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USDN Podcast is a cinematic indie comics interview series hosted by the USDN_Chairman and the Council of Nerds spotlighting the creators, storytellers, and worldbuilders shaping the future of independent comics.
Each episode dives beyond headlines into the real journeys behind the books from Kickstarter launches and creative struggles to the philosophies driving today’s indie storytelling movement.
This isn’t about rumors or recycled news.
It’s about the people creating the worlds.
Through in-depth conversations, creator spotlights, and crowdfunding discussions, USDN explores:
• The rise of indie comics
• The business of crowdfunding
• The art of worldbuilding
• The realities of independent storytelling
USDN is where indie comics come to life for the fans, by the creators, and powered by the community.
You are listening to the USDN on the
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what is up everybody and welcome to the
united states department of nerds where we
are for the people by the people and
of the people what if the biggest problem
in indie comics isn't talent but
infrastructure
what happens after the crowdfunding
campaign ends the hype fades and the
algorithm moves on tonight we're talking
about building something bigger than a
comic we're talking about building the
entire ecosystem a platform designed for
creators by creators the future of indie
comics might not just be stories
It may be in an entire system.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the Council of Nerds is now in session.
I know it's not sure Rob,
but welcome to the USDM podcast.
Please correct me again.
Thank you for having me on the show,
Chairman.
I really appreciate that.
Saurabh.
I think a good way to remember this
is Saurabh.
Saurabh.
And then you rub.
You know what that's from?
Oh, yeah?
Spider-Man one.
Oh, yeah.
What was his name?
The Buzzsaw.
Macho man doing that.
I like it.
I like that a lot.
But bro, before we get started,
let's tell everybody who you are and kind
of what got you into comics in the
first place.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Thank you again.
And yeah, I am Saurabh.
I'm a comic nerd and a software developer
for life.
Like I've been building tech and stuff for
almost twenty plus years now.
And, you know,
being a comic fan for all my life.
I think it started with when I was
growing up,
my dad gave me the comic of the
first issue of X-Men.
X-Men one by Jim Lee and Chris Claremont.
That just changed my life, like,
nineteen ninety,
nineteen eighty nine or nineteen ninety.
That was the time I just changed my
life forever like that,
that that the comic book was the best.
And also, like growing up,
like I was telling you backstage,
you know, we didn't have comic book shops,
so we had like newspaper subscriptions.
And I grew up in India where
We had really long train journeys.
So whenever we went on a long train
journey for like, twenty four hours,
we would just buy a whole stack of
comics at the train station.
Just read that for next, you know,
next day or so.
And yeah.
That's how I created a big collection of
comics.
It's really cool, though.
I always like learning about how different
cultures and people who grew up in
different cultures first experienced
comics for the first time.
And shout out to Akihiro.
He is a manga creator in the Philippines,
doing it big over there.
Glad to have you with us tonight, man.
Good hearing from you, too.
But when did you kind of realize that
comics weren't just going to be a hobby
for you, but something bigger for you?
Yeah, I mean,
I've always been a bit of a writer
myself as well.
I wrote my first bootleg comic at, like,
say, my eleven years or twelve years old.
My friend and I,
we wrote and drew a bootleg version of
Independence Day of all things.
No, that's really cool.
Like,
I would literally like to like I would
pay to read a new one like that.
You know what,
it actually works really well as a comic
book.
Yeah, I believe it.
I mean,
a twelve-part series of that would be
phenomenal to read.
Yeah, yeah.
And then like,
in about I actually published my first
comic book on Kickstarter with a with a
bunch of friends and you know, people,
people in the US.
So we came up with an anthology called
Monster Mashup,
which was
uh like a public domain crossover of
monster characters so um it was like a
fun anthology uh hundred and fifty pages
each volume produced two volumes of it uh
twenty seventeen was a good time at
kickstarter we raised around seven
thousand dollars or something but yeah
that's
but for that time frame yeah that's
impressive but you know you look at some
what some of these books are producing now
we're talking like eighty ninety thousand
dollars for a comic book being raised and
it's just like absolutely unheard of for a
single issue like a number one to garner
that much attention but it's happening
is happening i mean there's a good mix
of ip comics and you know like uh
not even not ip comics as well i
was looking at uh one of our creators
who who did a kickstarter recently and
they did like a thirty thirty one thousand
dollar campaign you know and that's yeah
it's wild and uh
Chris Ford with Dark Pink Comics in his
very first book, I think,
ultimately raised like eighty something
thousand dollars.
Wow.
That's phenomenal.
For the very first issue,
almost eighty grand.
yeah that's that's amazing i i i feel
like that's if that's not telling you that
it's time for indie comics then what is
dude a hundred percent a hundred percent
and we were talking before we went live
just like trying to put indie comics in
the forefront of people's minds now and
it's starting to happen but you have a
tech background what kind of made you want
to bridge tech
in comic books absolutely so like i said
on in i made this comic we put
it in hands of the readers and then
sort of fell off after that right like
i i feel like i didn't think i
don't think we had enough to to keep
going after that so like like you said
earlier what happens when like you finish
your crowdfunding campaign you that whole
month you're just focused on pushing your
book
Like, you know, on social media,
you're telling people about it.
Once all that's done,
all you have to do is then create
the book, print, ship, all of that stuff.
You know,
you get into the cycle of creation and
that whole thing sucks your time,
you know.
During that whole period,
you're not pushing that book along.
It's not moving along.
You lose the steam of promotion,
the fan base goes away.
You have to do that all over again
next time around when you do a campaign.
When I went through that whole process
myself,
I think surely there has to be a
platform out there that's going to do that
for you or going to help you in
some shape or form.
And really, it crossed my heart.
I couldn't find anything.
Back then,
there was no Global Comics or any of
the other platforms that we have now.
And I thought,
maybe I should go ahead and do that.
So yeah, I started doing that.
I started laying some groundwork around,
you know,
I started talking to creators like first
couple of years.
I was just talking to people and trying
to see what's exactly the problem they're
facing.
And I kind of realized like a lot
of creators want to create.
They don't really want to market the
books.
They don't really want to.
They love speaking to their fans.
They'll do the first thirty days of
marketing to get the book funded.
But after that.
And it's hard.
And I'm not saying that it's everybody's
cup of tea.
It's a very hard thing to do.
A lot of people have different
personalities.
They're shy.
They don't want to talk about it all
the time.
Some people even feel guilty about pushing
their book too much.
And I'm like, no,
you're not doing it enough.
You should do it more.
A hundred percent.
If I'm not annoyed by you pushing your
comic book,
then you're not doing it right.
Exactly.
That was the whole genesis of the idea
saying,
let's start a marketplace first for books
that have already been created,
that have gone through this cycle of
crowdfunding,
and let's try to find new fans for
them, new readers, new fans.
And then slowly over a period of time,
and we can't say crowdfunding is not a
part of, it's a very,
very critical part of the whole process of
comic book creation these days.
So the idea kind of started snowballing
into this thing where
We need to help creators at every stage
of their journey.
So crowdfunding is good,
but it's not perfect.
We need to make it better from the
current experience that is.
It feels a bit disjointed, right?
Like you're writing a Substack newsletter
and trying to push people to Kickstarter,
and then you send them to Backerkit for
fulfillment and things like that.
um and and then once all that's done
you put your book on global comics and
and comiXology to you know yeah and you
know it's funny that you brought up
comiXology because i used to love them
when they first started they were i
thought they were amazing but then when i
think it was when they got bought by
amazon i was just like this just ruined
it
Like, I just, after that,
I was just like,
I don't care about this no more.
Yeah.
I think around twenty nineteen or twenty
twenty,
Amazon just completely choked Comixology
and killed it.
I think that was like for me,
that was like a huge inflection point for
me.
It was like a part of me died.
I was like,
I feel so bad that Comixology is running
away.
I need to do this now.
It was like the big push that I
needed to get this thing in motion.
yeah but so good you've ran your own
kickstarter campaign so in your eyes what
was good and kind of like what do
you think was broke on when you during
that whole process
Yeah, like I said,
I think with Kickstarter,
the good thing is, obviously,
Kickstarter is a huge community.
On a day when you launch your campaign,
they send those emails out to people.
And when you're top of the category,
that's when there's a whole swell of fans
who come in and you'll have eyeballs on
your campaign at that time.
But that also is a spoil of riches,
right?
You'll go down pretty quickly.
So within the next hour or so,
you will know where to be seen in
the whole sea of those campaigns.
Um, there's also like, uh, and like back,
back in,
in Kickstarter was a very different time.
There were not many,
not as many campaigns as today, uh,
for comic books,
like kicking off on Kickstarter too.
So they were,
they were definitely like the good parts
where you get a community,
you get all these people to yourself.
And, uh,
if you send the message the right way,
you will definitely get funded.
You will definitely be able to raise
funds.
I think that where it kind of lacks
and there was,
it was a product of that time as
well.
Like the post campaign experience was very
lackluster.
Uh, like it was,
we were all managing it from spreadsheets
and like,
it was a bit of a nightmare actually
to do the fulfillment because we had a
printer in somewhere in the U S and
I was in Australia and there's a whole
bunch of like the artists were the couple
of artists from Nigeria, from Argentina.
coordinating with everybody.
That part was fun.
Creating the comic was fun,
but the hard part was the proofs needed
to be sent to people all over the
world.
Making sure we're delivering the right
product and
Back then,
shipping was not that big of an issue.
That side, despite everything,
that still worked.
But again,
just living within spreadsheets for that
many days and then just making sure
everybody received their product,
that part itself was not the most fun
thing to do.
Almost every creator you back,
once they're done with fulfillment,
I love how most of them would send
out something with their newsletter
saying,
fulfillment is done I'm going to hibernate
for a couple of days and reconsider my
life
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And like you, everybody,
every creator has one other part of their
life, their job and, you know,
the kids and friends and everything.
And everybody has to sacrifice that.
Like you're on a Saturday night,
you're sitting there back,
like opening Gemini mailers,
making sure the books are padded,
put it properly.
Yeah.
And please, y'all, for the love of God,
if you're in the indie comic industry or
the comic industry as a whole,
Freaking use Gemini mailers.
Nothing makes me more paranoid.
When I get home from working all day,
I pull my package out of the mail
and it's just in a regular mailer with
some cardboard.
It freaks me the hell out because I'm
like,
this shit's about to be heavily damaged.
And if you put a sticker on it
that says do not fold,
guess the first thing they're going to do
is fold it.
every single time like i have heavy books
how big old heavy books that i have
so in case something does get folded just
to stick those big heavy books on there
and hopefully it straightens them out
Exactly.
Even with Gemini Mailer sometimes,
I think there's a whole bunch of times
that it can go wrong too.
But it's good like, like, the time.
So everybody should stick to that.
Please.
