Pat Shand's Whaddya Gonna Do? - Newsletter #7
Should your series be ongoing?
What if the kind of book you want to make is not the kind of book publishers can support?
Reading long, epic creator-owned series showed me how great comic books could be.
Books like Y: The Last Man, Preacher, and Ex Machina were what drove me to create comics in the first place.
Then, early in my career, I saw the writing on the wall: publishers and retailers — the tastemakers of comics — were frightened off my long, epic creator-owned series in the 2010s through now.
You want a successful pitch with a publisher? Four issues. Five is pushing it. Six? Might as well play the lottery.
That is one of the main reasons why I embraced the direct-to-reader model that Kickstarter offers.
Before I get into all that, though…
We are in the FINAL days of Wild Wisps #1 on Kickstarter!
This book is a massive passion project in every way. It’s the oversized, debut issue of my new ongoing series about a world that humans share with incredible creatures known as Wisps.
Wisps are magical monsters with elemental powers that can be either commonplace or god-like. Some Wisps can help with household chores by using their water-based powers or load-bearing strength. Others have great and terrible abilities to control the weather or even read human minds.
And others still are turned into weapons of war.
We follow a would-be knight, KINO and his Wisp TONKAREX. When we meet them, these two have lost everything. Their family, their purpose, and their hope.
All they have left is a plan: to join QUEEN RAINA'S Guard. However, they harbor a secret that could tilt the balance of Raina's 20-Year War if it gets discovered.
Kino knows the truth about a MYTHIC WISP: a special kind of Wisp born out of one million hatches that has an incredibly rare Tri-Element ability, which gives this extraordinary Wisp the power to alter reality itself.
In the wrong hands, Kino's secret could lead to the end of existence as they know it.
Here is a preview of WILD WISPS #1 showcasing Nabetse Zitro’s once-in-a-lifetime artwork. I couldn’t ask for a better collaborator for this story.
Pledge to WILD WISPS #1 here before it ends!
Now… let’s talk ongoing series.
When I first started to get comic book gigs, I found a job that was perfect for the kind of books I wanted to write. Comics where I could play out character arcs for years to come.
It was 2012 when I became a staff writer at Zenescope Entertainment. My first two miniseries were Robyn Hood and Godstorm.
What did I do with those miniseries?
I stayed on Robyn Hood for three miniseries, three one-shots, and an ongoing series that amounted to a total of 39 issues.
I wrote Godstorm for five issues and then continued the storyline I started for years, letting it play out over various series including the massive 28-issue Unleashed/Ascension event and more.
Other projects? I had a 25-issue run on Grimm Fairy Tales, a 20-issue run on Charmed: Season 10, and a 20-issue run on Van Helsing that I picked up again years later. We’re now at over 40 issues of Van Helsing from me.
But there was a piece I was missing. Creator-owned. I wanted to have these long runs with my own characters.
The early days of Destiny, NY saw me pitching the series around. The closest I got to a pre-Kickstarter pick-up was IDW, where they were considering picking it up for a miniseries. After initial conversations about doing a few issues of the title, they decided that they had a different title that was too similar in genre coming up.
I look back at that rejection and I rejoice.
Understand this: If I did Destiny, NY at IDW and it was their most successful creator-owned of the 2010s, how many issues would I have gotten? A 5-issue miniseries with a sequel?
Taking it to Kickstarter, though, we now have over 50 issues worth of the series and almost 20 issues of spinoffs… and I’m just halfway through.
Direct-to-reader is the way for these kind of long runs. I promise you.
Now, what I wanted to talk about today goes beyond just getting to the point where we CAN do these long series.
It’s vitally important that we ask ourselves why our series SHOULD be long-running.
For almost a decade, Destiny, NY has been my main focus. It’s my main ongoing series. Its spinoff Smoke Weed, See the Future is also ongoing, but we do a volume every two years and it’s still very much part of the Destiny, NY universe.
In all the time since starting Destiny, NY I have kicked off just two more ongoing series.
The first is Private Dance, which I started last year. From the business side of things, the truth is that I wanted Cheeky Comics to have a flagship title the way Space Between Entertainment has Destiny, NY. It could have been any of our titles, though. While I could tell OnlyFriends With Penn and Amorini: Amateur Cupid stories for as long as people would read them, it was Private Dance that, from the birth of the idea, felt as if it had to be ongoing.
And now, as I’m wrapping up the Kickstarter for Wild Wisps #1, that series, too, demands to be ongoing.
I can see at least 20 issues for each of them, but likely more.
Why?
Why these series as epic, long-running, legacy titles?
First, the cast.
The concept of Private Dance is designed around the ensemble. While it is Sabby’s story the same way that Destiny, NY’s is Logan’s, the point of Private Dance is to examine the way the overlap of fantasy and reality impacts the lives of the dancers, the customers, the bouncers, the DJs, the owners, the bartenders. It was a big idea with many moving parts. It’s also about waiting for life to start… and waiting… and waiting…
Wild Wisps focuses squarely on Kino and Tonkarex, while also telling the story of warring kingdoms that impacts the entire world. Through this story, we’re also experiencing the world. The Pokémon comparison is obvious because it’s a creature story and there are many of these Wisps we’ll meet, but as I’m writing, I also feel that same excitement about learning new aspects of the world that I felt while reading Harry Potter and entering the Wizarding World for the first time. It’s a world within me that yearns to be explored. By me, first, and then through me.
Second, the theme.
Destiny, NY is about life, death, and the stories we tell about life. The narratives we build around our lives and the lives of others as we reach for meaning. It begins with prophecies: contextualizing lives by the most important thing these characters will do. But we pick up with Logan after her prophecy is complete, many years after that, as she is left to find meaning in her life.
Private Dance is about lying. We hide pieces of ourselves and present an idea of ourselves to the world, but it’s not the full picture. We arm ourselves with these partial truths and partial lies, and we crash into each other. Sometimes, we bring love and light to each others’ lives and sometimes we bring chaos. The comic picks up with everyone in the cast in the middle of their own personal chaos, picking up the pieces both together and separately.
Wild Wisps is about unbreakable bonds forged from trauma, and about the sacred relationship between humans and animals. Wisps of course represent animals, taking the relationship between human/pet and turning it into a sacred metaphor. In the series, the creatures are called Wisps because when they bond with a human, an orb of light floats from their heart and is absorbed into the chest of their guardian: an eternal bond.
Finally, and when you’re a creator, this bit might actually be most important.
Never underestimate this bit.
Because I fucking wanted to.
I had my idea for the comics I wanted to create.
The market seemed to suggest those kinds of comics were impossible.
I did it myself.
What do you know?
The market responded.
Do your own thing. It’s the best gift you can give yourself as an artist.
The time for knocking on doors is over.
Do what you want, and do it well.
Can't disagree at all. Fighting with this notion for SIRE through the DM. The retailers all claim to want ongoing, but the mini series always gets the boost in sales for the #1s. Kickstarter is a great way to keep this going.
Looking forward to Wild Wisps!