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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: Welcome to Indie Comics Showcase, Aaron! Tell our readers your elevator pitch for One Last Job.
Aaron Dowen: A spy on his way out of the job, with an industry that won’t let you run from your past. Thomas Clayborne is fast-tracking his own retirement, and with a newly developed heart condition, he just wants to take his wife and start a new life. However, his past sins always seem to come bubbling back up.
CB: What was the genesis for this project, where did the idea for this comic come from, and what led to you deciding to crowdfund it?
AD: I grew up watching 007 and Mission Impossible, and was a teenager throughout the Bourne years and Taken years. The spy life always thrilled me, and I used to think that I would go into that line of work someday. I would be completely awful at it… but at least I get to tell stories in the genre now.
This is our sixth crowdfunding campaign, and our seventh comic book coming out. We love the exclusivity we get to give with our campaign backers. We have some links on the campaign page of people unboxing issue 1 on their shows, and we are stepping up that experience even more this time.
CB: What kind of comic fans do you expect this comic will entertain the most?
AD: Anyone who is a fan of properties like 007, John Wick, Mission Impossible, Taken, and the Bourne Series will find a lot of a lot of those storytelling and world building elements in One Last Job.
CB: Let’s get into the creative and production side a little. Tell us a bit about your creative team that have contributed to this project?
AD: Well, I am the writer, and I also created the cover for issue 1, and lettered it. Daniel Jimeno has illustrated both issue 1 and issue 2 in that epic greywash style that he does. We brought Dave Lentz in to letter issue 2, and Matt Sotello illustrated the cover for the new issue as well.
CB: The art looks good! The books are black and white, was that a creative decision, or a pragmatic way to keep costs down?
AD: Definitely a creative decision. This was always planned to be a black and white/greywash series. The vibe we can get with that noir feel really elevates the mood.
CB: New backers can still get the first issue digitally, correct? Any plans to reprint that issue?
AD: Digital and physical, actually! It is in there on certain tiers, and also can be added on. In fact, for this campaign, we even are rereleasing the first issue with a holochrome cover! This is our first time doing that with a book, and I am thrilled to see how it comes out.
CB: What have you been learning from crowdfunding and creating through this process?
AD: Right now it seems to be a bit of a hot time to crowdfund, but we have also noticed campaigns are taking a bit of a hit with the way things are economically right now. We have been at this for a few years now, and we know our costs and what we need to cover the expenses. We love the availability it gives us to directly contact supporters who want to see our books made.
CB: Are there more stories to tell?
AD: Always. One Last Job is a 4 issue mini-series. Next year we have two of our ongoing superhero projects launching, and we are working on a few other titles as well; including a follow-up to our dark fantasy/horror: Welcome to Everville.
CB: Thanks for chatting with us! Good luck and we are rooting for you!
AD: Thank you so much, we always have a great time talking with you guys.
Check out the campaign here!
Visit Catalyst Comics here.
Check out the campaign here!
Chris Braly: Tell our readers your elevator pitch for Rammur – Get my readers up to speed.
Charles Santino: Shortest elevator pitch in entertainment: Rammur is a master thief in a future police state. Simple, straight-forward crime stories. All self-contained. Here’s the pitch for the lead story: A museum heist gone wrong. Two thieves dead. Rammur’s fusion gear damaged. The target of the break-in-a banned objet d’art-destroyed. But that’s just the beginning of Rammur’s problems, because one of his colleagues is a police informant. Can Rammur figure out who’s tipping off the authorities before he finds himself in a Global Freedom Authority labor camp? There’s a comic-within-the comic, TOPS Tales of the Police State—funky little slice-of-life vignettes.
Extrasin Rammur include a propaganda poster, an alternate cover (in the book, not on it), sneak peeks, and a “making of” section. 48 pages plus covers. Square-bound with a spine. The visual style of the Rammur stories takes it cue from the DC animated tie-in comics of the 90s, especially the Batman titles. Other influences include Magnus: Robot Fighter and 2000AD. (I wrote Conan for Marvel back in the day, so I guess thieves got into my bloodstream.) The police state of the future is the GFA, The Global Freedom Authority. Ruptors—the robot police—are everywhere. The GFA is ruled by Dominaytra (“Dommie”), a “Big Sister” matriarch who may or may not be a real person.
CB: What was the genesis for this project, where did the idea for this comic come from, and what led to you deciding to crowdfund it?
