Category: Webcomics

Spotlight SquadCast Interview with Cartoonist Leeanne Krecic

Spotlight SquadCast Interview with Cartoonist Leeanne Krecic

We were very excited to talk to our latest guest. Cartoonist Leeanne Krecic, creator of the worldwide hit webcomic series Let’s Play, sat down for a discussion about her comic making craft and what she is currently working on.

Let’s Play, a romance webcomic that has 4.8 million subscribers and over half a billion views on Webtoon, is Leeanne’s most well-known work. It is a super engaging story with wonderful, and relatable characters.

Leeanne has just launched a Kickstarter to make a video game based on the characters from Let’s Play called Everdate. It funded in less than three hours and is barging through stretch goals. We talked about the game and what backers can expect from the results of the campaign.

As is typical with most comic creators, Leeanne’s journey to comic success is unique and interesting. We talked about her journey and the challenges that she overcame.

We are really happy that we had the opportunity to talk to Leeanne about her comic, life, and the game.

We hope you enjoy the SquadCast below, and don’t forget to check out the campaign information for Everdate – Let’s Play: The Dating Game.


Everdate – Let’s Play: The Dating Game
Coming soon from Mongie Studios!

Campaign Link: http://kck.st/3RZ6QW8

Ending: Thu, March 16 2023 3:00 PM EDT

PCS Notes: This game looks amazing for both fans of the comic and newcomers. We highly encourage you to check out the campaign site. There are lots of animations and a couple of videos to give you even more about what to expect from this project.  Continue reading “Spotlight SquadCast Interview with Cartoonist Leeanne Krecic”

Live SquadCast with Comic Creator Thom Zahler

Live SquadCast with Comic Creator Thom Zahler

Join us live as we talk to cartoonist and comic creator Thomas Zahler.  Thom is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for print edition of Cupid’s Arrows Season 2. That comic was originally published on Webtoons.com and delves deeper into the mythos of the covert teams of “cupids” who ensure that the right people fall in love with each other. It is a funny and heartfelt property that explores the nature of love and destiny through the lens of romantic comedy.

Thom is also running a Patreon page where he regularly updates new pages of the latest volume of his long running magnum opus Love and Capes. The latest collection will be called Love and Capes: Home For the Holidays and is a follow-up to last year’s Ringo Award Nominated Love and Capes: In the Time of Covid.

We hope you enjoy the conversation and check out the Kickstarter campaign for Cupid’s Arrows.

Brainiac On Banjo: Burning Down The House!

Brainiac On Banjo: Burning Down The House!

Every year many bleeding hearts tiptoe through their keyboards decrying the spread of book banning in state and local schools and libraries. And by “every year,” I mean “well, actually, every couple of days.”

As we’ve seen this month, a huge part of the Virginia gubernatorial race focused on the horrific nightmares evoked from the work of author Toni Morrison. She was the winner of the American Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Nobel Prize in Literature, the National Humanities Medal, the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and over 100 other A list awards. Lord knows, that’s not the type of person whose work you’d want in your library, is it?

Nazis doing what Nazis do.

These lists often come out of Texas because their school library habits influence purchasing patterns all over this bigoted nation… and that’s because, when it comes to electing government officials, Texas is to fascism what Florida is to prostitution.

Therefore, every year I find myself dancing across my own keyboard bitching about censorship. Technically, that word only applies to works banned by a government, so it certainly applies here. But in a democracy – yeah, I know; stop laughing! – the government acts in the name of the people, so I subscribe to the overreaching definition of that term. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Burning Down The House!”

Continued After the Next Page #018: What is a Substack and Why Do I Care?

Continued After the Next Page #018: What is a Substack and Why Do I Care?

After decades of predictable delivery methods for comic book content, the past twenty years has been full of novel delivery mechanisms, and now we are being presented with an new option: Comics via Newsletter. The New York Times reported on the announcement that several high profile writers are joining Nick Spencer at Substack.com and creating comic content for their subscription based newsletters.

