The Lonely Spaceman

I want to write a short series of posts about the new comic series I find myself working on. I hope this will prove interesting to someone other than me. Today's installment is pretty much just setting the stage and introducing the players.

Two, maybe three years ago, I stood on the stage at a Salem Ignite event and I told the audience how much I loved the Internet as a method of distributing... well, everything. I concentrated on comics and I closed with the promise that the next comics project I did would be published to the web.

It looks like I'm keeping that promise. I just didn't expect it to take this long.

I made several half-hearted attempts at getting a web comic up and running, but there were a couple of things that slowed down the process. The first is that a lot of people still see working in web comics as less prestigious than working in print comics. The second is that not a lot of artists want to work for no money up front with no guarantee of money on the back end. And, once I put it in those terms, it's not hard to see why they aren't beating down my door to work on such a project. I would definitely need to find just the right artist for this.

About that: It always helps to know people. In this case it helped a great deal to know Devon Devereaux. Devon is sort of a nexus of cool people (Malcolm Gladwell would call him a "maven") and when I told him that I wanted to work on a web comic, he immediately thought of someone I should contact – his buddy, Matthew Hope. Matt is a designer and he does illustrations for concert posters and other things. Devon sent me the link to his web site, Poor Man's Bread, and after poking around for just a minute, I knew I wanted to work with Matt. And I know on which project I wanted us to join forces. A lot of Matt's work has a SF feel to it and I've had a SF idea kicking around for several years. One piece in particular caught my eye and it's the piece that starts this blog entry. Often when I contact an artist about working together, I send them several ideas and let them choose which one most appeals to them. This time I sent just one idea: The Lonely Spaceman.

Next: What is The Lonely Spaceman?