A Rough in the Diamond...

First off, thanks to everyone who came out to buy up all the copies of the Brinkerhoff comic book in Spokane at The Comic Book Shop. It's very much appreciated. For those of you in the rest of the world, I'm still working on how I'll be making it available. Your patience will be awarded with awesomeness.

That lead-in kind of brings me to the purpose of this post.
Brinkerhoff has been steadily growing in popularity and notoriety and the next big steps are no longer on the horizon - they're in our laps. Just like any other cartoonist, I have dreams for my creation but progress isn't built on dreams alone. Now the legwork comes in. What does this all mean?

Let me back up... Late last year, you might've heard about Brinkerhoff being accepted by Viper comics. As we worked through the details of the contract, though, I found a few things that wouldn't quite mesh with my vision of where I wanted our favorite rabbit to go. They were willing to host the comic on their site and then, when enough readers were accumulated, they'd publish a collection of strips. I liked the collection being published, but I always thought it would be after a series of comic books were released first. Their unwillingness to do that, added to the character rights they were requesting, and the fact that I haven't heard back from them in 4 months pretty much ended my involvement with them. It didn't work out for me, but I wish the rest of the lineup well. It looks like Brink's spot was filled, without them notifying me, anyway. Nice.

As that botched relationship was fizzling out I started work on Brinkerhoff's first comic, determined to make the series of comic books I wanted to make in the first place. I took it to the Emerald City Comic Con and had a great time with it. I planned on selling out those issues at the Con and later online at a print-on-demand store, then continuing with the online ordering as each new issue was ready. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the feedback I got while I was in Seattle changed my mind. I found out I had some fans out there. I found out some of those fans are people I didn't expect-people who were successful in comics and knew what they were talking about. They helped me to realize that my original ideas of distribution would be counter-productive to real growth and success. I see now that if I want to make the effort worth my time, I can't play it out like a small-timer.

So Brinkerhoff is ready to take a big step. I'm sending Brinkerhoff's first comic to Diamond Distributors, and I'm doing it as an independent.

At the Con I had the good fortune to meet a lot of people. Two of them were Terry Moore and his wife, Robyn (who's the spitting image of Molly Shannon, incidentally). If you don't know who Terry Moore is, shame on you. What really resonated with me was when Robyn told me to "stay independent". She talked of all the trials and tribulations they'd gone through over the 13 years with his epic Strangers in Paradise comics. It made total sense as I was sitting and listening to her, but it was scary to think about at the same time until I looked around the room at the other cartoonists that were there. Many of them were living off of their creations, or at least making some good money from them. Aside from one guy in the corner, all of them shared the same common trait: they were independent. They had many different ways of attaining their success, but they did it their way.

Brinkerhoff needs to grow. It will whither and die without soil, water, and sunlight like so many before it. It can't just be content to hang out in its corner of the web with the same general slow-growth it's been doing for the last year-and-a-half. I like this comic and I want to make it go somewhere. Now I must make the effort. Syndication is a lost cause since Brinkerhoff would not make a good fit there (don't get me started) so I'm in the process of preparing a submission packet to Diamond. One of the places Brinkerhoff is supposed to be is in comic shops, not next to Peanuts reruns. I'm going to push as hard as I need to. When the title gets picked up, it'll start with issue 1. On the advice of some dealers I've talked to, the issue that's already been printed will then technically be an issue #0, even though it says 1, since stores won't want to start with issue #2. That'll add to the collectibility of that book, eh?

Stay tuned to this blog and I'll keep you updated on the progress. You'll also need to keep stopping by for the availability of the current book. I don't have a whole lot left, so they'll go pretty fast when they go.

Thanks for the support so far. If there's anything you can do to help, I'll let you know.