OK, a while back Warren Ellis told a bunch of people to “FORM a BAND.”
I’m gonna quote him in full here:
Warren Ellis via Bad Signal, “Building the Imperfect Beast,” 08-12-2008
Okay, I’m pretty sure I did do this last year, but I
think it’s reconfigured in my head since then. So.
What you need is one writer and three artists.
Essentially, you decide to Form A Band.
And you decide up front that all the money from
the anthology comic is divided 4 ways equally.
This is for simplicity’s sake — people argue this
point with me all the time, but I have had
publishers say to my face that they avoid
anthologies, especially creator-owned ones,
because THE SUMS ARE TOO HARD. Keep
it simple. 25% for everybody.
What you’re going to do, you see, is one writer
writing three serials for three artists.
You’re doing a two-dollar book. That’s FELL format.
A 24pp unit, all on the same paperstock, including
covers. “Guts” of 20pp, with the “cover”, constituting
4pp, wrapped around it, yes?
Three 6pp episodes is 18 pages. Your cover and
inside front cover for indicia etc are 2pp. So that
leaves you 4pp, including the back cover, to play
with. Use them to interleave the serials, use them
as backmatter, let the artists take turns doing
full-page pieces, whatever.
The cover art is a rotating job between the three
artists.
Collect it every six months as a 128pp book (therefore
still splitting everything four ways) or collect each
serial on its own as best fitting (each book therefore
splitting 50/50). (As is blatantly obvious, but people
like to ask these questions instead of thinking for
themselves.)
Go and do it. I need something to read.
Form a band, boys and girls. Form a band.
OK, let’s look at the hurdles
1) I had to form a company so that my ass isn’t too liable as a self-publisher,
2) I had to create a legal agreement,
3) I’ve had to recruit artists (which I did find one - he’s great to work with, top notch.)
4) Some serious bitterness on my behalf, but oddly… I’m better for it. I’m a hell of a lot happier in this last six months.
Oh yeah, and I had to write the scripts because that is what I want to do, y’know, write stories. As opposed to be a publisher.
It’s six months later and I’m looking at now 5 finished scripts, one in final-final, four in finished draft stages, a ton of undeveloped ideas, and no artists on the horizons.
So, I’m putting this out to twitter-verse, and facebook, and all the other places once again.
I’m looking for few good artists. Actually, I’m looking for two good artists who will commit to the project. I know that royalty projects are difficult, but if you’re wanting to break in, and you love comics, here’s an opportunity for you. Please forward to any artists you know.
For us to shop this story, an artist needs to commit to the following:
1) Character Design - based on my descriptions, you will design the main characters of the story.
2) The first 5-6 pages of the story so that we can shop it to publishers. No page rate will be paid for these first few pages.
Legal Agreement Abridged
You and I co-own the characters. I own story. You own the character designs (what they look like) and receive royalties based on that design. If a different artist comes in later and redesigns the characters, you will still receive a smaller royalty amount for ownership. The story and characters are completely licensed to Heresy Research Labs to be repped - in short, HRL’s job is to get others to license and print the comics.
Here’s the detailed license. Feel free to print out and take to a lawyer.