CS: It began with Darwyn Cooke yelling at me. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In 2003, I contacted the mystery writer Donald E. Westlake about adapting his tough-guy SF novel, Anarchaos, into a graphic novel. He gave me the rights to shop the idea around. When IDW published the first of Darywn’s adaptations of Westlake’s “Parker” crime novels, I re-tooled my proposal for Anarchaos, mimicking the style of Darwyn’s IDW books. Joe Staton drew my proposal. It was beautiful. IDW Editor Scott Dunbier thought so, too. And promptly rejected it. Because, he said, “it would hurt our relationship with Darwyn.” I had no idea what that meant.
Was he saying that he thought my proposal looked even better than Darywn’s “Parker” books? Then I did a very stupid but ultimately fortuitous thing. Instead of just moving along to another publisher, I contacted Darwyn. Had he even seen the proposal? If not, maybe he was OK with it. Well, he was not OK with it. I can’t repeat exactly what he said, but it was profane. Then he called the Westlake estate and told them not renew my rights, which were soon coming up for renewal. So I decided, the heck with it, why don’t I create my own tough-guy character? Rammur had been kicking around in one (unpublished) form or another for years, so I dusted him off, redesigned his look, and pitched him to UK publisher Markosia. Harry Markos snapped it up.
I decided to crowdfund simply to get a print version out there because Markosia doesn’t do print floppies; at least they didn’t when I began the campaign process. At that time, Markosia was doing only digital until there was enough material for a trade paperback. But after my campaign ended and I was about to print, I found out that Markosia can now do print-on-demand for individual issues. So I probably will not crowdfund future issues.
The campaign is still on Indiegogo InDemand, with signed copies and a poster-perk, but the 48-page Rammur #1 (now called Rammur: Corvus Trilogy Part I) will be available on Amazon, etc., 12/31/2021. The digital version has been available for a while.
CB: What kind of comic fans do you expect this comic will entertain the most?
CS: The Rammur “Manifesto” says it best: If you think testosterone is a kind of poison…if you recoil at the word “macho”…if you want comic books to be safe and “sensitive”…then RAMMUR is not for you. But if you want stories that make your pulse race…stories that grip and delight you…stories with beginnings, middles, and endings…self-contained stories that give you the fix you need…stories told visually—the way the gods of comics intended…stories about a criminal so clever the police state will never nail him…a thief so cold he’ll freeze your blood…then—you guessed it—you want RAMMUR. No man can stop him. No woman can resist him. No prize can daunt him.
That’s my audience.
CB: Let’s get into the creative and production side a little. Tell us a bit about your creative team that have contributed to this project? It says Charles Santino and Friends on the cover…
CS: Lots of artists. The main man is Paulo Peres, a Brazilian artist. He did the cover and the lead story, which is 24 pages. A 6-page back-up Rammur story was drawn by Italian artist Marco Perugini. The TOPS cover was done by US-based Dave Barden. Another US-based artist, Trashy Dreams, did the propaganda poster. Argentinian artist Carlos Aon did a TOPS story, and so did Marco. All of these artists provided pencils, inks, and color on their respective stories, which makes my life so much easier. They are all working from full scripts that I provide.
CB: What’s the workflow like? How do you like to work?
CS: I start with a kernel of an idea and if it sounds good, I work up a 25-word summary. I refine that until it sounds like a story that has to be written. Next comes a fairly detailed synopsis, maybe a page for every five comic book pages. Then I “draw” the whole story in remarkably rough thumbnails. This is a technique used by only a few writers who are not also artists. At this stage the story starts to come to life. I’ll make a lot of changes here as I discover that something that sounded good in prose doesn’t quite work visually. Once I have the roughs worked out, I write a script based on them. Generally, the artists don’t see my roughs, unless I can’t explain something in adequately in words in which case I will show the artist my crude sketch. One of these sketches appears in the “making of” section in Rammur.
CB: You’ve taken the crowdfunding approach before, what have you been learning from crowdfunding and creating through this process?
CS: It takes more time and effort than you can possibly anticipate. Before you launch, you need to build an audience and promote the campaign for months for the launch, and every day during the campaign.
CB: What are your plans beyond this book? Are there more stories to tell?
CS: Rammur: The Corvus Trilogy Part II is finished, except for a few pages that need to be designed, and the lettering needs to added to all the pages. It should drop 10/1/2020. A free digital giveaway promoting Part II will happen before that. Paulo is working on the pencils for Part III. Those three parts will be collected. I’m plotting the fourth Rammur individual issue right now. I’m also writing web comics for the Edgar Rice Burroughs organization and I take on other assignments as time permits.
