His website is http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic/. These comics appear according to an irregular schedule, but are often updated at least once a week. However, the comics themselves are irregular. Some are traditional humor strips with continuing characters. Occasionally these are less funny and more meditative. At other times he draws surreal (and sometimes very strange) single-panel gag cartoons, like this one.  Enjoy!

- Sarah Morean

Kickstarter is an internet infant, having only been around since April 2009.  If its existence is news to you, I suggest that you read this excellent Publisher’s Weekly article from Terri Heard that illuminates some of the service’s history.  Most interesting to me was that its origins lay in the effort to keep Arrested Development on the air.  Oh, how I wish it had succeeded!

This month’s Wired Magazine also featured Kickstarter in its award-winning Start section.  It reminded me of specific Kickstarter success stories like the Calvin & Hobbes documentary Dear Mr. Watterson which is still openly accepting donations and generating mad cash.  In fact, it’s almost doubled its goal amount through Kickstarter donations.

I’ve lived a number of impulse purchase success stories, including the time I bought an orange coat I totally didn’t need but always receive compliments for wearing.  Basically, I’ve been a big fan of this model even before it existed.  The fact that it’s here now is so remarkable and unbelievable, I hardly appreciated it was real until someone I know well got involved.

Then I remembered an old friend from far away, Box Brown, had already made the Kickstarter system work for him.  Boxy makes the webcomic Bellen! and self-published minis until he won the Xeric to print his graphic novel Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing.  He recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign that earned him $3,279 to print issues one and two of a new comic series Everything Dies.  We talked over email regarding his experience as a Kickstarter success story.

How long was your Kickstarter page active?

39 Days.

How long after posting it did you reach your goal?

Um, I’m not sure. I think had about 10 days left when I reached $2500. Maybe less. I ended up getting close to $3300. So, people just kept on donating even after I reached my goal.

Was this the first time you used Kickstarter?

Yes, it was.

How difficult has it been/will it be to get the right rewards to the right donors?

For the most part it wasn’t difficult. I thought it would be much worse. There were a few hiccups though: just a few people never got me their addresses! I thought there would be more and luckily the three people who did not send me their addresses were family friends, so I was able to hand them their copies. At least two of the envelopes completely fell apart before they reached their destination. One poor guy just received an empty envelope! But, it’s been fairly smooth sailing otherwise.

How soon after your Kickstarter closed did you receive the funds?

It takes a few weeks. It’s a few days for Amazon to set up and verify your bank account and then it takes two more weeks to transfer the funds. They transfer the cash directly to your checking account which ruled!

Did you think the percentage Kickstarter claimed for their services was worth-while?

For me it was totally worth the cost, it really gets transferred to the donors, kinda. You just have to factor that in to your goal.

How did you learn about Kickstarter?

I think the first one I saw was Jamie Tanner’s Kickstarter. I was totally blown away! But, then I saw Spike’s and the Tiny Kitten Teeth one gaining HUGE success and I thought, I think I could do that too.  Also, the Everything Dies project was really coming together in my mind and Kickstarter seemed like a good fit for it.

Everyone at the lowest levels of donation will receive books 1 or 1+2. This means you’ve pre-sold about 110 copies of your book! That’s awesome. Still, how does this compare to your usual sales? How many copies do you usually print in one run? AND how will do you intend to reach your potential audience for books 1+2 (by which I mean, people who did not participate in the Kickstarter fundraiser)?

Well, it was interesting. Having sold pre-sold all those copies was great. But, it also meant that my “base” had already bought books! These are the people who are great true fans and will usually be super happy to fork over a couple of bucks for books when they come out. So, the first week of actual sales was super slow (or at least it felt that way). Either way though unloading over 100 copies right away felt great for me. It usually takes a month or two to reach that goal (If I’m lucky!). I printed 500 copies of each book for the first run but they seem to be moving. We’ve still got the whole con season to go pretty much! I’ve been selling a few copies here and there on my online store but have been moving more books than usual at the few comic shops that carry my work. The audience for Bellen! and Everything Dies may not generally overlap unfortunately, but it seems to do much better with the analog comics crowd. I also have an ad up at The Comics Reporter.

