Starblazer

Starblazer was a UK Digest sized that ran (according to wikipedia) from 1979 to 1991, though not sure how they were distributed in Northern Ireland as I’m pretty sure I never saw one.

The digest size is a lovely format, I’ve been obsessed with for ages. Identical to the Commando comic (at least in terms of format) it’s  7 × 5½ inch size with 68 pages of comics. The physical size necessitates that the pages usually have an average of about 2 panels per page.

Printed on newsprint, with a glossy cover, I’ve been in love with the format since I first picked up a commando comic when I was a kid.

Where Commando specialised in war stories, Starblazer did sci fi tales.

There’s a number of things I like about the format, for one – it’s very drawable. You could draw a full page digest format sized page in an hour and a half, I think – pencils and inks. That makes producing one page a day very easy – functionally a single page is equivalent of about a quarter of a normal comic page.

What that means is you could easily draw a commando strip, a page a day on top of regular work load. (and if that’s a struggle, half a page a day, goodness, it’s so small you could draw it while you’re eating lunch).

One of the big problems with kickstarter for comics is that it’s pretty hard to get a kickstarter amount to fund the creation of a comic – John Reppion did the legwork here, and working out roughly £250 per page to make a comic (writing, pencilling, inking, colouring, lettering – all at a modest rate) you’re talking about 24 pages x £250 = £6,000.

That’s before you get in to printing the damn thing.

Let’s say you expect to sell 100 copies, and the print cost for 100 copies is £155*, and let’s call postage a simple flat £1 per issue, that’s another £100. So altogether you’re looking for £6255 – which breaks down at COST price of £ 62.55 per copy.

Which is clearly nuts.

Let’s multiple the print copies by 10 – selling 1000 = print cost £488, postage stays £1 per issue for £1000, total production cost is £7488 making each issue cost £7.48

Which basically makes the whole thing a non starter if you’re paying your team.

Now, the biggest cost is obviously script/art/lettering, but let’s say you do that yourself – while working on other things – the cost isn’t zero but you can bury the production costs into the general milieu of your day, doing a digest sized comic means you can really do a page a day (I find getting a finished page a day really helps with motivation) but you need a bigger page count, 64 pages or so …

Sums again – production of comic cost: zero.

Print cost (based on A5 print, 64 b&w pages + four pages colour cover/inside cover, for a print run of 100) £136

Postage £1 that gives a total print run cost of £236, or £2.36 per issue. Now if you can sell this at a £5 per issue on a kickstart (it’s a bit high, but it means you actually get to make a tiny profit) then bingo! You’ve made an amazing £234.

It’s not gonna make you rich, that’s for sure…

If you can scale up to 1000, you can go with : Print £581+£1000(postage) – £1581 / 1000 = £ 1.51 per issue cost, profits £3489

Which, actually, if you can then keep the momentum going and get yourself in some kind of flow, if you could manage to have a number of those little digest books coming out on a semi regular basis, say once per quarter, that’s a fairly respectable income for a project that really is just a fun little sideline.

(And if you can get some sort of momentum going and do something like that once per quarter, no reason you couldn’t do a horror, a comedy, a scifi, a romance and kids comic and more…)

And now for some Caveats:

Man, I think my postage and packing cost is way off … £1? That’s just me rounding to a nice number, probably something stupid like £2.35 or some other random, but high number)

The comparison wasn’t entirely fair, the £6k figure for a 22 page comic was assuming colours, where I’m talking b&w.

Also, I can only consider (*And I’m not really considering it, more doing some thinking-out-blog) doing this because I’m a reasonably accomplished artist who knows he can draw 64 pages and I’m comfortable lettering my work and doing a lot of the technically fiddly stuff, and while I’d probably want to write my own work, I’m sure I can put my hand up and look for someone willing to cowrite one of these little things with me, just to have something fun in print.

God it would be so cool though, right?