And I understand they're not that cheap.
But at the same time,
we've chose the industry that we're in.
Utilize the good stuff.
But it's wild when you get a comic
book in a UPS envelope with two pieces
of cardboard taped around it,
and you're like, oh, God.
Yeah.
And it's not bag and board either.
There's no bag and board.
I'm like, come on.
Like,
I supported this campaign at the rate of,
you know, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
twenty dollars, and my books come raw.
No bag, no board.
I get it.
It's expensive to create comic books,
but come on.
Yeah.
Come on.
A lot of printers do bag and board
themselves now.
They are.
Yeah.
So I think that kind of brings me
to another point where we're trying to
solve all these problems,
like this huge mess of post crowdfunding
and with the help of experts.
I'm not a hundred percent expert in it.
I've been like a DIY creator myself.
That sounded very long bot's punk of you
to say.
diy yeah i love chris shout out to
chris yeah hey congrats to aha as well
man successful crowdfund on aha volume one
hopefully it's gonna it's volume one and
we're getting another one soon but shout
out to chris and chris man they're great
people and they thank them because they
let me have the entire team to to
interview which was a lot of fun
wow that team has so many people i
love like duke electric i i love that
guy that's my boy right there that's my
boy right there pink suit and all man
i love him and then squids and um
that whole team travis like that was such
a a fun thing to get to do
because normally when you talk to somebody
about an anthology you talk to the
creators
But they gave me access to everybody.
Like I got to talk to almost everybody
associated with the book.
There was a couple of cancellations,
but I understand that life happens.
But just to get to talk to the
majority of the team that worked on the
book, so much fun.
And it's just something you don't get to
do often.
yeah like it's rare to get the opportunity
to talk to an entire creative team on
an anthology and it was a lot of
fun that sounds amazing did did one is
where one fox did he from our glass
comics did did he come on the show
as well no he he was one of
the ones that did and
But I had Jasmine on,
Squids McKenzie up in Canada, of course,
Travis James.
Yeah, just such an amazing team.
Let me – oh, come on now.
My computer wants to be slow on me.
Interviews.
See, Chaz and Tony Kapp, Evan Johnston.
jasmine and uh matt didn't make it for
that one menage menage is a phenomenal uh
writer he's based out of new york city
um he wrote an indian body horror story
that was just like
And I was like, that's legit.
Like, I love it.
He's such a nice guy too.
Very well spoken.
Everybody was very well spoken.
And that's what I love about talking about
the people in the community is they're all
very well spoken,
very well knowledgeable on everything.
And then Travis James, of course.
And yeah, Chris and Chris,
let me hop up to March.
see you know chris and chris duke of
course and mids miguel's also they're both
in canada as well so and i thought
to paul iza recently who's now a part
of uh the comics one family with the
olympian so
Yeah, man,
I've had a busy start to the year,
and I've loved it,
but I did have to pump the brakes.
I was like, I'm doing too much.
I need some me time.
it is very important to to scale back
at times you know yeah and i think
what i have now is a good footprint
going forward once one every like four
days i think is like the perfect setup
because it gives me time to actually edit
things properly and do all these things
that i want to be able to do
plus you know there's a lot of tv
i want to watch i still need to
catch up on a lot of tv
very very true very very true all the
good shows since that came out since
january i have not got to sit down
and watch so like the new daredevil i
need to finish one piece uh there's a
lot of good anime that i haven't caught
up on
I got to get caught up on everything.
That's why I'm like one every four days
is good.
Although I'm quick turning right now with
you and my interview on Sunday.
I'm very excited to talk to her because
she's an actress and she's been a muse
for comic books.
Absolutely amazing person.
That's going to be a lot of fun.
Continuing on,
But so what happens to most indie comics
after Kickstarter's in?
I know we were just discussing it a
little bit,
but at the end of the day,
it kind of just like it poofs, right?
It disappears like you don't it feels like
you don't hear from them again.
Yeah, yeah.
So the way we tried to solve that
was that middle part of finding fans when
your books have been created is really,
like, that was we started with.
But then we started with, like,
we put crowdfunding before that.
And now we're putting up socials.
So it kind of ties the whole thing.
So you create your book with crowdfunding.
You start pushing that on the socials.
But then once you're done,
before the next book comes along,
you can start engaging your fans with
different things.
So we're looking at doing live selling.
We're looking at doing live streams.
You can do sub-stack like blogs.
You can have like a patreon like thing
where you want to do a script guns
like if writers can do script
Consultations, you know, yeah,
we can buy one of things from them
or like do merchandise and you know Stuff
like that.
So it's really cool that you're spending
it to like to become this Megalith of
a platform with all these different
systems built in it.
I know you just brought up live-streaming
it's like selling comics that way and
So like, what are,
is there another platform that you plan to
use?
Are you,
do you plan to build another platform
within comics one to, to do that?
Cause I mean, why not exist?
And something I have thought about doing
is like after interviews,
cause I'm set up as a seller on
whatnot.
I just haven't started selling anything
yet.
And one of the things I've thought about
doing is after I have somebody on is
like, Hey,
do you want to go live on a
whatnot stream and sell some of your
books?
Yeah.
is something i have thought about doing
that's a brilliant idea by the way you
should totally do that and and i think
that's gonna come probably in the second
half of the year so that and yes
i have that coming like i'm going to
start offering that i'm also going to have
um
already built sponsorship packages as well
so that will be coming in the later
half of the year where you can sponsor
the podcast and like basically it's free
promotions for you for the month or for
the week or for the show there's going
to be like three levels of packages one
for a month one for like a week
one for like a single show
And basically, yeah,
it's going to be basically free,
free advertising.
I'm going to have to because I'm going
to have to put in some extra work
on that.
So but it's definitely going to be
affordable marketing and advertising for
your company publishing, what have you.
And it's going to be done very nicely.
It's going to be, you know,
pre-written into everything and you'll get
your shout out during the show.
And so, yeah,
it's going to be done nicely.
That's amazing.
To answer your earlier question,
so we are going to build it into
the platform.
all the stuff that i'm talking about will
be completely built into our own platform
we don't just want to be like if
you see and i'll dial back a little
bit we talked about creating an ecosystem
and ecosystem for comic books it's not
just the creators not just the writers and
artists and letters and all those creative
people right there's another set of
creative people who actually make things
happen for comic book creators as well so
there's
PR professionals, people like yourself,
like podcasters and, you know,
like bloggers and media people and stuff.
Comic book reviewers and, you know, like.
I wish this was another thing that I
wish I could do more of is reviewing,
but I don't enjoy reviewing as much as
I like talking to the creators.
To me,
that's more fulfilling than writing the
review on your book,
because if I don't like your book,
I have to be brutally honest about your
book.
But I can come on and have a
conversation with you about your book
without ever having to see the book
because I'm letting you market yourself to
the audience, right?
But if I'm asked to do a review
on a book,
I unfortunately cannot sugarcoat and I
won't sugarcoat because I feel like I owe
it as a journalist to be open and
honest, right?
So I'm definitely going to be open and
honest and if it's not good,
I'm going to
like a's so that's why i personally won't
do reviews anymore because yeah yeah yeah
probably not that person like the the few
that i did do i loved everything about
the book so it was easy but then
i was like i'm gonna stop this because
if i ever get my hands on something
bad i'm unfortunately gonna probably hurt
feelings and i'd rather not do that i
would rather talk to the individual and
let them share their story and their
journey
than possibly ruin or strain a
relationship because I gave them an honest
review.
Hmm.
Hmm.
No, I think, I think that's totally fair.
And, and, and, you know,
like art is also very subjective, right?
There's,
there's things you may not like and others
may like and vice versa.
So like, and that's, that's a very good,
very fair call on your part.
You know, you, you do.
And it's one of those things where I'm
still a hundred percent on board for every
creator has a voice and every creator
deserves to be heard.
That's why I like the platform that I
do.
I still consider myself a piece of media.
I let the creator come on.
They tell their stories.
We take them on the journey of their
creative journeys.
For me,
I get to be fulfilled in that way
and letting you tell your story and
getting to talk to you in your journey.
You get to tell your journey and how
you became a creative.
To me, at the end of the day,
that's
it's very fulfilling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's fantastic.
Yeah, so I was telling you about reviews,
right?
So that's one part of it.
So we recently started onboarding some
comic book reviewers.
And what we're doing is they can actually
read the books.
They get kind of like a god mode
for the whole platform.
They can go in and read pretty much
any book.
They can leave pull quotes directly on the
comic book listing.
And they can also link it to their
blog.
So they get traffic.
They can optionally blog on our platform
if they wanted to,
write a full length review.
That's really cool.
Thank you.
And they can leave pull codes directly.
And then users can see that when they
see the comic book.
So when they look at a book's page,
You can see user reviews.
You can see reviews from professional
reviewers.
You can see people like the comic book
creator posting about the book.
If they have, say... You know, man,
you sold me.
I'm in.
Sign me up.
Awesome.
Sign up on the website.
You'll get a whole bunch of books for
free anyway.
I'm talking about, no, I'm in, man.
Whatever you need, I'm in.
Let's do it.
But why do you think discoverability drops
off so hard after the campaigns?
I don't want to call the creator lazy
because that's not the case at all.
It's a lot of work.
But everybody has to admit,
unless that creator is one hundred and ten
percent all in on what they do,
they're probably they're thinking about
what's next and what what's coming up.
And honestly,
comics one is allowing them to hang the
comic book there and it's still doing its
thing.
You know what I'm saying?
So why do you think that discoverability
drops off so much?
There's two things.
I think a lot of comic book creators,
one is like the platform thing.
That's why we have all of these things
in one place.
For example, with crowdfunding,
you're looking at Kickstarter.
Then you built a whole bunch of fan
base on Kickstarter.
I would say there's a thirty to forty
percent crossover between Kickstarter and
Substack, for example, right?
Substack is where you write a weekly or
monthly newsletter.
You write regularly.
But then Kickstarter is where you're
funding the books.
So there's a little bit crossover,
but not a lot.
So you're dropping some fans off there,
dropping some fans off there.
Piecing together everything is still a bit
disjointed.
All these different tools that you use to
create, that's one.
And the other part of it is I
think the focus kind of shifts away from
marketing your book after a crowdfunding
campaign.
For creators,
they want to make sure the book is
produced after that properly.
And like we talked about,
fulfillment is such a huge undertaking.
It takes your focus away from actually
continuously marketing your book and your
ideas.
And you may have new ideas as well.
So you'll be like, oh,
I finished this book already.
In my mind,
if the artist is going and doing their
thing,
they may come back to the questions every
now and then.
But for me,
this project is now complete as a writer.
So just move on to a new idea.