I had a big book release party/Art Show here in Philly at a comic shop called Brave New Worlds. and books seem to be selling well. They’ve got a great set up there where the customers have to walk through the little art gallery to get the shop and I think that’s helped sales. I’ve already had to replenish their supply.

How does this compare to winning the Xeric? Is there more or less expectation, do you think? Did you ask for enough in your Kickstarter to help cover promotion of these books?

Xeric comes with more prestige for sure. There are plenty of people who will be interested in your book just because it’s a Xeric Book. Kickstarter doesn’t have that appeal. In fact, there are certain people in the business who have made Kickstarter controversial. I don’t know why. As far as promotion goes, I’ve spent money on it, but it really seems that the best promotion is free from places like The Daily Cross Hatch, other blogs and even the local media here in Philly. One thing I have spent money on is sending out promotional copies to lots of different places.

- – -

Just one statement confused me in Boxy’s response:
In fact, there are certain people in the business who have made Kickstarter controversial.

I’ve never known cartoonists to pooh-pooh free money and a built-in audience, but if there are legitimate arguments against using Kickstarter to help fund your next creative pursuit, I’d love to hear them.  Like with any self-publishing venture, if you rely on Kickstarter or your mom or your savings account or whatever, you should be committed to (and comfortable with) self-promotion or you’ll never move a single book.  Kickstarter could be a great resource for the right person, but many other cartoonists benefit from a publisher’s promotional arm or distribution ring.  You should stage a plan of attack, maybe if no one will publish your book, go for the more prestigious Xeric, failing that try for a modest Kickstarter fund, failing that rely on ol’ number one — you!

Additionally, depending on your level of success on Kickstarter, you should prepare yourself to make good on your claim.  Say someone will be written into your book?  Make sure that’s really something you’re comfortable with.  In looking at the high-rollers, it seems that the vanity tiers pay very well, but not everyone’s work lends itself to that kind of patronage.  Just remember that these supporters are investors as well, and you’ll want to make them happy with a prompt return so far as that is possible given your proposal.  The internet’s full of love, as Kickstarter has shown, but it gets pretty spiteful against those who flake on purchase orders and commissions.

I don’t know the statistics for failed comics projects, but here are some Kickstarter success stories:

One Night Stand

Everything Dies #1-2

SketchyCon: A Worldwide Conference of Dr. Sketchy’s Directors

And here’s a few comics-related projects you can still get behind:

Superhero Web Series

Dear Mr. Watterson

Johnny Recon Vol. 1 No. 2

James Kochalka + Pixeljam = Glorkian Warrior

FIXIT magazine for comics and art

Comix Journalism: Send Ted Rall Back to Afghanistan to Get the Real Story

Reading With Pictures: Getting Comics into Schools and Getting Schools into Comics

Good luck!

- Sarah Morean

Hive is a theme-less comics anthology that’s edited by J.M. Shiveley and printed by Grimalkin Press — Shiveley’s ambitious DIY publishing company. To wit, the third issue of Hive is being sold through a Barnes & Noble store.  See?  Ambitious.

Yes, individual B&N stores have a history of carrying books from small-time publishers, but those titles tend to cover local history and still look like “books.” You know, soft- and hard-cover vanity-pressed books.

None of these terms describe Hive 3 which is folded concertina-style and has a double-sided letterpress cover. Hive 3 is certainly a fat 2-in-1 booklet, which is something I thought I’d never see in a big box bookstore.  I’m calling that an achievement.

That said, while printing experiments in comics are admirable, there are some clear issues with the publication style of Hive 3.  It’s eye-catching, sure, but there’s just too much going on with the printing of this book that doesn’t make sense for the material.  I guess if you’re going to charge $10 for a self-published hand-made black-and-white anthology, it should really have something distinctive going on, but I’m afraid this issue has crossed the line from unique to gimmicky.

To be fair though, a book shouldn’t be judged entirely by its cover, and what Hive 3 presents deep down inside is a high-quality selection of short comics and art.

