Broken Frontier

Unless you are a true Renaissance Man or Woman; someone who writes, pencils, inks, colors and letters (there are some of these freaks in the world!), then you are going to need a team of people to bring your comic story to life. They will need to be talented, creative and fearless if they are going to bring your vision to the page or to the computer screen (digital comics, folks!).

They will also need to be desperate to break in, that way you don’t even have to pay them (Joke! I am only kidding!!).

So, whether you are Richard Branson looking for a new industry in which to invest or as ‘rich’ as the guy sleeping on the park bench, how do you find your team? Well, you could stand atop a pile of comics, raise your Mjolnir or Captain America’s shield replica and yell at the top of your lungs: “CREATORS ASSEMBLE!!!”, wait for the thunder and lightning to ease and then rub your eyes as the greatest unknown creators of all time appear before you (believe me, I tried this and nothing happened) … or you could get serious and start hunting for the people who will help to bring your story to life.

Yes, I know the world is a big place and I know it’s scary outside your room. I know they don’t have I WANT TO BELIEVE posters up in your local Starbuck’s … the good news is that you don’t even need to leave your room to find your creative bosom buddies (bad image!).

As many of you know, I live in Australia. I have never met anyone who has worked with me on a comic. Sure, I have ‘met’ them online where we first introduced ourselves under our forum names, but I don’t even know what most of the people that I have worked with look like. If I am lucky enough to travel back to the USA I could be sitting next to one of my collaborators on the subway and I would never know!

There is a small comics community/ industry in Australia, but I believe that if you want to ‘make it’ in comics, and by that I mean being a published creator, you have to make it in the United States of America. I am not asking you to comment on whether I am right or wrong, that is what I believe.

As such, I am yet to work with another Australian on a comic, while I have worked with a handful of Americans. I have worked with one Australian creator his name is Andrew Law. As you can see, Andrew’s work is spectacular. I am lucky to have him work on a pinup for my Tiki’s Phayrie mini comic, but more on that in another column.

So how on Earth does an Aussie meet some Americans and make a comic? This is the beauty of the internet. I have met all my collaborators online and most of them in Rob Liefeld’s forum. Through a series of message board PMs and emails I put together the team that produced Tiki’s Phayrie, my first ever creator-owned comics work.

Once you have a team in place, how do you make things happen? Seeing as Tiki’s Phayrie was my project, I somehow evolved into the team leader or project manager or… as I prefer to think of it as the Editor of the project. I worked closely with creators on things that I felt I needed to manage closely (like the look of the characters and their world) and went with a hands-off approach on things that I didn’t know too much about, such as inking or colors.

The hardest thing to do as a creative team leader is to make sure that people hit their marks: they draw the characters the way that you envisioned them, they use the color scheme you always had in your mind, they make the corrections that you request and they get things done on time. Remember that I didn’t pay anyone to work on Tiki’s Phayrie so I couldn’t really boss them around, especially if I wanted a quality product at the end of the whole process.

Without money in the mix, you have to accept that you don’t have nearly as much control as you would like. After all if someone isn’t pulling their weight or if they refuse to color, draw, ink or letter in a certain way, what are you going to do about it? You can’t cut their pay or threaten to fire them – you are not even paying them in the first place! If you do happen to hit a bump in the road, let’s say your team isn’t getting on or someone is not pulling their weight, the only thing you can do is ask that certain person to move on. If that happens, do it in the most polite way possible. As a new creator you can never afford to burn bridges.

Assuming your team gets along and everything runs smoothly, there is one more challenge you will face, one that becomes even greater when you are not motivating your team with money; the deadline.

With Tiki’s Phayrie our project was accepted into the initial stage of the anthology one month after the other creative teams had started their projects. We were way behind from day one. By the time we had character concept sketches, some of the other teams had finished pages. We had to move quickly! I didn’t crack the whip, I didn’t threaten Michael … I offered encouragement and heaps of praise as each illustration and finished page came through because they all looked awesome!

When it came to inking and coloring, I left this stage of the project largely to Michael, Michael and Mike (long story!). In reality, everyone turned everything around remarkably quickly for no more incentive than hitting a deadline. As the saying goes, if I am ever in the trenches, I want these guys with me!

In a very short time, with virtually zero incentive we built a team that delivered a wonderful product. Everything went fine with no arguments, no dummy spits, no one walking out over ‘creative differences’ – everything was perfect … this time.

Next: Civil War.