ComicsAlliance.com

Pear Cider & Cigarettes: From Animation to Comics with 'TRON' & 'Aeon Flux' Artist Robert Valley [Interview]

Christopher Sebela — 2012-07-31T15:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Indie, Interviews, Video, Animation

Some people take a rigid, hardline view of success. In this hierarchical thinking, once you've achieved greatness in a difficult field, the idea of stepping back to something deemed less challenging and with fewer eyes on it could be considered a retreat. Some people see the challenge there and roll up their sleeves and charge in, eager to see just how much of a dent they can put in that myth. Robert Valley, having already established himself as a commercial director and a success in the animation field (Aeon Flux, Gorillaz, Beatles Rock Band, Tron: Uprising) for the last 20 years, pressed pause on the world of animatics and frames to jump ship to the land of comics. Now he's turning to the Kickstarter platform to fund the second volume of his book, Pear Cider & Cigarettes.

WARNING: Some of the video below contains imagery that could be considered NSFW.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes is an autobiographical comic, but the kind that makes you look at your life and either wonder what you've been doing wrong, or drop to your knees and thank God you never went so far astray. Instead of meditations on relationships and jobs, Pear Cider is a whirlwind journey full of drugs, blood, sex, disease and international travel. Following Valley and his larger-than-life friend Techno, the story skips through the perilous land where childhood meets adulthood and the uncomfortable dawn of responsibility. As Valley wrests himself from the constant party and struggles to find a place in the world, Techno rejects all that in favor of accidental riches and self-destructive brushes with death. As Volume 1 ends, Valley is on his way to China, asked by Techno's parents to bring his friend back home and get him to stop drinking. Volume 2, which Valley is funding, is the story of how he does it.

Valley set out to raise $16,500 to fund production of the 88-page hardcover book, which starts next month and should wrap up by October. Having quickly shot past its goal, the Pear Cider project has raised almost $10,000 in excess, with less than a week to go on the Kickstarter clock. All the money goes towards Valley's costs for drawing, coloring, lettering and printing the book under his own steam. While many of the limited rewards have already been spoken for, people can still secure pre-orders of one or both volumes of the books, posters and digital versions of Valley's Massive Swerve art books which come packaged with the short film they're based on. If you're feeling excessively generous, you can secure Valley's creative consultancy on your own project.

As evidenced by the short film Valley cut together to recap the first volume of Pear Cider & Cigarettes, the book is at turns a lushly beautiful dream and a teeth-grinding angular nightmare, with the kind of pacing that draws on Valley's time in animation, but translates perfectly to the printed page. Funding the Kickstarter is the best way of pre-ordering your own copy, but also, ideally, works as yet another hand on Valley's shoulder, dragging him deeper into comics, a move that's neither a step up or a step down, but sideways into a Venn diagram where all these artforms can live together in perfect, messed-up harmony.

ComicsAlliance spoke to Robert Valley about the jump from animation to comics and how Kickstarter works as more than just a funding platform.

ComicsAlliance: How long have you been working on Pear Cider and Cigarettes? What was the genesis of the project and is volume 2 the end of the story or is there more to come afterwards?

Robert Valley: I took a leave of absence from my job at Disney (TRON: Uprising) in late November. I spent three months making the book and now I have been promoting the hell out of it for the last four months. Over seven months already...holy f***. The story will be concluded in volume 2.

CA: I know you do a lot of animation work as well as comics stuff, and the short film you put together recapping volume 1 of Pear Cider makes a pretty good argument for it as an animated film. What attracts you to each medium and what's the ultimate decider on doing a project like Pear Cider as a comic as opposed to a film?

RV: I have always been interested in making a successful crossover between comics and filmmaking. One of the main purposes of the book is to act as a storyboard for the film, that is why the panels all have the same aspect ratio. This also lends itself to the creation of the edit as well. All the panels are edit ready and are built in Photoshop layers which will eventually be put into After Effects for a multiplane pass, etc. I haven't got to that stage yet.

CA: Why should people fund your Kickstarter?

RV: That's a good question. I was hoping Kickstarter would introduce a new fold of people to my work. The rewards on my project are exactly the same price as I would be selling them otherwise. So I prefer to think that I am collecting pre orders for books and prints, etc. So far it's worked pretty good. The diagnostics indicate that Kickstarter itself is responsible for almost half the business on my project, Facebook is responsible for about 30%. That was another surprise. I certainly haven't run a perfect campaign but I really have learned a lot about promotion and social media. This group funding thing is amazing.

CA: Since you've already hit your goal pretty quickly, what does any money over what you asked go towards?

RV: Beer and women and antibiotics.

You can learn more about Pear Cider & Cigarettes and still back the project/pre-order your copy of the book at the Kickstarter project page. As of this writing, three days remain in the campaign.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Sound and Fury: 'The Dark Knight Rises' Against Theme and Story

Christopher Sebela — 2012-07-27T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Movies, Reviews, Opinion

Each of Christopher Nolan's Batman films opens with a quiet, singular image forming the unmistakeable bat symbol. They're cinematic palate cleansers before the business of Batman begins in earnest. In Batman Begins, it is a sky full of bats; in The Dark Knight, it is a wall of flames; but the opening image of The Dark Knight Rises is notable for two reasons: the bat symbol appearing from cracking ice is muddy, only there if you look for it, and it is overlaid with the film's opening lines of dialogue. If you wanted to, you could say that the first ten seconds of The Dark Knight Rises spell out all the problems that lay ahead: here is a film both rushed and obscured.

SPOILER WARNING: The following contains massive spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises.The Dark Knight Rises is so packed with a Jenga-like tower of plot that it can barely spare you a moment to breathe. Any quietness that might have existed in this film seems to have been sacrificed to the cutting room floor in service of trying to condense a year-and-change in the life and death of Batman into fewer than three hours. While The Dark Knight Rises sets out with measured paces, as soon as Selina Kyle jumps out the window of Wayne Manor, we have left the realm of film and entered the domain of montage, and it's one that picks up speed and intensity and sheds story, character and entire months of movie time at a rate that only gets faster as it goes.

