The Importance of Keeping Comics Weird
It takes a healthy dose of the unusual and the unexpected to stand out within the crowded crowdfunding comics community.
Kickstarter is a hotbed of comics projects competing for pledges from a fairly niche and well-informed community of comics readers, collectors and supporters. Drawing the attention of these backers is job number one for crowdfunding comics creators in need of financial support to see their projects through to completion and publication. In a product environment dominated by NSFW comics and replete with unfiltered campaigns for books that may never be produced, let alone fulfilled, it’s critical to find and implement a strategy for brand identity that attracts backers with thematic appeal, artistic acumen, and fulfillment confidence. You gotta stand out in these areas, and, with regard to thematic appeal, we at Flatline Comics relay on staying weird.
Whether the theme is reclamation of innocence lost (a la Vicious Circus) or vengeance against oneself (a la Last Ride of the 4 Horsemen), as examples, the typical first narrative impulses that fling themselves onto a comic script must, for me, be twisted into something stranger and, thus, stronger. Lost innocence is recovered with the aid of killer clowns on a divine mission to eradicate, not children, but predators. Vengeance upon oneself is taken, not via suicide, but by incurring the wrath of ever more powerful cosmic entities…and defeating them.
In Gothic Horror Team-Up, I paired Frankenstein’s Monster and Lovecraft’s sleeping deep old one, Cthulhu, in an unlikely duo based on the Monster’s dream of a true father figure and the sleeper’s domination of nightmares. They met on the plane of dreams, drawing the Monster to the sunken city of R’lyeh, where the two thwarted an apocalyptic plot by greedy gods to prematurely wake Cthulhu and steal the dreams of chaos that are his to inflict upon humanity. It got nice and weird, and I’m proud of it.
The second issue of Gothic Horror Team-Up is now beginning art, and I took this story to places even weirder. This time, the classic, Bram Stoker version of the vampire Dracula is teaming up with the great white whale, Moby Dick. Yeah, that weird.
I came up with the simple idea of teaming these two 19th century icons before I ever conceived a notion of how or why these characters might interact, let alone collaborate, but I accepted the challenge of my own strange impulse and worked through it. And it’s a damn fine story, if I do say so myself. Epic. Fun. Unexpected. Weird.
I’ll refrain from spoiling any more plot or character details at this early point, but I’ll share art and story tidbits as the book comes together. You’ll be surprised what an immortal vampire and a revenge-obsessed sperm whale share in terms of motivation and drive and how they wield those against an ancient enemy common to them and to the world. Weird enough for you?
More soon!
Kevin
You may see your work as weird ... I see it as uniquely creative! Unlike so many writers (especially the ones on Kickstarter) you write with theme and that theme is true to your experience in this world. I personally don't care for Cthulhu but I enjoyed your book because it was well written ... yes ... it was by definition "weird" ... but it was also a cut above what I've seen on Kickstarter as of late.