hour hang out with my friends. Then one day I saw that they had a sign to hire somebody. I said, "Hey, if you guys are hiring, I'll come in and start working." That was May of 2001.

I was dating a girl who lived in Sacramento. She said, "My dad needs to hire somebody to work for him, and you're planning on moving out here anyway, so why don't you come out here? So I went out there. He wasn't hiring anybody. [laughter] It was wishful thinking on her part. I had quit my job -- my company installed fire alarms in buildings like the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. We did check-ups on them, run alarm tests and stuff. I quit that job right before August 2001 and I came back from Sacramento, with a part-time job at Hanley's, on September 6. And five days later I was scheduled to work and it was, "Don't come into work today." It didn't change anything; it was a matter of the focus becoming a little more focused.

SPURGEON: You mention your friends are still there and that you've been there several years yourself.

DELSANTE: Yeah, it'll be seven years in May.



SPURGEON: Is that the kind of shop that Hanley's is? Do they retain long-term employees like that?

DELSANTE: Yes and no. I think that by and large we try to foster good relationships with people, but we always know it's a transient job. We employ three musicians, four artists, and three writers. Evan Dorkin worked for us at one point. We know there's going to be another Evan Dorkin at some point. Jamal Igle worked for us at one point. We know there's going to be another Jamal Igle at some point. We know somebody's going to get a job in the industry but outside of the retailing end of it. We try to foster that and encourage everyone to follow their aspirations.

At the same time, when guys are here for 20 years it's because they've been here since day one. Myself, as I said, I've been here for almost seven. Nick Purpura, who is one of the head managers, he's a musician that plays in at least two bands. He's got record deals overseas and stuff. At any given point he could say, "The band took off; we're going on a tour around the world." We're going to say, "Good luck to you."

I think we try to foster a little bit more of a friendlier attitude towards stuff like that. Hanley is always really good about that. He's always been really supportive of everyone. When I first started working here and he knew that I wanted to start writing, he made sure I knew who Alex Toth was, he made sure I knew who Steve Ditko was. He wasn't like a teacher, and maybe a little less of a mentor, but that kind of relationship. When he knew that that's what you were trying to do, he knew to keep your focus in retailing to find what interests you with the end result of making you a more informed creator.

SPURGEON: Your official title is Events Coordinator, am I right?

DELSANTE: Yes.

SPURGEON: Is it possible for me to ask about the year in events coordination?

DELSANTE: Better than last year.

SPURGEON: Is the in-store event a growing concern as opposed to a few years ago? Retailers have told me that they're seeing more events than they did two to five years ago.

DELSANTE: When I started doing the job, it was because Mike Mignola walked into the store. He lived around the corner at the time. I said, "Hey, can we have you in for an event?" He said, "Sure." I turned to one of the managers, I wasn't a manager at that point, and I said, "Who does the events?" And he said, "You do, now." [Spurgeon laughs] Once my name is up on the web site, people want to promote their books, so they'll get in touch with me.

Everyone always wonders about the rivalry between Midtown Comics and us, or Forbidden Planet and us. We three are the only ones that I know of in the city that do events other than Barnes & Noble or the Virgin mega-store. We're the only three comics retailers that really do events here in the city. It's one of those things where's it's not so cutthroat sometimes, but, say, we've gotten wind of Midtown getting somebody and so we ask, "Hey, how come we aren't getting this guy?" We'll call up Marvel and say, "You have this guy going around and he's been there four or five times, when are we going to get them to come in here?" I find myself utilizing MySpace a lot more often in that respect. Saying, "You haven't been to Hanley's in five years. We'd love to have you." Put out open invitations to people. It's starting to heat up a little bit in that now that New York's got its convention. I think the clientele and fans and customer base are expecting to meet people a little more often than not.

SPURGEON: What distinguishes a good event over a bad event? Is it in the reaction from your patrons? Is it in pleasing the guests?