Hive 3 a is simply outstanding collection of comics.  Every story is excellent.  It captures a full array of styles and subjects and I enjoyed every minute spent reading and re-reading it.  Contributors for this issue include Karl and Matt Kindt, Malachi Ward, John Kinhart, Dax Delap, Hawk Krall, Andrew Drilon, Jon Freihofer, Eamon Espey, Chad R. Woody, Joe Decie, Joshua W. Cotter, Mostyn, J.M. Shiveley, Douglas Wilson and Mark Leicht.

Krall’s contribution is a series of “Summer of 7-11″ recollections, in which he describes a summer job as a convenience store clerk. His stories are full of crazy, incomprehensible, foul characters. It’s awesome. And his drawing style is perfect for expressing the wild, nasty people he encounters in the store.

Ward tells a science fiction story that takes place partly in a cave and partly in the protagonist’s mind. It jumps swiftly from strange to eerie and is rendered in his lovely brushstroke style and with gray accents.

Drilon tells a story that is a sobering mix of memory and mysticism for a man in the Philippines who struggles with his family’s response to his first homosexual relationship.  He uses interesting stylistic devices to distinguish between past and present.  In the present, his drawings are layered and realistic and tonally more grown-up.  The adult years are also narrated by type-written text, rather than hand-written text.  When he looks back on his past, the illustrations have a clean line and look more playful.

This is a very full anthology and covers monsters, the Civil War, sex, and death.  It is also 140 pages long!  This could have easily been two issues instead of one.  Still, Hive 4 is on its way to the presses and it seems Shiveley has no shortage of willing contributors for future issues, so there was really no reason to space out the material.  That’s a good kind of problem to have. I am just befuddled by the way Grimalkin Press decided to handle these pages for the publication of Hive 3 which, as I mentioned before, uses a concertina fold.

If you’re not familiar with concertina folds, just imagine two mini-comics that share a back cover. Once you finish with one side, you flip over the book to find a second booklet. This can be a very cool way to print something if you have the right reason to do so. 140 pages is admittedly a lot of paper to deal with, and a concertina fold can break that up into manageable parts, but its use in this instance is so entirely uninspired. The book as a whole doesn’t share a theme or have a “flip side” perspective — its content is all over the map. There is no logical way to break up the content to begin with, so separating it physically into two parts is just arbitrary compartmentalization that clearly reduces the comics to their page count. It just looks like, because the previous two issues were fold-and-staple, they went that way a third time by default. For a DIY publishing company that aspires to think outside the box, this is a pretty disappointing display of their talents.

There are so many interesting ways that they could have bound flat pages, or worked in signatures, or something even crazier than my mind can conjure. Finding ways to hand-bind 140 pages as a single book is a challenge, and I’m not impressed by the way Grimalkin Press chose to meet this challenge in this instance. Not to mention, the two booklets each need a face trim (a cut that makes the pages flush on the right side and easier to turn). Any self-published book that wants to be taken seriously ought to have a face trim. The technology is simple: cutting board + metal ruler + razor blade = go!

The double-sided letterpress job on the cover is another story. It’s very cool that they went letterpress with this issue, but the intent of the letterpress is confusing. The cover stock is so thin that impressions compete with each other and end up creating very little indentation on the page at all. Plus, letterpressing both sides has had given the effect of streaky ink, which you’ll notice in the cover photo accompanying this review. Whether or not that effect is desirable comes down to taste.

The title of the book was printed on a proof press with large type. To see the whole title, you’d need lay out the whole cover flat (more or less). The way this effects how text appears on the cover is interesting. The effect of the broken-up subtitle leads to a misrepresentation of the book as a “quarterly comic journal” instead of “a somewhat quarterly comic journal.”  However, most confusing for me is that it’s not even a journal!  It’s an anthology.  I realize that coming from someone at The “Daily” Crosshatch this must sound like the pot calling the kettle black, but as someone who works with real journals all day in a library, I couldn’t not notice the cheeky disregard for nomenclature. There is not a single journalistic element to the book, just comics and bios.  The editorial selection process of culling talent for publication does not make a book a journal.  That’s an anthology.