And social media is such a huge...
thing now because I'm on four different
social medias five technically if you
count YouTube and then I have my own
individual like pages my personal pages
which I don't really have a personal page
no more because I'm using both my personal
and my podcast pages for all the same
thing at this point because I'm trying to
push not just what I do but the
creators that I work with and I get
to talk to on a weekly basis because
I find it to be so important to
make sure that I, myself,
am keeping the indie comic book spirit in
front of people.
That's why I create clips.
I give creators the clips to share,
and then I share them, and I tag,
and I collaborate.
And I'm just doing everything that I know
I'm in control of to keep ensuring that,
A, they're still getting the marketing,
they're still getting advertising,
and they're still getting their stuff in
front of people.
So for me,
I'm for sure doing my part,
and I'm making sure that I'm doing my
part.
And I love it.
For me, it's just...
It's what I do.
I go to my normal job.
I come home,
and I get to do this.
This is fun.
This is like, oh, it's a hobby.
Yeah,
but I'm currently podcasting in two
different days.
It is Saturday in Australia.
It's Friday night in the US.
Come on,
how often do you get to do that?
Exactly, exactly.
And you're like,
I know it could sound like a hobby
for a lot of people,
but you are actually pushing real people
forward.
You're actually pushing those campaigns
forward.
People have backed AHA with real dollars
and made it happen.
So, you know, like...
So I was batting a thousand up until
recently.
I've had one campaign fell one out of
probably forty,
almost fifty campaigns that I've had on
the podcast.
I've had one.
One fell,
and I think it's because they kind of
fell off on marketing themselves.
Yeah.
which I mean I was really excited to
see that book get made like I know
it's already made I mean I can go
and order the book if I wanted to
and I may still do that but it's
one of those where I'm not too pleased
with what he did with some of the
clips that I produced for him like he
altered them and I'm not a fan of
that like if I go through a lot
of trouble
to make something and give it to you
i'm not charging you for clips i would
never do that but uh but then you
alter them like come on dude don't alter
my yeah yeah yeah i i know this
is my money maker man why would you
hide this exactly exactly you get it you
get it
One podcast to another, we get it.
Exactly.
So in the long run,
do you think marketing is a problem or
is it a system problem that you're trying
to fit with Comics One?
Yeah,
I think it's a mix of system and
focus problem.
So I'll give you an example.
We just did a crowdfunding campaign on the
platform.
Yeah,
I think we're going to be talking about
that a little bit.
Yeah.
And what we're going to do with that
is, now that it's over,
it just finished yesterday.
So now that it's over,
we have an expert coming in from the
printing side and the fulfillment side.
We already have printers and fulfillment
partners ready to go.
Yeah.
Shout out to InkBridge.
We're going to announce that very shortly.
And this is an exclusive for you.
Ladies and gentlemen,
you're hearing it first.
Yeah.
So Inkbridge Distribution,
they're going to be our fulfillment and
distribution partners.
It's co-founded by the founders of Band of
Bards,
who already know how the whole publishing
and distribution side works.
um they have invented their own version of
gemini mailer which is like two dollars
cheaper than gemini meter oh nice as good
and slightly better in terms of uh how
how it you know holds up with with
damages and stuff like that um and they're
able to do a lot of stuff like
printing art prints internally and you
know doing it yeah uh
Right here in the USA, you know,
like they have like a press in Buffalo
and fulfillment.
So why did you go with them versus
like somebody else like maybe Philbo,
who I think is like terrific as well?
yeah i i think it's also like we're
a small group like yeah one of the
creators on the platform as well like they
they're published small publisher uh but
they're also very driven uh they're also
like you know like people like us who
want to do it right by the comic
book uh creators and publishers and books
and i was just curious about that now
i mean i love that kind of stuff
where
I appreciate it more when it's small
business, small business, small business,
picking each other up and everybody's
getting their piece of the pie,
so to speak.
Even though that pie isn't very big and
it's not very much right now, it's still,
I always like to say you get on
the bottom level and you ride the wave
up, right?
Exactly.
And I think with Indie Comics,
there is no top level.
I mean,
comics is a multi-billion dollar industry.
And I think we're going to start seeing
a lot more indie comics.
You know,
that third chunk of that industry is going
to start to grow.
I'm not saying it's going to break a
billion or a million.
Well, a million maybe.
But it is going to start happening.
It's going to start happening a lot sooner
than we think it is.
yeah yeah absolutely absolutely i mean you
know kickstarter sells on thirty five to
forty million dollars worth of comics
every year yeah this is just in one
year uh i i have i follow their
blogs every year like they put out these
numbers and that's just kickstarter alone
so if you if you combine all these
platforms where like webtoon does like
webtoon is listed on nasdaq like they're
like
Huge.
I've heard Webtoons has fallen off.
I mean, yeah.
Creators don't make too much money on
Webtoons.
Oh, hey, John.
Yeah, I left it up for you.
John, thanks for tuning in, man.
You've missed about forty minutes of great
conversation, but it's okay.
You're here now.
And a mention to you.
so yeah um uh we we were talking
about uh sorry i just lost my train
oh we were discussing like if it's a
marketing problem or a system problem and
we were at the point where it's like
it's both it's definitely a marketing we
were talking about the fulfillment you you
made the big announcement on your new
fulfillment partner with you know comics
one which is
Freaking amazing.
I love to hear that you have these
partners coming in and you're making
things happen.
It's all small business and it's such a
cool thing, man.
And you're doing it from Australia,
which is even cooler.
i we i feel like we have a
bit of an advantage being in australia
because we have access to these amazing
people in the us and and also sorry
i just keep going on tangent so i'll
finish my thought first no like this is
one of those where like there's no such
thing as a tangent ever because it we're
just talking to indie comics and it's one
of those where
Let's just talk about it, man.
I mean,
I got points I want to cover,
but we're covering them as we go.
Yeah.
Hit those tangents, man.
Yeah.
So the core idea is you take creators
things off their plate.
We don't want them to do the fulfillment
bit.
We'll just involve them, like say, OK,
this is how much it will cost you.
You can build this cost into your
campaign.
And then once it's done,
you know,
Anchorage can come and take over,
do the fulfillment for you.
Boom.
They'll solicit quotes with the printers.
They'll negotiate all of that stuff for
you.
We also have a whole suite of printers
who can come in and like, you know,
like, for example, in the US,
we have Comics Wellspring,
who we partner with for print on demand.
They're also looking,
we're also talking to them to see if
we can do like crowdfunding partnership
with them so they can give us like
different quotes for crowdfunding,
maybe a bit more discounted ones for the
creators.
We have a partner in Canada.
We're just about to finalize that deal
with them.
So Studio Comics is like a, yeah.
Studio Comics is great.
Yeah.
I've been trying to get them to come
on for a while now.
Yeah.
I've been trying to get him on.
Yeah.
Cause I want to talk to publishers.
I want to,
I want this to be a home where
like,
I want to talk to everybody from the
industry, right?
Not just the writers and the artists on
occasions.
I want it to be about everybody like
right now,
getting to talk to you who has put
together this amazing ecosystem of a
platform for indie comics.
I want to talk to the publishers.
I'm going to have, um,
Oh, hang on.
I just brain farted and I don't like
that.
Let me...
It's going to be July because I'm
currently booked in July.
So if anybody's out there wondering,
we're booked in July right now.
Oh, Wiseacre Comics.
I'm going to have Frederick on here soon.
Yes.
Who is...
great dude like very responsive when i
messaged him because like i said i've been
wanting to help publishers on i want to
get red five on red five comics i
think is amazing they do a lot of
amazing stuff and um which i had alex
deluca on not that long ago and he's
his work is published with red five comics
so i want to talk to everybody man
if they're in the indie comic industry um
to them i want to share their story
and their journey of you know what got
them here so yeah now there's uh we
have some really fun people as well i
can put you up with a few amazing
publishers and and creators uh as well i
was going to talk to you after the
show about some of that stuff
Yeah, definitely.
Because I got a feeling we can scratch
each other's back, so to speak.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah,
I think that these amazing people who are
supporting creators to do all these things
that take up a lot of their time,
free up their time to do marketing,
explore ideas,
and talk to their community and build fan
base.
Yeah.
you can do things like, oh,
I have this idea in my mind.
Can you, as my community of fans,
tell me if this is a good idea
or not?
Test your ideas.
You can send out
a test panel saying, oh,
which one looks better works for you.
That's really cool because, I mean,
right now I'm stuck on titles.
I'm putting together a list of titles.
So it'd be great if I could hop
on the Comics One web page and like,
hey,
new creator,
but I've been around indie comics for a
few years now.
Here's some ideas for my comic book or
titles for my comic book.
Give me your thoughts and just let it,
just let them debate it because I'm torn.
Like I got it in my head where
I think I want to go with it.
But at the same time, I'm like,
why is that the hardest thing?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
great coming up with the title for it
and coming up with like good names for
characters you know or is like the
toughest thing in my head right now the
story is there it's just yeah those parts
you know are like really difficult because
i want them to tie to what the
characters are you know i don't i just
don't want to call him steve because
that's just weird you know i want to
own a name that kind of goes with
the person so yeah
So do you think creators are forced into
this cycle of constant crowdfunding
launches just to survive?
I think so.
There's a lot, yeah.
Because they're doing it like this.
They close a book, new book,
close a book, new book.
And it feels like it's like, Jesus Christ,
what are y'all doing over there?
You have a factory of...
people just pumping out comic books for
you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I hear you.
I hear you.
I think it also is there because people
don't see that as the best.
Currently,
that's probably the best way to bring
their ideas to life.
That's one.
The other also is,
if you don't do that constantly,
then you stand to lose the set of
fans and the community that you've built
on Kickstarter.
So those are really important things that
people want to keep holding onto.
That's why they're constantly like,
let's just keep doing it.
We launch a Kickstarter every month or two
months.
It is a grind.
I cannot do it every two months.
Dude, that would be exhausting.
That would be like my January or my
February and March where I probably did...
almost thirty interviews between those two
months.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh and I think a certain section of
people can do it because uh since they
they may and it's good on them that
they they have been able to build
in a way that the book is actually
nearly ready or ready before the campaign
goes live,
which is not the case for like,
sixty to seventy percent of the campaigns.
They just come up with, you know, like,
preliminary sketches and they finish like,
seventy percent of their book after.
the campaign's done.
So the whole process from taking the money
from people and from crowdfunding to
finishing of the book sometimes takes six
months, ten months, eighteen months even.
Life happens to people along the way and
you know the number of people i hear
where like something happens with their
artists and now they've got a you know
a halfway finished book and they have to
find a new artist to finish that other
artist's work and a lot of artists don't
want to pick up what another artist has
done because it's not theirs yeah yes
that's a big one that i see constantly
Yeah.
And that's why a lot of people,
more and more,
are trying to finish the books or bring
it as close to finish as possible before
the campaign even goes live.
