Gina Biggs, whom I’ve talked to in the past about her series Red String, has launched a Kickstarter project to publish her fairy tale comic Erstwhile.

The project has well exceeded the original goal with, at the time of writing, 23 days left to go. The main release will be a 136-page color hardcover collecting five lesser-known fairy tales. (One of which, “The Farmer’s Clever Daughter”, I previously reviewed when it was a stand-alone comic.) Another $2,000 in pledges, and two more short stories will be added to the book.

The stories are illustrated by Biggs, Louisa Roy, and Elle Skinner, and they’re told in the grimmer, more original versions. A $20 pledge will get you your own print copy in September. Higher amounts offer original art or extra comics. Or you can just read the webcomics.

I wrote about this project when it launched, but for new readers, Smut Peddler is a female-friendly porn comic anthology that will pay bonuses to the contributing creators based on eventual funding level — the more the project makes, the more the artists make. Additionally, all the stories in its over 350 pages were fully or partially created by women.

Participants include Jess Fink (Chester 5000XYV), the now Eisner Award-winning Carla Speed McNeil (Finder), EK Weaver (The less than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal), Harvey Award nominee Steve Horton (“Amala’s Blade” for Dark Horse Presents), Erika Moen (DAR!, Bucko), and many, many more! Everyone’s been paid for their work, but more money raised means more bonuses for the artists.

Since the Kickstarter launched, the project has added new pledge levels, with original art packages (pages by Amanda Lafrenais or Kel McDonald) added at $35,000 and original commissions by EK Weaver (sold out), Blue Delliquanti, Rennie Kingsley, and Carla Speed McNeil (sold out) added when it passed $40,000. At $45,000, which was reached last night, an Erika Moen book package was added, but it has since sold out as well. There’s still one special-edition limited messenger bag available, as well as three chances to be drawn on the book’s back cover. There’s also a 10-copy discount package for retailers.

You can still contribute at the Smut Peddler project page. It’s $15 for a PDF copy of the book, or $30 for a paperback. Comics Alliance has interviewed driving force Spike Trotman about her goals for the project, and Spike has herself posted advice on using Kickstarter successfully.

I hope John will forgive me for excerpting so much of his post in this following paragraph, but he makes some compelling points:

I’m assuming Marvel made these changes because they were uncomfortable with the idea of young kids coming to FCBD and walking out with copies of a comic where a super-heroine is stripped naked; thrown down on a cold, hard floor; and interrogated by two creepy male super-villains. Which makes you wonder why the scene was written as it was in the first place: What exactly is gained by removing the heroine’s costume (other than creepy fan-service)?

Or if you argue that the nudity is integral to the scene as originally written (because of course bad guys would strip-search any hero they capture to make sure they don’t have any tracking devices or other gadgets embedded in their costumes — happens all the time whenever the Wizard captures the Human Torch, for example), then perhaps this particular comic wasn’t the best for Marvel to pick for FCBD. Why not something that would be appropriate for all ages, such as an issue of the old Marvel Adventures: The Avengers series, or a brand-new story from the just-launched The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon tie-in?

John also suggests one possible fix for the problem that makes his point well.

The Smut Peddler Kickstarter has launched! It’s been live for less than a day, and it’s already close to the $20,000 funding goal. I’m impressed, but you should also note: the more money it makes, the more the contributing creators get paid. They’ve already gotten a page rate — no free work here — but more income means artist bonuses.

You may remember the name Smut Peddler from a three-issue minicomic series that ended six years ago. This particular incarnation came back to life two years ago, and I’m thrilled to have helped it along as a submissions editor. The end result will be a collection of great comic porn, created by women (as well as some men) in a book of over 350 pages.

There are a ton of amazing creators contributing, including Jess Fink, Carla Speed McNeil, Erika Moen, and a cover by Emily Carroll.

See the full contributor list — and the details of the bonus payment plan — at the Kickstarter page.

If you’re interested in sex-positive, female-friendly dirty comics by a truly talented list of contributors, check it out.

This is a comic shop that is trying something different. More importantly, this is a comic shop that is doing something different that will bring the general public in to the store. Most people are not going to accept something for free that they do not regularly consume in the first place. For example, I do not belong to a gym, so offering me a free turn on the dumbbells on a particular day of the week is not going to make me rush to my nearest gym to try them out. It is not even going to get me to try them out if I am walking down the street and pass by a gym.