Time is the biggest gray area in The Dark Knight Rises. It hopscotches in both screen time and movie time so much that it feels like it should come with a temporal libretto to help audiences follow along. Taking place eight years after The Dark Knight, the opening set piece of Bane and his crew taking down a CIA plane in mid-air takes place six months before we even get to Gotham. From there we leap days and months in single cuts. Jim Gordon tucks his reconsidered Harvey Dent truth bomb into a jacket pocket, and it's still there several days later when he gets captured by Bane in the sewers. Minutes after Bane is mentioned to Bruce Wayne, Alfred is there rattling off Wikipedia entries about the villain and the entire League of Shadows. Bruce Wayne goes from a broken back to push-ups in 80 days. Cops spend months underground and come out as clean-shaven and robust as when they went in. The best indicators of when something is happening are snow on the ground and a long-winded countdown of the atomic bomb that inexplicably takes five months to reach detonation. It's a clock that jumps from five months to 23 days to 24 hours in rapid succession, because the plot is all-consuming.

Plot doesn't just consume time in The Dark Knight Rises, it pigs out on clarity as well. Big, important things happen so quickly and so often that it's easy to forget that much of it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. The daylight Wall Street raid turns into a pitch-black nighttime chase in just under ten minutes -- not ten minutes of screen time, but actual movie time, as pointed out by the mobile computer counting down the bars to completing the fraudulent trade that wipes out the last of Bruce Wayne's finances (another ridiculous plot point). Bane's crew pumps the Russian scientist's blood into their carry-on corpse to help fake his death, a death Bruce Wayne is too shut-in to even notice happened. John Blake spills the Batman beans all over Wayne Manor because he recognized the look of "dead parents" in Bruce's eyes and no one bothers to even try denying it, yet supercop Jim Gordon has to be flat-out told who Batman is.

Bruce Wayne goes from an eight-year heartbreak over Rachel Dawes that causes him to kick Alfred to the curb to sleeping with Miranda Tate simply because they got caught in the rain. A broken back is fixed with a rope and swift punch to the spine, administered by two prison Yodas whose services Bane inexplicably pays for. Never mind the villain's shock when Batman actually returns from the desert prison with the GIANT ESCAPE ROUTE he threw him into. Talia al Ghul hates her dad for his disloyalty to Bane -- until Batman kills him, at which point the idea of destroying a major American city suddenly seems like a really awesome idea. Bane orchestrates the disintegration of Gotham because... well, I don't even have a joke answer for that, his plan just doesn't make sense in the larger scope of the film. The list goes on and on and on.

Admittedly, suspension of disbelief is a helpful concept in superhero movies, because at some point you have to shut your brain off to the fact that things like this just don't happen. Except the Nolanverse has strived to swaddle these films in the notion of reality. Things don't just happen. Batman's arsenal comes with an engineering pedigree, villains are flesh and blood nightmares, Batman is vulnerable to such minor concerns as knives and dogs, and officials follow procedure and code. What makes The Dark Knight Rises such a disappointment is that it is riddled with chasms of logic and just plain dumb moments that seem to beat back against this real world starkness of the previous films, answering with a shrug of, "Well, it's about a dude who dresses up as a bat to fight crime, what do you want from us?"

So we get a Gotham devoid of people, populated only by cops and robbers and MacGuffins. Characters ramble expositional monologues at one another to explain things that there's no time to spell out, from CleanSlate.app to abandoned fusion reactors gathering dust under the streets. You're not meant to understand them, you're only meant to accept them. The sewers fill with thugs from central casting reporting to a convoluted hierarchy of villainy that seeks to be evil for evil's sake or make more money. But don't get caught up in the Occupy metaphors that are vaguely hinted at, because there's no ethos or commentary to be found. The 99% don't exist in this movie, they're only used as collateral damage or as extras dragging the rich from their homes, cheering on the condemnations in the Scarecrow's courtroom. Unlike in The Dark Knight, their affections and moral dilemmas are unimportant. The Dark Knight Rises' only agenda is to get to the ending, to wrap everything up in a cliched bow.

What does it all come to? A generic ticking time bomb, a grunted sacrifice by Batman (for a city that, if Bane's plan did anything, was revealed as being really not worth saving), children in peril, a hothead detective speaking truth to an administration of bureaucrats, a flooding chamber to jerk our chains of hope, a force of nature wiped out with a big gun, a would-be mass-murderer defeated by crappy driving, and a tacked-on happy ending with a love story that was as hard to figure out as any of the other giant question marks of the film. What we're left with, in the end, is a feeling of exhaustion on the part of the brothers Nolan as screenwriters and Christopher Nolan as the savior of the Batman film franchise. It's a hasty goodbye that dances near the slippery slope of farce that Nolan once strove so hard to drag Batman away from.

Occasionally a pretty film to look at, the greatest shot of The Dark Knight Rises happens about ten minutes in, and then aesthetics get the bum's rush. While it's a bit of a running joke at this point, The Dark Knight Rises often treads through the land of indecipherable. If the visual mechanics are serviceable, the audio end is as hobbled as Bruce Wayne. So many lines are spoken through masks, slurred from hospital beds, whispered and heavily accented, all while struggling to be heard over Hans Zimmer's screaming score that eventually you have to admit defeat and hope you catch enough of the dialogue to make sense of anything at all. Having seen it twice now, in two different theaters, I can only conclude that this is how the film is meant to sound.

Upon a first viewing, The Dark Knight Rises is an enjoyable movie. I don't believe it commits the cardinal sin of being boring, and much of the film is carried along by solid performances from the cast, especially Hathaway's Catwoman, who almost single-handedly steals the show. Levitt's turn as Blake is enjoyable, and it has to be as he carries much of the film on his back. Hardy's Bane is as good a villain you could hope for to follow up Heath Ledger's unfollowable Joker, the kind of jaunty terrorist that works against the oppressively serious crusader. Nolan can still pull off an amazing opening scene and his followthrough on the concept of a Batman film where the titular character is largely absent is admirable, even if it isn't wholly successful. But seeing it a second time, no longer watching to see how the story unfolds but to revel in the finer details, all the film's issues step forward in stark relief and the brisk jog of that first viewing gives way to a grueling march uphill.