But that does mean you have to invest
money upfront,
which is hard because it's risky.
I just had that conversation with Kevin
Davis recently of KevSide.
I think it was after we went off
air.
I was telling, I was like, Hey dude,
I was looking at your Kickstarter page and
you need to fit a few things before
it goes live.
Otherwise it's not going to do good.
And he was like, Oh shit.
I didn't even realize like I,
I was doing those things or certain things
were moved around or misplaced.
And I was like, so I, you know,
basically just like, Hey,
you want to do this?
You want to do this?
You want to fit this in,
in that kind of stuff.
Because I,
And I'm like, oh, by the way,
I noticed you only had a few pages
of the artwork.
I always say between six to eight pages
of work already done.
That way you can show it on your
Kickstarter page that, hey, look,
this is a real book.
Here's like eight pages of the book.
you know,
whether it has the words in it or
not,
I don't recommend you put the words in,
but if you want to do one or
two pages with words,
I would recommend that,
but don't have eight pages of the full
letter in and art done,
but at least have, you know, three,
four pages, you know, art,
and then maybe one or two pages of,
you know,
pleated pages, lettering the whole nine.
Because when I go to a page,
a Kickstarter page that I'm interested in,
and it doesn't have those stains,
or if things are just out of place
and it's just completely chaotic,
it shows me you don't care enough to
make sure it's as close to perfect as
you can get it.
So I'm not going to back it because
you obviously don't care.
That's how I take it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I totally agree with that.
And I think like,
I'm not saying you invest the whole thing
upfront, but invest, like you said,
just enough for people to understand that
you had an idea in mind and there's
a certain vision you have for your comic
book.
There has been some work done to actually
make that idea somewhat real,
even in your mind.
To be fair,
a lot of artists aren't going to even
start on it unless they've gotten at least
half the payment or most of the payment
up front.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't pay them a hundred percent up
front.
I never recommend that because, you know,
you don't,
especially if you don't know the person,
but, you know,
invest some of the money up front,
get your eight to ten pages to show
like, hey, my vision is coming to life.
This is what you're investing in.
yeah yeah yeah yeah and people are going
to want to invest in that with you
but again you're going to have to we
don't get into indie comics for money you
get into it because you love it yeah
if you don't love it well you're you're
going to hurt at the end of the
day right
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So the thing also is,
what I've seen also lately is a lot
of creators don't want to even,
some creators saying,
we completely don't want to go
crowdfunding.
We are able to pay the artist.
We'll get the book done.
We just want, you know, like, say,
a preorder campaign,
which sounds awfully similar to
crowdfunding, but it's solely focused on,
like, say,
setting up a preorder and releasing a book
on a certain date.
Or they want to do a small batch
print run saying, oh,
we just want to print a hundred copies
of this issue and then, you know,
sell that off and see what the market's
like.
I think, like, you know,
everybody has a different journey as a
creator,
and they want to do it their way,
you know,
and that's the flexibility independent
comics does give people, you know.
No,
it's one of those where you're wanting to
break into the scene,
you already have it done,
only you've only done it digital,
but you want to do,
say you want to take, you know,
your book to a Comic-Con,
You got a table or a booth at
a comic con.
I need a hundred copies or so to
to sell or fifty copies to sell.
I just want to see if it's going
to be marketable for for a large scale
in person.
And because at the end of the day,
comic cons are going to be your friend
or your enemy, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Some people just want to say like, oh,
I've sold a hundred copies and then go
to a publisher saying like,
I've sold a hundred copies of this book.
People have said good things about it.
And, you know,
maybe they want to get picked up by
a publisher.
So every creator has their own version of
the journey, right?
No, I mean, that's true,
but I can tell from experience.
And when I say experience,
I've literally talked to,
tons of publishers at this point are
creators at this point.
Every single rejection letter they've ever
gotten is because what are you known for?
What have you done?
Oh,
I wrote this one book and sold a
hundred copies.
Publish are going to go.
Okay, cool.
Come back when you sold a thousand or
come back when you've published more than
one book, you know,
that that's how they are.
Yeah.
And also putting myself in publisher's
shoes,
they get a whole lot of submissions.
So they're well within their rights to say
no to a lot of these people.
If it doesn't fall in the right,
not in their wheelhouse,
if it feels like something that they would
not produce as a regular programming,
or even if they do,
Like they're well within their rights to
say no to most of it if they
don't feel that's the right thing.
know book for them so yeah um we've
we've had we've had uh like the because
this for comics one uh the journey has
still been like i'm still so deeply
involved with everything last few years
have been just me going oh this is
a good story for this publisher i i
have actually connected like creators with
publishers and their books have got
published and they're like
wow, I didn't expect that to happen,
but that happened.
And that's why I've been trying to get
publishers on the podcast because I would
like to be able to do what you've
done there.
It's kind of connect people where like,
oh,
I know this publisher likes this type of
story or this type of book.
Hey,
let me put you in contact with this
person and see if they want to do
this book with you.
And that's where I kind of want to
get to with this eventually is
Yes,
I can give you advice on your Kickstarter.
A hundred percent.
I just did it.
but I want to get to that point
where I can do that too.
Like, Oh, I know this one publisher,
let me, you know,
contact them and get y'all into contact
with each other.
And maybe we can make something happen
there, you know,
cause that's the type of story they like
to produce.
And that's where I want to get to,
man.
That's to me,
one of those goals I have to where
I have like, I have like,
I have like, I have like,
I have like, I have like,
I have like, I have like,
I have like,
uh maybe not that story but you know
maybe you can try this guy over here
he he may or they may so yeah
i just i want to do more for
the community other than just tell the
stories right and this is my favorite part
don't get me wrong but i do feel
like i want to do more for the
community as well and that's one of those
where i feel like i could do that
love it i love it you need more
people like you
We do, but at the same time,
I'm kind of trying to... Mine, mine, mine.
Like the seagulls from Finding Nemo.
Mine, mine, mine, mine.
But what we're saying is that Indie Comets
don't have a life cycle.
They have these spikes.
And what Comets One is doing is when
you're not spiking,
they're there for you to fill in those
gaps of those spikes,
which is a really dope platform to be
able to do that because there's not one.
It's one.
And it's Comets One, which is wild.
See what I did there?
You did something amazing.
But we're looking at it like this.
Comics One right now is a marketplace,
community, a reader platform, soon to be,
well, you're already doing crowdfunding,
soon to be live sales,
an all-in-one ecosystem that is expanding
still
So,
but what is comics one at its core?
At its core,
it is a place for indie comic creators
and fans to connect.
I think that's really the core of it.
A lot of times,
they both are the same person,
because we all are creators and fans
ourselves.
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
If I was such a huge fan that
I was very passionate about this,
This would feel like a job,
but this doesn't.
I'm just talking to my new best friends
every single time I do this.
Yeah.
Exactly.
That's the point.
We want indie comics and fans to connect.
There are so many different ways to do
that.
Crowdfunding is one and marketplace is
one.
If you like the digital comic,
you can order a print version of that
and support your favorite creator there.
You have print on demand,
which is freaking dope as hell.
How often can you just have a single
book
print it i mean i know amazon does
it but that's like a large scale and
i've never ordered a comic book off of
amazon to be fair and i don't think
i ever would like yeah i mean i
order my my cat's new collars off of
amazon because they go through them like
every four months it seems like they lose
them and i just i just got to
a point where i just order them in
bulk and slap a bell on them
yeah yeah yeah it's kind of weird in
my head to order a comic book off
of amazon i have my get my manga
through there yeah but i have that on
pre-order like i'm like certain series
that my daughters like
it just have it set to like this
new new issue comes out sends it straight
to the house you know yeah yeah and
even even then like i like i love
distributors like i don't know if you use
denpa and you know like
have their own like manga stuff you know
like sorry for my idea is that like
for when you when you order print on
demand book from comics one you you
support the printer who prints that book
you support the creator who creates that
book and you support us in helping them
support get that support you know and
that's what's cool and it's all small
business right which is even better
So what's the turnaround time if you print
on demand through Comics One and through a
publisher or your publisher?
What's the turnaround on that?
Usually like seven to ten days.
It's not bad.
You save the book at your door.
That is not bad at all.
And it's wild to think about seven to
ten days from print.
They're not printing two, three, four,
five unless they get that many orders for
the book.
They're printing one book
Bagging it, boarding it,
sticking it in a Gemini and slapping a
sticker on it and sending it to your
house.
Exactly.
Which is absolutely cool as hell.
Who else does that?
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
we're actually very lucky to work with
comics wellspring they're like they're
huge comic book fans themselves and you
know like that that's always right when
they're big fans themselves but um so what
do you think into in actually means for
creators uh you mean like being on comics
one you think
Yeah, yeah, no.
I mean, you are Sarab, or Sarab, yeah,
Sarab.
You go ahead.
Of Comics One.
Yeah, we're talking about Comics One.
Like,
what does end-to-end actually mean for
creators on Comics One?
Come on, man.
You need another cup of coffee.
That's what it is.
I do.
yeah no i i think for end to
end means as a creator you can you
can do ev you can run your indie
publishing business as a business there
you know like you uh you're in business
of creating yeah end to end cradle to
grave yes exactly although it never dies
it's there
No, it's there.
It's there.
That's one of our promises.
We want to be there till the end
of the internet.
That's amazing.
It really is.
I love the term cradle to grave,
but in this case,
it's not cradle to grave.
It's from birth to whenever the next issue
of that book comes out or whenever...
know they decide to launch a new title
and it's there and you you support that
from the bottom to the top now and
your ecosystem is continuously evolving
and getting better and adding new pieces
to the ecosystem
Exactly.
And I think in my email I did
mention it's like an economy, right?
It's like a comic economy.
That's what we're setting out to build
because we feel like everyone,
people like you,
people who actually recommend books in a
comic book shop,
Everyone is such a key part of comic
book economy,
like the printers and distributors and
even people like translators and
letterers.
I talked to somebody not that long ago
that they actually have had their comic
book requested and translated into nine
different languages now.
See, that's that's that's a huge skill.
And, you know,
like we actually work with a publisher who
imports indie manga from Japan,
translates it to American English,
distributes it in the US.
And, you know,
like there's there's so many and also vice
versa.
I mean,
we actually work with somebody who
actually translates books in Japanese and
distributes it in Japan.
So that's really cool.
All these people are such an important
part of this whole economy of comic book
creators.
We want to build this whole place where
everybody wins.
You as a comic book journalist get to
talk with fantastic people,
push their books,
and the fans keep discovering new comic
books.
That's literally my favorite part of the
job there.
