Chapter 3
THE PERFECT HAMMER
The very next day Greg had started selling candy and gum in the shadow of the sliding board during lunch recess—gum was ten cents a stick, and he sold tropical fruit Starbursts at three for a quarter.
Sales were brisk, and Greg was making some money. But it was risky. Kids took the candy and gum into their classrooms, which was against school rules. And if one kid had turned him in, Greg would have found himself having a little chat with the principal, Mrs. Davenport.
So Greg began to look around for other things he could sell. He thought about the ads on TV when he watched his favorite shows. What did they always try to sell to kids—besides candy and breakfast cereals? Simple: toys.
Greg did some research on the Internet and quickly discovered dozens of companies that sold toys and souvenirs and gadgets at incredibly low prices.
“You need to do what?”
That’s what Greg’s mom had said when he told her he needed to borrow her credit card.
And Greg had explained: “I need to buy some toys—not for me. They’re to sell to other kids. To make some money. This company has great stuff, and it’s real cheap, but I need to order with a credit card. I can pay you back with cash right away, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
His mom was actually worried about something else. She thought Greg spent too much time thinking about making money. Just a few days before, she had asked her husband, “Is it something we’ve done, to make Greg like this? All he ever thinks about is getting rich. I want him to just enjoy being a kid, hang out with his friends more, have more fun.” But her husband had told her, “As far as I can see, Greg’s definitely a kid. He likes to read and draw, he plays sports, and he gets good grades. I’d say he’s pretty well balanced. And he seems to be having plenty of fun. This money thing is probably just a phase. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money. Or working hard. If that’s what you call a problem, then I wish some other people in this family had it too!”
So his mom had used her credit card to help Greg place an order with the NicNac Novelty Company. He ordered 144 miniature troll dolls, tiny plastic creatures with big eyes and long, bright hair—blue, red, orange, and green. Then Greg paid his mom $12.00 in cash to cover the cost of the credit-card order—$10.50 for the trolls, and $1.50 for the shipping costs.
The little trolls were a huge hit at school, an instant fad. Greg sold all 144 of them in three days for a quarter each, taking in a total of thirty-six dollars—and twenty-four dollars of that money was pure profit.
But Greg didn’t call it profit. He liked to think of it as “new money.”
Greg had taken twelve dollars he already had—that was the old money—and he had used his old money to buy 144 trolls for about eight cents apiece. Then he’d sold each one for twenty-five cents. So he had made back all twelve dollars of his old money, plus twenty-four dollars of new money.
And what did Greg do with his new money? He used it to place another, bigger order with the NicNac Novelty Company: 48 more trolls, 48 miniature superballs, 24 small jack-and-ball sets, 48 sticky-stretchy spiders, and 36 plastic rings—12 for boys and 24 for girls.
But the new items hadn’t sold so well. After two weeks only about two thirds of the second order was gone. Kids had started to get bored with his products, and so had Greg. And there was another problem.
During third-period language arts one morning, he’d been called to the school office. And then he’d been shown into the principal’s office.
The first thing Greg noticed was the toys on her desk. Mrs. Davenport followed his eyes and nodded at the four mini-superballs and the wad of sticky-stretchy spiders. She said, “I got the superballs from Ms. Kensing. She caught Eddie Connors and Hector Vega bouncing them up and hitting the lights on the ceiling of the gym. And I got the spiders from Mr. Percy, the custodian. He says these things have left oily marks on almost every window in the school. And Mr. Percy tells me that all the kids he asked said they bought them from you. Is that true?”
Greg nodded.
“Why are you selling toys at school?” she asked.
Greg shrugged. “To make some money. And because they’re fun.”
Mrs. Davenport said, “Those tiny trolls I saw all over the school a few weeks ago—were you the one selling those, too?”
Greg nodded.
The principal said, “Well, I admire your initiative, but starting right now, you may not sell any more toys at school. The boys and girls already bring plenty of other nuisance items to school, and they do not need extra help from you. Is that clear?”
Greg nodded and said, “Yes.”
“Very well. You may return to your class now. Ask Mrs. Ogden for a pass.”
Walking back to language arts that day, Greg hadn’t been discouraged. He wasn’t even unhappy. He faced the fact that his novelty toy business had been doomed from the start. For one thing, kids usually get tired of toys quickly. And Greg also realized it was amazing that his toy sales hadn’t been shut down even sooner. If you sell toys to kids at school, that’s where the kids will play with them. And toys and school are a bad mix. Still, even though he hadn’t sold all the toys from the second order, he’d made a small profit.
Greg carefully reviewed what the principal had said to him. And again, he saw the bright side. Because Mrs. Davenport had not said that he had to stop selling things at school. She had just said he had to stop selling toys.
So all he needed was something else he could sell at school, something that wouldn’t upset the teachers or Mrs. Davenport. Or the custodian. Even better, it would be great to sell something they would actually approve of. But what? What?
The answer came to Greg as the first few days of summer began turning fifth grade into a fading memory. The answer was so simple, and it seemed absolutely foolproof. It would take some hard work if he wanted to have everything ready in September for the start of sixth grade, but hard work was something Greg had never been afraid of—especially if the rewards were great enough.