Nolan's Batman films have never been absolute masterpieces. The previous two had their own special flaws, the severity of which people will long continue to argue over the same way they will over the ones in The Dark Knight Rises, but those flaws were easier to overlook because the overarching stories gave you something to cling to when the waters got rough. The Dark Knight Rises suffers so mightily because it substitutes twists for character arcs, convenience for hard choices and flashbacks for discernible themes. Gone are meditations on fear, family, the cost of justice, order vs. anarchy, or the thin line between good and evil. What remains is just an action movie with people punching and shooting each other until one side falls down, all muddled sound and unexplainable fury signifying not much at all.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Amy Reeder & Brandon Montclare's 'Halloween Eve', Kickstarter And The Major Label Syndrome [Interview]

Christopher Sebela — 2012-07-19T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Image, Indie, Interviews

There's a myth in the music industry that if you get signed to a major label, all your problems are taken care of. It's a myth that hundreds of bands would gladly dispel from behind the desks and counters of their day jobs. The comics industry has its own version, where as soon as you're accepted by a publisher, money rains down like water and you float to success on a cloud of paid bills and unfettered creativity. The reality is that publishers outside of the big two -- Marvel and DC -- are often just a vehicle that carries your finished product through the hardest stages of production and distribution. This is why more and more big name creators are turning to Kickstarter to fund their books, which is the case with Image Comics' forthcoming Halloween Eve, now entering the home stretch of an already successful campaign on Kickstarter.

Halloween Eve is a 40-page, full-color one-shot written by Brandon Montclare (Private School, Fear Itself: Fearsome Four) and drawn by Amy Reeder (Batwoman, Madame Xanadu). A kind of spooky version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the book is a tale of what happens when Eve, a Halloween grinch, has to face down a costume store full of rubber masks and empty suits that start coming to life. As drawn by Reeder, it's a beautiful-looking book with equal amounts of humor and horror, due to arrive in stores just before Halloween from Image Comics, a publisher the duo secured before starting their campaign. We spoke with them about the project.

Montclare and Reeder originally set out to raise $10,000 to cover their production costs -- paying for the time intensive duties of drawing, coloring, lettering and assembling a comic. As Image doesn't pay upfront for creator-owned books, the money raised will bridge the huge gap that often looms between creating a book and finishing a book. Given the nod by pros like Jeff Lemire, Frank Quitely and Matt Wagner, Halloween Eve's Kickstarter has gone $4,000 past its goal, leaving the duo looks in a comfortable spot to finish the book without resorting to dire poverty or fudged deadlines.

With a week left to go, many of the rewards have already been snagged, but there's still some left for those eager to pledge. Higher levels offer limited edition prints and a portfolio review of your writing or art by Montclare and Reeder, but the basic $10 level will still nab you a copy of the book and a greeting card right up to the last minute.

As evidenced by the announcements at this year's San Diego Comi-Con, creator-owned comics are, more and more, luring in bigger names and crazier ideas. Not coincidentally, it's crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter that are quickly becoming the new way for creators to make these books happen. Empowering fans to vote with their wallets, the once crazy notion of labors of love walking hand in hand with living wages appears to be approaching reality.

ComicsAlliance spoke with Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder about creating Halloween Eve, the freedom to make the books they want to see and their new publisher.

COMICS ALLIANCE: Tell us a bit about the timeline of Halloween Eve. When did you come up with it, and how long have you been working on it?

AMY REEDER: Brandon had an idea about a Halloween story taking place in a Halloween store. At the time he didn't have me in mind because I was working at DC!

BRANDON MONTCLARE: The concept was floating around in my head before Amy and I decided to do it together. I think the collaboration came before the content-that is, we knew we wanted to work together before we knew what we were going to work on.

AR: My DC contract was up in April, and I knew I needed something restorative -- I'd been given some great opportunities like Madame Xanadu, Supergirl, and Batwoman, but the experience was starting to wear on me. Brandon's idea to work together on a short creator-owned story sounded like the perfect thing. I could work with a great collaborator, have tons of creative control, and figure out where I stood with comics, and where I wanted to go with them.

BM: We zeroed in on Halloween Eve -- and as much as we liked the story, it forced us into some interesting goals. Having a book solicited and in stores by Halloween meant we had to really be committed. That actually helped fuel the passion in a lot of ways: dive in, trust our instincts when it came to character and plot, and take no prisoners with self-imposed deadlines.

AR: It was great to jump in. I am capable now of being faster because I don't have the distractions you get when you're working for a big company, and I was driven by the fun of all that creative control.

CA: Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites have essentially transformed the comic book publishing landscape over the past few years by giving creators a recognizable and streamlined platform for financing their work. Given your time in the industry, what made now the right time for you to try a Kickstarter campaign?

BM: I think "now" is the right time to try a lot of things in this business. With Kickstarter, it's in large part necessity: if I want to do my own comics, I need financing; moreover, Kickstarter allows me to test the waters to see if readers are going to respond to a particular idea.

AR: I've found that it's always good to follow new trends in the industry before too many people catch on. I got into comics through a contest TokyoPop was doing -- at the time they were handing out three-volume book deals like candy! Now they're out of business because of it, unfortunately, but wow, what an amazing opportunity for me as a young creator.

BM: I think Kickstarter is here to stay-but whatever its future, its present is red hot. There's already a core audience familiar with the platform, ready to back comics that look cool. I think more creators are going to be using it-with that, the competition is going to get tougher in the very near future. Not to sound cocky: I think Halloween Eve is one of the books that has already raised the bar on Kickstarter, in terms of quality and creator pedigree.

CA: Though you couldn't announce it until it was solicited, you guys have had a publisher for this book for a while now. Can you talk a bit about what role Kickstarter plays when you have a publisher lined up?

BM: When we were first figuring out how to get Halloween Eve made, we decided that we were going to try our hand at Kickstarter. This was before Image was even in the picture.

AR: By the time that we did launch the Kickstarter, Image was pretty much on board.

BM: But it wasn't a done deal, and it would've been inappropriate to name them. So we waited on Image to make the call as to when we would officially announce the partnership.

AR: We told people upfront that we had a great publisher, but our deal involved no money upfront. So Kickstarter became more a platform where we could have help financing it, and where they could preorder books. In addition to that, it's proven a great way to get the word out about the comic!

CA: The subject of women in comics -- both creators and characters -- has been discussed quite a bit in the past year or so. There are still few female protagonists starring in their own books, and even fewer women of color. Was this something you were conscious of when you created Eve?

AR: Oh, definitely. I mean, I will more than likely do many more female-led stories than not; it's just what I do best and what I like to do.

BM: More than anything else, I wanted to give Amy something she wants to draw. That goes for every character and situation in Halloween Eve-and of course the center of all that is Eve herself.

AR: So yeah, it's what I like to do, but I think I also feel a responsibility-given the current state of comics-to create female characters that I know need to be out there, characters that female readers will want to read.