But who can resist a cookie?

This is an excellent point. However, I think our difference of opinion in this case comes from me actually having visited the stores involved. Based on my experience with the chain offering this promotion, their attitude is less “how can we reach out to more customers?” and more “how can we ride the coattails of an event but pay less to get attention?”

Plus, I have not yet seen that this store is offering the cookies to people who don’t already shop there. The advertising I know about is through a postcard mailing to existing customers and their website. It’s true that one of the locations is in a strip mall with a Chuck E. Cheese and other venues that might attract walk-in traffic, but reaching out to families might mean they’d need to take the kid-unfriendly “you cannot come in without a parent” sign off the door. (I don’t blame them, if they’re in an area where thoughtless parents treat them as a babysitting stop.)

The general principle STR proposes is a good one, and that’s why many comic stores have artists appear on FCBD to give away sketches (especially to kids). People may not want a comic, but an original piece of art? That’s cool! Many stores also offer snacks and refreshments and create a party atmosphere — they just don’t make it the center of their advertising campaign and talk down their competitors while doing it.

(Oh, and thanks for the compliments, guys!)

Dustin makes a funny

It’s a neat example of comic journalism taking you somewhere you might otherwise not go, complete with thoughts on what it means to be an award-winning cartoonist and why awards exist. Dustin’s cartooning is, as always, exceptional, but it’s his observations that bring the comics far beyond the usual diary strips.

Nervous at meeting an idol

Dustin also includes an afterword essay that ponders the problems with comic awards. As someone who has been involved with many of the major industry awards except the Eisners (helped with the Harveys for two years, judge for the Glyphs and Isotope, Ignatz presenter, ran the Squiddies a long while back — I dream of being an Eisner judge someday, but I doubt it will ever happen, mainly because I don’t go to San Diego Con that often), I found his points on target. Anyone who manages an award program has my sympathies.

I agree with Dustin that there are too many categories, but which do you eliminate? Whose feelings do you hurt by saying their field of endeavor is no longer worthy of recognition? Do you reward the works (best comic, best character, etc.) or the creators (best artist, best writer, etc.)? How much attention do you pay to the traditional assembly-line method of work (best editor, best letterer, etc.)? Who do you let determine the winners? If you’re wondering about those questions as well, don’t worry, Dustin goes on to answer the questions by proposing his own award system. Which I really admire — it’s easy to pick at the existing, but proposing a positive solution goes above and beyond.

…a project should not rely on that sort of “walk-by” traffic for success. The key is to get the word out among your target audience, get them talking about it and running up interest, and make your project such that your backers are also your evangelists. If you’re relying on Kickstarter itself to generate backers, you’re going to be disappointed.

…Waiting for Kickstarter itself to provide a host of backers isn’t a winning strategy, and if you bring enough of your own backers to the table, you won’t miss the casual browsers who are swayed by what’s featured on the front page.

That first complaint letter, by the way, also says, “Very often ‘creators’ are not in the business of marketing or PR.” Perhaps, but if you’re going to try and fund something yourself using the Kickstarter site as a tool, you’d better be ready to market and promote it, or you’re going to fail. If you don’t want to handle all the aspects of a creative business, concentrate on finding a publisher, rare as that is these days, and resign yourself to getting less control and less of a cut. Blaming the tool just tells me 1) you’re not ready to be running a business and 2) you didn’t understand what Kickstarter offered and what it didn’t promise. (And also maybe 3) you read the stories about million-dollar Kickstarters and got so starry-eyed over the numbers you didn’t realize you don’t have thousands of existing fans already like they did.)

On another note, since it’s more fun to read comics than letters, today’s Dork Tower strip has some Kickstarter wisdom. Click the panel to read the whole thing.

Cartoon found here without authorship noted: http://podpeep.blogspot.com/2010/03/sunday-picture_21.html

The Washington Post does not review self-published books. The Post’s fiction editor Ron Charles admits, “We simply don’t have the staff to wade through the torrent of submissions that would come in.”