That is my favorite part of this.
yeah exactly sorry my kids are trying to
bust through the door little man come on
so you're building amazon kickstarter and
the patreon of comics right here all in
one comics one see what i did there
again i don't know how it's happening but
it's probably gonna happen two or three
more times and i'm just making that up
as i go that's not over here that's
not written in
Fun fact,
I have to tell you this before I
forget it.
We are creating a mascot for comics one.
One of our creators is actually designing
it right now,
and it'll be on the merchandise.
I promise you to send a t-shirt as
well.
Appreciate it.
That's dope.
You should have seen each way to shrink
down your logo to use last night.
I was like, oh.
Finally, I got the circle one,
like the pink circle with the smaller
circles.
I was like, okay,
I can work with this one and I
can get it to squeeze in better because
the comics one,
I couldn't make that one work.
I had to go with the circle one.
That circle is kind of like the galaxy
of stars.
That's the idea.
It's like an ecosystem,
a universe where all these beautiful comic
creators, and they're all support system.
They all come together as a universe of
indie comics.
But before I forget,
we're creating this character called
X-One, which is comics.one.
x-men that's cool that's really cool i
like that that that's yeah i see what
you did there yeah that's really cool that
is really cool so with comments one do
you think this is the next step into
moving toward a global fulfillment model
for indie creators
Yes, so we already,
like Studio Comics I mentioned,
we're already starting to create a
distribution network in Canada.
So Studio Comics is going to be the
print-on-demand partner in Canada.
They're also going to put- Good people
too.
yeah amazing people really uh again like
big because they run a comic book shop
as well yeah exactly and what we're trying
to do is even with inkbridge and com
and studio comics we're actually trying to
get these books in into shops like actual
brick and mortar comic books that would be
so awesome but i know so many shops
push back so hard on indie creators unless
they know them personally and they're big
supporters themselves of indie comics to
begin with.
But I hear that's like the horror story
of the indie world, right?
It's trying to get their books in brick
and mortar.
I know I've probably talked to about a
handful of artists and writers who have
been able to get their work into brick
and mortar,
which is a low number considering how many
people I have talked to.
We're talking less than a handful of
people who've been able to successfully
get their books into brick and mortar.
Yeah, yeah.
Exactly, exactly.
And I think I get both sides.
I understand why a lot of
comic book shop owners are skeptical about
it because they see Kickstarter.
To me,
I feel like that's a wrong interpretation
of Kickstarter or crowdfunding.
People see them as a competition,
like an alternate distribution network.
I think the biggest thing with that is
it's the upfront cost versus will they get
return on investment.
That's the biggest one because they're
having to pay for those books that may
not move.
It may just go into a dollar bin.
Yeah.
And that's their biggest worry is, yes,
we they want to do it.
And I honestly think they do want to
do it,
but they're scared on the return of
investment.
Exactly, exactly.
Also, a couple of other things.
Indie comics are way more expensive,
and rightly so,
because they're produced in much less
numbers.
I mean, Marvel comics are industrial,
right?
They're industrial comics.
They're produced at a very different
scale.
And the volume itself.
If you say yes to one,
you will get, like,
five hundred requests the next day to buy
indie comics.
So that's why I think what Studio Comics
and Inkbridge are doing is doing the right
way.
They have their own catalog,
previews catalog,
which they send out to the comic book
shops, just like Diamond used to do.
It's FOC.
You still have FOC.
you know every comic shop goes to the
website they go through the focs they pick
out the quantities and what they want and
yeah yeah but it's kind of cool though
it's just an indie creator pure indie
creator sending out their own focs for
certain books that would be really cool to
see
Yeah, exactly.
We also have, I think, like,
outside these two amazing ones,
we're actually working out something on
our own.
So we have, like,
printer in China and Australia,
and we're looking at doing rest of the
world through them.
So the printer in China is able to
print and ship to the UK, Europe, and,
you know, a lot of other countries.
Yeah, that just, like...
breaks those barriers right you can have
fans anywhere that was literally my next
question is this is removing the friction
from creators and doing these things like
they can basically put their feet up and
relax because, you know,
they have these tools through you and
through comics one that are taking care of
a lot of the headaches that they would
normally have.
I mean,
it's still good and wise of them to,
you know, continue to market themselves.
And, you know,
one of the easiest ways to do that
is,
social media and but it's hard to post
to social media every day and but what
i have found is uh like buffer like
you can literally go to buffer build all
your social media posts in there and it
takes care of everything for you it does
all your posting which is i'm i haven't
started using it yet but i'm like i'm
already kind of like playing around with
it just to see how much i like
it and so far i'm like yeah
I still have to do a lot of
stuff manually.
Like I still have to do YouTube myself.
I still have to share everything to groups
myself, but at least I don't have to,
you know, it's already there.
Yeah.
And I don't, and like,
if I'm just posting a clip to Facebook,
I just do that through buffer and it
sends it to Instagram and threads and blue
sky and Facebook for me.
exactly that's like twenty minutes worth
of work you didn't have to do but
you did it one day last week no
exactly exactly and and you all you said
it earlier and and i say it again
if you won't push your books who will
you like even at the end of the
day there's only so much you can do
for them
They still have to be pushing the app
or the website.
They still have to do these things for
themselves to market themselves because
there's only so much that you can do.
Exactly.
We were talking to some other creators
last year and they were like,
why didn't the crowdfunding campaign work
for me?
And I was like, yeah,
because you have to push it really hard.
If you don't do it,
then it won't happen.
We can provide you with all the support
we can from our side,
but it's your fans.
They want to hear your voice and they
won't
They want to know why you're doing this.
Why have you created this book?
What's the idea behind it?
Because you are just one person.
And I'm not saying it in a bad
or pejorative way.
I'm also that.
I'm also somebody.
You're not Jeff Johns.
You're not...
You know, all these big creators,
you know,
like you're an individual who's making
this amazing story that's personal to you.
And that's fantastic that you have been
able to do that.
But if you don't tell it your way
and you don't tell why people should back
you.
Then nobody will back you.
Nobody is going to give a shit.
Nobody is going to give a shit unless
you tell your story.
And it is bad to say it that
way.
And I know a lot of people don't
want to do podcasts and they don't want
to do these types of things.
And that's fine.
But it sure makes it easier on you
at the end of the day, you know?
Exactly.
Exactly.
But in this whole thing, you know,
it just goes to show you don't need
a warehouse or a big machine to run
a comic business.
You're literally doing it from your office
at home.
Yeah.
And you're making all these amazing things
happen for indie comic creators around the
world, which is again,
just such a cool concept and such a
cool thing that you're doing for the
community itself.
So yeah.
And you've already made your big
announcement, which was really cool.
I can't thank you enough for sharing that
with everybody here.
It's such a dope thing.
I've been getting a lot of big
announcements lately.
I like it.
We've already covered crowdfunding.
I do want to ask you this.
When you were preparing the ecosystem to
start crowdfunding,
what was your framework for that?
Did you go with the Kickstarter framework
or Indiegogo?
I think Zoop is another one.
When you put that together,
what was your model for that?
Yeah,
I think it's kind of like a hybrid
of Kickstarter and Indiegogo in that sense
that we don't want to restrict the funds,
at least for the time being.
The creators that we're working with,
they have their projects ready to go.
Their books are ready.
um it may evolve in future into more
something that's more closer to
kickstarter with all or nothing at the
moment it's you you keep what you raise
yeah and uh we wanted to do it
that way because creators have already
created the book they want to give it
a limited print run or they want to
raise money for you know like finishing
the book finished yeah
No, I like that.
And I think that takes away a lot.
One of the biggest headaches with
Kickstarter is even if it doesn't fund,
they can still receive the funds.
But do you have a guarantee that the
people will still get what they pay for?
So I was saying,
I think what you're saying is absolutely
right.
With regards to the money,
we validate the cards and instead of
charging them at the end of the campaign,
we actually do charge them live.
So people get live pledges.
Creators actually keep getting money
transferred to their accounts every second
day, even during the campaign.
Let me ask you this.
What's the guarantee on that?
That's the part we really work hard on.
So we work really hard to make sure
the creators that we work with have to
deliver.
That's why it's very concierge-based.
We don't do it like a mass scale
thing right now.
I think it will...
it will change over a period of time
when we put all these guardrails in place
where there are things that are protecting
the backers when we are not looking at
it all the time.
Right now,
we're kind of micromanaging it in the
sense that we curate these creators.
We see that they have the books ready
to go.
There's no risk there for the completion
of the book.
And then the other part of the ecosystem
where the printers and everything is all
lined up.
So backers are sure to get their books
and they don't bear that risk.
Because that's the scary part of when I
heard that is I'm like,
What's stopping them from just not
delivering?
They got paid.
They don't care, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's not me saying the persons are
dishonest or anything like that.
It's a scary thought when you invest your
hard-earned money into...
a creator and then that creator not
deliver i've seen kickstarters do that
where it hit goal and then it what
should happen is it gets printed and the
books get fulfilled right they get
delivered and yeah it doesn't happen at
all the person just takes the money and
they're like oh whatever you know i've
seen that like a horror story that i
hear from people
Yeah.
The most infamous case is from UK.
There was a Kickstarter campaign called
Tales from the Quarantine.
They built an anthology.
They got all these creators to do work
for free.
They said they would donate this money to
charity.
didn't raise the word like forty thousand
dollars on kickstarter disappeared poof
gone man that's uh god it makes me
want to drag people like that out back
and just
and beat the snot out of them.
No.
Yeah, exactly.
So I think right now, because we're small,
we're able to control that side of things.
And we are trying to do that by
working with these really amazing creators
who we know really well.
And we know the books are ready.
They will be delivered.
One hundred percent to the backers.
There's no doubt on that.
I think as we grow,
we will put guardrails in place or evolve
the system a little bit more to be
more backer friendly in that sense.
Yeah.
I mean,
it's one thing to be creator friendly now
in the beginning of this stage,
but as it expands,
you definitely have to have those
guardrails in place to protect both
parties.
It's scary to think about when people are
investing their hard-earned money into
something they believe in,
then only to find out that person that
you believed in isn't the person you
thought they were.
And people will fucking bury you on social
media if you pull that kind of shit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because I've gotten messages from people
who were like,
I can't believe you're going to have this
person on your podcast.
I'm like, whoa.
I don't know anything about that until
now.
And I'm like, when did this happen?
Oh, a long time ago.
I'm like, okay, well,
I'm not here to talk about that.
I'm not going to talk about that.
I'm talking about what's now.
Like, I'm sorry that happened to you.
Not my problem.
And I'm not going to discuss that with
the creator either because that's
disrespectful.
Now,
if it was like knowing what I know
now, maybe I would call them out.
But at the beginning of this, no,
probably not.
I wouldn't have because that's not what
I'm here to do.
I'm here to focus on the positive and
focus on the journey.
And we are continuing our journey
together.
after I had to make that emergency pit
stop, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So ultimately, at the end of the day,
it fits in the fulfillment.
