In part one we looked at how perhaps the most unloved of minicomics is the current crop of “new” minis, which are often viewed as too professional-looking by some traditional minicomics creators, and not professional enough by some mainstream publishers. It’s not that these non-traditional minis are a completely new development, they aren’t; Harvey Pekar began in comics by publishing highly professional-looking publications and, a couple of decades later, here in the UK, Paul B. Rainey, the brains behind There’s No Time Like the Present, was publishing comic books like Memory Man, that could easily, and comfortably, sit on the shelves alongside the best that the big names were producing.
Whilst the shape of the new non-traditional minicomics is more uniform than some traditional minis, with many creators opting for the traditional comic book format, the contents are still as rich and varied as ever, ranging from kid-friendly stories, to humour strips, to mature reader titles – and from stand-alone stories, to complete series. With his comic Sister Mary Dracula, published through ComixPress, Gerry Mooney is in the process of producing a series, whereas Jason Nocera, also through ComixPress, used the same format to create a comic book featuring his comic strip characters Buddy and Hopkins. The cartoonist known as Stik, Bill Greenhead, meanwhile, publishes his Cow panels and strips in an ongoing World of Cow series, in a slightly smaller, book format, with a thicker cover and glossier full-colour pages inside, through Lulu.
(Gerry Mooney’s Sister Mary Dracula #2, Paul B Rainey’s Memory Man, Stik’s Cow Tales and Jason Nocera’s Buddy and Hopkins)
The major difference today is the cost involved in producing the publications. Where once only very daring and brave creators like Harvey Pekar dared to tread, because having your own comic printed to industry standard was a very risky and expensive business, thanks to POD, anyone who wants to see their work produced in a high quality format, can follow.
Gerry Mooney’s Sister Mary Dracula, is the story of Terry Malloy, a fourth-grader at St. Egregius, the Stricter, Elementary School, who is sure his teacher is a vampire and that she has selected him for her next victim. Mooney, who has created work for various publications including Forbes, Parents, Publisher’s Weekly, the New York Daily News, Mad, Newsweek, and The New Republic, has embraced the non-traditional route when it comes to getting his project out to the public. An enthusiastic user of POD, Mooney says:
“Print-On-Demand publishing allows artists to sell merchandise with very minimal start up costs, or even for no upfront costs at all. Anyone can go to sistermarydracula.com to read several sample pages, view the original flash animation, tour the Sketch Gallery, read the “How I Draw a Comic” feature or buy the comic book and a raft of merchandise online.”
Mooney’s Sister Mary Dracula was created, first, as a Flash animation, and in 2004 the movie was selected to premiere at the San Diego Comic Con, Independent Film Festival. With more and more people heading to his site to see the animation of Sister Mary Dracula, Mooney began thinking of creating a graphic novel based on the movie, and establishing a Sister Mary Dracula website. It’s from that site that Mooney sells the first two chapters of the graphic novel, in comic book form. With this series of steps, Mooney is utilising all the modern technological advances that are now available to creators and with the publication of his graphic novel as a series twenty four-page comic books, each of which continues a chapter in the story of Sister Mary Dracula, Mooney’s use of ComixPress’s POD service looks like a natural progression in what is swiftly becoming a necessary part of the serious creator’s new business model – with the creator in control of his or her creation’s every development. According to Mooney the process of publishing through ComixPress is painless and relatively straight-forward:
“The way it works is like this: You go to their website and set up a print job, specifying number of pages and other formatting. You then send your files (I send a CD but I think they have an ftp site) in PDF format. Once they receive and check the files, they send an email invoice. For the 24 page comics I am doing, the setup fee is about $18.00 (which is currently around £11 I think) which includes one proof copy.
It takes about three weeks to get the proof. If you like it you can then order any quantity, as well as have it sold on their web store. For the 24 page comic each copy costs $1.35, and I sell them for $2.95.
None of this involves any copyright or rights to the content of any kind. ComixPress is just a Print-on-demand service. I also have been very happy with the quality, so much so that I skipped getting a proof copy for chapter two of Sister Mary Dracula and just ordered copies when I sent my files in.”
