Producing Your Own Comic?

[Bodhi396]

Curious if anyone here has written or drawn your own independent comic book? If so, what was your experience doing it?

 

I'm interested in attempting to create my own comic. I already have ideas written out that can easily be made into a -script, but I'd need a partner to do the artwork. I'm guessing it would be quite an undertaking to get an entire comic actually produced, but I'm not sure exactly what it would entail.

 

 

[999ghosts]

Great question. Would be great to hear from some writers or artists that have experience with this.

[Dr. Balls]

That makes me as well. I have a couple industry pals who have given me some insight, but I'd like to hear other stories as well for my own future endeavors...

[sckao]

 

Read this first:

 

http://www.imagecomics.com/submissions/

 

 

[Dr. Balls]

"Please do not try to "impress" us with all the deals you've lined up or testimonials from your friends or family."

 

[shadroch]

Things are different now, but here is how it worked circa 1987/88.

 

You come up with a catchy off-take of a popular comic- GI Jackrabbits as an example.

You hire a mid-level comic artist to do a promo piece of art for the book.

You produce 3,000 promo posters and send them to the various distributors for them to send to their client stores. The next month, you solict orders for the book. Your book is included in the distributors order form and hopefully half the shops order a couple copies each. You recieve a purchase order from the distributors for X amount of copies. If the numbers add up, you proceed. You hire a kid who is trying to break into the biz to flesh out your plot, you hire another to pencil the roughs, another to finish the roughs, another to ink. Hopefully you keep them all seperated so each thinks he is your only assistant. You lug your finished product to Brooklyn where Gary Brodsky and his dad have a hundred year old comic press and you sit around a few hours while your book is printed. If you are lucky, Sol Brodsky is there and tells you vulger stories about the old Marvel bullpen. If not, you listen to Gary explain how he is the worlds best pickup artist dispite being ugly with a capital U.

You get your copies, go to UPS and ship them off to the distributors. Sixty days later, you get a check from them. You pay your assistants and look for a new project.

[Anfield Fox]

I wrote a comic with Alex Ross in mind of painting it. It's a one-shot in the vein of "Marvels" that follows the story of a copy of Action Comics 1 as it rolled off the press in 1938 from the point of view of the people who owned it over the years from the kid who bought it from the newspaper stand to ending up in his older brothers bag in Europe in WW2 to it's return to America and changing hands throughout the decades right up to it being slabbed by CGC and sold at auction in the present day. Now to ask Mr Ross to paint it

[Dr. Balls]

I'm currently trying to figure out how to make a ultra-violent 48 page story with aliens, barbarians, space-travel all with no spoken dialogue or narration marketable.

 

[Bodhi396]

Read this first:

 

http://www.imagecomics.com/submissions/

 

 

I don't even have aspirations of getting my comic on Image. I'm looking more into being really independent, basically printing it myself, if that's possible, and selling it on my own.

[aardvark88]

If you plan to have your indy comic distributed by Diamond Comics, then you pretty well need to print and hopefully sell through at least 10k copies of your b/w comic with color cover to breakeven. You can also try to self-distribute and promote your own (quarterly?) comic via the summer comic-con circuit. e.g. Wondercon, SDCC, Wizard Chicago, Toronto Comic Expo (need a passport to cross into Canada though).

[unmovedmover]

Use the web. Comic printing costs = ridiculous and web costs = trivial.

 

My wife wanted to get print copies done of her indie book, but when we compared getting a few hundred printed to getting hosting for even like 3 yrs, it wasn't even in the same ballpark.

 

Then, if you get a following, you can transition into print from there.

 

We're still working on that last part...

 

 

www.ninjapea.com

[MatterEaterLad]

If you wanted to go the graphic novel route, you could pitch your idea to a traditional trade publisher. This was a project that I was a part of that went that route:

 

Secret Identities

 

The team that put this together pitched The New Press and got an advance to get the first book off the ground. I have scripts in Vol 1 & 2.

 

 

[DougC]

Use the web. Comic printing costs = ridiculous and web costs = trivial.

 

My wife wanted to get print copies done of her indie book, but when we compared getting a few hundred printed to getting hosting for even like 3 yrs, it wasn't even in the same ballpark.

 

Then, if you get a following, you can transition into print from there.

 

We're still working on that last part...

 

 

www.ninjapea.com

 

 

This would probably be the best route to go, as it will build the fan base you need to support a kickstarter later if you wanted to publish. Once you have the web comic fan base you can test the waters with a 10 page preview + extra fluff and self distribute it through comic conventions (VIP, goodie bags, or freebies at badge pickup).

 

Printing can be expensive but once you have the money for it the actual numbers to print are not much of a factor (this is old info but the difference per, between 1500 and 4500 was only 5c ea, which brought the total cost from 15c to 20c). I would suggest if going to the print route look for local printers first instead of those on the internet, for an underground low run book it is always more beneficial to have first hand experience with someone you can actual see in person.

[shadroch]

Back in the day, Ken Langraf used to self publish a few books and sell out of a shopping cart. I didn't believe his claims so I accompanied him while he walked the Lower East Side of NY and watched as he distributed bricks of 100 books to bodega after bodega. Books had a $1 cover and he'd get $25 up front and the other $25 when he returned with the next batch. The owners always thought they were getting over as they seldom paid the last $25, but Ken was getting 25 cents per copy which gave him a $10 profit per bundle. He'd move thirty or forty bundles in a long day, then head uptown or to brooklyn and the Bronx. Good money for a struggling artist in 1985.

His NYC Outlaws #1 was carried by all the major comic distributors and sold about 3,000 copys in the diredt market. He'd sell more in a day of hitting bodegas, record and head shops.

Not every artist is blessed with living in a city of ten million people, but where there is a will, there is a way.

[montrealfilmguy]

here ya go.

 

 

Lulu for books.

 

http://www.lulu.com/

 

 

 

and Magcloud for magazines,or comics.

 

http://magcloud.com/

 

 

Doesnt get easier than this.

[B3AST]

I edited and lettered an independent in the early 90s. Digressing here, but we had some wins for us, Linsner did a cover for us and we got the first original Boris Vallejo comic cover, not comic magazine, ever. We actually did pretty well, our art director too well in fact. At least from our perspective. He got picked up by McFarlane toys and later, for those that know the toy biz, he and three others left McFarlane to form the Four Horsemen. After he left we couldn't find another artist to match him and everything folded.

 

Things have changed a lot since then. As others have mentioned printing costs have gone up as well as Diamond minimums for solicitations in Previews. Also as others have mentioned the cheapest thing to do is establish a web comic done on a regular bases and build up enough fan base to earn add revenue to then publish your web comic in trade form.

 

Best case in point would be Girl Genius by the Foglio's. Even having done print comics before they decided the better way to go was web.

 

 

[Anfield Fox]

I'm currently trying to figure out how to make a ultra-violent 48 page story with aliens, barbarians, space-travel all with no spoken dialogue or narration marketable.

 

 

I'd buy that!

 

Wasn't there a prestige format Batman book in the early 90's with just one baloon bubble in it?

[Underground44]

I'm currently trying to figure out how to make a ultra-violent 48 page story with aliens, barbarians, space-travel all with no spoken dialogue or narration marketable.

 

 

[oakman29]

I thought about it for awhile but seemed too far out of reach.Here is some of my chicken scratches though.