BM: I agree. When you come from a background working at Marvel and DC, there's definitely a shortage of all minorities. There's a creative appeal to just be doing something different. But Amy's right: if you have an opportunity to do something a little more diverse, you should take it. It helps to bring in new fans as well as making some casual fans feel more included.

AR: And it seems to me that the female characters we do have look a lot alike-similar faces, similar body types, and a whole lot of blondes. I wanted to stray away from that, and it sounds like fans are pretty happy with the change, too.

CA: Amy, you haven't colored a lot of your most recognizable comics work. What were some of the rewards and challenges of coloring this story?

AR: This has been one of my first experiences coloring interiors, and I'm definitely still learning the ropes! I will say, though, that a lot of the images people associate me with are ones where I had a bigger hand in it. The Batwoman covers were all inked, greytoned and colored by me, and the first two Madame Xanadu covers were all me as well. I took a long time on those, so it's probably more patience than innate talent, but I am one of those artists who are just better at doing it all. Like my pencils aren't much to look at, and I leave a lot to colors. I'm a finisher more than a starter, I guess.

CA: Image Comics created a lot of buzz last week at Comic-Con by announcing several high-profile projects from top creative teams. Is it exciting to be putting out a book through Image right now, as the publisher continues to market itself as a haven for creator-owned material?

AR: Even in the early process of planning the book, Brandon and I agreed Image was our first choice. We feel very lucky it worked out!

BM: I'm as excited as Amy about Image. Because she's too shy to say so, Image was likewise jazzed to have Amy do a book with them. It's an ideal situation at Image these days: top talents are bringing their creator-owned stuff to the imprint, and the imprint is getting these books in the hands of enthusiastic retailers and rabid fans.

AR: It's so cool to be a part of Image right now. I've been wanting to do creator-owned work for a while now -- I'm not sure that the usual recipe for comics (preexisting characters, work-for-hire, editor/writer/penciler/inker/colorist/letterer/cover artist) was made for someone like me. I find I have to force myself into that world. But creator-owned feels natural. Comics is such an amazing medium because it can be all you or a couple of people, creating an experience. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees this and I've been happy to hear about all the other creators who have decided this chance is worth taking.

CA: Halloween Eve is being created as a one-shot, standalone story, but is Eve a character you'd consider revisiting at some point?

BM: I'm of two minds. Usually, I like to think of any project as being completely self-contained. Practically speaking, this keeps me honest as a writer. Readers get their beginning, middle, and end; they get everything they need in the story that I'm telling. That being said, these are great characters with a lot more in them... and Halloween does come every year.

AR: I am generally more drawn to stories that are self-contained-that leave you wanting more. And I had also planned on this being contained, but I have to admit, drawing this, getting excited about Eve, and getting everyone else excited about her, is getting me thinking about the future possibilities. So we'll see!

You can learn more about Halloween Eve and still make pledges for a number of rewards at the project's Kickstarter page.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

The Kickstarter Successes of 'The Dylan Meconis Library 2012' and 'Godsend Volume 1'

Christopher Sebela — 2012-07-05T17:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Indie, Interviews, Video, News

Lots of Kickstarter projects struggle all the way to the bitter end, trying to hit their goal and rallying the internet to come together in the last moments to make their particular dream come true while making contingency plans that involve lots of ice cream and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' Five Stages of Grieving. Others, though, explode out of the gate and past the finish line in the span of several days, hitting hundreds and thousands of dollars above what they originally solicited. Sadly there's no instant formula to make it happen, but taking a look at two such projects, Dylan Meconis' The Dylan Meconis Library 2012 and Meg Gandy's Godsend: Volume One, helps light the path on how some people make the magic happen.

We spoke with both cartoonists about about made their respective Kickstarter projects successes, and why it's still important to check out what they're selling and contribute even though fund raising goals have been met.

The Dylan Meconis Library Project 2012 sounds a lot more high-falutin' than it actually is, covering three of the writer/artist's irreverent books from the last decade: the farcical French Revolutionary vampire epic Bite Me!, the Eisner-nominated short fable Outfoxed, and the modern-day art book look at the funny side of death, Danse Macabre. At turns funny, touching and goofy, with beautiful artwork to hold it all up, all three projects have always lived on the Internet for free, but now Meconis is crowd-funding a print run for those of us who find running our hands lovingly across our screens a less than satisfactory replacement for actual books.

With her money breakdown exactingly listed for those budding accountants out there, Meconis has left no question unanswered about how she intends to use the $15,000 she set out to raise. With percentages set towards taxes, fees and shipping, the rest will go to pay for printing costs, with an eye towards quality perks like hardcovers, fancy page stock and spot colors. Already passing her original goal -- now up to $7,000 higher than expected -- Meconis is now unlocking new rewards with each new level.

Originally offering rewards like DRM-free digital copies, books, prints and original commissions, each new level beyond her original goal has unlocked new perks to retroactively reward supporters like a brand new Bite Me! story, print sets and patches. Meconis' project still has two weeks to go, with nearly 500 supporters on-board, and the only thing more exciting than seeing how the books come out is seeing just how much it raises and what new swag will be accompanying it.

We talked with Dylan Meconis about why she's crowd-funding her library and how a decade on the Internet helps raise money.

Comics Alliance: What's your timeline on these books? Not just how long they took but a history between you thinking stuff up for each of the three books and you finishing the books.

Dylan Meconis: I started Bite Me! in high school around the start of 2001, after noodling around with some character ideas for awhile. I finished it in 2004 (junior year of college), and I put it into print the first time in 2008. I ran out of copies of the second printing last year!

Danse Macabre 2.0 I did over the course of just a few weeks in the early winter of 2011, mostly to entertain myself and give myself a clever drawing project to start out my work mornings with. I've wanted to turn them into prints or a book over since, but held back on it - waiting for the right moment to strike, I suppose.

I wrote the script for Outfoxed almost five years ago, originally planning for it to be a story for a volume of the Flight anthologies. I couldn't block out the time (or summon the nerve) to draw it until this past summer, when I took a writing hiatus from my current graphic novel. I did all the art over maybe two months, and intended to put it in print after it went online.

CA: Why should people fund your project? Would you be able to do any of this without crowdfunding?

DM: Because you get three lovely (and quite different) books from an independent creator! I earn more money per copy sold of these books than I would through any other means of publishing. I wrote it all, I drew it all, I put it all online for free, I'm designing the books, I'm printing and distributing them. If you like my work, there is literally no better way to thank me for it than funding the project. And, in return, you get these lovely print books! And some other cool stuff, too.

