Welcome back to another installment of Indie Comics Showcase, the weekly blog where we signal boost a few truly independent comics that are currently crowdfunding their projects, crowdsourcing their funding in some way, or just completely self-publishing on their own. Every little bit of support for these creators matters, from a single dollar pledge to the twenty-five dollar bundle, and of course the higher tiers are usually fun too! Even if you can’t back a campaign or buy a book, you can share or tweet about these projects to your friends and followers.
On Indie Comics Showcase, we interview the creators, show off some art, and tell you how you can check out the product for yourself. Below we have some outstanding crowdfunding campaigns this week for you to learn about, enjoy, and hopefully support by backing one or more of them! Thanks for checking these out and for being the best part of Indie Comics Showcase. Let’s jump in!
All Luck Comics
Retro-Style Action!
by Dan Davis
Check out the campaign here!
Chris Braly: Tell our readers your elevator pitch for All Luck Comics Adventures #1.
Dan Davis: ALCA is my own action oriented comic with three ongoing features all concocted and drawn by me. Spies, Space, and Spear guns is the short take. SPY 66 takes place in 1966 and features April Thunder, Agent 66, in the spy crazed era that was the mid-sixties. Expect over the top villains, evil lairs, gadgets, girls, and guns! CAPTAIN LUCK is a modern day adventurer in the tradition of Terry and the Pirates or Indiana Jones, but being in the Bermuda Triangle has a supernatural twist with a little Jonny Quest and Tintin thrown in for good measure. And the third is BLAST CARSON ON MARS:1,000,000 BC and I think the title says it all. He accidentally lands on a prehistoric world of Martian dinosaurs, cave people, alien creatures, and a just developing race of little green men with flying saucers!
CB: You’re a veteran artist and you’ve worked on some pretty big properties. What made you go indie and how did your experiences inform how you’ve approached this book?
DD: The changing market now has a good indie opportunity for creators and the freedom of calling your own shots, for better or for worse, is really rewarding. I hope to continue to build this series and even have it outlast my working for other employers. Investing your talents into other people’s creations is okay, but they can take it away from you anytime they want. Series get canceled and even entire companies can go away, but if I want to do another issue of my own book, that’s up to me and that’s great!
CB: How did this all come together?
DD: It’s been a lifetime goal to do my own comic and I recently got a work schedule where I could carve out some time to get at it! I had three ideas that floated to the top of what I wanted to do and didn’t like the idea of doing a graphic novel or series with just one of them, so I opted for the anthology format like the old Golden Age comic books that would have many adventure characters in shorter stories and I could enjoy all three genres that I wanted to draw right away! The title comes from that kind of forties title, More Fun Comics, etc. Just combine an adjective, a noun, and Comics and you had a title!
CB: Tell us a little more about the project. What do you think readers will like about it most and what kind of comic fans do you expect this comic will entertain the most?
DD: Action, action, action! And I hope readers will respond to a lighter touch, not grim and gritty all the time. I’m also using a colorful palette reminiscent of the four color era and Sunday funnies of the past. I find the realistic current coloring trends a bit drab. Action and adventure with a humorous touch is my main ambition. Just having fun with it and hopefully the reader will too!
CB: Tell us a bit about your creative team or if there are any other creators that have contributed to this? Who or what inspired this?
DD: I am the creative team! It’s all me done entirely in Clip Studio Paint. It’s marvelous that the technology allows me to do everything for the book in one program. I did bring in some great cover artists for the current campaign to do Variants, like Tim Levins, John Royle, and Kevin West, all doing covers for Issue 2. It was surreal to see these great artists drawing my characters, plus I got to ink and color all their covers which was a blast.
Creators that inspired this project would be a long list. Surely Steranko and Gulacy inspired me to do a spy comic. Wally Wood and Kirby as well. I really have a love for that 60’s era of spy movies and TV so that’s in there as well. Blast Carson really comes from the crazy names the golden age comic books like Planet Comics would feature. Knockoff Flash Gordons which I always thought were so much fun. The real Flash Gordon as well by Raymond and Williamson. Captain Luck comes from Terry and The Pirates and Captain Easy type of adventurers. So Caniff and Crane are right up there as well as Alley Oop by V.T. Hamlin, a rollicking good adventure strip in its day.
CB: What are you learning from crowdfunding and creating through this process?
DD: Learning the ropes from making the videos at the campaign (which turned out to be a lot of fun!) to just figuring out how to do everything the first time has been an eyeopener to what goes into this. They say don’t try it by yourself, but that’s all I got so I just jumped in with the motto, “Mistakes will be made!” But it’s really turned out well and I’m enjoying the feedback a lot.
CB: Anything else you’d like to share about the project? And do you have any final words for our readers?
DD: Just a big thanks to everyone for their support and especially for spreading the word even if they couldn’t contribute in these crazy times. People really are amazing and I’m all about the positive side of things and appreciative of all the comments.
CB: Thanks for chatting with us! Good luck and we are rooting for you!
DD: Thanks for helping me get the word out! It’s been a pleasure.
Check out the All Luck Comics campaign here!
