Well, it's been about four months since the third issue of Dead Man Holiday came out, so I better sum up all of my thoughts about the experience before they're gone forever. This article is peppered with drawings I did for people who ordered comics from me. In case you are interested, here are the wrap ups I did for the first and second issues in the series.
Production.
Story-wise, I felt a little painted into a corner here on the third issue. In issue two I was freewheelin'! It was the middle of the story and I had all the time in the world to go with any cool idea I had. Since the third issue is the end of the first arc, I had to wrap it all up. This wasn't nessisarily a bad thing, but being that deliberate is a lot more work and stress.
I had a big breakthrough drawing the second issue of Dead Man Holiday, but I was spinning my wheels a little here in the third. I wasn't drawing as fast as I wanted, and my head was stuck in the future. As a result, I wasn't focusing as much as I should have on what was in front of me and some of the storytelling suffered. Namely, the ten page zoom in sequence is a bit hard to read, but that's a very difficult sequence to convey anyway and I guess it came out okay. There were even some continuity errors. That is Roky, the luchador secretary, has a wedding band that disappears a couple of times. This will be fixed in future editions. So, lesson learned: Don't worry about the future and enjoy what's in front of you.
THAT SAID. I do think this issue contains some of the best storytelling and art in the series.
I would also like to thank Ted Seko and Javier Hernandez for the AWESOME guest art pieces that they produced for this issue (available only in the print edition) , and Alex Bishop for the fun comic strip in the front cover!
Publishing.
The post production process on this issue went smooth as butter. I'm a lot better with Photoshop now than I was before, and that made that whole deal (scanning and adjusting the images for the printer) a breeze. I used Ka-Blam again. They're great. The print editions of the previous issue were a small disaster- it came out muddy. I applied the lessons I learned there to this issue, basically not to make the images too contrasty or dark and to get a proof copy of the issue before ordering the print run, and it went great. I think this is the best looking issue of Dead Man Holiday so far.
Press.
The press Dead Man Holiday gets with each new issue has been getting more and more exciting. I did a bunch of podcast interviews, but only one text interview. And there was some nice general coverage from Ain't It Cool News, Insulin Funk and even Comic Book Resource's excellent Robot 6 blog (!). The real exciting stuff for me though is the reviews.
Sean Kleefeld, who has been in our corner since day one chimed in. Steven Surman wrote a really wonderful piece for Broken Frontier. And then, a couple of months after the issue was released, the great Rob Clough dropped this amazing review on the Comics Journal's website. It's a great review that says some things I had been waiting for someone to say since the beginning.
I made a conscious effort this time to not spend as much time chasing as much press as possible, and just focus on a smaller number quality outlets. It paid off. I spent much less time on it and got much more interesting stuff in return.
One strange thing that happened was that practically no websites ran my press release. I mean, it always kind of struck me as a strange thing for those sites to do in the first place, but the last issue of DMH saw like a dozen sites run the release. This time, there were like two. This could be because I put the issue out at the bottom of the recession and people didn't have time to run their hobby comics news sites, or it could have been because the headline of the release was "Weird 'Haunted Science-Fiction' ongoing comic book series celebrates the end of its beginning by entering the doomed domain of retail pamphlet comics." Speaking of which...
Indy Comic Book Week.
With the third issue of Dead Man Holiday, I participated in Indy Comic Book Week. Since there were no comics shipping the Wednesday of January 30th, 2009, ICBW called on independent comic creators to get their books in as many stores as possible on that day. What this did for me was allow me to ride the significant wave of ICBW's publicity, and it also gave me a reason to try getting into retail stores for the first time (here's a list of the stores I got into). I learned how business transactions with retailers work, what questions to ask them and that, for me, getting my book into comic book stores is not really worth the effort.
I spent a lot of time talking to stores, figuring out their exact needs, packing up books for them or arranging the books to be shipped to them through Ka-Blam, and then staying in touch with the stores that took them on consignment or harassing the stores that bought them wholesale to actually pay me (a process that continues to this day, four months later). The stores that took them on consignment sent back two thirds or more of the comics I sent them. That means they sold a third or less of the comics I sent them. For the amount of time I put into this, time I could have spent drawing comics or making money on freelance gigs, that is just not worth it.
I feel like comics retail stores have changed into something that are not able to sell non-superhero books. The store that I grew up buying from can't even move copies of Madman or BPRD anymore. I think most comics stores are dedicated superhero shops with a narrow clientele that is unlikely to pick anything else up. The percent of people buying Dan Clowes' new book at a store that also sells X-Men comics is likely much lower than when Eightball #6 came out. Frank Santoro said the bridge is dead, and I don't feel like spending any more time throwing my comics in the river. Jeff Smith recently said that he got his start self-publishing by handing his book out to retailers at shows. I don't predict that going well for me these days.
But then again, my comic is not nearly as accessible (or as good, duh) as Smith's either. Maybe most people have to bang their head against the wall for a while before they start making progress. People might pick my book up if they see it on the shelf a second or third time. And it'll be an easier sell because,you know, the art will be better in the future. So, I don't know. I'll probably use the same strategy I'm using with press now; focus on a smaller number of stores that I'm likely to get a better response with. And maybe get some help with distribution, if I can.
The future.
So I'm done with most of the pre press work for the Dead Man Holiday collection. I'm waiting for some stuff to come in from a couple of contributors and it'll be ready to go. I'm not sure if I'll go with Ka-Blam or explore offset printing again. In the interest of raising awareness of my book in the most productive way that is apparent to me, I'll be serializing the already printed issues as a webcomic. I'm also in the final stages of getting Dead Man Holiday on iPhones and iPad.
Then I've got a project called Not Comics #1 coming out. It's an anthology of stories I'm collaborating on with people who don't read comics. I've got a couple of screenwriters, a playwright and maybe an abstract painter in there. Good way to broaden my horizons, I think.
I'm also working on a couple of one to two page stories with other comics people.
After all that's done, I'll be drawing Dead Man Holiday #1. I can't wait. We'll see if I can get it out by the promised 2010 deadline.
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