Laurie Hertzel, Books Editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, doesn’t review e-books or self-published books. “I receive about 1,000 books a month from commercial publishers, large and small,” she says, “and it’s all I can do to keep up with them. Adding e-books and self-pubbed books to that mix would quickly raise the number to something closer to infinity.”

Steve Paul of the Kansas City Star says, “…The main problem is that self-publishers think they don’t need editors. And real editors and real publishers serve as a gateway, making the first judgment of whether a manuscript is of interest beyond the author and his family.”

Freelance reviewer Mark Athitakis has never reviewed an indie-published book [and] says, “I somewhat testily discourage writers from pitching me self-published books. I get some testy emails in response, but the fact is that reading a book is time-consuming, and while I’ll try pretty much anything, I want evidence that more than one person was excited enough about a book to see it into print before I invest that time.”

These sources rely on publishers to serve as a filter, believing them to have winnowed out lower-quality books, so that the big name becomes a way to vouch for the quality of the material.

Comics has always been different when it comes to this, without people looking down as much on those who self-publish. (The term “vanity press” doesn’t have any meaning in comics.) After all, when you have gifted creators achieving success with works such as Bone or Finder or Strangers in Paradise, it’s hard to argue that self-published works are poor quality. And artist-driven works are often more interesting, vibrant, and creative than the franchise maintenance works coming from the big US comic publishers, as well as more diverse in subject, genre, and viewpoint.

Still, for a second, I was thinking about how different my to-do stack would be with this rule in place. I’d have more time for books from outlets like Oni, Top Shelf, and Dark Horse, less for discovering the next artist to watch.

Comic shops are in trouble, and this is a big reason. Why should customers have to commit to purchasing in order to sample new titles? Shouldn’t retailers take risks in stocking new products? The answer to that, in many cases, I guess, is that the retailers are creating the kinds of stores they want by restricting their product lines, but the end result is too many potential purchasers are left with shops that serve as DC/Marvel superhero boutiques. If they want to read more widely, their choice is to go outside the direct market.

The store gave him some story about not wanting to risk shelf space on “independent publishers”, but two of the books he was looking for were from Vertigo and Image. Worse, one of the books was an issue that the shop said they’d order for him after they messed up his preorder. They forgot. No wonder so many people are going online to purchase — physical retail locations need to compete on service and providing immediate access to products. If you don’t care about keeping your customers happy, then why should they shop with you? As Mozzocco says,

A lot of us online blowhard types rarely if ever single out shop owners and employees, save for the most vile examples, and focus our venom instead on the big corporate publishes. It makes sense, really — the shop owners are small business men, most of whom got into their small business because of their great love for the same thing we love so much. But it should be said that some of them just aren’t very good at selling comic books to people, and they can be a force pushing people away from comics, if not Comics comics, than certainly comic book comics.

End result is that the store loses $25 worth of business, the publisher loses a customer who might have come back month after month, and the customer gets closer to being fed up with the whole process. Mozzocco did the smart thing; he began shopping elsewhere. At least he had a store choice.

I had my review [of the last issue of Blackest Night] in hours before the article would run… yet my review was nowhere to be found in the article. Come to find out later that a fellow contributor had their review dropped, too. We happened to be the only two voices in the crowd that had written negative reviews about the finale. At the time, [the article compiler] was actively pitching comic book work. I know for a fact that one of the publishers he was pitching to was DC.

Too many writers about comics are doing it just to get noticed and attempt to transition into writing for the publishers they’re covering. That’s an inherent conflict of interest that many rationalize as not a problem, when it’s clear to readers that it colors their coverage choices. (To be fair, Huxford mentions others later in the article who would run negative reviews.) Huxford sounds quite jaded about the whole thing, a mindset it’s difficult not to fall into.

I swear I’d wish I never wound up on the “professional” coverage side of the divide. Once you’ve seen behind the curtain, it all starts to lose its magic. And once you see how the sausage is made, it starts to turn your stomach.

I’m struggling with that myself. I need to recapture the light-heartedness of writing about whatever I want instead of being tempted to run articles for hits. Once you’re running a business, it’s difficult to keep the fun in it.

