OG's BLOG

It’s time once again for Question Saturday…

Friend of the Blog Kori writes:

If you remember (way back at the beginning), your original reason for blog posting on your Moon Town creation (when it was an animation) was to share your experience with others who were interested in the subject.

What I would be interested in reading (or hearing) is what you have ‘learned’ (both good and bad) about your Moon Town comic creation experience, and the Wishtales Publishing Studio web site failure. Perhaps you have something you want to teach others about your successes and failures, thus far, in your creation of Moon Town.

Well, that’s a big subject. I’ll address the WishTales failure first, because that’s easy.

For anyone who wants to run a Publishing company, let me tell you how it is: do NOT go into it lightly. Publishing takes a lot of work, much more than creating the actual work itself. You think you’re going to self-publish, but neglect doing things like going to shows, getting the word out, spending a lot of time pimping your work, you are going to fail. Let me repeat: you are going to fail.

The dream is a nice one. I think about how the Beatles started their Apple publishing label. That seemed nice – you get to do your work, and then you get to sell your stuff the way you want, without some idiot sitting in judgment. I wanted to go and do likewise.

But there are two problems there – first, I’m not The Beatles. Second, they had a lot of people working to make Apple a success. I had me and Tom, and we were busy making our comics. Worse, neither one of us is a superstar. And when Eddie Pittman joined us, we both felt horribly guilty that we weren’t able to increase his sales. The question we began asking ourselves all the time was – what is WishTales doing for Eddie? What’s in it for him?

After the terrible failure and money pit that was the SPACE show, it wasn’t too long before all three of us began wondering just what WishTales was getting any of us. The honest answer was that WishTales wasn’t getting any of us anything. I thought people would be attracted by the notion of shopping at one store that offered Marooned, Moon Town, and Red’s Planet books shipped from one location, combining shipping. By Grabthar’s Hammer, what savings!

What I neglected to realize was that neither Moon Town nor Marooned had that sort of star power, and Red’s Planet was only offering a preview. There was a limited market there, and so limited sales is what we got. You can say that the fact we were disappointed with our sales suggests that we expected too much, and maybe you’re right. But for all the energy and time we sunk into the initiative, it never really paid off in terms of sales. It’s a pity, and the spectre of WishTales’ failure weighs on me daily, but I know when to fish or cut bait. The people spoke, and it was deafening: aside from a few loyal fans, people weren’t buying what we were selling.

OK. We heard you twice the first time. And so Tom and Eddie went off their separate ways. Hopefully they will find more success on their own… at least that was our concensus. WishTales wasn’t getting anyone anything, so why not go it alone?

As for the rest of your question, what I’ve learned from the creative process on Moon Town so far, there’s a lot of stuff there, but I’ll try to boil it down for you.

Moon Town the Animated Short Series was going to fail. I can see it as clear as day now, but it’s funny that when I was in the middle of it, I couldn’t see it. I actually thought I could create 30 minutes of high-quality animation in my spare time over the course of a year or two. When I look at what I set out to do, I see the pure foolishness of it, but there we have it. It is what I wanted to do. Hell, it’s still what I want to do occasionally. But I know that I am not equipped to produce it the way it needs to be produced, and so we have the graphic novel.

As for that – honestly, it is far too early to declare Moon Town the Graphic Novel a success or a failure. Certainly the animated series was doomed, but the graphic novel still has legs.

But I have to be honest – there are days I wonder what the hell I’m doing. Moon Town seems to take so much time and energy, and I don’t have the visitorship I feel it deserves, I don’t have the book sales I expect. I think I’m telling a good story with good characters and decent art, and although I’m honored to have a thousand or so visitors each day, I wish I could get 5 or 10 thousand, and I don’t know what I could do differently to get them. I’m honored to have sold 100 books, but I ordered 250, figuring, Oh, come on, I’ll sell AT LEAST 250 books, won’t I? There are 350 million people in the US, 6 Billion world wide. Is it too much to ask to sell a measly 250 books? Apparently so.

There are days I feel like throwing the whole thing out and starting over on something else. After all, I have other stories I’d like to tell and Moon Town seems to be in the way. It gives me back very little, it feels like a tremendous waste of time and effort, and I have only so many summers left, you know?

And then I finish another strip and put it up, and I like it, and 5 or 10 people out there also like it enough to write me a note about it, and I feel like I can keep it going for another week, if not for me, for them. And that’s how I’m progressing at this point.

As for what I learn from Moon Town, I learn something every time I post a new strip. Mostly it has to do with the value of story in an episodic environment. It has to do with the little nuances of character and the little microfeedback I get from the microupdates I put up. There’s almost a real-time feedback loop with the audience, where they get ahead of me on some things, or ask questions about things I haven’t thought of, or point out confusions I hadn’t anticipated, and I’m able to make small adjustments to the story in the next update. That is golden. It’s something you don’t have access to in any other artistic endeavor I can think of. Playing music live comes close. So does live theatre.

But on balance, I think I’m lucky that I didn’t do Moon Town as an animated series after all. By the time I got my feedback, the 1-3 minute episode would be over, and I’d be stuck with whatever corner I’d painted myself into.

The other thing I’ve learned from Moon Town the Graphic Novel is that although I understand a lot about character, drama, and episodic content, I still have a ton to learn. I guess this is a good way for me to learn.

Hopefully you all will stick with me as I figure it out.