DELSANTE: I go out of my way to please the guests no matter what because I want them to come back. We always invite them back; we give them a perk like having a discount in the store or something like that.

I think how I know an event's going to be successful is that I try to have two weeks promotion on something. If we promote it on a Wednesday two weeks before the event and people are calling and asking, "Do you have this book in stock?" Or "Do I need to get in line early?" If I'm getting calls about an event and it's not even close to the time of the event, I know. We had a World War Hulk #1 signing that was phenomenal. We had a Claudio Sanchez signing a couple of weeks ago that was phenomenal. We had Nicholas Gurewitch for Perry Bible Fellowship, and that did great. We couldn't get enough books. We never want to turn anyone away.

There have been events... we had Steve Niles and the director for 30 Days of Night come in, and customers had been clamoring for Steve Niles. That was a quick rush and it died. We anticipated people hanging around and talking to them and stuff and we had a signing right after, and it was a ghost town. I felt really bad. I said to the creators, "This is atypical. The weather is terrible. It's just something that happens. If you have something promote you are always welcome back here, just give me a call."

SPURGEON: How has Hanley's changed to adapt to this latest shift in the way comics are published now, say something as fundamental as the increased emphasis on trades?

DELSANTE: I don't think there was a shift necessarily, but there was more of a concerted effort to look at the trends going on. We deal with Fantagraphics directly, we deal with Drawn & Quarterly directly. We deal with all these publishers on a name to name basis. We've always sought out the next big thing before it happens. But we still support the floppies. I don't know if it's bread and butter so much, but it's something we have a client base for, that are still coming in on Wednesdays. So we're not going to abandon that.

I think we also got burned a bit by manga. Where everybody was experience growth, we started experiencing the opposite. We were getting stuck with Naruto or whatever the big ones are. So we scaled our ordering to hit everyone that we knew was going to buy it but also have a couple of spares. There are still days where we'll sell out of One Piece or Death Note really quickly and we didn't anticipate it so we rush to re-order. But for the most part we've always tried to look ahead and just say, "Graphic novels? We're in. This is what we want to do."

SPURGEON: I think of your store as having a reputation as a store that operates on the feel of its managers. Is that fair?

DELSANTE: We have Ron [Hill], who's been here for 20-plus years. We have Nick, who's been here about ten years. Myself, I haven't been here as long, but I actively work in a different end of the industry. Out of the three of us, two of us go to San Diego every year. We all see what's coming next. We also have an idea how we would run the store if it were our store. We try to live vicariously that way. Say, hypothetically, we know that Marvel Zombies is going to sell 60 copies the first month; let's get 120. Ron especially is really good at predicting those trends.

SPURGEON: Am I right in that your inventory isn't computerized?

DELSANTE: It is but it isn't. We don't have a Point of Sale system, but we do have a computerized inventory system that's kind of antiquated. But if it's not broke, why fix it? We are trying to upgrade and go a bit further.

SPURGEON: The first time I can remember seeing your name was during the end for Speakeasy.

DELSANTE: Oh, yeah.

SPURGEON: How was that experience, for you to be there as the Hindenburg crashed and burned around you? It wasn't the ugliest crash and burn, as I recall; I think they tried to pay some people... wait a minute, I'm not sure I remember exactly how that turned out. How did that turn out?

DELSANTE: I think there are people still waiting to be paid, but I'm not sure.

SPURGEON: What was that experience like for you, as the public face for the fall a little bit?

DELSANTE: Yeah, totally. There are still web sites out there with my name on them regarding Speakeasy.

SPURGEON: Was it... interesting? Was it a real pain in the ass?