This shirt features the company’s best-known characters, most from the upcoming Avengers movie, in a design that’s dedicated to the core appeal of the genre. (Note, also, that their demo illustrations feature people other than the stereotypical white male nerd.) Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and Thor remind us that “Super Heroes Save Lives”. (No artist credits were provided.) The shirts are $19.99 plus shipping and handling. Proceeds go to the Foundation to help fund childhood cancer research.

When done by competent artist, this topic — which pops up every so often — makes a point while providing plenty of humor. Like Captain America flashing his butt to the soldiers following him or the weirdly attractive Hal Jordan, Star Sapphire.

I particularly like those who add a story to the situation, as when Saturn Girl has to save the Legion of Super-Heroes all by herself — with the aid of some transvestite robots. Or the especially well-drawn Catwoman and Batman sexy times.

Bless Graeme McMillan for reminding me how much I enjoyed Dial H for Hero during its Adventure Comics run from issues #479-490 (March 1981 – February 1982).

He’s a bit harsher on the concept, of allowing reader-submitted heroes and other ideas (including clothing and furniture!), than I recall being, but I was young when I read it, and I didn’t have the most developed critical faculties then. It wasn’t even the idea of submitting that attracted me most — I never did — but the idea that you could have all these different powers and abilities, only for a limited time. At that age, I appreciated the idea of trying on different roles and seeing what you could do with them.

The Carmine Infantino art looked oddly streamlined to me, with all the speed lines and flat faces, but he became one of the first artists I could recognize due to his distinctive style and how often I reread those issues.

for the month of March … I’m going to try and make a point of emphasis out of linking all of the creations we talk about in comics on a regular basis with their creators. Therefore, if there’s an Aquaman movie announced next month, I’m hoping to say “Paul Norris and Mort Weisinger’s Aquaman character” as opposed to automatically writing “DC Comics’ Aquaman character.”

His post goes on to pre-emptively address potential quibbling, the most significant of which is this: “There are also instances where it could be said that referencing an original creator isn’t all that appropriate when it’s a subsequent creator or creators whose efforts are the reason the creation is being discussed.” That way lies madness, as we try to figure out who really created, for example, the Wolverine we now know.

Still, the point is to acknowledge true creation instead of corporate acquisition, and that’s something I can definitely get behind.

It is common, at Conventions, to see four times as many men on panels as women, often despite the fact that there are many more female authors, editors, and publishers at the Convention … in the audience. Given that a gender split of 60% women to 40% men is about average at genre conventions, this ratio is rarely reflected in the panels and guests of honour. It should be the responsibility of a Con organiser to notice the gender imbalance and address it — before the Convention. … There are just as many female authors in the SFF community as male, if not more. So why does the SFF convention-running world that was built decades ago still assume that most SFF is being written by men, for men?

Paul Cornell

I found myself wondering what would happen if comic creators took the same approach. (Interestingly, the two main authors quoted in the linked piece also write comics.) Said Paul Cornell,

I’ve decided that I’m going to approach this problem via the only moral unit I’m in charge of: me. I’m going to approach this problem from the other end. And this approach is going to be very much that of a blunt instrument.

If I’m on, at any convention this year, a panel that doesn’t have a 50/50 gender split (I’ll settle for two out of five), I’ll hop off that panel, and find a woman to take my place. … I will then stay in the room to listen to the panel, and then, due to the small possibility that someone might have come to the panel purely to see me, make myself available outside afterwards, so no audience member is short-changed.

He even addresses the comic situation:

You probably won’t find enough female DC Comics creators to make the panel 50/50, convention organisers, so how about some women who write about comics? If it’s just me being interviewed, I’ll seek a female interviewer.

The comment thread resulting features more discussion, with the expected “but this would mean more work!” and “what about the poor mens left out?” complaints and the horribly wrong “women aren’t as qualified as men”. I applaud Cornell’s choice, and I hope more follow him to make the point that this change needs to come and it won’t unless people make it so.

Sadly, to do so at comic conventions would mean a lot more focus outside the superhero genre, which would be a difficult switch for organizers and planners of the larger shows, who get much of their audience (and media coverage) based only on that genre.