Without crowd funding of one kind of another (I've also funded books by taking pre-orders on my own website), no, I wouldn't be able to self-publish nearly so effectively. The cost of printing is quite high, especially stacked against a freelancer's income and the vagaries of American tax code. I'd be looking at a lot more dayjob work (freelance design and illustration) and spending a lot of time wooing publishers, many of whom are overwhelmed and underfunded and/or looking for very specific kinds of work that don't necessarily match my skills and interests.

CA: How much do you think having your stuff up online for free helped with you reaching your goal so quickly/building an audience?

DM: I started doing comics as a teenager with Internet access, and what you did as a teenager with Internet access was put your comics online. My work was on a for-pay site for a few years, when folks were experimenting more with that model. It paid my rent for one month after college, but it limited the audience (more than print would, I think) for what amounted to a very modest pay-out. So eventually I made that work free again and just postponed making money from it until I could sell a book collection.

In the intervening years, nobody has yet given me a large-scale publishing offer that was really worth giving up my independence for. I don't think of online publishing as a core element of my philosophy as a creator (oy! so pretentious!), but simply the best way for an unaffiliated creator like me to reach people and connect with readers in an otherwise very broken market that's in the middle of a big transition.

For the last two and a half years, Godsend has been unfolding the story of a chosen messiah prophesied to save the world from a great darkness, and what happens when that prophecy turns out be to all sorts of wrong. Written by Jesse Bausch and drawn by Meg Gandy, Godsend creates a world of old gods, new religions and the kind of madcap hijinx usually reserved for buddy comedies, all wrapped up in a brand of fantasy that feels entirely accessible for those of us allergic to elves and dragons. With three chapters already complete and described by Gandy as an epic that could go on forever, Godsend: Volume One looks to be just the tip of an increasingly huge iceberg.

Given nods of approval by creators like Warren Ellis and Ross Campbell, Godsend has hit Kickstarter to raise $5,000, with the money going towards printing copies of the 150 page book, buying ISBN numbers and paying for shipping and the attendant Kickstarter/Amazon fees that come with every project. Having already gone almost $2,000 over that limit and with less than two weeks to go, the extra money raised is going towards fancying up the book with bookfetishy extras like nicer paper, spot gloss and french flaps.

Gandy, who in addition to drawing, lettering and maintaining Godsend's website, is running the Kickstarter with rewards that include a numbered amount of extra swag including posters and charms, signed copies of the book, original art, commissions and your likeness appearing as a cameo. If you're looking to snag any of these, you should act fast as the prestigious levels are going fast. Consider it an investment in continuing an already great story and possibly funding your future grandchildren's secondary education.

We spoke with Meg Gandy about why you aren't beholden to fund her book and how there's not enough time in the day to make Godsend even greater.

ComicsAlliance: Can you give us a timeline of Godsend so far? When did you and Jesse come up with it, how long have you been working on it, etc. Is it what you'd call a passion project?

Meg Gandy: About four years ago, Jesse approached me with this pitch. He wanted to do this spectacular full color epic that would go on forever, and I love that stuff so I agreed. I did some pages, he shopped the pitch around to publishers -- no bites. We didn't want to give up on it, so he asked if I'd be willing to do a webcomic. I said yes, reworked it into something I knew we could self-publish if we had to, and here we are. And yes, I would call it a passion project. I don't make any money on it, i don't have ads on the site (yet. it would be nice if it paid for its own hosting someday). I have a number of things going on, and this project is the most fun, and the one I really wish I had more time for. I spend about a day, day and half per page, from thumbnail to lettering. But I wish I could spend a week.

CA: Why should people fund your project? Would you be able to do any of this without crowd funding?

MG: That's kind of a funny question. People should only fund the book if they want a copy. We're not trying to get anyone to buy something they don't want. And yes, of course we could put it out without Kickstarter. Places like Lulu and Createspace guaranty it. We chose Kickstarter because I wanted to grow our audience and get more word out, and Kickstarter is amazing for that -- Kickstarter is an event, not merely a means. Even if you fail, you succeed.

CA: How much do you think having your stuff up online for free helped with you reaching your goal so quickly and building an audience?

MG: People could go to the webcomic and read what they're getting. It's exactly what it says there on the tin, no surprises. You can walk into any comic shop or bookstore in the country, and do the same thing with any other book you'd consider buying. That's how we shop. So of course it's going to help. And, anyone who's ever touched social media knows -- we like to share. We love to share. If we find something we like a lot, we will post it up so others can see it too -- and that's chiefly what's helped this project. It's been amazing -- worked far, far better than I actually anticipated.

And I don't even mind if that's all they do, if they go to the webcomic and read it and don't buy. They read it. I hope they keep reading it. That's the whole point of this.

To learn more about The Dylan Meconis Library 2012 project or to make a pledge, click over to its Kickstarter now. To find out more about Godsend: Volume One or to pledge towards it, head over to its Kickstarter here.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Trickster 2: The Little San Diego Con That Could [Indiegogo]

Christopher Sebela — 2012-06-15T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Conventions, Indie, News, Culture

If you've never been to San Diego's Comic-Con International, it's hard to picture just how huge and insane it truly is. Last year's attendance numbers topped out around 120,000 people, turning the little town that Ron Burgundy made famous into a nightmarish maelstrom of Twilight shantytowns, promotional blitzes and a decibel level akin to a black metal concert. While at times it felt like there was no escape -- SDCC's population seems to completely overtake everything a dozen blocks in any direction -- an oasis was born just across the street from the convention center: Trickster. Providing a quiet venue of drinks, art, creator-owned merch and symposia, all while rubbing elbows with comics pros, it quickly became the place to be for people looking to maintain their sanity and experience the creativity community of comics. This year Trickster coming back and is seeking funding via the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform, offering rewards far and away greater than any free merch you can snag in the convention center.

Founded by Scott Morse, Ted Mathot and Anita Coulter, Trickster wasn't created to be competition for SDCC, but one of the countless secondary destinations for con-goers that distinguished itself by being the rare venue catering to comics fans in an environment where TV and movie promotion are quickly becoming bigger and louder. It quickly became the little engine that could of SDCC 2011. Surrounded by skyscraper tall billboards and pedicabs emblazoned with flair, Trickster -- or TR!CKSTER, as it was known -- was housed in an unassuming wine bar with just a banner hanging across one set of windows. If you didn't know about it, you wouldn't have approached it on the first few days, but by the end of the weekend Trickster it was the place to be, with crowds swelling out to the sidewalk, drawn in by drink and draw sessions scored by DJs, Michael Allred's rock band, live comics created on-stage by Steve Niles and Scott Morse, exclusive merch provided by the likes of Mike Mignola, and an impromptu concert by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine.