The take away from all this is that when it comes to Hive 3 — just read it.  Don’t think too much about it. I’ve thought about it enough already for all of us.  Just read those lovely comics and remember that Hive 3 is likely just the third publication that Grimalkin Press has worked on. They’re clearly ambitious and have their heart in the right place and will continue to promote amazing artists and work on unique books for many years to come. This particular issue just rubbed me the wrong way.

If you’d like to be rubbed wrong by Hive 3 — it’s $10 + shipping through the Grimalkin Press etsy shop.

Hopefully they’ll be around producing books for many years to come and dare to push the envelope of self-publishing a little farther and more masterfully with each attempt.  I’m sorry that the first time I’ve discuss their catalog it sounds so negative, but I really do believe if they live up to their creed and gain more experience they’re going to be amazing.  Watch out for these guys.  They could eventually cross a line where all these confused printing mechanics get used in a most incredible and inspiring way.

- Sarah Morean

Depending on your mood, you will either find Sad Animals mildly amusing or totally hilarious.  When I bought it a few weeks ago I thought it was clever.  Today though, it’s really entertaining me.  I don’t know how the gags got funnier, but they did.

Sad Animals has been sitting near the register at Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis for over a year now.  I took my sweet time buying it, for sure.  I mean, it’s kind of a breezy read.  You could easily finish the whole mini just waiting for Michael Drivas to bag your books.  When I finally broke down and got it, Drivas was kind enough to tell me the history of Sad Animals and its legacy at his store.

Sad Animals was written by an artist in North Carolina named Adam Meuse.  He doesn’t usually make comics.  Meuse is a fine artist who makes a living on portraiture.  I assumed his book was sitting at Big Brain for so long because nobody was buying it.  Apparently though, it’s a local best-seller.  Drivas can’t stock enough of these, and Meuse just sits around waiting for orders while rolling in cash (one assumes).  I’m a little in awe, but that’s mostly the jealousy.  Who wouldn’t kill to have one great mini that basically sold itself?  I’ve since learned that it’s also a best-seller at Skylight Books in Los Angeles.

The idea of the book is simple.  One gag per page, illustrating a wild animal introspecting.  Take the fish who thinks ‘I’m one dumb motherfucker’ or the bulldog who realizes he’s fat.  This is ridiculous shit.  It’s good for a re-read, good for a gift, good for impressing your friends, good for the spirit.

The book is $4 and that’s money well-spent.  You can order it online through Atomic Books or pressure your local store to stock it.  Warn them though, it has a tendency to fly off the shelves.

– Sarah Morean

He also worked on a few publications back in college and loves doing cartoons.  You can check out his latest comics on his blog The Short Plank.

– Sarah Morean

Eliza Frye has an overwhelming talent for constructing beautiful images.  I sat next to her at APE in 2009 and was totally awestruck by her work.  Dumbstruck even.  Still, fans kept flocking to her table, chatting her up, and I wondered ‘How does anyone know what to say to someone whose artwork is so goddamn gorgeous?’  Fandom is an art all its own, I tell you.

Her background as an illustrator and character artist comes across strongly in projects like The Lady’s Murder.  In it, she takes a rather sexy poem from S. Albert Chatman and uses his idea to build a bony story structure from which her gorgeous art hangs lush and wild.

Frye’s art is the meat of this piece.  The story is an extension of the poem, yes, but the intention of the comic isn’t to flesh out the poem’s core plot, but to flesh out the subject of the poem — a woman who is dangerous and lovely named Marie Madeline.  Her story is told in a series of vignettes styled as conversations between an anonymous, silent interviewer — the reader — and the people from her life.

These former friends of hers are mostly lascivious men.  When they remember Marie, their recollections feel quite voiceless and hollow, merely stating what she does or where she goes.  They say nothing about who she is or what she wants.  Everything you learn about Marie Madeline, the woman who captured so many hearts, could be summarized as a crude observations of her body.  Still, that’s where Frye shines.  She draws lady bodies like nobody’s business.

This book serves as an incredibly superficial definition of one girl who led a pretty fascinating life.  It’s too bad that the book only shows one side of her, it would have been interesting to see into Marie’s personality.  Perhaps it will take a third author, drawing from Frye’s work, to take Marie’s story to the next level.