Update: (2/26/12) A case study. Writer/rabble-rouser Mark Millar has helped organize Kapow!, a UK comic convention. For two years, now, they haven’t bothered to announce any female guests until pressured to. When asked, Millar responded with the usual false assertions: Women creators aren’t big enough names. Women don’t work on superheroes. If women are working on the guest selection committee, then there can’t be a problem. The writer of that post, summing up the problem, asks these pertinent questions:

With the growing female readership of comics, and the larger female readership of graphic novels and books, is it a mistake to say only superhero or big money titles are the “mainstream”? And if we want things to change, if we want women to be more comfortable attending comic cons and spending their money, shouldn’t we strive to ensure they are represented by the guests themselves?

… both these series [Vampire Diaries and Secret Circle] were written “for hire” which means that the book packager owns the books the author produces. Although I didn’t even understand what “for hire” meant back in 1990, when I agreed to write books for them, I found out eventually, to my horror and dismay. It means that even though I have written the entire series, I don’t own anything about The Vampire Diaries. And from now on, the books will be written by an anonymous ghostwriter.

One can speculate why a company might disagree with an author, especially since the show based on the books is a hot one. (That’s a pun. The show’s stars recently got near-naked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, as shown here.) Here’s a followup interview with author L.J. Smith with more details.

It’s understandable why a young author would take a deal like that — many can’t break in or get published any other way. And the reality is that once a packager has an idea they think will succeed, they’ll hire anyone to pump it out, and if you won’t do it, someone else will. I do regret that book publishing is following comics in that way, to a perception that the characters and brands are what matters, not the people who create the stories.

I appreciate this fan’s passion. It’s that kind of outrage that might keep authors from signing deals like this and companies from offering them. It seems that the process of educating her on how perfectly legal (and even common) this practice is was hard for her, and that’s a shame. Most readers want to keep seeing the vision they enjoy from the author who brought it to them. I hope all those disappointed readers stop buying the books by people other than the original author.

What I’m linking to is a promo post for Evernote, but I thought some readers might appreciate seeing Matt Madden’s process in tracking his various comic projects. Madden is an accomplished comic creator (Odds Off) and teacher (Drawing Words & Writing Pictures) who created one of my all-time favorite craft books, 99 Ways to Tell a Story.

I use Evernote myself to keep track of review copies and ideas for posts. I was using Things, but it’s Apple-only, and my phone is Android, so I needed a cross-platform system. It’s free, if you keep your expectations for storage reasonable and don’t need to store Office files in it.

Friends With Boys

Faith Erin Hicks continues her glimpses into the life of a freelancer by telling you how to pitch a graphic novel to a publisher. Or how she did it, anyway. As she says,

They’re tough to do, because you’re trying to convey a lot through the shortest and most succinct language possible, and you’re also trying to do it in a way that is 1) enthusiastic (“you really want to buy this comic, publisher!”) and 2) clear eyed and cool (“I believe in this project, but I am not acting like it is the second coming of Star Wars because that’s obnoxious and people can see through that hucksterism”).

She also shares her pitch and outline for Friends With Boys, due out later this month, pointing out “it shows I have a good idea of what kind of story I want to tell, and the publisher I’m pitching to can judge whether or not it’s the kind of story they want to publish.” In the comments, there’s also discussion about how to find an agent.

I so hope that all this supplementary material is released somehow. Just having it on the web isn’t enough (especially since I suspect that, once the book is out, the full reprint online will go away). I want a volume, even if it’s a self-published minicomic, with all these notes and commentary, to sit next to the book on my shelf.

In other example of valuable professional advice, Jesse Post reviews his work lettering and ballooning the excellent Johnny Hiro. He takes several examples from the book, following the reader’s eye flow through the work, both good and those where compromises had to be made.

If you take in the entire page and follow along naturally, one balloon to the next, you start to see how the balloons act as guides. They ask your eye to linger over artwork you might otherwise skip, back and forth across images, leaping over dead space and further enlivening the live space, words and pictures harmonious at last.

This is an important craft that not enough people pay attention to. It’s one of those “silent skills” that is most noticeable when it fails, while great work goes unremarked because of its achievement.

Bill Walko (The Hero Business) drew this one-panel cartoon of Wonder Woman as a Disney Princess as part of a contest exploring comic book characters in different genres. Love it! Captures her personality as well as her appearance. I want to buy a print! (Actually, I want to buy that comic series.) His post has his background sketches, too.