DELSANTE: Interesting is one way to put it. [laughs] It was one of those things where, let's be honest, if it could have been someone else I would have been a lot happier. It's one of those things where you're relatively young as a creator, and you're wanting to get your creation out there, you turn a blind eye to certain things. I'll be honest. I wasn't privy to people not getting paid, I wasn't reading the [accounting] books, I was asked to assist in sending out press releases and raising the profile. I started doing that in the December prior to them going out of business [December 2005]. I started to create an awareness of the product, but then they were cutting titles and I didn't know about that. I would look at their future plans and go, "They're doing this and that and it doesn't look good, but it looks like they have their head on straight about this and the other thing." Again, I'm turning a blind eye to some of it because I want my book to succeed. I want to be a creator there because I believe in the product. I hesitate to say I was drinking the Kool-Aid, but I believed in what they were trying to do.

SPURGEON: You had your own flavor of Kool-Aid you were hoping to get over.

DELSANTE: Definitely. Again, in the press release that I sent out where I said Speakeasy was closing down, I didn't realize until that day that anything was wrong.

SPURGEON: [laughs] Oh, God.

DELSANTE: It was the first New York Comic Con. Adam Fortier was supposed to be there and meet with me. I'm sure a few other creators as well. And no one could find him. Then I heard little rumors about him being behind a pillar and then ducking out. I had come to create a friendship with Adam. I'd stayed in his house. I went to his Christmas party. I was one of the guys he would call whenever he had a question about the retailing end. We had done phone meetings up until then, and two weeks prior to the New York Comic-Con was the Toy Fair. Adam and I had met with a couple of other guys and started going through the Ardustry Entertainment deal and the books they were going to do. Basically at that point they had asked me to edit any and all licensing properties. At that point I'm thinking I'm going to be moving up to Canada soon because I wanted to be closer to them. Then the New York Comic-Con happened. No sign of Adam.

I get a phone call on Monday about 11 o'clock, prior to me coming to Hanley's. He laid it all out. I was like, "Hoo boy." And I said, "Look, are you calling all the creators?" He said yes. I pointed out that the general populace out there didn't know that this was going on, and did he mind if I tell everyone? He was fine with it. I guess he didn't want to be the fall guy at that point, but I think he did an interview or two following up on some of the stuff that I had sent out. It was one of those things that even when it was happening, I don't want to say it was an out of body experience, but it was, "Hey, why wasn't I in the loop, why wasn't I informed?" I've since become very cautious of start-ups.

SPURGEON: Sure.

DELSANTE: I remember meeting Ross Richie when Boom was starting. He's a smart guy. That's the only reason they're succeeding, because Ross isn't the kind to just throw everything out there and let's see what sticks. He's very selective. He knows the products he wants to put out, and what he wants to represent Boom. Ross has become a little more canny than Adam was at that point. I contend that Adam loves comics so much he wanted to do it right and maybe didn't think it through? I put a question mark on that because he didn't call during all of this so I didn't really know. I've only seen him one time since, and that was at the San Diego prior to this year's where we had a lunch and tried to talk things out.

I'm so bummed out right now. [laughs] Just kidding.

SPURGEON: What do you have on your plate heading into 2008? Say we were to meet at a comics event in January and I was to politely ask you what you were working on.

DELSANTE: I have the Before They Were Famous series for Simon and Schuster. I've completed writing Albert Einstein, and I'm finishing up Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth should be out in 2009 and Einstein should be out in July . These are stories of their childhoods. It's based on their Childhoods of Famous Americans series. It's funny in that Albert Einstein's not American. Than they did a Dalai Lama one, too. I guess that's why their changed the series name.

SPURGEON: We'll take 'em.



DELSANTE: Other than that, I have a new strip I just started with Rachel Freire, a newcomer that no one's ever heard of before. She's fantastic. It's really cool when you go to a CBLDF party and everybody's talking about this girl that's no one ever seen. It's like, "Well, good. They're going to read my strip, I guess." I just got asked to do a two-part story for Savage Tales from Dynamite. That's pretty much it right now. There's a bunch of things I did for DC that may or may never see print from DC. I got paid for them. I can't complain too much. But I would love for these things to come out and people to see them and judge me on my merits for that. That's pretty much it. I'm also writing a novel based on a teenage con man. That's a wait and see kind of attitude.

