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Friday 2 September 2016

A fresh start for the Year of Wonders

I resisted Facebook for the longest time. It’s not that I don’t like tech, I just don’t care for people that much. (Only kidding. I like people just fine. It’s the pet photos and soccer chat I wanted to avoid.)

Finally I’ve had to succumb, and the reason is that Leo Hartas and I needed to set up a Facebook page for our comics saga Mirabilis: Year of Wonders (If you need a this-meets-that, try Tintin hunts Fantastic Beasts with a soundtrack by Danny Elfman).

This is part of our big push to get the Mirabilis project moving again. The story was originally serialized in weekly British anthology comic The DFC, published by Random House. When The DFC folded, our story was left unfinished but our rights were tied up in a complicated contractual tangle. It took me months of increasingly desperate negotiation to find a way out of that limbo, made all the more fraught by the fact that none of the people involved in the mess would even return my calls. Luckily I knew Philippa Dickinson, the original publisher of Dragon Warriors and one of the truly nicest people you could hope to work with, who by now had risen to be the head of RH’s children’s publishing division. She pulled strings with the powers that be and got me and Leo our rights back.

Thus unfettered I could stop chewing my nails, but it was still far from plain sailing. We secured a publisher for Mirabilis, but though they did a beautiful job of the production they failed to get copies into any shops. I had to lug a couple of bags stuffed with copies to the Gosh! Comics store in London – if you bought one of those, hang onto it like a Penny Black with Queen Vic in a hipster beard, because they were almost the only copies that ever saw the light of day. The rest, I hear, went astray between the printer (in Bosnia) and the distribution warehouse (in Lancashire) and may now be propping up wobbly café tables somewhere in Germany.

So, back to the drawing board. A comics publisher reached out, but the deal they offered was like a handshake from Don Corleone. We were expected to sign over all rights in perpetuity to them, even though there was no obligation for them to keep the book in print. After the epic struggle with Random House there’s no way Leo and I could accept terms like that. As a creator, all you have is your work. You can't let other people lock you out of it.


What about Random House themselves? Well, Philippa had retired by this point, and the mildest way to put it is that having escaped the clutches of the contract we didn’t really have a lot of friends there. We were in our gulag and, at any other time in history, there we might have stayed. But this is the 21st century, right - with social media and crowdfunding and shit. So Leo and I have spent the last few weeks getting ready for a full and concerted relaunch of this mighty fantasy saga. Our plans include:
  • a Patreon page where aficionados can come and pledge as little as $1 a month to help fund new instalments. Pages of the comic go up there Mondays and Fridays with higher-level backers getting access to backstage blog pieces and other goodies.
  • a new website where everyone can read the comic absolutely free – just a little way behind the paid-up supporters on Patreon, who also get higher-res versions of the art.
  • the aforementioned Facebook page where you can get updates on Mirabilis and any other books, comics, movies or games that we thing might interest you.
  • a Twitter account with daily instalments of the comic.
And we’re toying with the idea of a Kickstarter to fund a Mirabilis gamebook. Or app. Maybe a boardgame. Possibly all three and - I dunno, a roleplaying game too? The Patreon backers may get a say in that. The exciting thing is that it's a community where everyone gets a voice.

Here’s the thing. We could really use your support – which is, after all, the whole point and rationale of what we’re trying to do now. We’re bypassing the publishers and distributors and going straight to the people whose opinion and backing count most. That’s you, we hope. The readers. Already we've got backing from Jason Arnopp, the 21st century's Stephen King, from the Jedi Master of gamebooks Stuart Lloyd, and from musician, artist & game designer Frazer Payne, among others. Good company to be in, and an absolutely priceless vote of confidence when we're starting a new venture like this. Thanks, guys.

If you can spring for a few dollars to actually fund the work, then you’re our BFFs till the sun dies – but even if not, a like on Facebook costs nothing and can really help boost interest. You never know, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

23 comments:

  1. Well, good luck affording even a used copy of Volume 1.

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0956712118

    Yeesh.

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    1. Yeah, that is kind of steep. $1 a month on Patreon is all it takes, John. Or free on the website, if you can wait 6 weeks between issues.

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  2. My stock question, Dave. Is a print copy planned at some stage? Happy to support in any case, but nice to be able to leave a small space on the shelf to be able to complete the collection in the future. p.s. Good luck with it.

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    1. Tell you what I'd really like, Andy, and that would be to release each 25-page issue/chapter in print form. But I'd really be catering to my 11-year-old self, as the market for pamphlet comic books has withered away to nothing in the UK. Now, if a publisher would like to take me up on this - and, crucially, didn't want absolute control of the IP forever - I'd jump at the chance.

      Failing that, I expect Leo and I will look into setting up print on demand versions eventually, assuming the Patreon backing gets us far enough along to complete the story.

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  3. I plopped down for the $20.00 per month because this thing looks really, really good.

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    1. Thanks, John,that's awesome. Leo and I will be talking to you in a webchat -- just as soon as we can figure out how to actually set one up.