And that's the part that nobody really
likes to talk about.
And you have multiple avenues for
fulfillment,
whether it's a digital or a print.
You have parties in place that handle all
of the above, which is really cool.
And so is the creator themselves
fulfilling the digital stuff?
Or do you have somebody who is like,
say if I ordered a digital print,
who's sending that to me?
Who's it coming from?
The digital comic?
That's us.
It's done through the platform.
It's in there.
Oh, OK.
So if I buy something right now off
of Comics One, the website just, oop,
here you go.
That's it.
So we have our pledge manager where people
have to upload the digital copy of the
book.
And then they just press a button saying,
fulfill, fulfill, fulfill, fulfill, done.
And people get sent out emails saying,
this book has been added to your digital
library.
Either read it online,
download it to your favorite reader,
or you can read it on our iPhone
app.
So it's the digital library automatically
syncs.
It's there for you to read.
We haven't brought that up yet.
Is the app live?
Is the app ready to go?
Is it ready to be downloaded?
Yeah, yeah.
iPhone app is in the App Store.
The Android app is what we're working on
right now.
Okay,
I knew there was one that was being
worked on still.
I just didn't know which one it was.
So we're actually doing a complete
overhaul of the app.
The new app is going to be something
completely different from what you see on
the App Store today.
So the whole marketplace is going to be
on there.
So you can actually buy books,
digital and print directly from the mobile
app.
And also like your whole digital library
is going to be there.
So it's going to be a bit more
even like and eventually the idea is you
can do all of that stuff that we
talked about on the mobile app as well,
not just the web.
So you can live.
That's kind of cool because I know
somebody who literally writes their books
and everything off their phone.
Yeah, he does everything from his phone,
from writing his books, everything.
But you're also building a social
platform.
What does that look like?
uh right now it's it's very bare bones
so you can just do like social posting
similar to like facebook like you can put
up images and and text-based posts uh and
you people can like like comment uh you
know all of that stuff and people can
actually follow you already so you can
actually start building that fan base you
got i gotta get my account on there
man
Exactly.
I'm not going to lie to you, man.
I was like,
I was kind of holding out.
I wanted to talk to you.
I wanted this to happen before I fully
committed myself to the platform.
And I think a lot of it is
because I'm not a big digital guy, right?
We were talking about that before we went
live.
And I'm like, after talking to you now,
I'm like, okay, yeah,
I'm a hundred percent like bought into
this and I love what you're doing.
Like it's truly phenomenal what you are
doing.
But we got to keep going, man.
We got to keep going.
And so you're not trying to replace any
social media here.
You are actually just trying to provide a
piece of social media purely for the indie
comic world.
There's no girls trying to sell you only
fans and stuff like that.
This is strictly for indie comics.
And that to me is like,
This is only indie comics, not OnlyFans.
Oh, I like it.
I like what you're doing.
So how do creators get discovered inside
of ComicsOne?
yeah because i mean i know you have
a really nice landing page and like so
say it's my first time landing on comics
one and say i want to look at
i want to find a new horror comic
how would i go about that on comics
one
Yeah, awesome.
So if you go on ComicSpun today,
you'll see, and you browse down,
you'll see a list of genres there.
And you can actually,
we have segmentation by genres.
You can look up by, say,
the price point that you want.
Say you want, say, one dollar.
books or something like that.
You can, you can filter by that.
And, uh,
there's a bunch of free comics as well.
So there's few different ways to like look
of using the genres.
You can also go on the search box.
If you, you know, you are, you know,
the creator by name,
you can actually search by the,
their name or for a specific comic.
Um, we also have, and this is off.
There's a lot we want to do on
the platform with the discovery.
Now that we have enough number of books,
we have like three thousand plus books now
on the platform.
So now we can actually start.
Yeah.
The comments one has been around wide
about a year, two years.
Yeah.
Two or three years now, but like.
we went the big end of last year
we were we had like three hundred and
fifty comics so we have ten extra number
of comics this year and it's just grown
like crazy yeah it is continuing to grow
and not just like like growing in a
way that we're talking like
good publishers here you got acorn comics
on there now and like people that i
personally know are starting to show up on
the comics one app which to me is
another really cool thing and um i know
i was like teasing this interview for a
while now and i intentionally didn't
repost my calendar like i normally would
because i just wanted it to be like
like hey just because i'm doing things
this way now doesn't mean i'm not going
to have like you know the solid on
here to talk about comics one which is
really freaking cool to get to do so
yeah it was a reason why i didn't
repost my calendars because i wanted it to
be like this really cool like you know
pop-up show not necessarily a pop-up show
but it was a pop-up show
even though i've been you know scheduled
now for a couple of weeks maybe a
month at this point yeah so it was
really cool for me to get to do
that and i wanted to be able to
like hey look boom look what we're doing
so yeah
So I think as that social bit starts
coming in,
we'll be creating like a whole new
timeline kind of thing,
a page where you can actually see a
mix of books and create a post,
and you can discover a lot of stuff
based on your- For your page.
Yeah, exactly.
That's really cool.
So do you think we're moving toward niche
platforms versus general platforms?
Do you think we'll see that?
I think so.
I think it's already there.
We, I think we've been, uh, you know,
you just did it, you know,
you just did it.
well yeah we're we're we're coming there
coming along well but we're i would say
we're not not fully successful yet till
the time we get that machine going for
the creators which which i i feel like
we're still in work in progress uh i
gotta fill in this these nets two to
three years are going to be like
absolutely huge
for the indie comic industry and you were
literally getting in at the bottom level
of that and you've created something
that's going to elevate it to that where
we were talking about but you know and
this is with being a social media platform
baked into comics one these creators
aren't having to fight the models and the
car ads and it's just there's no ads
it's just yeah
them getting to put their stuff out there
for people on the app to see,
which is really cool.
And if you're a comic book person,
an indie comic book person,
this is like next level for you.
Like this is where you want to be
is on a,
on a space that is literally built for
you.
And how cool is that?
Yeah, I mean,
these niche spaces are so important
because they give people focus,
like both fans and the creators,
because fans can come in and see really
the stuff that they want.
Like if they like science fiction,
they like horror, they like manga,
they like, you know,
any genre that you like,
you can just come in and start looking
at like, you know,
the books that you like.
uh from from that side and uh and
for creators because it just cuts out all
the other noise like you rightly said you
know and uh the the best example like
i i was saying backstage is game found
because game found
just looked at RPG games.
They were just doing that.
And they just completely went so deep in
that niche.
They started like,
they were doing at some point,
I know that GameFound overtook Kickstarter
in number of games that they were
producing every year on there.
I forget that Kickstarter does games as
well.
I don't go there for that.
Yeah.
So yeah,
and they ended up buying Indiegogo,
which was the second biggest incumbent.
We were just talking about that, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's crazy.
You can go quite deep in a niche.
And I respect what Zoop was trying to
do then.
I think that had a lot of potential
in it that it just couldn't deliver on.
Yeah,
I don't want to say too much about
them because they're sort of a
competition.
They're good people.
They're lovely, amazing, amazing people.
I think the only feeling with Zoop is
they can't decide if they're a service
company or if they're a product company.
They either want to put a crowdfunding
product out or they want to do the
service side.
You have to pick a side of the
bridge on that one.
But let's talk a little bit more about,
so you're working on this new part of
the ecosystem with selling comics.
And we've already discussed,
it's going to be very similar to, like,
Whatnot.
And I had told you beforehand, like,
that's something that I kind of want to
incorporate at some point,
is after an interview,
just having the creator, like, hey,
do you want to go live with me
on Whatnot and sell some of your comic
books?
which I don't know if I can do
that.
It's something I need to speak to the
people on what not about.
And I do plan on doing that here
very soon.
And it's just try to make that happen
because I think that would be something
cool to do, but you're also doing this.
And so do you think that's how how
will streaming like a live auction like
stream change the creator to fan
relationship?
That's going to be a huge next step
for your not just comics one,
but indie comics in general.
Yeah, yeah.
I feel like that will bring fans and
creators even more closer, in my opinion.
I think a lot of fans have this
thing where they want to buy directly from
the creators because they're like,
this is the original source of that stuff
that I love.
I think that's like,
I'm just getting it from where it all
started.
So for them,
if they're buying directly from a live
stream where a creator is talking about
the book, or say even doing, say,
live art,
say if they're doing live commissions and
you're buying directly from there,
Or you're talking about the book and
saying the link is available.
Or you can buy directly in the stream,
and you're showing off pages and whatever
that is.
For me, that relationship, one,
it goes beyond just that transactional
one.
It goes beyond that I'm buying.
a comic book, it goes from like,
I really love this creator.
I really love what they're doing.
I really like how they're thinking about
these characters, the story.
And they have a very unique point of
view.
I love that.
And that's probably why I'm buying it
directly from there.
and like and from the creator standpoint
it does turn them into a marketer and
like their own kind of forces it right
it kind of forces it a little bit
it also what you get from this experience
when let's say a creator goes live on
your
own comics one to have a cell of
like some of their back back logs of
stuff like like i have these books i
need to get rid of they're my books
it's almost like a miniature con live
right because you're getting to talk to
the creator you're buying his work
and it's kind of cool like you're getting
to like watch them live like a whatnot
like when tyler kirkham goes live or when
todd mcfarland goes live it feels like
it's a little miniature con all of a
sudden you're typing in your comment like
hey so girl good to see you on
here you know oh yeah like i have
this book but now you know i want
to buy it again and get it signed
by tyler kirkham you know i've done that
you know
And it was just really cool to watch
Tyler Kirkham actually sign my book that I
just purchased, you know.
And it was that Comic-Con experience
without having to be around all the smelly
people.
Yeah, yeah.
There's also, like, this whole...
For fans, there's, like,
this whole brush of...
Oh,
I got a shout out from Jim Lee.
You know, that's like, that's my life.
Yeah.
Do better, man.
Like when you get recognized by fricking
Jim Lee, it's such a cool thing.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, the dudes, he's,
if there was a,
and I think there should be a Hall
of Fame for comic book creators.
Like he's like a first ballot Hall of
Famer in my eyes all day.
Yeah,
he's up there with Jack Kirby and everyone
else.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Like there's a generation there with Jim
Lee, Todd McFarlane, you know, Liefeld.
I'll throw him in there too.
You know,
there's that generation of comic book
creators who are now running the comic
book scene.
Right.
And it's kind of wild to see these
guys.
Like I remember in ninety three,
ninety two,
when these guys first started
burst onto the scene with Image when they
created Image and he's running DC now.
It's like, what the hell?
It's insane and it's so cool to see
that we've watched this evolution of him.
I actually love what they've done with
Image and what Image has become after them
as well.