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ACCESS DENIED
by Samuel George London
In the near future, an artificial intelligence named Zeus leaves Earth to build an android city on Mars called Neo Olympus. Twenty years on, and although human-android relations are tense, humans are invited to build an embassy in the new city. Everything goes according to plan, until forbidden love blossoms between the human ambassador’s son and Zeus’ daughter. It’s a sci-fi adventure comic about forbidden love between an android from Mars and a human from Earth.
Check out the campaign here!
Chris Braly: Tell our readers your elevator pitch for Access Denied. Briefly tell our readers what’s up.
Samuel George London: A sci-fi adventure comic about forbidden love between an android from Mars and a human from Earth.
CB: You successfully funded this on Kickstarter first before moving to Indiegogo. What are you learning from crowdfunding and creating through this process?
SG: I’m constantly learning from crowdfunding in so many ways. Business-wise you learn a lot about shipping and that filters through to the creative process because when you’re coming up with extra rewards they should be light and compact. For instance, on ACCESS DENIED backers can get a jigsaw, which is cool to have but from a shipping perspective it’s light and compact, so doesn’t cost much more to include in a parcel.
Also creatively, I’ve learnt that people are happy to support indie comic books as long as the pitch is compelling. On my first Kickstarter, Milford Green, I didn’t have any following but I still managed to raise a siginificant amount of funds. I like to think it’s because backers found the pitch compelling, which is also another great part of the process. Crowdfunding comic books help hone your pitching skills, which should hopefully translate to making better pitches to publishers.
CB: What advice would you share with other indie creators doing crowdfunding that you’ve learned?
SG: Get involved in the community. Crowdfunding websites have large communities of comic creators and fans on them, so be sure to be part of that. Back projects you like, contact the creators and let them know they’ve done a good job. Also, get involved with the comment sections on projects.
And lastly, I’d recommend updating your backers with your progress at least once a month post-crowdfunding. Creating a trustworthy rapport with backers is essential in trying to forge a long lasting career.
CB: Is this your first comic work? Tell us about any previous work and how you’ve brought your experience to this project and it all came together.
SG: This is my sixth crowdfunding campaign. My first was, Milford Green, which is a Victorian alien adventure story. Originally it was a one-shot but this went on to have two further installments, which were funded on Kickstarter, called Beyond Milford Green and Defend Milford Green.
I’ve also funded an all-ages horror comic called Project Hoax with art from Dan Butcher. It’s basically my love letter to the 90s when I was a paperboy riding around on my BMX. We had a lot of fun with that campaign but one of the funnest things was having a cassette tape USB drive as one of the rewards, one of which sits on my desk to this day.
CB: Tell us a little more about the story.
SG: In the near future, an artificial intelligence named Zeus leaves Earth to build an android city on Mars called Neo Olympus. Twenty years on, and although human-android relations are tense, humans are invited to build an embassy in the new city. Everything goes according to plan, until forbidden love blossoms between the human ambassador’s son and Zeus’ daughter. The question is… will love conquer all?
Based on that, I hope readers will like its originality the most. The idea first came to me after seeing a news story about artificial intelligence. From there I thought to myself that fictional stories involving artificial intelligence always depict them as wanting to eliminate humans as a natural step of logic but I wondered what other options were there. Trying my best to think outside the box, I thought that instead of the artificial intelligence putting all its energy into eliminating humans they’d just jump ship and leave Earth altogether. Fans of Valérian & Laureline, Saga and science fiction comics at large will enjoy the story but equally if you just like the idea of an adventure set in space about forbidden love then this would be for you too.
CB: Tell us a bit about your creative team or if other creators that have contributed to this? Or who may have inspired your work.
SG: I’ve carried over the creative team behind the Milford Green series to Access Denied. Starting off with the artist, Mikael Hankonen. A full-time artist from Finland, Mikael is simply superb. Efficient, effective and elegant are 3 words I’d use best to describe his work ethic and art style. Then there’s our editor, Nicole D’Andria, who’s the Marketing Director and Submissions Editor at Action Lab Comics. She joined the team on the second installment of the Milford Green series and has been my go-to editor since. In terms of inspiration, the story is in part inspired by Romeo and Juliet but it also contains aspects of Transformers, so you could say that the references of inspiration are quite far-reaching.
CB: Anything else you’d like to share about the project? And do you have any final words for our readers?
SG: There’s not much else to share, but I will say that as well as the book itself we have some pretty cool rewards up for grabs. Including the aforementioned jigsaw, some waterproof stickers and a hardcover edition of the book.
CB: Thanks for chatting with us! Good luck and we are rooting for you!
SG: Thanks very much for this opportunity, I really appreciate it.
Check out the campaign here!
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HEXCRAFT MECHANICS #2
by Nate Masters
If you like supernatural, action, the Hexcraft Mechanics comics may be for you. This is part two of a three part urban fantasy series set in Chicago, revolving around secret societies, magic cults, demonic infestations and the demon hunters and heroes trying to keep this all in check.
Check out the campaign here!
Check out the campaign here!
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That’s it for this installment! Support indie comics!!!
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