SPURGEON: Is it difficult at the stage you're at to keep a core identity? Can you pick and choose some of your projects or do you just take what you can get?

DELSANTE: Yes and no. I'm not offered a lot of stuff. [laughs] But I'm pretty aggressive. These editors at DC and Marvel can tell you I send them an e-mail at least once a month if not once ever two weeks, saying, "Is there anything going on? Do you need me for something?" It's dried up now, but it usually picks back up around February.

Going back to the whole identity question, I think the problem with my identity is I'm linked to the store. That's not entirely a bad thing. It is when you're trying to be taken seriously. Hence me trying to do more of my own stuff than trying to do stuff for DC and Marvel. Don't get me wrong: I'll take the work. But it's really one of those matters where I've impressed the right people but I've not impressed the other right people.



SPURGEON: To pick at that point a bit, the suite of work you just described, is that work that will show off an aspect of your writing ability, or what? How do you look at that work? Is it work to get you from one place to another? Do you think about it in those terms? Are they going to serve you well in the years ahead or do you focus on what's in front of you?

DELSANTE: I don't know. The stuff I just finished doing is mostly Scooby-Doo. This past year was mostly Scooby-Doo. I've done stuff for the DCU that might not see print this year, if ever. It might be in a drawer somewhere for perpetuity. [laughs] I think had that stuff come out it would have shown off a little more what I can do. As I said, one of the things I have coming out is a series of kids' books and it might paint me into a corner as a kids' author, which isn't a horrible thing but it's not the only thing I can do. I'm trying to do a YA novel about teenage con man because I read Lawrence Block novels every couple of month because I love his style of writing and it's what I know. I know the James Ellroy kind of writing and the Elmore Leonard kind of writing.

Going back to Speakeasy for a second, the last thing I did for Speakeasy was a superhero noir story with Dean Haspiel. It's the thing we want to finish the most. If it were my last collaboration with Dean, it'd probably put me on a map somewhere where people say, "This guy can do this, this guy can do this, this guy can do this." However, it's so mired up with Speakeasy rights and intellectual property and creator rights. It's so crazy right now, it's something I can't talk about, really, except to say it in passing.

SPURGEON: Would you say that project is the closest to an ideal for you in terms of all the projects you've done?

DELSANTE: Definitely. Fallout was only a six-page story over six parts, for a 36-page book. Waiting in Dean's drawer ready to be published. It's one of the best collaborative moments I've had in my career. It's beautiful to look at. And I hit every note. It was like watching Jimmy Page in his prime. It was perfect. From the letter of the first sentence to the period of the last; it was perfect. The only thing I've done close to that was a JSA Classified story that I wrote for Eric Wight. It was about Wildcat. It had the same tone... I liked to say a Pal Joey type of knockaround guy story about Wildcat. It was perfect. Another perfect collaboration that I had with an artist where we're sitting in a room: myself, the editor and Eric on a speaker phone. We're all excited and jumping up and down. "Yeah, we'll throw that in." It was such a great synthesis. The only other place I've had that was in Dean's living room doing Fallout. So I know that Fallout is exactly what I want to do. That type of story. The dark, edgy, Point Blank, Lee Marvin type characters. That's why I gravitate towards JSA characters whenever people ask for my ideal DC book. That kind of aged, wisdom type? That's got some type of bloody knuckle Charles Bronson to 'em?

SPURGEON: What is the exact quality you're responding to there? Is it just that specific edge to it?

DELSANTE: If I say it's what I know, I sound pretentious, right?

SPURGEON: Maybe. A little bit.

