The Comics Rack

Comic Book Memories Pt. 13

The Bud Plant LA warehouse was managed by Ken Krueger. Ken had come over from Pacific when they folded and, just to make it a family sort of warehouse, Ken's wife Patty kept track of the billing and I seem to recall Ken's son working in the warehouse, too (I know there were other employees, but their names have been lost to CRS). Usually, Ken could be found by looking for the trail of cigar smoke: either among the stacks of books, holding court in the main part of the warehouse or up in his office, where he used a hot wax tool to lay out the order form for the printer.

I often wish I had been as interested in the history of genre fiction back in those days as I am today. Ken was a fount of information about science fiction and fantasy, mainly because he had been involved in a lot of it. As I have pieced it together over the years, Ken was involved in the early days of science fiction fandom. He could relate stories of many of the well-known pulp writers and book authors, as well as editors, with ease. Ken's knowledge of books, magazine and pulps was also voluminous. He had run several bookstores during his life, selling pulps, books and comics (in fact he opened a new one while he was managing for Plant and Patty evenually took over the running of it). He had been a small press publisher, who had done hardback volumes, magazines and chap books. It was also interesting to note that Ken had the respect of both retailers and creators: something that is not given easily or readily.

Of course, starting with a new distributor always involved learning the rules. Comics would be ready on Thursday night around, I think, 7 or 8, due to the sheer volume of material that the warehouse staff had to break down each week. For us, this was no problem, because I ran my church rehearsal on Thursday nights and we had been picking up our books on Fridays for quite some time. For Friday pickup, the warehouse officially opened around 8 or 8:30. Well, that made for a bit of a problem, since traffic into LA was a bigger mess than usual during the morning rush hour.

Digression: For those of you who may not be familiar with the Los Angeles area, it is basically one huge city divided up into smaller cities that butt up against one another; often with width of a single street serving as a boundary line (the actual city of Los Angeles covers some 500 square miles). Nearly all the major freeways in the area funnel into the center of downtown LA, spread out on either side and, at least at rush hour, it seems that at least half the population of California is on these traffic arteries. It was around 25 miles from my apartment to the Plant warehouse, which would take about 30 minutes to drive without traffic...with traffic it could take over and hour.

After a week or two of sitting in traffic, I discovered that while the warehouse opened at its appointed time, Ken arrived somewhere around 6:30 and that anybody was welcome to come by the warehouse at that hour. But, there were rules: if you came before the warehouse opened, you couldn't shop the warehouse, you couldn't look at your invoice and you couldn't load up your car. This early morning time was to hang out, drink coffee and talk about anything except comics. As I had discovered back at Pacific, comics were not an area that Ken was interested in. To him, they were just product, but they had no intrinsic value beyond the dollar amount they could command.

So, for a time, the Friday sessions with Ken, and whoever else happened along, became a regular thing, regardless of what time I went to bed the night before (wish I had that type of energy nowadays!). I'm sure that many found Ken a bit crusty and off-putting, but I always found him to be a straight shooter, although a bit eccentric at times, most likely because he had spent years with books and magazines...to wit:

• We get a phone call from Ken one afternoon. He's checking up on the accounts to see how we're doing. It's hot as hell outside and we eventually find that Ken is sitting in his car with the air conditioning on full and using the new wireless phone that they've gotten for the warehouse. Since the warehouse was not air conditioned, he figured, "why not?"
• A dealer and I were discussing reading. Ken: "I found a place where I can get stripped paperbacks and, as I'm reading, I just tear off the pages as I finish. That way I never lose my place." (Tear a book...*shudder*)
• Ken on publishing: "You know when I was doing those pulp reprints, this other publisher used to have someone type the stories out for publication. I used to just take a copy of the pulp, take it apart, xerox the pages, cut up the columns, arrange them on the page with the hot wax tool and then send them off to the printer." (*double shudder*)
• At one point Ken informs me that a bottle of scotch, given to the proper people, gets the books delivered from the airport to the warehouse faster than they get delivered to the competition.
• Ken on writing porn: "...the publisher tells me that the book is a couple of thousand words short, so I sat down and added a dream sequence. Those dream sequences were always handy..."

I could go on longer about Ken, but I'm sure you get the gist of where I'm coming from. He was one of those unique individuals who was interesting to be around and who made the rather odious job of driving around picking up product prior to facing a full day of customers pleasant. I don't know where he is at this point, or if he is still around. I last saw him at the San Diego Comic-Con years ago at the Bud Plant booth, long after I had gotten out of the business. Ken was there to hang out, wasn't there for the comics and showed me an obscure fantasy book he had just found at a local bookstore. Wherever he is, I wish him well.

Next time: Another digression into Odds and Ends!