Broken Frontier

Money, money, money must be funny in the comics creator’s world.

Well, I just couldn’t resist. My mother used to sing me Abba songs to put me to sleep (I am a child of the 70s!) and more than 30 years later, Abba still sends me to the world of dreams! You will be happy to know that this column really has nothing to do with Abba at all, but is focused on creating comics at little or no cost.

I bet that got your attention! If any of you who read this are budding creators, or if you are thinking of heading into a ‘career’ as a comic book creator, I say to you; DON’T DO IT! By all means go ahead and create comics, just don’t view it as a career. Comics cost you money, whether you are buying them or creating them. Comics will rarely, if ever make you money.

I am no doom and gloom preacher, but gone are the days when any piece of crap with a holofoil logo on its cover is going to sell anywhere near one million copies. The market crashed in the late 90s and for good reason. Sure, people like the Image founders seemed to become overnight millionaires, but that was then and this is now. I promise you this will not happen to you – now get over it and get on with the job of creating comics.

I create and write comics for the biggest paycheck in the world – it’s called happiness.

That’s why I do it. In three or four years of actively pushing my way into the comics industry I have never been paid one cent. I accept that I have not yet been published, and I hope that happens this year, but even if my name is on the cover and even if the comic is on the spinner racks, I am not likely to be seeing a truck load of greenbacks any time soon.

Small press, where most of us budding creators will get our first chances, is squeezed. How many of the smallest indys survive is beyond me; they are lucky if some of their books sell more than 1000 copies. How anyone can make money off this is beyond my understanding; the sad truth is that hardly anyone does. Many creators do comics by night for the love of it, while working elsewhere during the day to pay the bills.

Why am I ranting on about this? There is a perception that you will never get a creative team together unless you can offer people payment. I am here to tell you that is rubbish. Case in point is my short story Tiki’s Phayrie, originally intended to be included in a small press fantasy anthology. Sadly I found out a few weeks ago that we didn’t make the cut. However, we did create a story! I now have a 10 page mini comic that is written, penciled, inked, colored and lettered by a team of no less than 9 people!

None of them got paid.

I met the artist, Michael Kasinger, on the Rob Liefeld message board. In the artist thread on that board I mentioned that I was putting together a pitch with a short story about a thief, a fairy and a mad as hell wizard. Michael liked the idea and sent me a PM asking about the project. Through the same message board we recruited Michael Cef on inks and Mike G on colors. Mike went on to ask a few of his friends to help out. Brant W. Fowler, my good friend, did the story logo and the letters.

All this cost me nothing.

I am not proud that I wasn’t able to pay the creative team. I am not boasting that I managed to rip people off. What I am saying is that if you believe in your work strongly enough, others will too and out of sheer joy for creation and collaboration, they will help you out. Not only will the end product be a finished comic, but you will also gain much more; great friendships.

The fantastic thing about the comics industry is that almost everyone who loves comics wants to create comics. On places like Digital Webbing or Ronin Studios you will be able to find very talented creators who just want to make comics – they might even like your idea and want to team up with you. What comes next is one of the greatest experiences of your life, collaborating with a handful of people to make a story out of words and pictures!

Well, that’s great Mr Berek-Lewis, just great! Now I have my comic all finished but I just found out it will cost me a small fortune to print the thing, let alone send it out to stores and the like! I already have one mortgage; you owe me money!! Ha! This shouldn’t cost you anything at all! No, I have not found a printer who will print you 1000 comics for free, but why print it at all? Is a comic only a comic when it is made up of paper?

No! Comics can be made of electrons and pixels too and increasingly that is the trend the industry is following. If you can afford to print 1000 copies of your comic, you effectively limit the story’s readership to 1000 or so readers (some copies will be read by more than one person). Yet, if you host your comic online, there is literally no limit to how many people can read it. You think Todd McFarlane was pretty cool by getting 1,000,000 + readers for the first issue of Spawn? Your comic could potentially be read by millions of people too!

Promotion is as important in making a comic successful as the team that puts it together. Yet, PR needn’t cost you much money at all. Sending out press releases via email doesn’t cost much at all (except for the cost of having an internet service provider). Writing the press release is free if you do it yourself or you can find professionals with years of experience who will help you out at affordable prices (just send me an email for a quote!). Promoting your comic on relevant message boards like the one here at Broken Frontier doesn’t cost a cent, neither does sending a PDF preview to our fantastic team of reviewers! One good review on a site as prominent as Broken Frontier will go a long way to boost the profile of your creation (OK, I will stop sucking up to the boss now! Thanks Frederik!).

These are just some of the experiences that I have had that prove that while, generally money does make the world go ‘round, the lack of cash should not be a barrier to creating and promoting your comics.

There are two things that money can never buy: self-belief and a good story. If you have both of these, you are on your way.

Next: Creators Assemble!