This year, Trickster has moved on up to a bigger venue and expanded its menu to include ticketed art workshops and storytelling symposia, free events, signings, and even more creator-owned comics available to buy. With the step up, the price tag for putting on such an ambitious event has swelled, especially for a four-day event that costs nothing to get into. Instead of turning a commercial eye to things, Trickster has set up a fundraising project on Indiegogo to raise $35,000. The money will go towards renting the space and acquiring the AV equipment that facilitates all the fun and games, without having to go looking for sponsorship that might negate Trickster's goal of championing smaller, creator-owned press.

Almost halfway to their goal and with less than a month to go, rewards like an original script from Steve Niles for you to draw or appearing (and dying) in an issue of Criminal Macabre have already been snatched up, but Trickster still has plenty more up their sleeve. On the cheaper end are exclusive T-shirts and signed books from last year's show, with higher donations scoring limited and numbered prints by co-founder Scott Morse and supporter Mike Mignola.

What really sets Trickster apart this year are the one-on-one cocktail hours they're offering: the chance to sit down with accomplished pros like Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon, Jill Thompson or James Robinson, you can discuss whatever you like, brainstorming ideas, getting notes on your own work or just chatting with someone you'd usually only get five minutes to shout a conversation with over a booth table.

Since funding is going through the Indiegogo platform, Trickster will keep whatever they raise and honor all rewards, regardless of if they hit their final goal or not, but it would be a shame if they fell short, the same way your heart breaks when a great creator-owned book gets cancelled. Trickster is just gaining traction and, if it keeps up, promises to be less of an addition and more of an alternative to the massive San Diego con. Besides being a place you can get a drink, a meal and buy comics, Trickster offers the rare chance of peeking behind the curtain of the industry, whether you're trying to break in, up your game or just want to meet your heroes and buy them a drink. Donating is a chance to vote with your wallet to keep comics a part of a comic convention that's become increasingly devoted to anything but.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

He's a Tiger. He's a Lawyer. He's a 'Tiger Lawyer' [Indiegogo]

Christopher Sebela — 2012-05-21T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Indie, Previews, Video

Book titles are a tricky business. Trying to sum up the essence of your work in a few simple words that intrigue and encapsulate can often be the hardest part of creating something original. Writer Ryan Ferrier (Terminals, The Brothers James) overcame this hurdle pretty easily with his latest comic about a tiger who is a lawyer -- he just went ahead and called it Tiger Lawyer. Drawn by Matt McCray and Vic Malhotra, issue #1 was self-published and quickly sold out last month. Ferrier is aiming to raise $3,000 on the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform over the next month to finance Tiger Lawyer #2. We spoke with Ferrier and took a look at the project, which has already earned praise from Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson and Glory and Hell Yeah writer Joe Keatinge.

Born from a random idea he posted on Twitter, Ferrier quickly turned Tiger Lawyer into an eight-page script he posted online, garnering a bigger response than he ever anticipated. From that came another story, artists McCray and Malhotra jumping on-board and Tiger Lawyer's transformation from a funny tweet into an actual thing.

Tiger Lawyer is one of those "so weird it's weird no one came up with it before" ideas that manages to squeeze comedy, noir, face slashings and cereal jokes all into one tight little package. With praise from Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson as well as a series of upcoming backups in Joe Keatinge and Andre Szymanowicz's creator-owned book Hell Yeah this summer, Tiger Lawyer is primed to be the WTF sleeper hit of the summer.

Designed as a flip-book style comic, with a front cover on each side and two wildly different takes on the concept in-between, Ferrier assembled issue #1 and printed it, selling it online and at several comic conventions. After it sold out, he knew he had more Tiger Lawyer stories to tell. Ferrier's setting out to tell them in issue #2, which will feature two new stories as well as an addition to the animals-doing-messed-up-stuff genre with Fabian Rangel Jr.'s Revenge Rooster.

The $3,000 goal on Indiegogo -- an alternate to Kickstarter that differs by allowing project leaders to keep whatever they raise by their goal date, even if they don't reach their magic number -- is to pay his artists and colorist Adam Metcalfe a decent rate and fund a print run of issue #2. Any overages will go towards maintaining the online store and the inevitable third issue of Tiger Lawyer. The rewards run from a print/digital combo pack for to Ferrier's lettering services all the way up to original art pages from either issue.

We spoke with Ryan Ferrier about animal-based jurisprudence and why he went with Indiegogo instead of Kickstarter.

Comics Alliance: Can you give us a timeline of Tiger Lawyer so far? When did you come up with it, how long have you been working on it? Is it what you'd call a passion project?

Ryan Ferrier: Tiger Lawyer all happened really fast actually. I came up with the idea one weekend in late December. By mid-January I was already putting together the book and finding artists to contribute. The plan was to release the first issue in late April to coincide with the Vancouver and Calgary comic conventions, which we did, and it went great. I think every project I work on is a passion project, to a degree, and Tiger is no exception, but at the same time, it's something I didn't really expect. It's momentum has been really out of our control, and it's worked out wonderfully that we all enjoy doing it so much.

CA: Why should people fund your book?

RF: Tiger Lawyer is still very young, and we're in that fun, experimental stage, and we're getting some really great collaborations going. I can see Tiger Lawyer continuing and becoming something even more special, even if it stays small. Everyone involved is a hungry creator that wants to make something really unique and just produce great work. I think this is just the ground floor, we can really only go up from here. And when I say "up," I mean ridiculous and fun and creative. We're also quite partial to trying to make people happy, and celebrate comics.

CA: What will you do if you don't hit your goal?

RF: Complete transparency time! If we don't hit our goal, Tiger Lawyer #2 will still happen. It will still be released and available at the end of June. That was never the question. It's happening. And if it doesn't make the goal amount, the incentives for those that do donate will still very much be rewarded. Tiger Lawyer is totally self-published, therefore paid completely out of my pocket. I love comics and am prepared to go broke so I can make them... but I'd rather not.

This campaign is a means for me to keep my head above water so that we can continue to do what we love and make comics we hope people will dig. We want this campaign to act like an extension of the online store. It's another means for people to get something out of it as a consumer while also supporting it. I'm not in it to make money, I'm just in it to make.

