Galactivity

The other day, I went looking for the recent Galaxion pages I'd been working on. Now, my brain may not be the sharpest, but I was reasonably certain I'd left them on the "drawing table" (AKA my desk) in my office. The table was suspiciously empty. I immediately suspected my 4-yr-old daughter of messing with them, but I couldn't figure out what she'd done with them. I mean, they're 11 x 17 pages, they're not something you can easily overlook.

Eventually I found them in the bathroom adjacent to my office, in the bathtub. (Fortunately, we don't use that bathtub much so the place was dry.) Why the bathtub is still a mystery to me. Maybe she was trying to hide the evidence? ...Because I saw that she had taken one of my Staedler felt-tip pens and scribbled on my latest page, the one I was in the middle of inking. Scribbled in several places, in fact. And she'd also left the cap off the pen, effectively ruining it by the time I found it.

What amazed me was how calmly I took this discovery. A few years ago I might have imagined that I'd have a major cow over a scene like this-- "You've RUINED my ARTWORK! I spent HOURS on this! Look at this, BLACK MARKS EVERYWHERE, these pens are EXPENSIVE, and you are GROUNDED FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!!" or something. For crying out loud, I've flipped my lid at her over much less important things. But you know what? A little white ink, a little trust that Photoshop can clean up the rest, a little reminder that she not go into my office when I'm not there, and life goes on.

It's good to know that I have it in me to be so levelheaded about the stuff I usually obsess over.

(But still... my daughter should be thanking her lucky stars that Photoshop can fix any number of sins, or else she'd be in BIIIIG trouble.)

New Galaxion! I had fun doing the little montage.



And now for something completely... you know.

There was a recurring blog theme that popped up last month around the time of the New York Comic Con. People were debating: is it still worthwhile going to conventions? I put off talking about this topic myself until now, because my first con of the year doesn’t happen until later this month. But now that Anime North is fast approaching, I’m ready to weigh in on the subject.

( (...which I do below the cut, because I yak rather a lot. Fair warning.) )

New page is up!



I've read several blogs from people who were disappointed by their experience with Free Comic Book Day (which was last Saturday), but I can report that mine was awesome.

I've only experienced FCBD twice. Last year, and this year. Last year I happened to be visiting friends in New Jersey, so I went to the excellent shop in Madison, Dewey's Comic City. Dewey's had a couple of artists signing stuff, and there was no rationing of the freebies. My friends and I came home with bags full of free stuff as well as goodies we happily paid for.

This year I got to try FCBD from the other side of the table, thanks to the kind folk at The Beguiling. The main event for the Beguiling, the one that had been widely advertised, was actually over at the nearby Palmerston Public Library, which was promoted as a FCBD event specifically for kids. There were readings and activities and stuff. I never made it over there, but my husband took our two kids (4 and 7), and they had a great time. And they came home with piles of excellent age-appropriate comics! Well done. Anyway, at what seemed somewhat like a last-minute plan, Chris (the Beguiling's manager, whom I'm sure many of you will know from his blog) sent out an email to a bunch of local artists, asking us if we wanted to participate in their festivities at the store. Knowing that I wanted to bring the kids out there anyway, I was happy to do so.

Last time I went to a signing at The Beguiling (which wasn't that long ago), the artists were set up in the store on the main floor, at the central table. There's not a lot of room to manoeuvre in that store even when the place isn't full of people. That's more or less what I was expecting to find when I got there, a somewhat squished set-up. Instead, I discovered that the event was set up next door, in a restaurant (whose name I forget, unfortunately) that doesn't normally open until 5pm. If not for the rain we would've been out on the patio, but instead we were in the front room which overlooked the street. It was a lovely location, actually. I mentioned to Chris about my expectations, and he just gave a small laugh and told me they don't have space in the store for things like that anymore. But the result of this was, I brought minimal supplies, thinking I'd have barely enough space to sit, and instead I was given a whole table. So my display was rather pathetic. But I did bring about 40 copies of Galaxion #3 to hand out, as part of my contribution to FCBD. We printed out a bunch of stickers with the current website information on it, and stuck them to each of the freebie issues. Once upon a time I would've cringed at the idea of devaluing a comic by putting stickers on it, but you know what? I seem to be over that now. I also had the minicomic versions of the online comic-- this was the first time I've had the second collection for sale. And then I had a few copies of the graphic novel. That... was it.

