Through hard work and a love of his craft, Royal Flush magazine’s Josh Bernstein has developed one of the more creative magazines on newsstands today — and is now trying to make it a full-fledged media empire.
New York is a city that rewards hard work, determination, and a never-say-die attitude, just as it rewards vibrant creativity and the ability to show the world that you do what you do just a little bit better than everyone else.
With Royal Flush magazine, Josh Bernstein has succeed on all these fronts and more.
Clockwise from top: Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass & Jack Black, Josh Bernstein, and Corey Taylor from Slipknot.
Royal Flush is a 112-page, full-color, fully illustrated and testosterone-infused rock/comics/pop culture magazine featuring the work of some of the top artists in the comic world. It is audacious, outlandish, and contrarian, and celebrates others with the same qualities. Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, for example, is the cover subject for the new issue, which hits newsstands on October 15.
And while Bernstein works tirelessly to build his magazine, he’s also making the Royal Flush brand a player in the city’s wider pop culture scene with the kickoff of the Royal Flush Festival, which brings film premieres, exhibits of art such as painted cars and rock posters, and concerts — including one by former Smashing Pumpkin Melissa Auf der Maur — to the East Village October 15-18.
One of the more satisfying aspects of Royal Flush’s story is that its growth was partially driven by revenge against a much-admired icon that did Bernstein wrong.
“I grew up on Mad Magazine and I once interviewed for a job there, and they strung me along for six months,” says Bernstein, 33, who didn’t get the job, but has had several since, and now serves as head of business development for the hard rock/heavy metal magazine Revolver. “At the time, I told the guy, ‘I will create a magazine and destroy you. I’m gonna come after you.’ A lot of [what drove me] was being turned down for what I thought at the time would be my dream job. I met [MAD creator] Bill Gaines as a kid and got a tour, and it really meant a lot to me.”
Hugh Hefner cover art by Robin Eley.
Unsurprisingly, Royal Flush is thoroughly infused with the irreverence of its esteemed forebear. In addition to the cover story on Hefner — which not only centers on Hef’s little-known background in cartooning (he drew for many years before he started Playboy), but also features original, never-before-seen artwork that he created in the 1930s — the issue also includes a rant from Ted Nugent, for a regular feature called “Inside the Mind Of,” on why he thinks President Obama should be jailed, complete with an illustration of the wish fulfilled; Alice Cooper’s Guide to Life; an original comic from famed “American Splendor” artist Harvey Pekar; features on actor Leslie Nielsen and the television show “Californication”; and an article on a little-known friendship between music icon Frank Zappa and comics legend Jack Kirby (creator or co-creator of Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Incredible Hulk) that changed pop culture history. “Kirby thought ‘Star Wars’ was a rip-off of his comics,” says Bernstein. “Zappa was approached by George Lucas to write a score to ‘Star Wars,’ but he turned it down out of loyalty to Kirby.”
This sort of outcast eclecticism harkens back to certain magazines of the seventies and eighties — such as National Lampoon, Spy, and the early rock magazines — that Bernstein grew up admiring.
“It’s very much like Creem or Crawdaddy, those kinds of magazines,” he says, “where they integrated the art and illustration into the magazine, and it seemed like fun. Magazines don’t seem like much fun anymore. Ninety percent of magazines and newspapers are dictated by number crunchers, and we’re being sold electric razors in the middle of an article. I’m coming at it from a completely different perspective. If I lose money, I don’t give a shit….well, I give a shit to a point. I don’t want to eat cat food. But if I can keep on doing this under my conditions and not having to bend my morals or anything, that’s pretty cool.”
Bernstein, who interned at Marvel Comics at 16, started the first version of Royal Flush in 1998 as a loose collection of jokes and sketches he printed on a copy machine while a student at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). He shifted Royal Flush toward a more magazine-style format in 2001, making it more of a comics anthology. But when he started bringing it to comic book conventions, hoping to build the magazine’s following in that world, he got a clear view of the difference between what he was doing and the direction of the rest of the scene.
“We started going to the MOCCA (Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) convention and other New York conventions, and we started getting the cold shoulder because we had funny comics,” says Bernstein. “At the time, that was like, whoa. It was like when for years I was in a band, and it was like, ‘your songs are funny. Don’t you want a real band?’ Like Frank Zappa’s not a real musician? So we got the cold shoulder from the Williamsburg comic community, which was more like, ‘this story’s about my first period. This story’s about how my dad hates me.’ We just wanted to make people laugh.”
