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You know how those Marvel movies always have that post-credit scene that makes you have to sit through ten minutes of names scrolling up the screen?  The ones that make me want to sit through the credits of every movie I see now, just in case Nick Fury is going to sow up and tell me about his team of super-heroes, even if it’s a comedy?  Is it just me, or was that a ploy to get us to watch the credits of movies so the thousands of digital effects artists get their due? (Semi-funny side-note: At my “real” job at Boston University, one of my tasks is to show films, and a professor once yelled at one of my work-study students because she shut off the film during the end credits.  The angry prof demanded she play the DVD again so that the credits could be shown and the artisans from craft services could be given their due credit, even though the room was now completely empty.)   Anyway, that’s a lot of build-up for me to get to the point, which is that nothing is created in a vacuum.  Yeah, it’s a little annoying to sit through all those names, especially since we can all watch the post-credit scene on our phones while walking out of the theater.  But, look at all those names! And when you’re a grunt in the movie business, I’m sure that first credit is totally satisfying.  I never got one myself in my short stint in the biz, but I would have probably crapped my pants if I did. The same is true of most creative endeavors. Modern technology has changed a few things. An accomplished musician can now record a whole album in their mother’s basement and then send it out into the world digitally and go on Facebook and tell everyone to buy it.  They can do that because the technology exists, but the musician still has to know how to do it. In my own experience, I did self-publish a comic book,(nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Buy it at the link) but the “self” part is a little misleading, because a lot of people made it possible.  I hired an artist, a letterer and a colorist, and I asked/begged many friends to help out with the technical stuff, which I new very little about, even though I thought I did.  Not to mention that over a hundred people donated to the Kickstarter so I could afford to pay all these people.  And as I touched upon in my previous post, then I had to send all the rewards out and spread the word to try and sell more books, because no one is going to do that for you. (I know of what I speak; I sent out dozens of emails to websites who say they would review independent comics, and nary a response.) That’s really where the “self” part of “self-publishing” comes in, and that’s the hardest part, and that’s where having a logo for an established company in your cover’s corner box helps a lot. Still, the fact that I haven’t sold too many books does not take away from the accomplishment. Even though it took a lot of help, I’ve done something a lot of people before me have done, and I must remind myself that a lot of people have also not done it. Upon seeing the finished product, a friend of mine asked, “How did you even know how to do all that?” I didn’t even really have an answer for her.  I just knew.  Obviously, it would have helped if I could draw or color or letter a comic book, but at least I knew where to find the right people to do all that for me.  And I figured out along the way how many pixels each page needs to be and all that, because I didn’t take a class for that (although if there’s someone out there who I can pay to do that for me, too, I’d be all over that.) The bottom line is that, in the end, even one small comic book requires a lot of work by a lot of people, and all you can do is hope people like it. And if not?  In the words of Johnny Depp in Ed Wood: “Well, my next one will be better.”    

Robin Hood #2 preview art – Whole comic soon