Considering all the rain we got, I was impressed at the number of people who showed up. A lot of families, which was really nice to see! I guess we got more than usual thanks to the kid-friendly promotion. I was only scheduled to be "signing" (I think I signed all of one thing) from 12pm-3pm, and I'd already run through my stack of freebies by 1:30. After that I tried selectively handing out copies of the first minicomic, to anyone who seemed interested enough in my pitiful display (even more pitiful after I'd run out of actual comic books) to stop and look. Several people identified themselves as teachers or librarians, which was also excellent. And everyone seemed pleased at the idea that they could go online to find more Galaxion if they liked what they read in the free issue. I plan to do the same thing, hand out free issues, at cons in the future. As advertising, it's way more effective than handing out a little flyer! And as an added bonus, I get to empty out the boxes of old overstock in my basement.

All told, it was a very successful day. My kids are enjoying their comics. I even made a few sales, which was more than I'd imagined would happen on a day when everyone's there to get free stuff! I would do this again next year in a heartbeat. When you consider all the negatives that this day tried to throw at me-- last minute invite, no display, and terrible weather (Chris said this was the first year in five years of FCBD that they've had rain)-- it says something really good that I came away from it as happy as I did. Now, can you imagine what this event might be like in a year when everything goes according to plan? Yeah!

And finally, to cap the day, my buddies and I went out to see Iron Man. Just so you know, I had absolutely no interest in seeing it. I was never an Iron Man reader to the slightest degree, and I never even watched the old cartoon. I knew nothing about the character except the name Tony Stark. But my hubby couldn't resist popping over to Rottentomatoes, and reported that Iron Man had recieved a 94% fresh rating. Which is pretty astounding, no matter what the movie. So I went along for the ride. Allow me to confirm that all the hype is for real-- it's really that good!

Page 77 is up, and it's the start of a new scene.



In other news, I will be helping to celebrate the Free Comic Book Day festivities at the fabulous comic shop The Beguiling in Toronto, tomorrow (Saturday, May 3rd) from 12pm-3pm. I'll put up a link when I can. Hope to see you there!

If you're like me and have a bookmark that takes you straight into the GirlAMatic site, you will probably not notice the fact that I've got the GAM cover this month. I think it's pretty, and it's a nice companion piece to that Mucha Aria picture I posted a couple of weeks ago, so go have a look!

.....

On a completely unrelated note, I was overhearing my kids listening to one of those alphabet songs on Starfall (which is a very nice website devoted to helping kids learn to read, Sesame Street style). So I'm hearing all the usual things you'd expect, like S is for Snake and T is for Tiger and so on... and then we get X is for Xbox! I had to confirm with my kids: "Did he really say Xbox?" "Yeah, mom, he said Xbox." OK, I know X was always a tricky letter, but I still had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

Page 76 is up, and you have a chance to win it!



You get to help determine exactly how weird Zan can be. Details are all at the link. Reader involvement is seriously awesome, as demonstrated by yesterday's post (thank you all so much for sharing your expertise!). I've even received my first entry already, so I'm very excited!

One of my upcoming pages has a little scene from which the following is an excerpt:




I thought I was using the word "asymptotic" correctly, or at least acceptably, but my sometimes-editor Wendy is calling me on it, and now I'm having my doubts. Essentially, in this panel I'm trying to give Aria a more clever way to say that possibilities for being stupid start going up a lot. Working from my admittedly vague high school math memories, one of the ways I think of an asymptote is as a line that approaches its goal but never quite gets there... so it continues on towards infinity. And thus, in the speech balloon above, so would the stupid-possibilities that Aria is talking about. But Wendy interprets it differently, saying that since an asymptotic line gets infinitely close to the target but never reaches it, then Aria would seem to be saying the people in question aren't actually being stupid. Which isn't quite what I had in mind.

So in an effort to correct a potential problem before I post the page (this time!), my question goes out to any and all of you LJ readers who are mathematicians, scientists, or who are just generally smarter about this sort of thing than I am-- does Aria's dialogue make sense, or will everybody reading it (esp. those who know what an asymptote is) just get confused?

You know how the minute your page goes live, that's when you spot all the flaws? Yeah, even if you don't do the webcomic thing, I have no doubt you can all relate with teeth-gnashing memories. Needless to say, as soon as I looked at this week's Galaxion page on my site, I realized what I should have done in the first place with the word balloons on the bottom panel. So:


The original version...



...and the corrected one.

It's a minor adjustment, but it reads so much better that way.

Just nod your head and agree with me, thanks.

*sighs*

(There were other flaws, but this one was most easily fixable!)

Page 75 is up! And there was much rejoicing.



We're coming to the end of this scene, but I think Chapter Three is going to go on forever. There's two small scenes coming up, plus one long scene, plus a little flashback that has to go somewhere, and it's all getting rather ridiculous. All I can say is, yay for the web, where I don't have to conform to 22-page segments anymore.

