On the December air in Queens a twelve-year-old Bobby Miller, was standing outside the newsstand.
He had fifteen cents in his wool mitten. He'd skipped the bus and walked the ten blocks from school just to make sure he was there when the delivery truck arrived.
Then he saw it. Not the usual flimsy, twenty-page pamphlet with a staple in the spine, but a magazine.
A sixty-four-page comic. PULSE WEEKLY #1.
Bobby handed over the coins, snatched the book, and felt the weight. Tucked inside the front cover was a stiff piece of cardboard, a "Pulse Card" featuring a dynamic, ink-washed sketch of a boy with a glowing green watch.
By the time the lunch bell rang, Bobby wasn't eating. He was surrounded.
He was showing a group of sixth graders the transformation sequence in Ben 10 and at the same time explaining the story.
In 1970, 10-year-old Ben Tennyson, a loudmouth, suburban Ohio kid finds a strange watch-like device during a family RV trip.
It bonds to his wrist and grants him the power to transform into 10 different aliens, each with unique abilities.
Across the table, another kid was squinting at the black-and-white panels of Slam Dunk, mesmerized by the way the artist captured the arc of a basketball.
As for his adaptation of Slam Dunk.
in 1970 New York City, a 16-year-old Italian-American Vince Alesci, a tall, explosive leaper, terrible fundamentals who joins his high school's basketball team just to get close to Gina, whose brother Frankie is the star center.
Frankie spots Vince's rebounding gift and takes him under his wing. He still kept him based on Dennis Rodman and made it so that he would develop as he navigates the New York City, Public Schools Athletic League.
The "phone book" value proposition had landed. For the price of a candy bar, they had an hour of entertainment.
The afternoon began in Duke's office.
Archie Goodwin burst in ten minutes later, his coat still dusted with light snow, holding a strip of paper.
"It's a massacre, Duke," Archie said, "The East Coast is dark. We've gone dark in four hours."
Duke didn't look up from the map on his desk. "Define 'dark,' Archie."
"Sold out. Every newsstand from Boston to D.C. has reported zero inventory. The vendors are calling the distributors, the distributors are calling the plant in Derby, and the plant is calling me."
"Kids aren't just buying one, they're buying two, one to read and one to keep the card. We underestimated the 'collectible' hook."
Duke finally looked up, a small, satisfied smile playing on his lips. "And the feedback?"
"Initial reports? We asked and Ben 10 is a sensation. Slam Dunk is huge, the kids are obsessed with the 'cool' factor of basketball."
"Transformers is steady, mostly with the sci-fi crowd. Rogue Sun... well, it's the least popular of the four. It's a bit too dark, a bit too moody for the ten-year-olds."
"That's fine," Duke said. "A magazine needs a floor and a ceiling. Rogue Sun is still developing, it will find its audience soon. But we have a bigger problem than popularity, don't we?"
Archie sighed, dropping into a chair. "The distributors, Duke. They handle Marvel and DC on a monthly cycle. They can't accomodate our weekly schedule."
"They can't restock PULSE until January."
Duke stood up and walked to the window. "The traditional comic book distribution model is a chokehold. It's built on the assumption that comics are a niche hobby for a few thousand fans."
"We're treating this as a mass-market consumable. If we wait for the monthly trucks, the momentum dies and i don't want to lose the free publicity this buzz gives us. By january, the kids will have moved on to something else."
"So what do we do?" Archie asked. "We can't build our own trucking fleet overnight."
"No," Duke said. "We don't build. But we can bypass."
Duke spent the next hour on the phone, leveraging every ounce of his prestige as the Chairman of Paramount. He wasn't calling "comic book guys."
He was calling the Southland Corporation in Dallas, the parent company of 7-Eleven.
The man on the other end was a hard-nosed executive who didn't care about superheroes, but he cared deeply about sales.
"Listen to me," Duke said, his voice calm and authoritative. "I'm not just selling you a magazine."
"I'm giving you a reason for a kid to walk into your store every Friday morning. I'm giving you a foot-traffic generator."
The executive was skeptical. "We have a magazine rack, Mr. Hauser. It's full. We don't have room for a magazine of comics."
"Then don't put it on the rack," Duke countered. "Put it in a wire basket next to the milk and the bread. Or right by the cash register. I'm selling these to you at almost cost, five cents a unit."
"I don't care about the profit on the paper. I care about the eyeballs. I'm using my Paramount promotional budget to subsidize the distribution. You get a guaranteed seller and a product with a 200% markup, and I get 4,000 storefronts."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. The logic was undeniable. Duke was offering a high-demand product with a massive margin that required near zero extra effort from the retailer.
"Fine," the executive said. "We'll test it in the Tri-State area starting next week. If it moves like you say it does, we'll take it national."
Duke hung up the phone and looked at Archie. "We're in."
While the distribution problems were being fought in New York, a different kind of scouting was happening south, in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
Duke's phone rang. It was the private line. Clive Davis.
The sound of the wind was whistling through the receiver. Clive was clearly in a payphone on a boardwalk.
"Duke? I'm in Jersey. It's freezing, it's miserable, and I think I found a good recruit."
Duke sharpened his focus. "Go on, Clive."
"I went to a dive bar," Clive said, his voice buzzing. "There's a kid here. Scruffy, leather jacket, guitar held together with duct tape. His name is Bruce Springsteen."
Duke leaned back, he knew this moment. In the original timeline, Clive Davis wouldn't sign Bruce for another two years.
"Sign him, Clive," Duke said. "Don't negotiate too much on the creative, also give him whatever advance he needs to keep his band together."
Clive cautioned. "The production is going to be a nightmare. He wants to bring in all these guys that work with him."
"Do not police him," Duke ordered. "Let him record the album exactly the way he hears it."
"You're a strange boss, Hauser," Clive laughed. "But I like the way you spend money. I'll get the contract drawn up tonight."
Duke hung up.
Later that evening, the night was falling in earnest, blanketing the Paramount lot in Hollywood.
Duke sat in his private screening room, the only light coming from the flickering 35mm projector.
Beside him sat Gary Kurtz, watching the screen with a critical eye. To Duke's right, Steven Spielberg was leaning so far forward he was almost touching the seat in front of him.
They were watching the dailies for Klute.
The footage was spectacular, moody, and voyeuristic.
Gary Kurtz nodded. "The Klute footage seems legit. How are things with the comic company?"
Duke stared at the screen. "Starting next week, every 7-Eleven in America is going to be selling our stories. And every kid who buys a copy of PULSE is going to see an ad for a Paramount movie."
"Great, we dont have any Press resources in Paramount and that could help. I dont know if you have too much on your plate right now but newspapers could be an expansion direction for Paramount" Kurtz said.
"I'm too busy and too deep in debt for a newspaper expansion right now."
___
This last part plays into the next chapter(he wont buy newspapers tho