Most comic books strive to become multi-layered character-driven stories, but get trapped by their very ambition.  For that reason, it’s easy to appreciate the straight-forwardness of this piece.  Frye’s interpretation of Chatman’s poem is the one that happily permits ample freedom for her to demonstrate her artistic prowess.  She didn’t let the story bog her down and as a result the story of The Lady’s Murder is almost entirely functional and allows her pure ambition to create a beautiful comic book shine through the project.

It’s clear that what Frye relishes the act of knowing a character’s form from all angles.  And she’s amazing at it.  Each page showed a new aspect of Marie Madeline that was alluring and interesting.

If you can find the lovely limited-edition screen-printed hard copy, currently sold out, it will be among the jewels in your collection.  Or if you just want to read the story and see Frye’s gorgeous art, she has posted the entire book online which you can read for free: http://www.theladysmurder.elizafrye.com/?p=6

- Sarah Morean

Sims has self-published his comics since high school.  His early books were memorable for their large 8.5″x11″ format.  With his latest mini, Rapscallion #5 he’s scaled down the format a bit to the standard, more affordable, quarter fold but hopes to print large again someday.

Expect the next issue of Rapscallion soon, which will be a faux-tabloid style comic.  I can’t wait.  In the meantime, check out Sims’ blog for more action, adventure and comedy.

- Sarah Morean

Her daily blog can be found at www.melikesyou.blogspot.com. Enjoy!

- Sarah Morean

The event was held at The Source, a local comics and games store. The Source has a large back room that they use to host, among other things, gaming nights and Free Comic Book Day. This was the first time it was used for Indy Comic Book Week. “When I heard about the event, I thought it was a great idea,” said Burl Zorn, a Source employee with a gray ponytail and a long earring dangling from one ear. Zorn has been working at the Source for ten years, and plans to be here for many years to come. Zorn’s job requires him to wear many different hats, and he does it all with a smile. Throughout the night, I watched him interact happily with all the different attendees, restock the free chips and pop, and talk excitedly with the artists about their work.

In all, there were 17 local artists tabling at the event, and over 150 different local comics represented on the racks that usually house the regular sampling of D.C. and Marvel titles. (Some artists submitted multiple titles.) The event lasted from 5:00 to 9:00, with a steady crowd throughout. “Things usually die down an hour earlier in the winter,” said Zorn, “because it gets so cold and dark, and people want to go home.” But the Indy Comics event seemed to keep things bustling longer.

The creator tables were covered with bright red and blue tablecloths, and a fancy name card marked each person’s place. I quickly found my own card next to Danno Klonowski’s. Klonowski is a pivotal member of the Minneapolis branch of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy, and throughout the evening, our corner of the room was visited by many different cartoonist conspiracy members, including Steve Stwalley, Dan Olson, Ryan Dow, and Mike Toft. Cross Hatch correspondent Sarah Morean also made an appearance (I was excited to finally meet her in person!). The small size of the event, and its emphasis on being local, gave it a friendly, intimate atmosphere that is often absent at larger conventions.

A highlight of Klonowski’s table was the first two issues of False Witness! The Michele Bachmann Story. False Witness was written by Bill Prendergast, and features the artwork of many local cartoonists, including Klonowski. Other brilliant offerings from Klonowski were issues from his ongoing series Many Tales of Cowardice, and his latest 24-Hour comic, from last October. Klonowski recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of his comics site, Staple Genius. To celebrate, he wrote up an insightful, hilarious, and self-deprecating history of his life as a cartoonist and posted it to his site, complete with images of Xeroxed copies of his early comics. In the last 10 years, Klonowski has created an impressive body of work, and the strength and variety of his work far outshone my own two pitiful minicomics.

Other creators at the event included Jennifer Menken, who is not actually a cartoonist but the creator of an online web series called Transylvania Television, populated by a cast of gorgeous handmade puppets. Menken was in fact sketching a puppet design during the event. Beside her was Michael May, of Cownt Tales, a comedic series “for moo-chure audiences.” He works on the series with fellow Minnesota cartoonists Gavin Spence, Paul Taylor, and Jessica Hickman.