I forgot all about this until almost the last minute, but it's Aria's birthday today! To help celebrate, I've posted another Galaxion Retrospective, 25 years worth of Aria sketches in 12 easy clicks!



I feel like I pulled an all-nighter to get this up in time, but in reality I only stayed up until about 1AM. I am such a wimp. On the other hand, my kids got me up at 6:30AM and afer I have my tea I'll be pracitcally fuctional, so I guess that's not so bad.

Remember how GirlAMatic celebrated its 5th birthday a few weeks back?

And remember how all the GAM contributors made birthday cards?



Well, now you get to vote for your favourites! Please note there are 5 categories, so don't forget to scroll down.

If you missed seeing some of the cards, or don't remember them, here's the list:

Black Forest/Arcana Jayne
By the Wayside
Claviger
Compass
Faery Underground
Five Star
Galaxion (yay!)
Gypsy
Hold My Life
Jeepers
Kismet
L'il Mell and Sergio
Pressing Dawn
Raconteur
The Return of Doctor Dragonwagon
the road to god knows

So go show your love for GAM and vote! (And remember, you can't pick the same comic for each category!) You have until April 24th to decide!

New page is up! Remember this guy?



It's hard for me to believe that out of 74 pages, Zan has only appeared in about 7 of them. Well, he was in the background in some of the bridge scenes, I guess.... Still, he's really taken the back seat in this new version of things, as I try to spread out the story and have fun with character development.

Convention Alert! I will be at Toronto's Anime North this year, May 23-25. I've never been to a full-blown anime con before, so I fully expect to be shocked and awed by the cosplay and the glomping and whatever else goes on (note to self: start learning the lingo). Wendy, who is an amazing seamstress and all-around crafy person, keeps talking about one day making a Galaxion uniform... if it ever happens (in some future year), I suppose this would be the place to wear it!

Happy Tuesday-- page 73 is up!



I've been spending the past several days trying to pin down what exactly I want to do with all these pages that I'm amassing. As wonderful as the web has been, print has always been my goal, and the sooner I have a book in print again the happier I'll be. Up until this weekend my plan had been to approach a publisher (which I've been putting off because I'm a big fat chicken who fears rejection), but now I'm not so sure. Galaxion is a long series, and I suspect that most publishers would be unwilling to commit to more than one book. What happens if the first book doesn't sell as well as they would like, and they choose not to publish the next one? Will I have to fight to get control of the material in the first volume? I could self-publish again, as a lot of the successful webcomickers seem to be doing, but I'd want to do a regular print run (as opposed to print-on-demand), and that would mean a heck of a lot of boxes to have to warehouse somewhere. I'm not convinced I can sell enough books from my site to make that work. I could also go through Diamond, but the rumours I've been hearing are that they are a lousy place to try and sell manga through. Plus, I'd have to meet their minimums.

So, all this is going through my head and I'm trying to decide which way to jump. Well, I know what I need to do next-- send some friendly emails to a few people who've been there and see if they can offer any advice.

Wish me luck!

P.72 is ready for viewing!



I had a small revelation yesterday. When I was out at our local English Country dance group we were discussing at the break summer dance camps at Pinewoods (in MA). It sounds like a lot of fun, and I really want to go. And then one of the ladies who's been going there for years said it was the only place she's ever been where adults can play all day. You can dance all day and stay up chatting around the campfire all night, for a whole week. But it struck me-- if that's the only place you've been where you can play, lady, you don't get out enough.

Judging by the people who agreed with her, and those of us who were muttering "speak for yourself!", I decided it must be a geek thing. We gamers, convention-goers, cosplayers, SCAdians, etc, are labelled geeks precisely for the reason that we never forgot how to be a kid and play. We get to have all the fun! No wonder the straight-laced folks look at us so disagreeably. Pure envy.

This has been such a busy couple of weeks with me still playing catch-up after being sick for what seems like most of March, so I had already warned GAM editor Lisa Jonté that I wouldn't be participating in the GAMiversary festivities this year. But then all my fellow GAMmers were talking about their projects-- we were all assigned to do GAM birthday cards, the only rules being that there must be a cake and it must mention GirlAMatic's turning 5-- that in a rush of community enthusiasm I dashed one off anyway. Well, "dash" being a relative term, since I dashed over the course of a few days. But here it is!



I've only been with GirlAMatic for about a year and a half, since September '06, but it's been a wonderful 18 months. A lot of webcomickers (I have now officially adopted this word into my lexicon) feel it's more important to have your own personal website with your own personal URL. To be honest, I have one of these, too-- www.galaxioncomics.com. I keep it more or less up-to-date, but I still consider GAM my home. When I put links to my comic, I always link to GAM. This is a great community and I'm proud to be part of it!