And he expected the rewards to be astounding. School was like a giant piggy bank, loaded with quarters. Greg was convinced that his new product would be like a hammer—the perfect hammer. He was going to crack the school wide open.
Chapter 4
UNITS
Standing in the cafeteria line, Greg opened his red plastic pencil case. He counted once, and then he counted again, just to be sure. Then he grinned. There were thirteen left.
Sweet! That means I sold seventeen units.
That’s what Greg called the comic books he’d been selling—units. And selling seventeen units before lunch was a new sales record.
Greg’s comic books weren’t the kind for sale at stores. Regular comic books were sort of tall. Also a little floppy. Not Greg’s.
Greg’s comic books were about the size of a credit card, and they could stand up on one end all by themselves. They were only sixteen pages long, and he could fit about fifty of them into his pencil case. These comic books were short and sturdy. And that’s why they were called Chunky Comics.
Greg loved that name. He had chosen it himself. He got to pick the name because he was the author of all the Chunky Comics stories. He had drawn all the pictures too. And he was also the designer, the printer, and the binder. Plus he was the marketing manager, the advertising director, and the entire sales force. Chunky Comics was a one-kid operation, and that one kid was Greg Kenton.
Greg snapped the pencil case shut and grabbed a tray. He took a grilled cheese sandwich, a cup of carrot sticks, and then looked over the fruit cocktail bowls until he found one with three chunks of cherry. He got a chocolate milk from the cooler, and as he walked toward his seat, Greg did some mental math.
Monday, the first day Chunky Comics had gone on sale, he had sold twelve units; Tuesday, fifteen units; Wednesday, eighteen units; and today, Thursday, he had already sold seventeen units—before lunch. So that was . . . sixty-two u
nits since Monday morning, and each little book sold for $.25. So the up-to-the-minute sales total for September 12 was . . . $15.50.
Greg knew why sales were increasing: word of mouth. Kids had been telling other kids about his comic book. The cover illustration was powerful, the inside pictures were strong, and the story was loaded with action. The title was Creon: Return of the Hunter, and it was volume 1, number 1, the very first of the Chunky Comics. So that made it a collector’s item.
Greg sat down at his regular lunch table, next to Ted Kendall. Ted nodded and said, “Hi,” but Greg didn’t hear him. Greg picked up his sandwich and took a big bite. He chewed the warm bread and the soft cheese, but he didn’t taste a thing. Greg was still thinking about sales.
Fifteen fifty in three and a half days—not so hot.
Greg had set a sales goal for the first week: twenty-five dollars—which meant that he had to sell one hundred units. It looked like he was going to fall short.
***
The idea of making and selling comic books had hit Greg like a over the head from Superman himself. It made perfect sense. Candy and gum were against school rules, and tiny toys were boring—and also against the rules. But how could he go wrong selling little books? School was all about books and reading. True, reading a comic book wasn’t exactly the same as reading a regular book, but still, there was a rack of comics right in the kids section at the public library downtown, and some new graphic novels, too.
Comic books had been part of Greg’s life forever, mostly because of his dad’s collection. Batman, Superman, The Flash, Spider-Man, Marvel Classics, Uncle Scrooge, and all the Disney comics—his dad’s collection filled three shelves in the family room—and it was worth over ten thousand dollars. Once Greg had shown he knew how to take care of the comic books, he had been allowed to read and look at them all he wanted. Greg had even bought a few collectible comics of his own, mostly newer ones that weren’t very expensive.
It was his love of comic books that had first gotten Greg interested in drawing. Comics had led Greg to books like How to Draw Comic-Book Villains, You Can Draw Superheroes, Make Your Own Comic-Book Art, and Draw the Monsters We Love to Hate. Back in third grade Greg had used his own money to buy india ink, dip pens, brushes, and paper at the art supply store. And drawing new comic-book characters was one of his favorite things to do—when he wasn’t earning money.
That whole summer before sixth grade Greg had worked toward the launch of Chunky Comics. From the start he had felt pretty sure he could come up with a story idea, and he knew he would be able to do the drawings.
But first he’d had to deal with a lot of hows: How does a whole comic book get put together? How big should each one be? How was he going to print them? How much would it cost him to make each one? And finally, how much money should he charge for his finished comic books—assuming he could actually make some?
But one by one, Greg had found the answers. An encyclopedia article about printing books had helped a lot. It showed how pages of a book start as one large sheet of paper that gets folded in half several times. Each time the sheet is folded, the number of pages is doubled. So Greg took a piece of regular letter-size paper, and folded it in half three times the way it showed in the encyclopedia. That one piece of paper turned into a chunky little sixteen-page book—Chunky Comics. It was so simple.
But not really. Greg figured out that making little comic books was a ten-step process:
1. Write a story that can be told on twelve to fourteen mini–comic book pages.
2. Sketch, draw, ink, and then letter all sixteen minipages—which include the front and back covers.
3. Paste eight of the minipage drawings into their correct positions on a piece of paper to make “master copy one”—a sheet that can be copied again and again.
