Jimmy Palmiotti And The Creator's Role In The Future Of Comics Publishing – WonderCon

Published Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:00:12 -0500

Last updated Sun, 08 Apr 2018 09:27:27 -0500

Joshua Stone reporting from Wondercon;

The Creator's Role In The Future Of Comics Publishing panel featured Chris Brandt, Jimmy Palmiotti, Kraig Rasmussen, and Brian Schimer. The panel tried to focus on helping those people in the audience who were looking to create their own comics.

The panel started focusing on the Kickstarter projects of those on the Panel, Palmiotti and Schimer both having run successful Kickstarter projects. Palmiotti said the key to Queen Crab being a successful Kickstarter was making use of social media. He is lucky enough to have over 20,000 followers on twitter and reaching out to them is what allowed that project to succeed. He decided to do it as a Kickstarter because comic companies prefer to do superheroes, so he figured he would do it himself. Once it was successful, Image printed the books.

With Palmiotti's most recent Kickstarter, Sex and Violence, he did it as print to order and printed them himself. He set the goal at $18.5K, and ended up raising $38K. Was able to give a bonus to his artists as a result, and the rest into his next Kickstarter.

Palmiotti and Schimer discussed how running a Kickstarter campaign is like having another full time job, from beginning till the last package is shipped out. Palmiotti said on his last Kickstarter he had to mail 878 packages around the world.

The discussion then moved into digital. Rasmussen said that the internet and digital publishing allows anyone to be an absolute auteur.

Palmiotti was next asked by the audience where he finds his motivation. Palmiotti says his motivation is knowing that someday he is going to die. Before that happens, he wants to get out everything he wants to say, and he enjoys doing the work.

I was able to ask Palmiotti about Creator Owned Heroes and why he went to Image with it and did not do it as a Kickstarter? He didn't feel an ongoing series could work through Kickstarter. Palmiotti said the comic bombed miserably. Retailers hated the book. You need to sell 6000 issues at Image to not lose money, and they were only selling 3000. He had thought that between his and Steve Niles' followers, that they would have enough fans to carry the book, but it didn't work out. He had to stop it at issue 8 cause he was losing too much money.

In the end the panel recommended Kickstarter as the easiest way to self publish, and that there was no better time than now for creators to get their work out there.

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