Indie Comics Showcase #151: Dead by Dawn, Redshift Express & Bite

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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!

Check out the campaign here!

Chris Braly: Tell our readers about Dead By Dawn Returns – Briefly give our readers the pitch.

Shane Chebsey: Dead By Dawn is a hard hitting and punchy prestige format horror anthology that gives new up and coming indie creators a platform for their work, whilst also giving established professionals the opportunity to tell stories outside of their comfort zone.

Any sub genre of horror is allowed. The only rule is that the stories must be 4 pages only. This encourages our creators to be very disciplined in their approach to storytelling.

CB: What was the genesis for this project, where did the idea for this comic come from, and what led to your decision to crowdfund it?

SC: Myself and Andrew Richmond formed SCAR COMICS back in 2004 to publish the first Dead by Dawn series as we’d wanted to work together on a horror project for a while and we’d always thought it would be a great idea to combine cutting edge small press talent with experiences professionals. Back then self publishing was very different. Kickstarter wasn’t really a thing. But the book did gain quite a following on the UK con circuit.

However as we both started working on other projects like convention organising Dead By Dawn ended up on the back burner. And as life got in the way eventually SCAR COMICS was wound down too. However Andy and I continued to be good friends and worked together on various convention and podcasting projects here in the UK.

Inspired by the current huge indie comics boom, after a ten year break from publishing, we decided to come back this year to relaunch Dead By Dawn on Kickstarter as the crowd funding platform allows you to sell in advance directly to your audience.

Printing has also changed a lot in the last 10 years and it’s a lot easier now to just print however many copies you need to fulfill the Kickstarter. Before you had to print a minimum of 1000 copies to get the cost per copy down and hope you sold them all. Plus you had to find the money to do that yourself. Kickstarter allows you to get advanced sales funding to cover all of your costs. It also helps you get to know your audience better. It’s revolutionized indie comics publishing for sure.

CB: What kind of comic fans do you expect this comic will entertain the most?

SC: Obviously horror fans will love this book. Anyone who loves The Walking Dead or the classic EC horror titles will love Dead By Dawn. However the anthology and it’s creators draw on many influences for tone and themes. This ranges from classic British horror mag “Scream” to modern pulp horror like Hellboy and the BPRD. There really is something for every type of horror fan in Dead By Dawn’s pages

CB: Let’s get into the creative and production side. Give us the rundown on all the creative teams contributing to this project?

SC: This is one of the really exciting parts of the anthology. We have a total 23 creators working on this book and they have really hit it out of the park with regards to quality.

From the professional side of things we have Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard, Marvel, DC and Warhammer 40k writer Dan Abnett, Animal Man and Justice League artist Steve Pugh, 2000AD and Sniper Elite artist Patrick Goddard, Spiderman Noir and Stormdogs writer David Hine, DC and 2000ad artist Jimmy Broxton and also top colour artist Matt Hollingsworth, who has coloured everything from Preacher to Daredevil and various hit Image titles.

We cast our net quite far and brought in the cream of the indie crop from the British scene to join them.

These include renowned artist Mark Stafford, the Eagle Award winning David Hitchcock, Andrew Sawyers on loan from hit Indie title “The 77” and writers like Michael Powell, Daniel Whiston and Chris McAuley. We even got the great great grand nephew of Bram Stoker, Dacre Stoker on board, plus many more.

CB: Wow! That’s really is an incredible collection of writers and artists! So what is the workflow like with such a large ensemble?

SC: We started planning the relaunch of the book late last year and decided that the first issue would be invite only to ensure that we could shape the styles of the book as we wanted it to be and to ensure a consistent high quality throughout.  Knowing our creators we’ll also means we have the confidence to pretty much give them total artistic freedom.

We were very lucky and got almost everyone we wanted for issue #1. We then set a script deadline for the end of June and an art deadline for before our Kickstarter campaign so that we’d have lots of art to show off to the potential backers. This worked really well as lots of our creators have other commitments and if they needed extra time we could be flexible. It also means we now have all of the work in before the campaign has ended. (We have been blown away for the quality of work coming in).

Andy and I will then prepare the book for print. I handle editing duties while Andy is a super talented creator in his own right: His day job is in magazine design, so as well as contributing the art on one of the strips, he also handles most of the lettering design and any extra colouring that needs to be done.

We set a Halloween release date so once the campaign is over we can then ensure everyone gets their books and rewards on time. Some of the rewards involve sending blank covers to artists to do sketches, so we wanted to make sure there was plenty of time to do all of that.

CB: Since this is a relaunch, what have you been learning from crowdfunding and creating through this process and how would you advise other indie publishers?

SC: We’ve learned a lot from this process. The most interesting aspect that has evolved with Kickstarter is that there’s a really good community on there of fellow indie creators and self publishers, and for the most part it’s very supportive and helpful. We’ve made a few friends and done a lot of cross promotion with other campaigns, which has really helped us expand our potential audience.

We’ve also managed to get lots of useful advice from Kickstarter veterans.

My biggest tip to anyone looking to do a Kickstarter would be to plan a marketing strategy in advanced so that you have something interesting to post out on social media every day. I actually creators a spreadsheet planning each day of the campaign. (Including a couple of days off utilising automated posting as you have to take your mind of it sometimes. It can be all consuming and quite stressful)

Whether it’s artwork, creator news or videos. You really have to work hard to keep those pledges coming in. The mid campaign slump is no myth either… (We’ve just hit halfway and pledges have slowed down, while we are only a few hundred pounds away from being fully funded). We planned to send out our traditional media and website press releases during the campaign to try and counter that. We’ll see how that works out I guess. We are still learning.

The other main tips would be make sure you know your overseas postage costs for all of your rewards and remember to include the cost of good packaging as well as your actual production costs. These costs can really add up.

CB: All very good tips to keep in mind. Thank you for chatting with me Shane, and good luck on the campaign!

SC: Thank you for the opportunity it’s greatly appreciated. We are really exciting to bring these stories to our backers on Halloween.

Check out the campaign here!

@ScarComics @CharlieAdlard @arichmondo @Gearmonkey75 @DavidRBedford @chrisaskham @stevepughcom @HineDavid @Dhitchcie @marxtafford @vincentabnett @Paddygod1

Check out the campaign here!

Chris Braly: Tell our readers your elevator pitch for Redshift Express – Briefly tell our readers the pitch.

David Feed: The super short version is: Picture “The Fifth Element” directed by David Cronenberg. Like Leeloo goes “Multipass” and then a giant bizarre monster bursts out of her face. And well, the longer elevator pitch: Romina Jones is a thrill seeker, space pirate, trouble maker. The story begins when she starts a fight between her boyfriend and an old flame. In the middle of the chaos she ends up with a mysterious genetic key that could save humanity from a galaxy-wide plague. When all factions of the Milky Way want to kill her and destroy the key… her only escape is to board the REDSHIFT EXPRESS, the last ship out of the Milky Way before the Faster-Than-Light travel system collapses.