Writers Jonathan Hickman, James Tynion IV, Saladin Ahmed, Molly Ostertag, and Scott Snyder are the first group of creators that are announced to be creating on the Substack platform. Substack is a website that bills itself as “a place for independent writing.” If you want to try to determine what the platform is trying to accomplish, you can start with their About Page, and I wish you luck. George Gustines of the New York Times did a good job of covering the details of the announcement, and if you have access to the NYT, I recommend checking it out, as it is a big deal in comics news.

I would like to look at this concept from a consumer’s perspective. This development is indicative of the difficult economics behind comic book publishing. Print publishing in general seems to be in great turmoil in terms of making things profitable as the world moves further away from paper.  I get that writers and artists are struggling and do not begrudge anyone the opportunity to get paid for their art.

This newsletter platform concerns me as a consumer of comics. It raises questions in terms of delivery expectation and content. I wonder how often a subscriber will be paying for expected content on a subscription and be disappointed that someone fails to deliver. The difference in this type of platform versus Patreon.com is that while Patreon is advertised as a support mechanism for creators, Substack is promising a product in return for the subscription. Without corporations and publishing companies absorbing the liability for delays and errors in products, the creators on Substack will have no one to hide behind if the product does not make it to market as anticipated. This is a big risk for future revenue and reputation.

There has been little said to this point as to what the subscribers are actually entitled to and what the subscription tiers actually cost. A concern is that the typical subscription is around $5 per month, and that generally works out to the cost of a single issue of a comic book.  Will these Substack Comics be generating a full single issue per month? Other digital platforms such as Webtoon or Comixology deliver products that are either free or complete at time of consumption. Therefore. the consumer knows what they are getting for their “money”.

My last concern is that as a consumer, I now have to determine if reading and purchasing comic content from some of my favorite creators is worth supporting Substack. There are plenty of reservations about the way the platform does business and who it does it with. A simple google search should give you plenty of reading material. The comic book consumer’s budget is now divided between Direct Market Retail shops, Online Digital delivery of published comics, Kickstarter campaigns, and bookstores. Adding this new expense may require thoughtful deliberation on the part of the consumer.

Ultimately, this is a way for creators to take more control of the monetization and delivery of their art. I applaud that. There is a feeling that comic creators are underpaid and under supported. I want comics to thrive and survive. I wish the creators who are endeavoring to deliver comics in this innovative way all the luck for success. I am not sold yet on this, but for the creators and fans, I hope it works and we get the next great comic story delivered in our inboxes via Substack.

Spotlight SquadCast Interview with Steve Conley and His Astounding Space Thrills

Spotlight SquadCast Interview with Steve Conley and His Astounding Space Thrills

We got the chance to catch up with cartoonist Steve Conley recently. This is an interview we have been wanting to do for some time and the timing worked out great as Steve is in the middle of a fantastic Kickstarter campaign.

Steve is best known for his multi-award nominated webcomic The Middle Age, but this time around he is collecting and printing his turn of the century webcomic Astounding Space Thrills. The campaign is doing excellent and is something you definitely want to get in on.

Please enjoy this conversation where we talk about the Kickstarter for Astounding Space Thrills, Steve’s career, the history and future of The Middle Age, and we throw in a little pop culture etymology for good measure.


Check out the trailer for the Kickstarter campaign below:

 

What is Astounding Space Thrills about?

According to Steve:

Astounding Space Thrills is a fun, retro-futuristic, sci-fi adventure following hero Argosy Smith as he solves cosmic mysteries. Think of Argosy as 1/3 The Doctor, 1/3 Buckaroo Banzaii, and 1/3 every kid who grew up playing RPGs and video games.

There are very accessible backer reward tiers and so far the campaign is blowing by the stretch goals.

It is an amazing effort that Steve is undertaking by resurrecting and remastering a webcomic that was designed to be viewed on a monitor that used a VGA cable and a computer that required a hard wired cable to a dial-up modem to get to the internet. This is definitely a labor of love and we are looking forward to seeing the final results.