4. Paste up the other eight minipages to make “master copy two.”
5. Using a copier, print the images from “master copy one” onto one side of a “press sheet”—a piece of regular letter-size paper.
6. Print “master copy two” onto the flip side of the press sheet—making eight page images on the front, and eight on the back.
7. Carefully fold the press sheet with the sixteen copied minipages on it.
8. Put in two staples along the crease at the very center of the little book—between pages 8 and 9.
9. Trim the three unstapled edges—and that makes one finished mini–comic book.
10. Repeat.
And each of the ten steps had to be done perfectly, or no one would ever want to spend money on his little comics.
After all the hows had been settled, then came the writing. But Greg hadn’t written just one story. He had developed a master publishing plan. Volume 1 was going to be about Creon, an incredibly intelligent Stone Age hero who helped his tribe deal with ancient dangers, like prehistoric beasts and Cro-Magnon marauders. Greg figured there could be seven or eight issues about Creon.
Chunky Comics volume 2 would feature the future, where a superhero named Eeon tried to protect a small colony of humans living in a world of melting ice caps and mutant life-forms that were part human, part toxic sludge, and part recycled trucks and airplanes. Again, there would be seven or eight issues featuring Eeon.
Then Chunky Comics volume 3 would feature Leon, a fairly normal modern-age technodude who suddenly finds himself energized when his digital atomic watch overheats and burns its circuits into the nerves on his wrist. Leon learns that the watch can be set for the future or the past. The six or seven time-travel adventures of volume 3 would follow Leon to the past, where he would team up with Creon, and then to the future, where he would offer his services to the amazing Eeon. And eventually, all three characters would have some final episodes together: Creon, Leon, and Eeon—past, present, and future.
Once the master plan was set, writing the first Creon story, Return of the Hunter, had been pretty easy for Greg. But the drawing was more difficult than he’d thought it would be. It had taken a long time to get each small page looking just the way he wanted. It wasn’t like doodling or sketching. These pictures had to be good—good enough to sell.
When both covers and the fourteen inside pages had been drawn and inked and pasted in place to make the two master copies, Greg tackled his first printing.
The copier he used was his dad’s, and it was actually part of the printer that was hooked up to the computer in the family room. It was an ink-jet printer, plus a scanner, plus a copier—one of those “all-in-one” machines. It made copies in either black and white or color.
Greg had stuffed about forty ruined sheets of paper into the recycling bin before he had figured out how to get all sixteen page images copied correctly onto the front and back of one sheet of paper.
But finally, he had folded his first perfectly printed sheet, stapled it twice, and trimmed the top, front, and bottom edges. And then, one hot night in the middle of July, Greg stood there in his family room and thumbed through the very first copy of the very first issue of the very first volume of Chunky Comics. It had been a proud moment.
Greg had done some record keeping along the way. He added up all the time, and learned some bad news: It had taken him more than sixty hours to make that very first comic book. But there was good news too, because it took him only two more hours to print, fold, staple, and trim the next one hundred copies of volume 1, number 1.
As he’d worked on his drawing skills over the summer, Greg had gotten better—and faster, too. Plus he’d had fun. He had dug out all his old drawing books, looking for shortcuts and new tips from the pros. Drawing was something he could do at night, so he still got to enjoy his days outdoors, and also do the regular summertime jobs that kept money coming in.
Drawing and inking the pictures for the next two comic books had only taken him about twenty hours—nine to eleven hours each. And by the time school began in September, Greg had the master copy pages for the next two Creon issues all put together and ready to print. Plus he had thr
ee hundred copies of Return of the Hunter printed, folded, stapled, trimmed, and ready to sell.
Making the comics had been fun, but Greg felt sure that selling them was going to be even better. If he kept the price at just a quarter per issue, the profits were still going to be fantastic. He had figured it all out. Ink for the copier was pretty expensive, but Greg had a kit for refilling the cartridges. All together, ink for one comic, plus one piece of paper, plus two staples cost him less than two cents. So, not counting his own time, selling one Chunky Comic book was like turning two pennies into a quarter. The money was going to come rolling in.
***
Digging around in the fruit cocktail on his lunch tray, Greg stabbed one of the cherry pieces with a fork. As he chewed the sweet fruit, Greg reviewed the sales figures again, and then shrugged. Fifteen dollars and fifty cents—that’s still not terrible. I mean, this is a brand-new business.
All things considered, Greg decided that Chunky Comics was off to a pretty good start. And before lunch was over, Greg had hired Ted to become the first sales agent for Chunky Comics, offering him a nickel for every two copies he sold. So Greg was still hoping to reach that goal of selling one hundred units the first week.
But business can be a lot like life—full of unexpected events. And thirty-three minutes later, standing in the hallway next to the music room, Greg and his new company got a shock.
There were two minutes left before sixth-grade chorus, and Greg was making the most of his time. He had just sold two copies of Return of the Hunter to Roy Jenkins when Ted came up and pressed something into his hand.