The Enchanted Dagger

Work continues on EDag #7.  Some nice work over the last couple weeks on pages 8-11, very dense artwork on an interesting layout, one that we haven’t seen yet.  Issue 7 is off to a good start, I think.  Work was slowed a bit by a strange virus I picked up, an odd laryngitis…was it Covid?  A home test indicated otherwise but well after my symptoms developed so who knows.  Maybe just a cold.

It seems like I should be able to have the majority of the comic drawn up by the end of March.  As I’m not planning on getting started with the Inks & Colors until next fall I’ll have a lot of time to tinker with it in the meantime so it takes the pressure off a bit.  The current idea is to draw up the second half of Meet the Purple Hairy Man in July, August and September, finish Edag #7 next fall/winter, and then continue with the ink/colors on MTHPHM from that point with the intention of biting the bullet and jumping into the crowd fund business.

I was just looking with envy at a Kickstarter campaign (KamenAmerica) which seems to have the resources of a publishing company behind it.  I’ve always had a DIY approach to it, logic being that the fewer people involved with the project would be fewer mouths to feed.  The ins and outs of the business part are straight forward enough, it seems, though not exactly playing to my strengths.  Those high school aptitude tests revealed I have no clerical skills whatsoever.   Additionally, I’ve always had reservations about the market potential of EDag, not that I think its a bad comic.  Its just not built like something like KamenAmerica, cute anime chick blasting people with photoshop lightening.  I haven’t read it but I would guess its yummy bubblegum candy whereas EDag is more like a Pollo au Vinegre served wild rice and sauteed green beans.

I expect the returns to be very low to start.  I may do a test run with Kalthar Redux just to get my sea legs.  Should I go ahead and push Edag too?  I’m currently stuck on on the touch ups to issue 4 (at the same 2 page spread, pages 6&7, that had me hung up for weeks back when i drew it up the first time haha).  There is less touching up to do for 5,6&7 thankfully, although there are a handful of pages throughout the book that I’d like a second go at.  It probably makes sense…I could do three floppies a year and then a trade collection as well (maybe with a good comic pro doing a cover), a campaign every 3 months for three years, which would give me time to finish the sucker, and then the hard cover collection in all its glory (it seems that people are pushing trades a lot in the crowdfund game rather than single issues but its what I got…the floppies will be collected as tier rewards as the campaigns accumulate).  That sort of consistency would be well received I’d bet, and it would set up a fan base for PHM.  If that were all were to work out I might be able to spend more of the year working and cut out some day jobs if it was generating income and not just covering costs.  If I had the luxury of total immersion, I think i could complete 50-60 pages a year, two or 3 floppies and a hardcover collection (I read recently that it took Herge 2 years to finish a tin tin book).  That would be a pretty awesome set up for the PHM era, I think… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the meantime I want to think again about checking conventions, mass spreader events tho they may be.  It occurred to me the other day that I didn’t have to set up and sell, that I could just go and shmooze!  I’m especially looking at the Pennsylvania convention circuit.  Pre-Covid it seemed like they had more than a dozen conventions throughout the state.  Given its accessibility to the DC area, I could jet up there and back without too much pain. Pittsburgh seems to have a hot scene with all the great work the Comics Kayfabe crew do on the regular.  Its been suggested that an enterprising comic creator could make a career out of just the Pennsylvania cons.  Of course, they could have been referring to people who specialize in pinups of Batman and shit.  Not my bag.

So much to do.  This is where my right brain over powers the left and says back to the drawing board.  But even right brain can’t deny that work is being done and that testing the market is in view.