Here is one of the early logo concepts I am playing around with. Iwan provided the original art/logo and I am playing with colors and tweaking the font a bit. Here is one of many we’ll be choosing from.

A couple of weeks back I posted an article on how having a production deal may have prevented a publisher from wanting to move forward on my comic book Lifespan. As I suspected, this isn’t that rare of an occurrence.

While on twitter today, Marcus Almand (A really nice independent comic creator) posted a quick note that people should check out Stephen Christy and what he was posting. I did and two posts caught my eye.

“Lastly, when putting together your pitch focus on making a good COMIC. While some publishers are looking for comics-as-movie pitches…”

“Let your publisher and people like me worry about how to sell your comic as a tv/film/videogame”

Before I go any further, I’m not sure what Mr. Christy’s official job title is, but on his profile it states “‘I’m the Hollywood guy for Archaia Comics.” That said, I decided to ask him a straight forward question:

“@stephenchristy Would Archaia publish a non-established writer if he had already signed away the film/TV rights?”

To which he was kind enough to reply:

“@suttercain probably not. Sharing in those rights is too important to the bottom line of most companies.”

Two independent comic book companies have now stated that they are not just interested in comic book publishing alone, but instead want to make money in other mediums as well. While this makes sense, I have to ask “Would I have signed all of my Lifespan rights away to an independent comic publisher whose sales account for less than .9% of the overall comic market?”

I don’t think I would have and here’s why. Most of these independent companies don’t pay a page rate. I’m not sure if Archaie does or not, but based on their submission guidelines, I’m thinking they don’t.  So what is the benefit of getting published by an independent publisher? If I have to pay (or find an artist for free) to get the book done, why wouldn’t I instead simply self-publish?

I can retain all the rights, get the same distribution that most of these small publishers get and I walk away with all the money (less printing costs).  Am I missing something here? Why would a creator sign all of their rights away to a very small independent publisher?

I understand doing this with Dark Horse or IDW, but on an independent that gets minimal distribution? To me, it doesn’t make sense. I think Image has this part down. They just worry about the comic. You get to retain all rights to YOUR creation. Now if only I was as famous as Tyrese Gibson…

I want to hear from other comic creators. Do you agree or disagree? Would you give away all your rights to an independent comic company that doesn’t pay page rates? Post your comments below. No censorship here!

I’ve been working with Daniel Govar, who has been awesome to collaborate with, on a new project we hope to shop around in the near future. Without giving too much away all I can say is that it’s a fantasy tale based on a story from the 12th century that we are updating for the 21st century.

We’ve got the major storyline squared away, as well as all the characters we’d like to incorporate. At this point we are working on the outline and that should be done by Saturday.