Kickstarter

Hi,

I am Dan Morrill, and I am part of the senior management for Comics Forge, a news and review site for independent comic books. With our team of amazingly awesome talented writers, we manage to review about 70 independent comic books a month, and keep up with what is happening in the independent comic book community. We love this community, it is our heart and soul, it is what we do, and it is how we stay successful with over 12,000 page views on our site each month. We love this industry, and believe that the independent market is something beautiful to talk about.

We have a plan, an idea, and we need a little help to make this reality.

We want to print comic books, but we want to focus on the best independent authors out there who might just need a little help getting professionally published, and getting a little attention in the market place.

This is where we can help, and this is where you can help out as well.

What is Comics Forge Presents?

Over the years that we have been selling independent comic books, and engaging in the independent comic book scene from DC to Seattle we have found hundreds of amazingly talented comic book authors, inkers, drawers, and people inside the industry. They are full of enthusiasm, hope, and joy for the industry itself, for the creation of comic books, for telling stories that need to be told, or for simply telling a story that they want to tell. Some of these stories set an important cultural marker for history, politics, relationships, and everything else in-between, without a lot of spandex.

What we want to do, and what we are doing, is taking some of those creative works, the ones that have gotten the most responses on Comics Forge, the ones that have kicked someone in the gut because of the story telling, and offering one comic, one author, one story as a limited edition comic book under the Comics Forge Presents moniker to highlight the best of the best, the most amazingly awesome comic book authors out there that are having a problem getting a gig, being published, or getting attention to their works. We are setting up just a simple beautifully crafted limited edition comic book that the collectors market can have, that highlights what good simple story telling can be about, supporting independent authors, and giving them the ability to say “we have been published”.

So why do you think this will work?

There are a lot of comic books out there, there are a lot of comic book readers out there, but you never know how many have been printed when you purchase a comic book. By doing a limited edition comic that is beautifully printed with card stock covers, a known print run, special art on the covers, and all the buzzers and bells that sets apart the normal run of a comic book from everything else we are directly addressing a comic book market that often goes under looked.

The collectors market, people who want to own the physical product so that they can do anything they want to do with it later including reselling it.

Imagine if Comics Forge Presents discovered the next “Stan Lee” or the next big name in comic books, suddenly you would physically own something awesome. Imagine if Comics Forge Presents didn’t find the next big name that everyone universally knows, but has a huge following, you still own something awesome.

The market exists for independent comic books, and for limited edition covers. We have worked with Zenescope for a Limited Edition Monster Hunters Survival Guide cover and with Zombies VS Cheerleaders for the same. These comics move fast, they are awesome, and they directly support the independent comic book industry, we help authors, writers, inkers, drawers, and publishers by offering the customer something special, unusual, and unique. We have years of sales data to back up this assertion, we have years of participating in conventions to support that statement, and we are very proud of our association with the independent comic book community. We want them to be successful, and with our ability to market, and our ability to get products made, delivered in to the customers’ hands, and excellent customer service, we know we can make this project happen, and make it fun for everyone along the way.

We are also avid supporters of Kickstarter and the projects happening on the site. To date we have supported, donated, discussed, and published information about five projects in the last four months helping all but one of them to achieve their funding goals.

This is why we know we can make this happen, and happen with your support, we need you to help us make our dream of beautifully crafted comic books featuring the best of new authors in the independent comic book community have a home run.

Why $10,000?

Each print run of the comic book will cost $2,000, each author is paid for their participation in the comic book including royalties upfront, so that they can buy food, make a car payment, maybe go to the beach for an afternoon. Comics Forge Presents takes on all the liability for the comic book and our main goal of each in the series is to break even. If there is enough left over and there is a convention in their local area that they want to go to, so that they can show off their work, we will help them get an artist’s alley table, we want to support them fully, making just enough money to pay off the main body of expenses so that we can do this again.

10 Grand pays for two editions of this comic book, with the proceeds going right back into Issue 3 and 4. Your money will be reused over and over again to keep this ball rolling, because eventually we will sell out of everything, and be able to put back into the system every dime we are getting from this project. We are paying regular commercial rates, and not cutting any corners on this one, given the market we want to work with, they will expect amazing attention to detail in everything we do, and that is our goal, the comic book has to be special, meaning a higher print cost, meaning we take this seriously, meaning we pay our authors upfront for their efforts.

Where is all this stuff going to be printed and where are the authors coming from?

Not to sound elitist, but we want to have everything done in America, we want to put the money for this project back into the local communities, support American employment, support American comic book authors. Nothing will be printed overseas; actually the printer we want to use is in New England with a long history of printing comic books, who understands what we want from this project. We want to keep the money for this project at home, supporting local communities, local employment, helping people pay the bills they have.

So why should I do this?

Well besides the fact you are awesome for making it this far into the 1200 words that are right here, you would want to do this if you love indies. You will do this if you want to help someone else, if you want to help us help someone else and make a difference in the overcrowded and often contentious comic book market. You will do this to see your name as a patron saint, an executive director, or simply see your name printed in a comic book. You will have your own reason, maybe it is a copy of something beautiful, maybe for the sense of satisfaction you will get from participating, and your reasons are your own. What will happen though is that you will directly support the independent comic book community, and that is pretty special in its own right. This would be just like visiting the artists’ alley at any comic book convention, and picking up a comic book from an author at a table who is hoping to see their product loved and cherished by someone else.

Finally

Thank you for reading this, thank you for watching the movie, thank you for all that you do to support independent comic books. Please consider supporting this project at a level you are comfortable with, you will help make a difference for one person, a person you can point to and say “I helped them”, and you will end up with something very cool as a prize as well.