THE INTRO
I feel as though I’ve had my foot on the gas pedal for the last two months straight and it wasn’t until this week that I could tap on the breaks for just a bit. I’m sure many people are overwhelmed by the recent Presidential election here in the United States, but I have absolutely nothing to say about it at this time (though, it is a topic I may write about in the future).
In this month’s newsletter I’m going to expound on my feelings on my recently successful HamletMania Kickstarter, as well discuss my work/life balance and how things are changing for me. Then I’m going to talk about the 1980 novel The Number of the Beast by one of my favorite authors, Robert Heinlein, and the alternate version of the book, The Pursuit of the Pankera, recently released in 2020.
THE BODY
This is not exactly a fresh opinion OR a hot take, but I think the future of indie comics is going to revolve around crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Patreon. What a blessing it is that creators can fund their art through direct contributions from fans rather than have to work around (or through) the various publishers, distributors, and other market hurdles. So, if you’re like me and have very little connections in the comic book industry but still want to make comics, you have a clear and direct path to success. Unfortunately, if you’re also like me and hate running a crowdfunding campaign, you’re going to be stressed out a lot.
Running a Kickstarter is a lot of work. I am not opposed to lots of work. If I can overshare for just a moment, I have been working two jobs for the last three years. I work all the time (much to my wife’s chagrin), and as such, I have limited time to devote to creative pursuits. Whenever I run a crowdfunding campaign, I inevitably spend all my free time on administrative work. It takes time to write out all the campaign information, design rewards, reach out to as many people as possible through social media, schedule interviews and public appearances, etc. That is all time spent on work that ISN’T writing or drawing. Even though it is work that needs to be done in order to make the physical book a reality, it’s not creative work and therefore doesn’t FEEL like part of the creative process.
I try to not let it wear me down, but it can be stressful. On top of that, there’s always the chance element that your campaign will not succeed, which then makes all that work feel even more pointless. HamletMania squeaked across the finish line, thanks in no small part to a couple of Angel Investors who, all combined, gave us about 50% of our funds.
Most people that run a successful Kickstarter go into it with a certain amount of money already promised or planned, if not the entire amount needed, already in hand. Sure, you use it to raise funds that you might not have, but the real value is in rallying people behind your product and making people aware that it even exists. To my mind, running a Kickstarter is as much a preorder system as it is an advertising system.
If there’s a system, it can be gamed, and a lot of people running successful Kickstarters know how to manipulate their campaign into success. For example, you can create a puppet account and pledge a significant amount of money to your own campaign. This makes your campaign appear that it’s on the path to success, if not succeeded already. This will encourage more people to back it because nobody likes to back a loser. It’s a subtle psychological manipulation of the consumer into thinking you are more successful than you actually are. Then, once the campaign surpasses its goal, you lower (or outright cancel) your initial pledge. By this point, you should have gotten enough people to back your campaign that even without your puppet pledge you still have reached your goal.
I say all this because I think that if you are running a Kickstarter you have a responsibility to have a plan for success, not just for your readers, but also for your collaborators. You are sorely mistaken if you think you can just launch a Kickstarter and expect people to find it. If you are lucky, you might get 1% of your funds from random people searching Kickstarter for new projects, but everything else has to be driven by your own promotion.
I am very pleased that our HamletMania campaign succeeded, and although the Angel Investors were very important, it absolutely would not have happened without the handful of friends and fans who (presumably) actually want to read the comic! I look forward to getting into people’s hands, and if you missed the campaign you don’t have to worry. Greg and I are already planning the campaign for the second issue. Thanks again for checking out our work.
THE ANNOUNCEMENTS
If you didn’t know, I work at a comic and game store called Fantasy Books & Games. I very recently received a promotion and am now the Assistant Manager for the store. I don’t normally share this kind of personal information, but I am making an exception in this case because it does relate to my comics work. With the new position at FBG, I will be able to quit my second job and have more time to devote to my comic work.
My first order of business is to finish Autographical 3. I have been working on that issue off and on for two years now and am very disappointed that it has taken this long. If you read my six page story, Disaster at the Deadpool Dance Party (you can find it in the Autographical Comics collection of this very Patreon), you will know that my wife, Jessica, started helping with Autographical. She is an amazing artist and is inking and, in some cases, finishing/redrawing, my Autographical pages. I think Autographical 3 is going to be a significant improvement over the first two issues.
Once Autographical 3 is finished, I would like to work on a different project with Jessica, but that is still in early developments and I don’t have a whole lot to say about it at the moment.
THE BOOK CLUB
This month, I am not going to recommend a comic series. Instead, I am going to write about a novel that I read several years ago, The Number of the Beast, by Robert A. Heinlein. In 2020, an alternate version of the novel titled The Pursuit of the Pankera was released. This new version was purportedly the first draft of the novel, before Heinlein decided to almost completely rewrite it and release it as The Number of the Beast.
For the record, The Number of the Beast is not my favorite Heinlein novel. In fact, it’s one of my least favorite, despite having an interesting premise. I’m not going to go into detail about the novel, but I’ll provide a brief summary of the plot.
The story revolves around four main characters, two husband and wife teams, who are all adventurer scientists. One of them has invented a time machine which opens up the possibility of visiting a near-infinite number of parallel worlds. Soon after making the discovery, they are targeted for assassination by unknown assailants and are forced to flee to an alternate universe. They explore the new universe’s planet Mars and notice some similarities to Edgar Rice Burrough’s Princess of Mars series of novels. They discuss the possibility that every piece of fiction is an alternate universe. This is seemingly proven true when the characters visit the Land of Oz.
Read more of my thoughts of The Number of the Beast and The Pursuit of the Pankera over at my Patreon!
-Aaron Walther
November, 2024
PS – Can I just take a quick moment to say how much I love classic sci-fi novel cover art and how much I hate modern digital photo-realism sludge? New book covers look so awful. Honestly, what is wrong with everyone? Look what they took from us! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.