CA: Can you explain to people who have no idea what Indiegogo is why you went with that instead of Kickstarter?

RF: The answer is very simple: Canadians can't start a Kickstarter campaign! We're not allowed to. Won't let us. Indiegogo is the next best thing. It's the northern alternative, you see. I'm not sure why that is, but alas, it is.

To learn more about Tiger Lawyer or make a pledge, click over to Indiegogo now.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Hey Kids, Learning! 'The Graphic Textbook' Brings Comics to the Classroom [Kickstarter]

Christopher Sebela — 2012-05-10T14:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Indie, Video, Culture

The phrase "Hey kids, comics!" is a bit of a defunct rallying cry these days. While most comic book fans would wildly roll their eyes and shove their Mature-rated favorites at the very mention of it, The Graphic Textbook is embracing the notion and the potential that exists between developing minds and comics pages. The project, lead by writer Josh Elder (Mail Order Ninja, The Batman Strikes!) and features the work of Fred Van Lente, Katie Cook, Roger Langridge and Chris Schweizer, has raised over $50,000 on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, with another $15,000 to go in the campaign's remaining seven days. We spoke with Elders about The Graphic Textbook and what potential rewards the project offers children, teachers, financial backers and the comics medium itself.

The Graphic Textbook is the brainchild of Tokyopop and DC writer Josh Elder, who formed the not-for-profit Reading With Pictures; an organization designed for "getting comics into schools and schools into comics." The result is a 144-page hardcover textbook for elementary schoolers between 3rd and 6th grade, using the accessibility of comics to explain potentially yawn-inducing subjects like social studies, math, language arts and science. With contributions from comics writers and artists like Fred Van Lente, Katie Cook, Roger Langridge and Chris Schweizer and a classroom approved teacher's guide to best use the panels and pages to teach, it aims to be the rare textbook that students can go back and read for fun. Theoretical side effects include hooking countless unsuspecting children on the analog delight of comics.

As a comics project that brings a hefty amount of academia to the table, The Graphic Textbook has gone to great lengths to prove itself as scholastically sound by committing the help of several comics-friendly college professors from across the country. Now they've turned to Kickstarter to prove that this bit of edutainment can appeal to a wide audience. Their $65,000 goal is rigorously broken down to the dollar, covering page rates for each contributor, printing costs, curriculum development and the minutiae of shipping costs and Kickstarter/Amazon fees. Elder, overseeing the project, is working for free and even promising $10,000 of his own to fill the gap via a small business loan. Overages will go towards expanding the books to different grades and funding the educator/librarian outreach program provided on Reading With Pictures' website.

Operating on an unlocking rewards system, The Graphic Textbook initially offers perks from $10 for a DRM-free digital copy to higher-priced swag like donated original art from artists such as Darwyn Cooke, Tim Sale and Jill Thompson and classroom-sized allotments of the physical book when it is finished in early 2013. The more people contribute the more new, amazing rewards get unlocked. Hey, that's sort of a metaphor for knowledge.

We spoke with The Graphic Textbook organizer Josh Elder about the book and why he thinks it's so important to fund it.

COMICS ALLIANCE: What's been the timeline of The Graphic Textbook so far? Is it what you'd call a passion project?

JOSH ELDER: It was first conceived back in 2009 as part of the long-term strategy for the Reading With Pictures organization. The initial concept - create a high-quality, standards-based comic textbook aimed at late elementary students tied to a research study overseen by a major academic institution - has remained essentially unchanged. It's just taken three years to get all the pieces into place.

And it is absolutely a passion project. In the traditional sense and the biblical one. It's been a real struggle to get here, but the cause is worth the fight.

CA: Why should people fund the book?

JE: Going to whip out the bullet points for this one...

It's a worthy cause! Each dollar you pledge not only funds the book, it also helps fund all the resources that Reading With Pictures provides free of charge to educators and librarians. And you can even donate books to a school or library of your choice if you believe in the cause but don't necessarily want a copy for yourself.

It's a great product! We have an amazing roster of talent telling stories that they're passionate about. The fact that they'll also make you smarter is just gravy.

We're putting our claims to the test! An all-star squad of academics led by Dr. David Rapp of the Learning Sciences Department at Northwestern University will be overseeing an impact study tied to The Graphic Textbook to see if comics really can improve engagement, efficiency and effectiveness over traditional materials.

You can be a part of something extraordinary! There were several publishers interested in The Graphic Textbook, but we wanted to let our creators keep all their rights and we wanted to give our customers access to a DRM-free digital copy of the book. That got outside their comfort zone, so we turned to Kickstarter instead. Now we hope that you'll invest in this idea that has the potential to change so many lives for the better.

CA: What will you do if you don't hit your goal?

JE: First, I'll cry. Then I'll cowboy up and commit at least $10,000 of my own money to making up any funding shortfall we may have by deadline. I'll probably have to sell my car and quite a few other assets to cover it, but I consider it a worthy sacrifice.

We're a non-profit organization, but our bills don't get paid with government grants or oversize novelty checks from private foundations. Everything we have ever accomplished has been because of support from individuals like you. Now we're asking for your help again, this time to produce The Graphic Textbook, the most ambitious and potentially gamechanging project in Reading With Pictures history. We really can make a difference, but only with your help. So please, if hooked on comics worked for you, then help us get them into schools so that they can work for kids everywhere.

To learn more about The Graphic Textbook or make a pledge, click over to Kickstarter now. For more on Josh Elder's thoughts on comics and their role in education, check out the video below from the 2010 CUSP Design Conference.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

'Reincar(Nate)': Better Living Through Death [Kickstarter]

Christopher Sebela — 2012-05-03T17:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Indie, Previews, Video

Reincar(Nate), created by writer Michael Moreci and artist Keith Burns, isn't about being haunted by your past, but by your past lives. A 102-page, full-color graphic novel, Reincar(Nate) follows private eye Nate McCoy as he tracks down a missing girl, battles a crime lord and deals with a gunshot wound to the head, all with the help of an old west cowboy and a vegas hitman - older versions of himself he was reborn from that no one else can see. Equal parts noir, comedy and supernatural thriller, Reincar(Nate) manages to smash all of these together to form a new, bizarre take on the down-on-his-luck gumshoe and the glowy bright light that awaits us when we die.