DELSANTE: But it is. It's not based on my own personal experience. I'm not Slam Bradley. I talked to Darwyn [Cooke] a couple of weeks ago at the New York Comic-Con, then I overheard someone else talking to him while I was talking to Amanda Conner. They said, "Are you Slam Bradley? It looks like you're drawing yourself." Darwyn said something like, "Well, Slam and I have a lot in common."

I don't have anything in common with Wildcat except that I used to box. I'm not that old. He reminds me of my stepfather. Having seen my stepfather in action, having read JSA and JLA stories that had Wildcat in them, I can relate to Wildcat because I know that guy. If you ask me who I relate to, it's any sidekick. From Robin to whomever they're killing these days. When I was a kid I called my dad Batman and I called the car the Batmobile, so I was always Robin to myself. An ideal story for me to write would be a Robin or a Nightwing story. The reason why I love those other characters is that I have a template in my head for who they are based on the adults I've grown up with, or the friends I've had and their parents. Our drug-induced adventures or alcohol-fueled rages that we've had in bars. That kind of thing. I almost put that in the Savage Tales story I wrote, but they asked for a different story. Those experiences wouldn't be too off base in that world.

I'm fashioning a proposal right now for Mark Waid at Boom! and the idea was that I wanted to do a story with nothing but villains. No heroes whatsoever. There would be a protagonist but there'd be no crisis of faith; he's a bastard and bastard from beginning to end. Dean Haspiel read it and said, "What you need to do is put yourself in there." I don't want to put myself in there! I don't want to be that much of a prick that people will read it and think, "What's wrong with you?" [Spurgeon laughs] But I may have to for the greater good of the stories. I like characters that are darker, that can go either way. I like exploring the line and why people go one way or the other.

SPURGEON: As someone who boxed and who knows that world, do you ever think that superhero comics are too casual about physical violence and its repercussions? Or does that just come with the genre?

DELSANTE: Jesus, what a good question.

I think it's part and parcel of the genre, but I think you also have to look at the entire American entertainment genre. Ultimate Fighting is doing bigger numbers than WWE on pay-per-view currently, so think about that for a second; real fighting is outselling choreographed fighting. The Vietnam War was televised; our current situation comes in snippets. So if you look at any stack of superhero comics and tell me that someone isn't getting punched around, and I'll tell you it's a book that doesn't have the numbers to support it and it will be gone in six months. Violence sells and has always sold. There's a reason why you can't do a superhero romance story. Marvel tried it with the I Heart Marvel one-shots. There's got to be a reason why they haven't done it every year like they're doing the new What If? comics, right?

I have this theory that the FCC, who should be regulating this kind of stuff on television, and the MPAA are working in cahoots with the current government to churn out violent heroic fantasy in order to increase recruitment for the armed forces. Now, I don't know if comic publishers have the same agenda, although the more I read current superhero comics, the more I see writers mixing in political themes into their stories. These themes seem to support the war in Iraq and support our current president, and while I have no problem with someone supporting Bush (as much as I don't), I have a problem with someone selling their own personal politics as if it's the policy of that character.

The best book to show the repercussions of violence, to me, is Palestine, and there's not much violence actually portrayed on the page, it's all in the aftermath of it or, for that matter, the fact that the folks in that area of the world have to live with the idea that they can die at any second. We're so sheltered here; we don't have to live in that environment! So, we'll live vicariously through these two characters punching each other. It's the way its always been done.



SPURGEON: What drives your interest in the kids' books? Is it just working those muscles you might not otherwise work?

DELSANTE: That's part of it. It is a challenge. You don't try to write down to anybody, no matter what audience you're writing to. I'm not Gore Vidal or Hemingway or whatever writer you respect -- I'm not that guy. [laughter] I'm not saying that because I'm a terrible writer but because I haven't earned that title. A guy I respect is Greg Rucka. Greg and I will go back and forth on writing in e-mails or on LiveJournal. Every time he writes about writing, I want to shut the world off and write. Because I respect him so much and he inspires me. To say that I'm trying to exercise the muscle, it's more like I'm trying to develop it first. The kids books are challenging. Even though you're not trying to write down to somebody, you're trying to tweak your language to make it simpler. When I was doing Albert Einstein the notes I usually got from the editor were, "Hey, you don't have to write in this ancient wording. You can write in modern language because modern kids are reading it." I can write "hey" instead of "ho." [laughs] Albert Einstein never said that. I could write like a normal person instead of dumbing it down or writing it for Albert Einstein's family. That's the challenge, really.