It's just become this amazing
a place where like talent comes and like
thrives and like creates this i don't know
the books i've read with image have just
been so wild and stuff that i'd never
imagined like yeah paper girl like i
couldn't not in a thousand years i would
have imagined paper girls being put out by
like say marvel or tc
No, you would never get that.
And that's what I love about them so
much is a lot of the stories that
you would that would probably be purchased
off a Kickstarter or a local comic
convention images published in those.
But we got Tigress Island right now.
Just so many titles that are like being
produced by them and not just them,
but Dark Horse and Boom Studios.
mad cave the keen spot ec comics yeah
so many great things are coming out right
now and you're just like it's overwhelming
every week and it's the best type of
overwhelm to have right i know i know
so many amazing indie titles out there
being produced by companies and you're
just like
I love it.
There's this amazing thing happening.
So a lot of indie folks are crossing
over to mainstream IPs.
So one of the people who used to
work with us, they were T Formula.
Shout out to T. They're amazing.
They're like the acquisition editor for
Boom now.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
and they're responsible for power rangers
so uh yeah and now you just saw
the new announcement joey esposito who who
created uh he's now spearheading power
rangers the new uh new series power
rangers prime or i think is what it
is power rangers prime yes yeah or
ultimate ultimate just one of the two i
can't remember if it's prime or ultimate
but yeah i've seen it today actually
Like, it came across my feed on Instagram.
Exactly.
So, like,
these are the people who have been
creating on Zoop and Kickstarter and all
of that stuff,
and now they've graduated from there to,
like, Power Rangers.
And, you know, like,
it just feels awesome that, like,
these are, like,
unique voices who have been, you know,
in our community,
and now they're
going in and making i mean you look
at erica schultz who started in the indie
comments she's now a she's the first
female to write spawn with rat city she's
wrote for marvel daredevil and there's a
few other titles i can name but she
started in indie comics and she's the
first female to write spawn yeah that's
amazing wow it's so cool to see like
and I always like to push that narrative.
Like it's not just dudes out here writing
comic books.
There's a lot of really talented females,
women, you know, whatever they, them,
I don't want to, you know,
come off as being like, you know,
rude or anything,
but there's a lot of people out there
from different walks of life.
Oh yeah.
Right.
And,
drawing and creating some of the Best
comic books in the world right now Yeah,
definitely.
There's there's you know,
Stephanie Phillips just just released the
her own daredevil series and
Yeah,
Gail Simone and some really fantastic.
Such an illustrious career for Gail.
I know.
What a champ.
I love her to death.
She is phenomenal.
Literally,
she bursts onto the scene and just keeps
on going.
She's fucking just still trucking.
Love to see her.
She loves to talk to people.
She's very personable on social media as
well.
She gave a shout-out to Acorn Comics
yesterday.
I saw that.
I know.
I've seen that.
That's what I was talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You were talking about an Australian
artist?
Oh, Nicola Scott.
Nicola Scott has some.
I don't know if you know her.
She's a cover artist,
and she's done so many beautiful variant
covers for DC.
Oh, nice.
Amazing.
Yeah, yeah.
I've probably seen it and just never put
a lot of brain cells into it because
I don't read a whole lot of DC.
Like, it's very few.
I don't read a whole lot of DC
or Marvel.
I will read, like, Vertigo.
Like, they just released Swamp Thing,
So I had to get Swamp Thing because
I'm a huge fan of Swamp Thing.
And when they had...
shit.
The vertigo line is out right now.
The vertigo line is like cooking over at
DC and they're producing a lot of really
great titles over there right now.
So I will, I will read that.
I will read the black label stuff with
the black label,
Batman and stuff like that because it's
darker.
It's gritty or I don't want cookie cutter.
I've never been a cookie cutter guy.
If somebody gets stabbed by Wolverine's
claws,
I want to know that that's stabbed by
Wolverine's claws.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So how do creator subscriptions work on
the Comics One app or on Comics One?
That hasn't, it's not out yet,
the creative subscriptions.
That's one of the things that we are
releasing later in the year,
along with a lot of this amazing stuff,
live streaming and live selling and stuff
like that.
But we're looking at two things.
So they can have subscription tiers,
just like Patreon, or one-off stuff like,
Script consultations for writers if they
want to do like you know there You
want like thirty minutes talking about
your characters or how to structure your
comic book or you know things like that
That's really cool.
Maybe I should start doing that starter
campaigns Like you'll you want me to take
your starter pick a pain.
I got you like before it goes live
Let me have a look at it.
I'll tell you if it sucks or not.
I
Exactly.
I mean,
PR professionals are like you and
marketers and PR professionals are a huge
part of it, right?
Yeah.
People just want to sell, oh,
I can create your press kit, you know?
Yeah.
And it's such an underrated thing.
Yeah,
I still need to write one of those
myself.
I have one.
I don't know.
I created one.
I don't know what I'm ever going to
use it for.
It's like when I created my marketing
campaigns, right, for...
for you know to have advertisements on the
usdn like it was like a month of
research like a solid freaking month of
research to finally like put together a
professional package of you know different
tiers of marketing available for the
podcast and holy hell that was like waking
up early
Hopping on, doing the research,
seeing how other people are doing it and
going,
I don't like the way they do it
and like not reinventing the wheel,
but taking the wheel that's already there
and making it look prettier and what I
need.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then try to find fair prices that
you think are reasonable for what you do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was the other hard part.
Hmm.
No,
and that's all part of you running the
business and trying to grow it, right?
yeah it's hard man because this indie
comics we're talking about and like i said
until we can get what we do in
front of the mainstream eyes we're going
to be at that disadvantage and again
that's another one of those things where i
spend countless hours researching how can
i do this better to bring it to
more people
And that is really difficult and something
that I'm still struggling with myself to
figure out.
But the moment is figured out by them.
We're going to the stars.
Yeah,
there's echoes of the sentiment I've seen
over the years in the comics community
that it's either friends or family or the
creators funding themselves or funding
each other.
Yeah, right now, yeah.
And I'm trying to get us to that
next level.
That's one of my ultimate goals that if
you go look at my twenty twenty six
goals when I
every year right you sit down either at
the end of the year or at the
beginning of the new year and you write
your goals you figure out what it is
that you want to do and how you
want to get there and uh that was
one of my goals it was to how
far can i get indie comments into front
of new eyes right into front of the
mainstream
And I don't know how I'm going to
get there yet.
But my goal is ultimately,
whether it's myself, a group of us,
what have you,
but just to get it there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think I've had this discussion with
other fellow creators and other partners
as well.
I was talking to Chris from InkBridge as
well.
And this is a huge crossover.
at least when I go to cons and
talk to people as well,
there's a huge crossover from people who
want to read comic books,
but they read prose right now.
They want to read comic books,
but they're so intimidated by the history
of characters.
They're like, oh,
Superman has like an eighty or a hundred
year old history.
People are curious, right?
They want to start from the beginning and
read to the now.
and you just dive in into indie right
exactly exactly you start like there's
very few indie comic books that have a
eight-year history if any at all so you
can literally get in on the ground floor
of indie comics
And just write that.
Yeah.
And it's, it's a beautiful thing, right?
That's why I love indie comics so much.
I don't have the going back to,
to the first issue of Superman to enjoy
it.
Cause I'm one of those type of people.
I want to be in on the bottom
of it.
When I got back into comics,
like one of the first comic books I
discovered was something is killing the
children, fell in love with the book,
fell in love with the story.
But I was already at issue five or
six,
so I had to literally go back and
try to track down those other issues.
And I was able to do it,
but it wasn't easy because I was like,
I want first prints,
but first prints at the time were
ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah.
But I was able to do it,
and I've got them all now.
But again, not easy,
not necessarily a cheap thing to do.
Yeah, exactly.
So with these subscription services,
if this goes off as planned,
this could remove the comic book creators
from Patreon and bring them to your
platform where there's already a
sustainable ecosystem in place for them.
And it's also going to continue.
They're not having to do anything
different.
You can still charge your Patreon prices
on Comics One.
with your subscriptions, right?
And ultimately, at the end of the day,
it's a big key to a long-term creator
stability all in one place.
Yep, that's the idea.
We want the creators and their work to
have longevity.
We want it to be created as a
legacy of them rather than
something they just do it on a whim,
or for those three days of crowdfunding
campaign.
It should not live and die within that
period.
It should live way longer,
find new readership, new fans,
and all of the above.
And ultimately, at the end of the day,
The creators aren't just relying on a new
crowdfunding launch.
This would help them build that
reoccurring income to keep making their
books, not necessarily to make a living,
but that's not outside of the realm of
possibility,
but it is at least able to allow
them to continue to make their comic book.
Yeah, exactly.
We talked about this earlier as well,
right,
where we were talking about creative being
artists up front and being able to do
that.
And if your previous book pays for it,
what's better than your creative work
paying for your next creative work?
Exactly.
Your Comics One Patreon page just funded
your next one because you do a really
good job on your Patreon page.
page on comments one like ultimately at
the end of the day that's what we're
all looking to do right yeah yeah yeah
oh dude this man i'm in love
The whole platform is just so amazing.
So let's focus a little bit,
and we're getting to the end,
but let's focus on the economy of this.
We've talked about building a comics
economy.
What do you think that means with Comics
One?
That means every stakeholder that we're
talking about,
like the comic book creators,
everyone who's involved in comic books,
like the comic book shops and people from
distribution companies and printers,
All of them get a piece of the
pie.
We all live and thrive together.
And you did touch on that sense that
comic book shops don't love crowdfunded
books for a certain reason.
They think that they're creating an
alternate distribution channel to a comic
book shop.
And that's one of the reasons.
I still think the biggest reason is return
on investment when it comes to that.
Correct, correct.
So we want to solve all these problems.
And we want everybody in this ecosystem to
thrive because we grew up with these
things.
Your memory of a comic book,
discovering comic books,
is going to a comic book shop and
being recommended by the staff there who
who love comics and who love this medium.
And a lot of creators come from that
school of thought.
They have discovered comic books in those
places.
And they just love that medium.
And anybody who's associated with that
medium
should thrive.
And that's what the comic book economy is
about.
That's what our end goal is.
Everybody involved here should have a
thriving career, should love doing this,
should also make money off of it,
and to make it sustainable for themselves.
for the lack of better term for the
love of comic books that's the biggest
thing right there right and so my recent
interview with uh tom rash we were
discussing this and we think he said the
uh the future of comic books may not
be what we think it is or at
least the delivery system of what we think
comic books future looks like may be
changing whether it's digital or print on
demand
And this is coming from a guy who,
who had done work at Marvel.
And that's literally what he said that the
future could be is like,
it's going to evolve,
but it's going to be like the way
you did the, the book is delivered.
Right.
And I think you're already ahead of that
by you really are.
