Beautiful sentiment

It can be really frustrating working on the comics sometimes.

There’s a large, vocal audience declaring how much they want to see more diversity in comics and more LGBTQ characters. I was one of them, even. And it’s why I made The Pride.

However, when an indie project comes out with just that, a lot of this audience don’t actually buy the product they’d been calling out for: because it’s not from Marvel or DC.

Fact is though, if an audience doesn’t prove a desire and market for such a product, they won’t be willing to take a risk on creating one of their own. 

Obviously, I’m small press. I self-publish. I pay to get the comics made out of my own pocket. At the moment, there’s still around £5000 to pay artists for work and get the rest of the series printed when it comes to it. This isn’t even taking into account the cost of postage etc…it’s hard work, and takes up a lot of my time and money.

But it’s a labor of love, so I keep working at it. I wouldn’t change that for the world. But I do wish that I was able to pay the artists faster and could afford printing easier.

The Pride has 841 Likes on Facebook. If all of them bought just one copy of The Pride digital issues (at just £1.50), any issue, that would raise a massive chunk needed towards paying off the remaining artists! It would literally fund itself. I wouldn’t make any money myself, but I don’t care about that. This project is as much about building my profile and name as a writer than it is about getting rich…I will never get rich off The Pride, but I love doing it.

Likes are all well and good, honestly they are great and a massive help in their own right, but it doesn’t help me actually make the comics. And it’s frustrating to see this market, this audience, saying they want a product and then just…not.

Just felt like sharing that is all. In case anyone is considering making comics of their own. Obviously, I don’t want to scare anyone off: you wanna make comics, make comics. But be prepared for hard times and struggles, but if you work hard it could well all be worth it in the end.

And of course, if you do want to buy The Pride, you can do so here.

I really do recommend this book, it’s absolutely a pleasure to read and a clear labor of love.

Signal boost. A lot of you got issue one, if not all of the series, which has been excellent.

It'd be great if all of you who've now read the series could share a post about what you thought, if you recommend it, and share with your followers how to get in on it themselves. It would be a massive help.

And if you only got issue one, then why not get the rest!

Be nice for the first weekend in 2014, eh? :)

2013 was a real wonky year and one that I’ll look back on with a scrunched up face. Professionally speaking it was the rockiest year I’ve ever had and I wanted to take stock of it all because I dunno, this kind of thing can be good for the soul or whatever.

Going into 2013, things seemed to be...

Excellent piece about how tough it is working on your own self-published comics, and the kind of roller-coaster of emotions that it puts you through.

Honestly, I wrote something touching vaguely on these feeling in my post about The Pride a few weeks back, I may expand on it and a sort of review of my 2013 like Marc did. As he says, I'm sure it cathartic.

As for Chloe Noonan, you need this book. Honestly, it's excellent. It's one of the best British Indie Comics that you can get today. You can see Marc at every comic con pretty much, and he's a charming, friendly guy. His work is amazing, and I'm really looking forward to his next work on The Pride, later this year (in fact, you can see his first crack at The Pride in issue one, as he drew the Wolf origin short).

Go support Marc now! I really cannot recommend his books enough, both Chloe Noonan and Ellerbisms. Get them now!

Yeah, it still doesn’t feel like 2014. Obviously, I’m being lied to.

Yeah, hasn't really felt like a New Year to me either, as it's pretty much business as usual

NEW COMIC! Here’s a sneak peak at my brand new comic (with my talented artistic collaborator Josh Sherwell)  that will be coming out in 2014. I am SO excited about this comic, and working with Josh is going to be a lot of fun (not for him obviously). I’ll post more about the comic soon.