At the next table over were Mitch Gerads and Scott Dillion of Johnny Recon. The two grew up together and have been close friends since second grade. Though they parted ways for college, they stayed in close contact, and eventually decided to collaborate on comics. Dillion’s the writer, Gerads is the artist—and the comic looks really cool.

Beside those two was Mike Bullock, a comics writer who has been part of many different collaborations over the years. One of the comics at his table was Lions, Tigers and Bears, an ongoing series that he says has a “Pixar movie feeling” in that it’s kid-friendly, but has something for all ages. Bullock is also currently writing for The Phantom, a job he originally got because he had a friend at Moonstone Books. It was supposed to be a temporary gig, but just as his temporary issue was finishing up, the regular writer quit, so Bullock became a full-time Phantom writer. Bullock declares himself a “lifelong comics fan,” who became interested in D.C. comics at age three. “I used to irritate my brother because I’d make up stories to go along with the pictures before I could read the actual words,” he said.

Sharing a nearby booth were Becky Grutzik and Matt Wendt, a comic-creating team and married couple. Their booth was full of beautiful colorful, expressive artwork, including Wendt’s dark comedy series Peep about an evil chicken, which Grutzik later spun off into a series called Peep Lite, for kids. Wendt and Grutzik do a number of art-related jobs to help pay the bills, including illustration work for Lerner Publishing in Minneapolis, and teaching a Tuesday night art class.

Across the room was Brent Schoonover with some fantastic and stylish books, including Horrorwood, a 1950’s murder mystery and Astronaut Dad, which follows “three NASA families from Houston, Texas during the boom years of the space race.” “Minneapolis is a great place for artists,” says Schoonover, who attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, which is where he met his wife, a photographer.

Near Schoonover was Carl Borg, of the Christian Comic Arts Society. He’s not a comics-maker, but a distributor. He was there with comic work by a number of his friends. Borg was born and raised in the Twin Cities area, and has been going to Fall Con for ten years.

Next to Borg was Bob Lipski, another Cartoonist Conspiracy regular, who has been working on his Uptown Girl series for six years now. Initially interested in working on children’s books, Lipski eventually decided to try his hand at comics and has been working on Uptown Girl ever since. He’s currently working on a giant Uptown Girl graphic novel. “I still enjoy writing and drawing these characters,” he says. “They feel real: it’s like I don’t have to write it anymore, they just tell me where to go. I’m not sure I could ever do a different series; it would be like cheating on my characters.” Lipski self-publishes all of his work, and sells it at various local comics events.

Towards the end of the evening, Burl Zorn circled the room with a large cardboard box, from which he pulled popcorn balls with a flourish, handing them out to the artists and their friends. We all munched on them happily (albeit awkwardly—that’s a difficult food to eat!). As the hour approached 9:00, comic books were piled into boxes, cardboard cut-outs were folded and tucked away, and comic fans piled into their cars and drove home. It was still ungodly cold out, but selling a few of one’s own comics (and acquiring a stack of new ones by local talents) kept us all a little warmer.

- Athena Currier

McNamee’s webcomic Pie updates thrice weekly.  He has drawn over 660 strips so far and shows no sign of stopping. He has been published in three issues of Pulse Comic Zine and has self-published two compilations of Pie. He recently lent his drawing skills for Duck Tales from the Crypt in Big Planet’s November newsletter.

Raskol authors Raskol Political Cartoons, which updates daily. He has been published in Pulse Comic Zine and finds that it’s not so hard to draw a daily cartoon, as long as you’re willing to cut all the people you care about out of your life. His political drawings lean to the left of the political spectrum, but have a streak of independence when it comes to the economic issues.

McNamee and Raskol met while publishing daily comic strips at The Cavalier Daily, which is an independent and self-sustaining newspaper published by students at the University of Virginia (both were graduates of the class of 2007).  McNamee  has had a table at the last two Small Pres Expos, while Raskol visited to mill about for awhile. By next year’s SPX, they plan to publish a compilation of Digestive Comics.

- Sarah Morean