CB: Thanks for chatting with us! Good luck and we are rooting for you!
CS: Thank you!
Check out the campaign here!
Check out the campaign here!
John Lemus: Welcome back Isaac, and thank you again for being a part of Indie Comics Showcase. Let’s talk about SuccuBUSTED!, your 3rd series and sixth Kickstarter project! Before we get started can you catch us up to how and what has changed since we had you on the first time?
Isaac Fox: Thanks to the amazing support of my fans and team, I have two more brand new series in the works. One will be coming to Kickstarter early next year – Foxxy Vacations Hot Springs Edition. A naughty pinup book featuring full-page pinups from some of the best artists around.
JL: Nice! Without spoilers, what can you tell us about SuccuBUSTED! #1-3? Where it’s been, where it’s going, and your plans for the future?
IF: SuccuBUSTED! follows the story of Agent Liam J. White – a federal agent tasked with policing demons. The job is hard enough, but when your newly-appointed partner is a horny succubus, things get much harder. The story is an ecchi comedy in lines with great works like Monster Musume and High School DXD. Ultimately, it’s planned for four issues but more stories can be told if people are interested. Anime has always been my primary inspiration so if I ever get the opportunity, I am confident SuccuBUSTED! would blow people’s socks (and other things) off in animated form. I should note, no Isaac Fox book contains blatant pornography. Though there is nudity and innuendo galore.
JL: What’s your experience with manga and how do you distinguish from Western comics?
IF: These days I think I read manga and comics at about a 70/30 ratio. I think mainstream manga tends to be a bit more surprising and experimental than mainstream western comics. You never know what you’re in for when you crack open a manga. I believe the indie creators in the western comic world are definitely bridging that gap with some wildly great and original ideas. We’re starting to see more books which blend eastern comics and Japanese manga and I couldn’t be more excited for this idea.
JL: What made you decide to do manga rather than a Western style comic?
IF: I wanted to do a book more in line with the ecchi genre of manga, though I’m not sure if this book qualifies as manga per say. This time I wanted to pull back from the dark, brutal horrors of my usual books and explore something sexy, colorful, and fun for a mature audience. Filled with plenty of the enjoyable commonalities to the ecchi genre without beating the reader over the head with them, I feel SuccuBUSTED! has achieved a nice balance of western comic and Japanese manga.
JL: Tell us a little bit about how you tackled this campaign as compared to your previous ones.
IF: I decided to simplify the campaign. A mistake I made with my last book, Pure Intent #1, was the campaign got too complex. It did quite well, but even for me it was a bit confusing. I decided to strip down to the minimum and present the campaign in such a way my cat could read it over and figure out how to get what he wanted in less than one minute. Now, I have graphics and explanations to walk backers through every process on the campaign. I’ve even received a few comments from backers expressing how pleased they are by this decision.
JL: Have you been reading any mainstream comics lately? Or any Indie Comics recently?
IF: In the comic world, not as much[mainstream] lately due to my local comic shop succumbing to the effects of the small business killer, Covid. Though I am incredibly hyped for the return of SAGA. I always enjoy reading [indie comics] Danger Zone One by Midnight Publishing as well as the Kickstarter works of my friends at Blue Turtle Comics.
JL: Cool. Let’s get back to your project. What are your hopes for SuccuBUSTED! and for the future?
IF: I hope SuccuBUSTED! and its characters prove enjoyable for my readers. The main story is planned for four issues, but I’d love to do another arc after that. When that time comes, I’ll ask my fans if they want to see more antics from Liam and Rita. For the future, it is my sincerest desire to keep telling stories which entertain and, hopefully, inspire people. The Foxxy Comics motto is “Improving the world one story at a time.”
JL: Anything else you want to share with us before we sign off?
IF: I want to say thank you to everyone who supports me, my work, and my team. We want nothing more than to provide our readers with the best experiences possible. Looking at the current campaign, with over 400 backers and counting, it’s hard for us not to cry tears of joy. It is this same joy I hope we can return with interest to you all!
JL: Once again Isaac , thank you for being a part of indie comics showcase. We wish you the best of luck on this campaign and all future projects
IF: Thank you, John. I look forward to sharing my next project with you in March.
Check out the campaign here!
That’s it for this installment! Support indie comics!!!
Follow Indie Comics Showcase on Twitter at @Indie_Comics and reach out to them if you want us to consider featuring YOUR crowdfunding comic project!
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