Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, HRL

Making Madman's 25th a Birthday to Remember

Published Sat, 02 Dec 2017 16:30:19 -0600

Christopher Irving writes:

Madman's 25th birthday has been a wonky one for me:

Last May, I followed up my 3D trading card set of Mike Allred's Madman (the sold out Madman Comin' Atcha 3D trading cards), with a Kickstarter campaign for Madman 25!, the curated 25th anniversary card pack that takes a different look at Mike and Laura's iconic book.

We funded in record time, and the set received "upgrades," where I switched them from 16pt standard card stock to everything from old school chipback, 3D (courtesy of the brilliant Christian LeBlanc), foil-embossed, and even 36pt (which is a really nice, thick stock), and we even received an old-school wax wrapper!

There's a two-week period between the end of funding and receiving the Kickstarter money in your account. I used that to put the final touches on design and copy, and to prep the files for printing. As soon as the money appeared, I simply sent cards off to the different printing resources (I used about four different ones on this set).

The cards themselves were shipped to SideKick Lab in Vermont, where Tom Lichtman has mastered the lost art of the wax wrapper; he's the only person in the country who can make these. Plus, he's a nice guy and does spectacular work.

There were delays, as SideKick faced more success (and production) than anyone could imagine with their Dan Brereton monster cards, and their Ed Repka monster sticker pack. In the meantime, my son Grayson was born, and I wound up teaching five different classes as an adjunct professor.

The box of finished Madman 25! packs arrived just last week, and I'm currently up to my ears in packed boxes. Mike and Laura are signing boxes for backers (and for sale on my website), and I'm 75% ready to go on shipping these out by next week. A few things I learned from the past two years of Kickstarter publishing trading cards, and especially with this campaign:

Keep your backers posted if there are delays. Even if you don't have immediate news, let them know you haven't forgotten them. It makes a huge difference.
If your life is crazy (I'm staring at grading final papers for four of those five classes), let your backers know, as well.
Having a vendor collate the packs for you makes life A HELLUVA LOT easier! When I got Madman 3D, I literally sorted each 66-card set by hand. Thanks to SideKick doing that part for me with this 25-card set, I only have to drop a pack in a mailer, and I'm good to go.
If you find a vendor who does the best work possible, it often proves worth the wait. SideKick did an incredible job on their end of production.
If you do enough Kickstarters, get yourself a desktop postage printer. I got a Dymo one this year and it makes my life much easier (when it isn't jamming, that is).
Buy mailers and boxes in bulk.

Finally, getting to make something to celebrate a comic book and characters that literally changed how I look at comics, still forces me to pinch myself in disbelief.

This is the best set I've done, and if you're a Madman fan like I am, pick up one of the remaining packs for sale on my website. I have under 200 to sell and then they're gone.

I'd hate to see anyone miss Frank Einstein's party.

Christopher Irving is a comic book historian and journalist in Richmond, Virginia. His one-man publishing company, The Drawn Word, is the only independent comic book trading card publisher. He currently teaches comics and media at Virginia Commonwealth University.