And I think when,
when he said that the,
one of the first things that came to
my mind was comics one, like,
like this is already happening right now.
Which is kind of cool to think about
when I was talking about the future with
him and here I am right now talking
to the future, right?
How cool is that?
How often can you get to do that
where you're having a conversation like
that and then the very next week you're
literally talking to the person ushering
in the future of what Indy Comets can
be.
Yeah, definitely.
Like
I don't know what...
I think there's a lot of different things
happening in the industry.
Distillery and all the other folks are
doing something cool.
Neo Nichiban is doing that Remarks thing,
which I have various thoughts on.
There's a lot of new tech and stuff
being built around it,
which is all very exciting and I'm really
happy about.
The more...
I kind of feel like it's being pushed
down my throat a little bit every time
I see it.
And I'm like...
I'm personally not that big of a fan
of it.
It's just something about it to me that
I'm like,
maybe it's the people I've seen pushing
it.
There's a lot of sense that it's very
close to NFTs, and it probably is.
I got a relationship with the guys over
at VV who's just across the pond from
you in New Zealand and also in Singapore.
One of the CEOs lives in New Zealand,
and the other one lives in Singapore.
Great dudes.
I really like what they're doing.
And their platform for digital comics is
separate from their NFT.
Although you can get covers of the comic
books as an NFT, which is really cool.
And they've built a lot of relationships
with like dynamite and boom and Marvel and
DC to where you can literally have a
room on the app where
Of your favorite comic books from them.
From the past or from the future.
Present.
It's kind of a cool concept.
And I do like what.
I do like what VV is doing.
I just.
And that's because.
I've literally.
I've spoke to the CEO of.
VV.
Great dude.
Big Star Wars fan like me.
And.
But I do like what they're doing over
there.
And their digital comic book app is very
much like,
it feels like a cometsology a little bit.
And my biggest gripe with Neon Ichiban is,
like I said,
the people who are pushing that platform,
I don't feel are in it for the
platform.
They're in it for their own clout.
is how it feels to me.
Like when I see the people pushing this
thing and I'm like, no, I'm like,
I'm not feeling this because you're,
you're using yourself to sell this to me.
And I'm just not,
I don't care at the end of the
day,
like this does nothing for me because it's
not in me.
Yeah,
I think the scarcity that they're trying
to create, even in print,
scarcity is strange.
I don't like fake scarcity.
You literally cannot create scarcity in
digital.
And they're literally talking about
creating stuff that's strictly for their
platform.
Yeah.
At the end of the day,
that's on them, right?
That's their goal.
I just don't see how this thing is
sustainable at the end of the day.
No, no.
And you know, bad idea had like this.
I love a bad idea, by the way.
Yeah.
But you can't do that.
You can do that in physical books.
Yes.
You can't do that in print.
But they're also a small print company.
That's their bread and butter is small
print.
and to be fair bad ideas producing some
amazing books right now like they have
some really great comics coming out yeah
like i've been consuming the hell out of
their stuff actually like that's how good
it's been yeah yeah
But I didn't mean to rant on Neon
Ichiban.
I'm sure what they're doing is fantastic
for some.
It just isn't,
at the end of the day,
my cup of coffee.
Yeah, that's perfect.
The reason why I'm trying to say I
brought that up even was there's a lot
of different things being tried out in the
industry.
The future will look very different from
what it is today.
We're just trying on our little piece of
the internet that's comics.one,
we're just trying to create a kitchen sink
where everything comes together for the
creator.
A big old stew.
Big ol' stew of things.
Yeah,
and all of us are in it together,
like the whole indie industry.
Oh, no, a hundred percent.
And you're not just building a platform.
At the end of the day,
you're building in an economy for indie
creators to thrive in.
And, you know, everybody is kind of...
If you've got your handy in indie comics,
you're kind of getting a slice of that
pie too, which is really cool.
So...
I think we got one more segment, man.
I didn't think we were going to go
this long,
but it's been such an amazing conversation
to be having with you and to bring
this platform to the masses.
Is the current comic distribution model
broken, you think?
Oh, that's a very good question.
Depends on what part of comic book you're
talking about.
I think mainstream has figured itself out.
Yeah,
we knew that was going to fix itself.
It was just going to be getting through
that rough patch for six months, right?
Yeah,
for the fall of Diamond has been like
a downward spiral for most of the small
press indie publishers.
Yeah.
I mean, you have Coffin left.
Like, Coffin started their own platform.
ZenScope went to Kickstarter,
which I was sad to see them go
because I'm a big fan of their twisted
tells and stuff.
yeah it kind of sucked to see them
go but i understood because they were
almost killed by penguin yeah there's also
like you know like the new things have
come up like filbo like you mentioned
earlier phil has come up with as a
distribution one for india they've been
around for a little bit though and they're
starting to really pick up steam i think
Yeah,
there's massive Indies that has come up
post that.
So there's definitely a lot of like,
there's a bunch of others that we keep
hearing.
There's this mainstream prose book
publishers or distributors that have
started venturing into comic books.
They're titans.
titan's one this this one more than i'm
just i think it's literally called indie
comic indie book idp indie book publisher
i haven't heard of them yet but i
do know titan because they do gun honey
and a few other titles
Oh, yeah.
Because one of our one of our publisher
fellow publishers who are on the platform
also distribute with them.
So they're like, you're not just limited.
You're not limiting people to just like,
oh, if you're with us, you're with us.
You're allowing them to.
have other avenues as well,
which I think is really cool,
because a lot of people try to lock
it down.
And you're not trying to do that.
You're still leaving it open for people to
do what they need to do to get
their books out to people.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
We don't want to lock it in for
anybody, because at the end of the day,
it's creators.
It's their baby.
We don't really want to.
A hundred percent, yeah.
We want to facilitate.
We want them to have more avenues,
not less.
No, a hundred percent.
And that's why what I do is really
fun.
It's another one of those avenues.
But why do you think platforms like yours
haven't existed before now?
Do you just think the technology wasn't
there to support it yet?
Or what do you think?
I mean, mine is Comixology,
but I'm not really counting them because
they kind of sink.
No, I think the technology has been there.
I mean,
Comixology and a whole bunch of other
platforms that have come and gone.
I think the technology is there.
I think it's the intent that's won.
And there's also this whole...
the industry side of things where venture
capital comes in,
these platforms are good for building.
They can sustain themselves.
But they are not really good candidates
for being acquired.
So like,
Comixology got acquired by Amazon.
But Amazon could not keep up at the
same pace because we know comic book
fandom is a niche thing.
It's not a mass market thing.
like books can be read by anybody from
like the, you know,
like prose books can be read by anybody
from age one month to, you know,
like you can read it,
buy it for your one month old baby
to like, you know, to a hundred,
a seventy eight year old person, you know,
like anybody can read it.
It's a must.
Let's go there because that was literally
my next question is what do you think
cometsology got wrong and selling out with
what they got wrong?
There are, like,
ten other platforms that I've spoken
about.
Like,
Joey Esposito was talking about some other
platform that came up.
I forgot the name.
There's a whole bunch of them that came
up in the early two thousands.
And they were trying to do the similar
thing.
But they all went away.
And the creators feel the pain,
because they're the ones who invested a
lot of time and energy and love in
those platforms.
And when those go away,
Yeah, they're the ones losing.
The fans lose that,
and you lose access to those books.
And that's why people are jaded with
digital a little bit.
So that's why,
even if you look on the platform today,
when you purchase a book,
there's always a download button.
You can always read on the platform,
but there's always a download button.
You can always back it up.
You will never lose it.
yeah that's amazing all you need is a
big enough hard drive right yeah so at
this point we are entering a new era
for indie comics which is really cool to
be at this kind of crossroads per se
of for indie comics
We're no longer confined to Kickstarter or
Indiegogo or Zoop.
We are taking that next step forward,
right?
And again,
we don't need permission to do what we
do anymore.
We're not seeking a publisher.
We're doing it all ourselves at this
point.
and such a cool thing to do but
we're we're there man so where can
creators and people who enjoy indie comics
sign up for comics.one so uh at the
moment we've kept it
But I can shout out the link where
creators can come in on board directly.
So it's comics.one slash sign up slash
creator.
And I can paste it for you in
the chat.
I'll have the link in the description.
Actually,
the link is in the description for
comics.one,
and they can just follow it in there.
Yeah,
or if you just sign up and email
me,
I'll convert it into a creator account for
you.
So for creators, that's the case.
If you're a reader,
you can just either download the iPhone
app or just sign up on the website.
There's a whole bunch of free comics you
can get for free and read.
Yeah.
and there's a little something on there
for everybody i mean you're at thirty five
hundred titles now yeah and growing dude
we've had been growing daily so yeah like
i said acorn is on there now so
yeah there you go that was just me
naming one there's plenty others yeah
there's there's so many lovely lovely
comic book creators on there coming such a
cool thing so i love it dude i'm
gonna get you done here soon man we're
almost there
So what should creators do today if
they're watching this, you think?
Or listening later?
Oh, sorry.
Can you come again?
Sorry.
What should creators do today if they're
watching this?
Well,
this is regardless of you being on
comics.one or not.
You should get yourself a press kit,
get better at marketing,
and don't stop shilling your book.
Always do that.
Always do that.
And don't be afraid of coming on shows
like this one.
I literally make this the most relaxed
place you could ever be.
I'm just a dude who loves comic books,
man.
It's been a good two hours just sitting
here talking to you.
We could probably do another two,
but I know you've got to get the
free comic book day here very soon.
Where can they follow you and Comets.one,
man?
We're wrapping it up.
I'm a ghost on social media,
but comics.one is not.
So you can find,
it's usually me running comics.one handle.
So you can find me or comics.one at
comics underscore app, almost everywhere.
On blue sky, it's comics.one.
On TikTok, it's comics.one,
but it's comics underscore app everywhere
else.
So find us, follow us.
we post a lot of very cool creator
features where you can actually learn
about behind the scenes of comic books and
creators themselves so yeah i love it dude
and all those links i think are down
in the description below of this and it'll
also have more of the dis
the links when this goes live on YouTube
and on podcasts and platforms later.
But if indie comments are built on
passion,
then the next evolution will be built on
infrastructure.
Tonight's conversation wasn't just about a
platform.
It was about possibility in a system where
creators don't just launch.
They sustain where stories don't disappear
and,
They continue to live, grow,
and reach new audiences.
And maybe, just maybe,
the future of Indie Comics isn't waiting
to be discovered.
It's already here.
But make sure you like, follow,
and share because this has been the USDN
Podcast where Indie Comics come to life.
And as always, I'm the chairman.
That's Saurabh.
And ladies and gentlemen,
the Council of Nerds is adjourned.
Y'all be safe.
Happy weekend.
Thank you so much.
Have a good weekend, everybody.
A.