The idea of writing a four-page Scooby story that has comedy and mystery and some kind of resolution with a monster is incredibly tough. You're trying to work with three-act structure, remember everything you learned in screenwriting, and do right by the story. To sit down and hack it out, I don't know how anybody could hack out a kids story because they're so tough. I can see hacking out a superhero story because they're hackneyed. They've been done. They've been done since '38. It's the same story every year. I'm not saying anybody does it, but I'm sure if you look at a list of 2007 books that people think were hacked out, there's definitely more than one. With kids books, I don't think you cheat. It is tough. You go through these moments where you're wondering if a kid is even reading them. You assume an adult is buying it for their children, but you can't hack it because you just don't know. You really need to sit down and figure it out.



SPURGEON: What do you next the step entails for you? Is it just getting a chance to write a book closer to your heart and getting it out there for people to see? Is it continuing to press the context you have for more work of whatever kind?

DELSANTE: Ideally, because I dislike thinking ahead too far, but I think for me what I want to do is do something other than what people think of me. That could be doing fantasy instead. That could be talking animals -- although I've done talking animals with Scooby. That could be straight science fiction. As long as somebody says, "Here's six issues of something." I'm saying it in terms of Marvel/DC/Dark Horse franchise type character. What's your idea for Star Wars? I don't claim to have the best ideas, but I love working with people so we all come to some kind of agreement about a story. We all come in with one version of a story and leave with a different version that we're all excited by and can't wait to create.

All I really want is for people to see the work I've done that hasn't been released yet like the Wildcat story. I think we all want to write our own ticket where we do creator-owned stuff more so. The thing I started losing touch with this year was having fun writing. It started getting to the point where I had difficulty writing because I was trying to write these franchise characters and make money. I chased money a little bit. I was getting frustrated and angry when people were getting opportunities I wasn't. I don't want to live like that. Does anyone want to get to the point where they're writing out of spite. I want to enjoy myself and at the same time tackle these characters I really enjoy. They say a lot about me, but at the same time, I can say a lot about them, and maybe discover something no one ever knew.

I think I told Johanna Draper Carlson if the JSA Classified story I wrote came out it would change continuity a little bit where people look at Wildcat a little bit differently and say, "Oh, now it makes sense." That's the kind of story I think deserves to be read and published, because if you don't change these characters every couple of years -- and I don't mean crossovers or killing of characters. I don't remember who said but I agree with somebody out there that you don't have to kill a character to make him or her interesting. You just have to write a good story. I think that story I wrote was an exceptional story -- I'm trying to be as objective as possible because I did write it. It's hard for me to be, because it was fun writing it. The fact that I had fun writing it led to this incredible piece of work sitting in a drawer right now.

If I were to prognosticate further, maybe editing. I have some ideas on how to make a good book.

*****

* photo provided by Vito Delsante
* JHU logo
* a Claudio Sanchez comic
* the Speakeasy logo
* a couple of panels from the FCHS webcomic
* cover art from a recent Scooby Doo comic to which Delsante contributed
* from the orphaned superhero noir story Fallout
* cover and then interior art to forthcoming Einstein childhood biography
* studies by Dean Haspiel related to Delsante's work with Wildcat character

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Vito Delsante
FCHS
Jim Hanley's Universe

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the CR Holiday interview series continues through Monday with two interviews scheduled for each day. Tuesday, January 8 marks a return to this blog's full array of regular features. We thank you for your patience.
 
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