Meanwhile, Bernstein built a career in magazines, working at Time Out New York, Maxim, Blender, and Guitar World, among others, before becoming the design director for Revolver. All the while, Royal Flush chugged along, eschewing the hipness that permeated the magazine world just as it had for comics.
Alice Cooper illustration by “Ghoulish” Gary Pullin.
“When I started working at Maxim and Blender, I started working with these British nutcases who made my design work a lot tighter,” says Bernstein, “and I realized that there was a fun way to do this, and approach a magazine from a fan’s perspective. I feel like when I read, like, Spin or Rolling Stone — especially Spin — they’re like, ‘OK. You’re probably not cool, but we’re gonna tell you that this band is cool.’” Meanwhile, I’m like, ‘Alice Cooper’s awesome.’ I’m always going backwards, much to the chagrin of one of my partners. He’s like, ‘we gotta get some younger people in here,’ and I’m like, ‘eh.’ This issue’s the greatest generation. We have Hugh Hefner, Leslie Nielsen, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent. I don’t believe ‘younger’ is gonna sell a magazine. I just want [people] I respect.”
So far, his philosophy is working. Created by an “all-volunteer army” of unpaid writers and illustrators, he manages to pay for the magazine’s printing and distribution costs through advertising, issue sales, and seven years of spending nights and weekends doing freelance work. With his last issue, the magazine’s fifth, Royal Flush was sold in Borders and Barnes & Noble, and had an overall circulation of around 40,000 copies. The magazine’s sell-through percentage — the percentage of copies on the newsstand that actually sell — was 38 percent, a number that he says puts Royal Flush on a par with top magazines like People and InStyle.
The magazine’s success is visible as well in the passionate response from readers. When Royal Flush announced an art contest last year on their web site, they received over 900 submissions from all over the world. They have also captured the attention of notable artists such as Drew Friedman — who drew last issue’s cover of comedian Patton Oswalt — and other illustrators with long track records at many revered comic institutions.
“We’re getting artists we looked up to when we were kids, famous Garbage Pail Kids or Mad Magazine guys, saying, ‘we’d like to work with you. Can we come by your office?” says Bernstein. “And I’m like, ‘you could. It’s in my bedroom.’”
Patton Oswalt cover art by Drew Friedman.
But while Royal Flush may still be far underground, their profile is not. Bernstein has created several popular event tie-ins for the magazine, such as a concert/issue release party he threw in 2007 at the Bowery Ballroom featuring headliners Clutch. Events like this not only laid the groundwork for the upcoming Royal Flush Festival, but caught the attention of Bernstein’s bosses at Revolver, who last year elevated him from design director to head of business development.
And it’s this business sense, combined with the effects of the recession and these especially tough times for the magazine industry, that has Bernstein diving head first into stronger methods of brand building such as the upcoming festival.
“In this day and age, no one wants to buy straight-up ad pages,” he says. “Though [advertisers] love the magazine, they want to get involved in the experience. When you have a festival, a rock concert, and a magazine with a national presence, then they can have a presence at festival, they can hang banners at concert — they can really interact with their audience. Budgets are tight and being slashed all around, but people appreciate value.”
But while Bernstein looks forward to continuing to build the Royal Flush brand in order to give advertisers greater value for their ever-shrinking advertising dollar, his true reward remains creating a magazine that’s not only a wildly enjoyable read, but also allows great artists to do their best work while staying true to their way-out sensibilities.
“This is a passion project for all of us. We get together once or twice a year and everyone just wants to show off. There’s a very healthy competition among the artists,” says Bernstein. “Here’s a very common occurrence. Someone will hand in their artwork, and then someone else will see it and go, ‘hold on. Let me take my artwork back,’ like they want to outdo each other, but in a positive way. Ultimately, the winners are the fans.”
Larry Getlen is the Editor-in-Chief of City Scoops magazine. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/larrygetlen.
Last 5 posts by Larry Getlen
- It's All Good: Harry Connick’s Wide-Ranging Success - July 20th, 2010
- Killing Barney - July 20th, 2010
- Ready to Party? Andrew’s Your Man. - March 31st, 2010
- Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television: George Carlin Was A F***ing Comedy Genius - November 19th, 2009
- A Groundbreaking View of America Comes to the Met - November 19th, 2009