Which reminds me-- did you notice in the last GAM editorial that there's going to be an open call for submissions in May? GirlAMatic gave me a fabulous flying start back when I didn't have the first clue about webcomics. So, pass the word!

Page 71 is up!




And on a different subject...

On a couple of the webcomics forums I'm currently reading, the topic of how to make money as a "webcomicker" has come up several times. I know it's certainly on my mind. There's a growing crowd of people who manage the trick, st least according to Wikipedia's list of self-supporting webcomics. I'm very happy to hear that the system works-- people can not only make money at this game, but they can even make enough money for comics to be their main source of income! That's pretty incredible, considering the number of nay-sayers out there who've been yelling about how giving away your comics for free would ruin the market.

And so, on the forums and blog lists, there is much discussion among those of us who, ahem, are not exactly raking in the dough, about how an aspiring webcomicker can get in on some of this action. Potentially, there are t-shirts, buttons and other merchandise sales, original art sales, ad revenue, donations... and, oh yeah, books, if you happen to have any. It is generally agreed that some comics lend themselves more to t-shirt/mug/whatever slogans than others (I note that the majority of comics on that list I mentioned above are gag-a-day, for example). And the print-on-demand options make everything so easy.

But I find I'm starting to get that same kind of icky feeling about all this as I did when I first started going to comic conventions again in 2006, after six years of not being in comics at all. I remember looking around at the tables in the small press alley and seeing all the hats and prints and t-shirts and toys and thinking to myself, where are all the comics? Isn't this place-- this section of the show in particular-- supposed to be about comics?

This isn't a new trend, of course. I remember the process of watching Toronto's great Queen St. W. comic shop The Silver Snail slowly slide from a store that focused on comics to one in which the action figures and related toys starting taking over the entire first floor. Action figures have a much higher profit margin, and if that's what it takes to keep your store afloat, especially in a trendy area like Queen West... well, I can't really blame them. Comic books, the floppies, have been a dwindling market for a long time.

I understand, I really do, the desire to make a little bit of money at this webcomic thing. At least with print comics the path to making money was clear (although making enough to cover your costs was pretty near unattainable for young start-ups)-- you make the comics, you sell them to stores. Usually with a distributor in the middle. Voila, money. But it's a bit trickier when the audience gets to read the comics for free. If you can't charge the readers for actually reading the material (I think we've all come to the conclusion that the subscription or micro-payment models aren't working?), then you have to get them some other way. And it seems that way is merchandise.

There are plenty of webcomickers out there who are clearly doing their comics for the love of it, because they love to draw, or because they have a story they want to tell. But I can see the slippery slope ahead, where webcomickers will be tempted to retool their comics to ones that will look good on a white cotton tee. How many gag-a-day creators are discarding good visual jokes in favour of one-liners that make good t-shirt copy?

I guess this is the same sort of pattern that other bloggers have been complaining about in regards to using comics to pitch movies to Hollywood. Or the slew of self-publishers in the '80s and '90s who saw the wild success of certain other self-publishers and tried churning out comics in an effort to get rich quick. But I'm not trying to speak to them, the ones that are only in comics for the supposed money. No, my concern is for the webcomickers who started out with the best intentions, trying to make the best comic they could, and are now wondering why they aren't seeing their fair share of the money that other people seem to be making.

Please please please remember: it's about the comics, you guys. T-shirts and buttons are all well and good, but don't lose sight of the reason you started this in the first place. And anyway, I really wish more people would think about making money off of print collections of their comics, instead of Zazzle merchandise! Make something good enough for me to want to read it, and I'll happily buy a book and support you that way. OK? OK.

This is a busy week here at Galaxion HQ. Today, we celebrate Darvin Deloren's birthday with another stroll through 25 years worth of my old sketches! Indulge me, people.



Tomorrow: the update that would normally have gone up today! On Thursday: Galaxion's GirlAMatic birthday card, as we join in the site-wide festivities that are GAM's 5th anniversary! And on Friday: the First-Friday-of-the-Month bonus update!

And I guess this means my statcounter will spike up nicely this week... it's always nice to pretend my comic can command a larger audience, even if the illusion is fleeting! ^_~

Page 70 is up!




...and now I'll just be going, too, as I've got to get my kids off to school. First day back from Easter holidays, and we're all still sleepy. Enjoy the page!

There's a new page, and a casual opinion poll to go with it. At the moment the votes are, I think, roughly 50-50, so I still don't know what I'm going to do with the pixies. Let me know what you think!

Feb 14th was Fusella's birthday (yes, I have birthdays for all my Galaxion characters, I'm hopeless), and if you remember the little character retrospective I did for her, you'll have a good idea what you're in for with Alex!



Regular update tomorrow!