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  4. Don't worry about that on my account, I just liked the extra ink pages. I don't have a webcam or webchat software. I'm still using Windows Vista on a 7 year old computer.

    As for Facebook, I'm not on it because Mark Zuckerberg turned into a digital Hotel California - you can check in any time you like, but you can never leave.

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    1. I can't tell you how glad I am to hear you say that, John. I use Windows XP, my favourite version of Word is 2003, and though I have more recent machines the one I use by preference is 9 years old. Having said that, we'll figure out a way to do the web chat eventually, even if it's only a text conversation on rolz.org.

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  5. Ditto on Word 2003, I still use that. If we ever do the thing I emailed you about, or something similar, at we know we have compatible word processing programs.

    On the Mirabilis front, I really need to go back and read it from the beginning so that I can discuss it intelligently when some form of chat communication is established.

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    1. We'll be sending high-level backers the link for issue 1 in hi-res PDF form in the coming week. Short of print, there's no better way to read it.

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  6. Thanks, I'll be looking forward to it.

    BTW, you mentioned Fringe, Season 4. If you like John Noble, I can't say enough good things about Elementary, Season 4. Really the whole series. There are episodes that are better than some, but I have yet to see an episode of that series that I'd call a dud. Just quality work across the board.

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    1. I'm with you all the way on that, John. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that Elementary is my favourite of all current TV shows. I was delighted when they announced John Noble as Sherlock's father, and my wife and I will be bingeing on s4 quite soon :-)

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  7. I admit that the father thing causes me to once again compare Elementary to Sherlock and find the latter somewhat wanting. Sherlock did the cutesy thing of casting Benedict Cumberbatch's parents as those of the Holmes brothers. Elementary waited three full seasons, building up Sherlock's father all the while and then cast John Noble to fully embody him in a worthwhile way.

    Sherlock is a show with highs that are really high, but lows that are pretty direly low. Elementary has high highs but even its "lows" are high quality.

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    1. I liked the first season of Sherlock, but gave up on it when he started crowing about being a "high functioning sociopath" as if it was a superpower. Sherlock is a Mary Sue in that series; his struggles are fake, his lows fleeting, his triumphs unearned. Whereas in Elementary he really goes through the wringer. And, as you say, the standard of storytelling in Elementary is consistently high, not tossed off as Sherlock scripts often are.

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    2. Even the first season had that weird "Yellow Peril" circus folk story as the second episode. Also, yes, James Moriarty was fun, but does he really have to show up in some fashion in almost every episode? Ironically, my favorite Sherlock episode is the second episode of the third series, "His Last Vow." Moriarty isn't even mentioned.

      Natalie Dormer has appeared maybe six-eight times over the course of the series and at least a couple of those were voiceovers. Less is more.

      For that matter the whole bit with Charles Augustus Magnusson was silly and overbuilt. Oooh, he's licking people and urinating in a fireplace. Look how eeevvill he is!

      Elementary's version of Charles Augustus Milverton had him blackmailing among others the parents/guardians of teenage rape victims by threatening to leak videos of the rapes onto the internet. That tells you all you need to know about how evil this guy is. Less is more. No licking, pissing or other body fluids required.

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    3. I couldn't agree more. Elementary shows a very precise and expert level of control in its storytelling, probably because the writers' room subjects every choice to scrutiny. Sherlock, by comparison, feels like it's often just thrown at the wall to see what will stick.

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  8. How long do you think it will be for you to spring in print (maybe even hardback)? I have my hardback of winter volume 1(which looks tremendous) and the paperback of winter volume 2. I really like mirabilis and have been hoping to see spring for some time.

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    1. To 'have' spring in print that should say.

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    2. So far the first issue of Spring is fully finished, issue two is inked but uncoloured, issue three is still just pencils, and issue four is written but not yet drawn. If we could get onto it full-time, the first volume of Spring would take about 10 weeks to complete. Response on Patreon so far has been amazing, but it's going to take time. If we can build up to the point that Leo and Nikos can devote one week a month to it - which could take over a year to reach, though I hope not - then we'll be able to make real progress. Watch for a detailed post about this on the Patreon page in the next few days.

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  9. I've taken the plunge. I enjoyed the first free issue on the iPad, so got the second for 39p (but that kept crashing). Do we just get the new issues or the old ones too?

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    1. New issues will be coming along, James - and thanks for backing us. I did a post on Sep 9 about the new stuff because Gavin Orpin was asking about it too:

      https://www.patreon.com/posts/getting-to-grips-6724931

      At the moment backers will have to wait through issues #2 to #8 before they get #9. Gavin suggested that at higher levels #9 should be available right away. The balancing act is to give those high-level backers something special without disadvantaging our other backers. Tricky... So do join in the discussion because we're feeling our way here.

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    2. Btw I'm sorry about the iPad crashes. I didn't have any problems with it myself. Sometimes a full shut-down and restart helps.

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    3. Oh, and I will be making Mirabilis issue #9 available as a high-res PDF to Patreon backers very soon - with appropriate spoiler warnings for those who haven't yet read season one.

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