In our conversation, Steve mentioned that he is willing and excited to go back to the world of Argosy Smith if the people want more of it.  I say that sounds like a great idea.

What are the important things to know?

The campaign ends on May 26, 2021.

You can find the campaign page here.

Steve’s website is steveconley.com.

You can follow Steve on Twitter at thesteveconley.

Don’t forget to check out The Middle Age as well. You can find it at Webtoon, GoComics, Tapas, or even in Kindle or Print formats on Amazon.

Steve also has a Patreon page that we highly recommend.

With Further Ado #137: Catching Up with Thom Zahler

With Further Ado #137: Catching Up with Thom Zahler

One of the many nice things about attending conventions was seeing familiar faces. For fans and industry professionals alike, it’s a great way to catch up with, and be inspired by, the many creative entrepreneurs of Geek Culture.

One guy that was always working hard, and doing it with his natural, movie-star smile, was Thom Zahler. Since I can’t walk up to his cool booth at San Diego Comic-Con this summer, I just had to catch up with him ..via this column!


Ed Catto: How have you been managing during the pandemic?

Thom Zahler: I’m not gonna lie. It’s been rough and interesting and everything in between.

When the lockdown first happened, I was kind of designed to be fine through the summer. I was working on season two of Cupid’s Arrows for WEBTOON and that wasn’t affected by anything. I converted the last convention-exclusive issues of Love and Capes: The Family Way into a shop-exclusive version that I was able to put out when Diamond shut down. And, when it comes to how I work at home, quarantine isn’t a lot different than normal times. I couldn’t go to the gym anymore, and everything had an extra layer of complexity, but it wasn’t a big change. I was fortunate to be close enough to my parents that I could take care of them, do their shopping, things like that. And I live in a small town where you could still go out and take walks and not run into anyone.

Losing conventions certainly hurt, as much from the emotional hit as anything else. Conventions kind of recharge me. I can see the people who read my comics and that helps fuel me to make more. The loss of the revenue stream wasn’t great. But it was manageable.

Then the summer rolled on and nothing changed, and it got a lot tighter. I’m glad I bore down and prepared for the worst, squirreling money away and preparing for the long game. It still wasn’t awesome, but it was better than the alternative. Continue reading “With Further Ado #137: Catching Up with Thom Zahler”

Superheroes Deal With the Pandemic in “Love and Capes: In the Time of Covid.”

Superheroes Deal With the Pandemic in “Love and Capes: In the Time of Covid.”

Press Release:

1/5/2021 – Timberlake, OH

The Harvey-nominated superhero romantic comedy Love and Capes is taking on an unlikely foe: the coronavirus. In the recently-released free online comic, the heroes and their families take a light-hearted look at lockdown, masks, social distancing and all the other hardships of the last year.

“I was living through the lockdown like everyone else and have been keeping it out of the comics I was writing hoping it’d be over before it was an issue,” says series creator Thom Zahler. “Obviously, that didn’t happen. And then I got to thinking about how my Love and Capes characters would deal with the world today… and before I knew it, I had twenty pages of ideas.”

Zahler used this latest chapter of Love and Capes to launch a Patreon campaign. It quickly found an audience, and a new page appears every Thursday. For the New Year, Zahler has decided to make the older pages available for free on his website. Each Monday, a new page will be released to the public.

“Writing and drawing this story has helped me deal with the way things are right now. I think, even separated, we have a lot of shared experiences and there’s a lot of humor to be found in them. I hope it becomes a little moment of respite for everyone who reads it.”

The Patreon continues to provide members-only content, too, including weekly sketches voted on by Patrons, “Lost Tales” of pitches than never became comics, and more.

This is not the first pandemic-related Love and Capes venture. In the early days of March when comic companies and distribution centers were shut down, Zahler created a direct-to-shops version of the six-issue series Love and Capes: The Family Way and got those to local stores, even including local store branding on each cover. The books were printed with the assistance of Jones Printing in Eastlake, Ohio.