(Like Achewood, you can buy Sister Mary Dracula comics directly from the creator, Mooney’s, site – www.mooneyart.com)
Another convert to POD, is Bill (Stik) Greenhead. Like Gerry Mooney, Stik is a cartoonist and an animator, and his POD characters from his World of Cow series also appear in Flash movies that you can find on his site – along with information about buying his books. Unlike Mooney, though, Stik publishes his books through Lulu, and his comics are more a soft cover book than a comic book; and they are in full colour.
Stik started drawing his cow jokes when he was one of only two cartoonists in the running to design the Kraft Dairylea Cows, but even as he was supplying the agency with his designs, he could see the possible gag potential of his bovine characters:
“I thought it would be great if each triangle or pack had a different joke on it. Cards perhaps, a huge collectable range. I think the creatives were very keen on my ideas, but there was a problem. My cows were essentially the same design as they are now, except the legs were more like thick string. I think ultimately the design put them off and they went with the other fella.”
Stik, who draws his cartoons directly into the computer using a Wacom tablet and Photoshop software, “to keep a natural freehand look”, continued to work on and develop his characters and the internet, particularly his blog, provided an opportunity for him to develop the work and get it out to the wider public:
“I developed the cows, but never really found a home for them. Then when I turned 40 I started a blog. To fill the blog daily I thought I’d set myself a challenge. I was feeling like I wasn’t capable of creating new material, so I declared to the world (about 100 odd readers, anyhow) that I would create a cow joke a day for a year. I did it and, my book 365 Cow Jokes later was the result of that first challenge. I’m up to 524, and counting.
It’s amazing to see how the strip has developed over the last 2 years. The cows now talk, fly, tell gags and even the grass is beginning to get a part. It’s all down to blogging. It forces me to create cartoons daily; something I’d never have done. I’d start out with good intentions and get to about 30 strips and give up.”
(Stik’s storefront at Lulu.com via his blog)
Not so very long ago, none of these comics might have existed at all, unless the creators’ had been willing to either wait until some publisher got around to maybe taking a chance on the work, or unless the creators’ themselves came into a large amount of disposable income to take on the Offset-printing gamble. I costed this stuff myself back in the day (BPOD – before print-on-demand) and the best deal I could find for a 32 page, full-colour comic, was a five-figure outlay for the 100,000 copies I needed to subscribe to, in order to keep the cost down. Today of course, I can use POD with ComixPress, or Lulu, or Ka-Blam, or We Do Comics, and I can have as few as one single copy of my full-colour comic book printed for me, and no doubt thanks as much to the new competition as technological advances in traditional printing, I can even find a printer who will knock me up as few as 50 or 100 Offset copies.
The very low cost of getting a very professional POD publication out there is surely very tempting for those who have had their fingers burned creating the allegedly cheap-as-chips traditional minicomics. Their experience flies in the face of the received wisdom that producing a traditional minicomic is fast, easy and cheap – all of which is true, up to a point, because whilst it can be relatively easy and cheap for some people to produce a traditional minicomic, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is going to be easy and cheap for you to produce your minicomic, particularly if it is your first. In fact I would go so far as to say that unless you are putting together a very short, very basic, comic, with the same paper outside and in, and handing the job of printing and stapling over to an outfit like Kinkos, that you might be in for a shock when you see just how much time, effort and money it takes to put even the most amateurish-looking, little minicomic together. Anything more sophisticated, will very probably require at least your presence during the printing process, if not your direct supervision, and possibly a lot more of your time, and your effort than you can afford to give. I, for one, am not going to refuse to recognise a self-published comic as a minicomic, simply because it has a different format, or because it looks too good.
In The Changing Face of Minicomics, Part 3, we will look at more closely at the pricing of POD and the true cost of making a homemade, folksy, traditional, minicomic; Part 1 can be read here.
Internationally published cartoonist Rod has a regularly updated blog which you can check out, and for more information and a glimpse at some of his many works visit Rodtoons and enjoy browsing the gallery.
Fri, Sep 12, 2008
Comics and cartoons, Rod's musings