#sad-boy

Maniac route.

Sad-Boy in "First Date"

I just feel so nervous all the time. My drive is at an all time low and I’m not in a space where I should even be comfortable. My “friends” are off dealing with their own shit or just tucking it under a rug. I wish it was that easy for me. I’m scared to try things and the only thing I’ve been able to do is go out and hump a new hole everyday. I have an insatiable sexual appetite and I know I’m only going to end up fucking myself over in the end. I need help. I need motivation. But most of all I need to push myself to get what I need to do, done. My “boyfriend” is so far away and I’m scared of him and the things he could possibly do. I’m a prisoner to my emotions and I need to get out of the stupid cycle I created for myself. I need stability and confidence in myself.

Bullpen Bulletins ITEM: Sad-Boy Kickstarter My SAD-BOY minicomic Kickstarter successfully completed it’s campaign a few weeks ago, and I’m anxiously awaiting arrival of the funds so I can get the rewards in the mail. I personally like to get fulfillments off my plate ASAP as I don’t like having it hanging over me. Some half-baked thoughts on running a Kickstarter vs. tabling at a comics convention. We all generally think of crowdfunding as a means to raise money for a project. Especially early on, folks had it in their head that it was a form of begging - passing the hat around your friends and acquaintances, guilting them into funding your dreams. I think we’ve moved past this line of thinking now. I like seeing small publishers launch their seasonal lines with a crowdfunder*. I think we need to think of KS more as a tool for reaching a wider audience. When I Kickstarted the RULES FOR DATING MY DAUGHTER book, over 50% of the pledges came from people I didn’t know at all IRL, who it seems had come to my project through it being featured on the site. That’s an audience I hadn’t reached before. It looked to me like a large percentage of folks backing my SAD-BOY project were the same people who had backed me on RULES. There was what I’d consider a low percentage of “I know Mike, so I guess I’ll give him 4 bucks” pledges. The less of those, the better. There’s some sense for me in taking a minicomic to Kickstarter rather than a con. The SAD-BOY mini raised between $1500 and $1600. That is, by far, more money than I’ve ever made on a minicomic selling at a show. I offered the RULES book as one of the SAD-BOY rewards, and sold 43 copies of it that way. That’s about on par with how well the book sold at TCAF. I sold a $200 original drawing through the KS, I almost never sell any original art at a show, and when I have, it’s been for 20-40 bucks. Economically, the Kickstarter feels more viable to me these days. Conventions offer a lot of other perks: access to interesting work all under one roof, a LOT of opportunities to meet and mingle with like-minded artists and readers, and folks will write a “con report” after and sometimes you’ll see your book in the photo they post of their “haul”. Ideally it’d probably be best to go to shows and also run Kickstarters, but money-wise, I don’t have a ton of choices these days. It’s tough to justify spending the money to travel that I’m unlikely to recoup, as well as the time away from family obligations. I want to do cons too, but at the moment I am very pleased with what online crowdfunding has to offer me. * I saw someone comment once that we are probably about due to see the first big failure of this approach to publishing. We’ve definitely seen a few that look a little perilous a week out of the deadline, but so far I think they’ve all rallied in the end. ITEM: Ink Panthers Summer Spooktacular 2016 Alex and I crept back into Panther’s Lair this week for our once-a-year catchup. You can hear Part One here. Part Two goes up later this week. And eventually, I hope to find the time to retrieve the audio from our Live Panthers Panel recorded at D!NK in this Spring and put that up too.

These are the two minicomics that you can get from me for 4 bucks, no extra shipping charges, just by backing my Kickstarter campaign. Two weeks left to go.

BILLS AT JETS - Free minicomic A second, FREE minicomic, that I'll produce and send out to all backers of the SAD-BOY 'zine Kickstarter

SAD-BOY "takes a Loop" Support the SAD-BOY Comix and Stories 'zine Kickstarter here