Thirty-eight years ago this month, I signed the agreement to purchase the Humanoids catalog, including its magazine Metal Hurlant, whose French edition had ceased publication the previous year. In January 1989, I moved from Geneva, Switzerland, to Paris to run the company and its ten-person team. At 23, I was embarking on quite a journey.
I have been fortunate to meet, and often work with, extraordinary creators, luminaries from the comic book world and beyond, to my absolute delight. I have witnessed the shift from analog to digital production and many other things, including, of course, some I would rather have avoided altogether.
But one thing has recently changed my experience as a publisher and caught me off guard, something that has touched me more than I expected. It began with our first crowdfunding campaigns and has grown since we started having subscribers: receiving your messages, your comments and, let's say it, your love, even if some will argue I'm going soft.
From day one, back in that October, Alejandro Jodorowsky told me that comics were a mass-produced art form, combining pure creativity with production, technical and commercial challenges. Yet for the most part, it remains a fairly solitary process, with very long working days and little opportunity to interact with readers, especially since conventions have never been my forte, as I'm rather shy.
That is why receiving your enthusiastic notes, your occasional criticism, and your expressions of love and support gives me a new perspective, and I truly enjoy it.
So this is what this blog is about: sharing, with those who might be interested, fragments of what I have lived through and learned over all these years; and, for the team and me, talking about what we are developing now and what we plan for the future. It will also be the right place to give you practical updates and respond to your questions and comments.
Please join me: the curtain is rising on Talking Humanoids.