*This is cheaper than I expected, and just based on a quick google search and using this pricing website https://mixam.co.uk/comicbooks

Why Not!? Post Launch…

So, couple of days ago I put Tom’s comic Why Not!? online. I figured I’d put it up as a free pdf download, and if anyone wanted to donate something, that’d be awesome – Tom could have a little extra friday treat money (which is what we call pay day round here…)

(he’d prefer it if you called him Thomas, he lets me call him Tom…)

I told Tom about it and, when I picked him up from school, we had a whole £6 in paypal. This was great, as he’d already blown his friday treat money on Thursday as it was the European elections and Tom’s school was closed so we had to entertain ourselves.

He was pretty excited about how he’d spend his money.

By the time we got to the toy shop (a 2 minute drive) it was up to £8, and Tom was giddy with delight. He started looking around for what he could buy. I offered him a couple of quid to bring him up to something around a tenner if he needed it.

My phone dinged a few times and suddenly we had £16, so he decided he’d buy an xbox game (he doesn’t have an xbox, but he is getting one for his birthday on the 6th of June when he’ll be 11).

He picked up a game (for £15) and we went to pay for it – turned out it needed the microsoft gaming network thing which we didn’t think he’d be getting, so he put it away and got a different game for a fiver. Never mind, Tommy, you’ve got an extra £10 so you can spend that later. No, wait, it’s £24. Hang on, it’s £30, it’s £50, It’s £70, it’s £80, oh blimey, it’s £100.

Right now, he’s sitting on £220 and I don’t think he’s been able to process it! At one point I was getting enough little notifications Tom was just “why!? why are people giving me money, surely they have better things to do with it??” It was a really fun day for both of us.

Tom’s never been great with money (well, he’s 10, so every penny suddenly gets spent) but this big chunk of cash he’s decided to save – at least until his birthday – when he can blow it all on some cool xbox games (though we’re off to disney land paris soon so I’ve suggested he can save it for that).

We’re both super appreciative of everyone who’s donated, especially those who donated a silly amount (we’d worked out £2.40 was a reasonable amount since it’s the same price as the beano) and lots of people paid way more than that!

But one thing Tom has really really enjoyed is all of the comments, and he’s made me read them all out to him, multiple times. So thank you for those.

Tom’s surprisingly shy. He really doesn’t want to show his comic off to people he knows (I think his older brother, who has a habit of browbeating you is to blame for this a little) but this I think has really helped him.

He was already working on issue 2 before we’d put issue 1 online (and he’d written a very sweet intro where he talks about hoping people liked issue 1 -they did, Tom, they did) and we’re a few pages in to it.

I’ve told him to readjust his expectations of issue 2s sales, no way can we match issue 1 for income.

But I’ve also told him let’s try and make it better, let’s add more backgrounds, let’s make some stories a little longer, let’s see what we can do.

I’d like to say all the money has really encouraged him, but like most poor doomed artists he’d be doing this even if he’d only made £5 on it and if you don’t believe me, here’s a Tumbler blog I made when he was three years old and was writing stories literally before he could write – he’d dictate the text to me and I’d write it down (the blog only talks about a few of them, in the end he made maybe twenty or thirty of these crazy little books).

Anyway thank you for everyone who downloaded it, paid for it and left a comment. It means a great deal.

Here’s tom hard at work on issue 2!

Image

Why Not?!

Thomas(10) has been writing up and drawing up a storm. He’s written and pencilled a 24 page comic called Why Not?! – which is largely inspired by the Beano and the Phoenix.

One of the struggles of being a professional comic artist dad is knowing just how much help is too much help. When Nathan (now 14) was younger he used to stop drawing and just say “You do it, you’re better than me” – now I’m not sure if he’d say they same about any adult, but I can’t help feeling I was to blame on this one.

With Tom as much as possible I’ve tried to encourage but not overwhelm, but I think we’ve made a happy compromise. Essentially, I’m inking and lettering his comic. (Actually, I think I’ve got a raw deal).

