Was showing this to a friend on Facebook, and realized that many of my pals probably haven't seen this news clip that was made back when I was 19 years old, and just a wide-eyed pup, hoping to make his mark on the world! Saskatoon couldn't hold me, man! I WAS GONNA MAKE IT! hahaha! I cut off all that hair a few months later, and didn't grow it back until just a year or so ago! Still keep it shorter than that, though.
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"Robin Boo-Jhay"? Weird pronunciation of my name, there. But at least he didn't say "Boogie", so I was pleased at the time. It's "Boo-jhee" not "Boo-jhay", in case anyone cares.
MIND'S EYE was open in the Wildwood mall for almost 2 years. The mall was dying (it's LONG gone now) and the owner gave us a deal. Pay for the light bill, and give 10% of all our sales for rent. If we didn't sell anything, we paid no rent. Usually our rent was about $150 a month. Pretty much the most insanely good deal I've ever heard of, before or since! But we were so full of hope and enthusiasm for doing this shit, I think we swayed him to want us to be a part of the mall. Wildwood Mall was it's own entity. Kind of a low rent place, but with a lot of personality. Local Vancouver people will get it when I compare it to Kingsgate Mall on Broadway. Very very similar.
Perhaps one of the RAREST Bougie-Dart comics of all time (good luck, collectors!) is a comic we made for the Wildwood mall to be given out as a coloring book/comic book to all the kids who entered the mall, which was a rip off of the Simpsons called "The Wildwoods". Hahaha! I have one around here somewhere. Actually, come to think of it, it's probably not that rare since they printed a thousand copies, and most of our minis only had a 200 copy print run, but I doubt many copies survived. It was a real "throw away" sort of thing.
We were very responsible kids. Never missed a day of work (it had to be open 6 days a week, we were not allowed to close if the mall was open) and made an hour and a half commute each day on the bus to get there. Very long days. Get up at 8am, get home at 10pm. We had one day to do all the chores, get the groceries, etc. But yeah, it was a blast. I learned so much at a young age on how to run a business. That's what I did instead of college, and it prepared me a lot better, I think. Didn't owe any money at the end, either.
The pro comic book thing being talked about in the story never happened, but we did self publish everything in zine form instead, because it was so much more affordable and we could do it in a small run of 100 copies or whatever. We just couldn't financially make sense of what it took to be pros... the printing, the shipping, Diamond taking such a massive cut to distribute it. We were in way over our heads, but it was a good learning experience. Sometimes you gotta DO IT and fail, to really understand how the system works. Hands on.