Comic Creators: Your Secret Weapon

A Few Thoughts on How the Creators Involved Can Be Your Best Asset When Launching a New Book

When I was a kid, I used to carry my drawing table across the street to my friend Matt’s house. Growing up, Matt was the best artist I knew and the only other kid in the neighborhood who liked to draw comics. We would regularly have all-night comic making sessions on the weekends, and pushed each other to up our games. Sometimes he would draw awesome pin-ups of my characters, and I would add some of his to the comics I was working on.

Making comics has always been fun for me… but making them with friends takes it to a whole other level. (There’s a reason my publishing company is called ComixTRIBE after all!)

(Some art from those all-night comic jam sessions by yours truly and my pal Matt Carrigan. You can probably tell what books we were reading at the time. #Sooooo90’s!)

The best part of working on anthology projects is that it captures some of that spirit of jamming and collaborating with your comic loving pals and creating something new, unique, and better than the sum of its parts.

The OXYMORON: KILLING TIME anthology, which launched a few days ago on Kickstarter to resounding success, is the latest example of such a project. I really do believe fans and readers who take a chance on this time-travel tale of chaos and carnage are going to be able to feel the sense of freedom and irreverence that only the comic medium can deliver.

One of the best parts of launching anthology projects, though, is that it provides an opportunity to tap into the collective power of all of the creators involved.

The other day, I had the opportunity to join creators JD Calderon and Rob Multari on their “Of Mice and Wolves: Creator Workshop Show” that appears on JD’s YouTube channel to brainstorm some ideas for how I might best harness the collective power of the creators involved to maximize the campaign’s reach. Here’s a recording of my “Hotseat” which I think other Kickstarter creators and anthology editors will find incredibly valuable:

I recommend watching the full video, but a few of the key takeaways ideas include:

• Empowering anthology creators to go appear on podcasts and livestreams promoting their contributions to the project.

• Getting organized with key project management tools (Google Docs, Dropbox, Trello, Facebook Groups, etc.) to keep all of the creators in the loop.

• Providing incentives using Kickstarter referral link tracking to encourage creators to share throughout the launch.

Again, a ton of great ideas came from that discussion, and really helped me as project lead to talk through some ideas and strategies with other hard-working creators.

As the campaign has now passed 200% funding, I’ve decided to rollout some new stretch goals, the first of which will be setting up CREATOR LIVESTREAMS with a bunch of the contributors to the project, as well as doing some things to make the core book even better and add some things to the campaign that our fans are asking for.

Again, comics is hard work… but making books with your friends and sharing them with the world is what it is truly all about!

We’ve extended the EARLY BACKER DISCOUNT PRICING for this campaign to one full week… but now we’re down to just a few more days for our readers to save.

We also have some fun surprises in store for WEEK #2, so we hope you’ll get involved!

-Tyler James