 


Thom Zahler lives in Northeast Ohio and has been creating comics for over fifteen years. Love and Capes launched as a hybrid print and web comic in 2005. Since then, the series has been self-published by Zahler’s imprint, Maerkle Press, and by IDW who also publishes the collections. The latest, Love and Capes: The Family Way, came out in November of last year. He also created the Webtoon series Warning Label and Cupid’s Arrows, and writes for IDW’s My Little Pony series.

Link to webpage: https://thomzahler.squarespace.com/love-and-capes-in-the-time-of-covid

Link to Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/thomzahler

Blackout: The Latest Season of the New Brooklyn Saga is on Webtoons

Blackout: The Latest Season of the New Brooklyn Saga is on Webtoons

What do you do when your Psychotic Vigilante Mother gets hold of an Apocalypse Sword?

Comic creator Dean Haspiel has been working on his original metaphysical superhero story The New Brooklyn Saga for a few years now, and the fourth season has just premiered on Webtoons.com.

The latest installment is called Blackout. Here is how Dean describes the new season:

When The Green Point’s apocalypse sword is reactivated by the malice of The Coney, The Red Hook must combat and convince his psychotic, vigilante mother to help finally destroy it, only to accidentally rebirth the wrath of an unexpected villain who threatens to save earth from the hierarchy of humanity by sending New Brooklyn back to the stone age! Does The Red Hook have to break bad in order to restore the goodness of society?

The Red Hook, crook turned reluctant hero, is an engaging character, and the world that he lives in is full of interesting characters. The big ideas that Haspiel explores in this series have always raised the quality of the story to lofty heights. The previous season ended with the sun being reignited by love; so, where do you go from there? Continue reading “Blackout: The Latest Season of the New Brooklyn Saga is on Webtoons”

Continued After the Next Page #014: Exercise Your Right to Vote For Comics – Ringo Edition

Continued After the Next Page #014: Exercise Your Right to Vote For Comics – Ringo Edition

This is the time of year when every comic fan can get involved in the process of recognizing excellence in comic making. The public nomination process is open for the 2020 Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards.

One of the great features of the Ringo Awards is that all fans and professionals have the opportunity to nominate their favorite creators and productions from 2019.

The ballot is available here.

I have taken some time to go through things that I have read or seen that was produced in 2019. Below is a list of some suggestions for each category.

PLEASE NOTE THESE ARE NOT OFFICIAL NOMINATIONS!! These are merely my suggestions!!!

The initial public nomination process is a free form text option for each category. Unfortunately (Actually, it’s pretty great!), I have found so many worthy candidates for each category.

In my list of nomination suggestions are people and publications that I feel are deserving of nominations. I am one hundred percent certain that I have forgotten or not included worthy candidates. This may be the first and only time I do this based on how many people I offend. Please forgive any omissions. Continue reading “Continued After the Next Page #014: Exercise Your Right to Vote For Comics – Ringo Edition”

Spotlight Interview with Love and Capes Creator, Thom Zahler

Spotlight Interview with Love and Capes Creator, Thom Zahler

What happens with super heroes when they are not fighting crime. Do they date? What are their private live like? Who are the people they interact with out of uniform? This are the questions that writer/artist Thom Zahler wanted to explore and decided to make a story about the personal lives of superheroes.

The first volume of Love and Capes was published by IDW in 2008. Three subsequent trade paperback volumes were published culminating in Volume 4 “What to Expect” which was published in 2013.  Since then, Zahler has worked on a bunch of excellent different creator owned properties and licensed material. All the while, he has been peppered with questions of when the will be more Love and Capes.

Recently, he has returned to Chronopolis and the world of the Crusader. Volume 5 of Love and Capes, titled “The Family Way”, will be published by IDW in February 2020, just in time for Valentine’s Day. We sat down and talked with Thom about what it was like to come back to the story after so much time and what has changed.

Check out our SquadCast interview on this page and a part of the interview that we transcribed below: Continue reading “Spotlight Interview with Love and Capes Creator, Thom Zahler”