Now, in his defence, he did offer to pay me. 50p. I refused, and he upped it to £2. (I didn’t take it, but there was no back end deal, so again, I’m feeling like I’ve been taken advantage of)

The line up of issue 1 (he has plans, we’ll see how far they go, but I’ve been slightly taken aback at how steadily he’s worked at this, chipping away a page or two a day) includes:

  • Monkey Arms (the boy with the long arms)
  • Spacedogs
  • Galaxy FC (two pager adventure strip!)
  • Electric Kid
  • Time Thief
  • Head Bump Hero
  • Mean Dean
  • Tim Teleport
  • Broken Reality
  • Element Man
  • and a page of Dad’s Jokes (which Tom included under protest)

So we’re gonna get this thing printed up and try and price it at £2.50 and I’ll probably point a limited run of about 10 (unless, you know… people ask for copies…) One thing I’ll say, it’s been fun doing it, Thomas is very very funny.

Mac and Me

New computer New computer!!

The last computer I bought was purchased from an online store where I got to pick and choose every single component. Now, I used to work in IT (though I preferred software to hardware) so I was fairly comfortable with this, but it was a windows computer and a bit of a brute.

I went for something with a decent graphics card – because I wanted to do 3d stuff, but also something that could handle, down the road, VR.

It was noisy as all get out though, and bloody massive. And after a years and years on a Mac going back to windows felt … not good.

BUT I mostly use Clip Studio Paint which looks identical on windows or Mac (and now iPad Pro) so I didn’t think there’d be much problem, just a decent email client, a simple word processor (not MS Word, no thanks) and I’d be set.

But man oh man, I’d forgotten about windows and how easy it was to find crappy software and how hard it was to find decent software.

I would’ve gotten a Mac – I have a Cintiq 27, and didn’t need a monitor, but the Mac mini model at the time hadn’t been updated in 5-6 years and I’d be damned if I was gonna drop a grand on a machine that was out of date by that much. So windows it was.

Since then, stuff happened. Mac minis finally updated, I smashed my Cintiq 27 screen and bought a 16 Cintiq pro, a 4k screen that, amazingly, was almost impossible to get 4k out of – needing, as it did, a USB-C output. And the super neat all singing all dancing windows pc with the super up graphics card … no usb-c video output. So pretty damn frustrating.

Eventually I fixed the 27″ screen and I’ve been sitting with the 16 Pro in a box.

Anyway, got some stuff on and I thought – you know what… it’s time to go back to the Mac.

So I did. Mac mini, not the top end one, but a decent one.

Instantly, the 16 Cintiq pro works and I’m getting 4k and gosh that screen is gorgeous.

Mind you, I couldn’t recommend the 16 Cintiq – it has a weird visual distortion when you put the pen near the screen (like an analogue interference) and even though the Mac is pretty silent, the fan noise on the 16 pro is pretty damn annoying.

BUT those 4k graphics. Gah, hard to go back to a normal display.

Another pleasant surprise, Mac mini has built in speakers. Wasn’t expecting that. I’m not an audiophile, something that can play some music while I work is about all I need. But I never bought speakers, so relied on a bluetooth connection between my old PC and an amazon echo (which required me buying a bluetooth adaptor for the PC)

Here’s the thing: with apple your options are so much more limited, BUT when they offer a thing the thing works.

Anyway, the Mac mini is lovely. The Cintiq pro 16 is also gorgeous. It can’t do anything in 3d worst a damn though, so I reserve the use of the old PC for when I inevitably need to do some 3d modelling.

Out this week: 2000ad Prog 2131

I drew the cover and the strip “The world according to Chimpsky” about a hyper intelligent ape who lives in mega city 1, written by Kenneth Niemand. New droid, good dredd writer.

It looks like this

Pencils
Inks
Flats
Colours

Publishing is a weird art, so this issue was drawn after the art in the prog that appeared before. And both were drawn over some time ago.

Matt wanted a cover for Chimpsky, and in an unusual note of convergence he suggested an idea I had already thought of – Chimpsky and Dredd facing off in the spider-man kiss pose (I imagine we both had exactly the same inspiration). Pretty pleased with how the cover turned out. It was pencilled, inked and coloured all within Clip Studio Paint.