The first 24 pages of the comic already complete, Moreci is looking to the Kickstarter funding platform to raise $8,250 to pay his artist, colorist and letterer to complete the graphic novel, which will be made widely available via digital distribution. The remaining money is going towards funding an original printing to be distributed by Viper Comics, while any overage will go towards increasing the size of the print run and further reimbursing the creative team putting the book together.

Having already hit some of their goals, the Reincar(Nate) creators are currently giving the first 24 pages of the book away free as a PDF download. The project's remaining rewards offer the entire physical book (estimated to be completed in August of this year) for a $20 pledge, while higher levels can get your likeness drawn into the story, even with a speaking part, as well as the original art of the page on which you appear. So even if you can't live forever, at least your pretty face can.

We spoke with Reincar(Nate) writer Michael Moreci about the project and why he thinks it's worthy of your patronage.

Comics Aliiance: Can you give me a timeline of Reincar(nate) so far? Is it what you'd call a passion project?

Michael Moreci: Very much so. Keith and I started working on it over two years ago. Everyone knows how it goes with creator-owned projects, in that they pay no money up front. Because of this, we've both had to take jobs as they came along. Keith got opportunities to work with Garth Ennis and John McCrea on The Boys and its spinoffs, and I was pulled away doing Hoax Hunters. Granted, these are great problems to have, but, they kept Reincar(Nate) on the shelf.

The thing is, though, we believe in this book. We both love the work being done, and we're committed to bringing the highest quality to the finished product.

Case in point -- just a few months ago, we overhauled issue #1. After having it sit for some time, we looked at it and knew it could be better. Chris Beckett -- who deserves insane admiration -- redid all the colors to give it more of the Michael Mann/'80s noir we were looking for; I rewrote pieces of the script; Keith completely redrew certain panels. That's our level of dedication to getting this thing absolutely right.

CA: Why should people fund your book?

MM: It's hard to toot your own horn, but this is a damn good book that we're pouring our heart and soul into. I've said this before, but we are living in a very privileged age, in terms of the quality of comic sout there. I know there's so many great titles to choose from, but I really think Reincar(Nate) stacks up with them. It's a fun noir story with a unique hook, and it has been likened to Chew and Who Is Jake Ellis?, which is nice company to be in.

I think we're doing Kickstarter the way it was intended -- this book will not get printed if we don't hit our goal. It won't happen. And our goal is modest. We're not asking for a year's salary or some crazy amount. And the rewards are all centered around the book, plain and simple. Believe me, if you support Reincar(Nate), you'll be happy you did.

CA: What will you do if you don't hit your goal?

MM: The only answer I have is to turn to a life of petty crime. Don't make me turn to a life of petty crime! But seriously, I don't know. I might try to scrounge money and do a printing myself...it's hard to say. I'm anticipating making this thing work!

If you wish to learn more about Reincar(Nate) or make a pledge, click over to Kickstarter now.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

'Anathema': Rachel Deering on Her 'Lesbian Werewolf Epic' [Kickstarter]

Christopher Sebela — 2012-04-25T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Indie, Previews

At first glance, you might not think of writer Rachel Deering's self-described "lesbian werewolf epic" Anathema as a love story. There's no romantic montages, overcoming adversity or teary confessions in the rain - and there's definitely not a happy ending: the first issue opens with Mercy Barlowe recounting her girlfriend being burned at the stake for the couple's "abomination" and the crippling guilt she feels for running away. Anathema is a love story about what happens when you can't take back your mistakes, and how far you'd go to make up for them. In Mercy's case, she becomes a werewolf, not on a quest of revenge, but to rescue her lover's soul from a dark cult with designs to use it to wake up something bigger, deader and eviler.

Over a year in the making, this is actually Anathema's second round at Kickstarter. Deering raised $8,000 for the first issue back in August to pay her artists Christopher Mooneyham and Fares Maes and cover a small print run of the book. Now she's back to fund the remaining five issues, an amount estimated at $20,000. This would be an intimidating amount for any comics creator, much less one who described herself as "a no name writer with an outdated sense of horror," but with a story in Renae De Liz's Womanthology and praise from fellow creators Bill Willingham and Joshua Hale Fialkov on Anathema's first issue, she's already raised close to $17,000.

The following video was created for Deering's first Anathema Kickstarter, so it offers a better introduction to the concept and goals.

Even though Deering is writing, designing and lettering Anathema, she won't see any of the money raised via Kickstarter. Every dollar, minus Kickstarter and Amazon fees (Amazon facilitates the financial transactions), is earmarked to pay her artists, who, on the strength of the first issue, look to be well worth it. Any overage the project gets will go towards paying her way to as many comic conventions as she can get to to hand sell the book and, if response is big enough, to plan more stories in this endearingly creepy little world she's dreamed up.

ComicsAlliance: Is Anathema your passion project? How long have you been sitting with it, from the first idea to researching/writing it to finding your artists and Kickstartering the first issue?

Rachel Deering: I started working on Anathema a little more than a year ago, and it's definitely way beyond a passion project. It's an absolute dream. I've taken every aspect of horror that thrills me and crammed it into this one book. The idea came to me when I was in the shower, and I just started fleshing out who Mercy is and what kinds of terrible things I could throw at her. There wasn't a ton of researching involved, honestly, because I didn't want the setting of Anathema to have to adhere to any sort of timeline or specific geography. I am purposefully vague about where Anathema takes place, and during what time. That covers my ass in case any history buffs want to come after me.

It took about three months to build the world of Anathema and get all of the elements straight in my mind and put down into a cohesive script. After that, I started searching for an artist and took it to Kickstarter in August (I believe) of 2011. I actually had to go through three different artists before I found one that worked well with me, and didn't rip me off.

CA: Why should people fund your book?

RD: The comics market is in serious need of some diversity if it hopes to draw in new readers. Anathema presents a strong female character, and she's gay. The tone of horror in this book is not at all like the modern gore-porn and/or romantic monsters. I think it's a book that could benefit the scene.

I'd say those people who long for classic horror in the vein of Hammer and Universal monsters will benefit most from kicking in a few bucks. There are precious few sources for that style of horror these days, and I feel like Anathema can more than scratch that itch.

CA: What will you do if you don't hit your goal?

RD: I have a few other projects in production at the moment, so I would probably focus on shopping them to publishers, and I'd revisit Anathema in the future if finances allowed for such a thing. That is if the artists were still available. It's kinda scary to think about, honestly.

You can learn more about the Anathema project at its Kickstarter page. The following are five pages from the sold-out Anathema #1.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments