The Corner Box S1Ep27 - The Murphey Luedke Interview: Kickstart My Heart

[00:00] Intro: Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comics as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go or who will show up to join host David Hedgecock and John Barber. Between them, they've spent decades writing, drawing, lettering, coloring, editing, editor-in-chiefing, and publishing comics. If you want to know the behind-the-scenes secrets, the highs and lows, the ins and outs of the best artistic medium in the world, then listen in and join us on The Corner Box.

[00:30] David Hedgecock: What's the name of our podcast? I screwed it up last time. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Hey, everybody, welcome back to The Corner Box Club. That's the name of it.

[00:47] John Barber: That's pretty much the name of the podcast.

[00:49] David: My name is David Hitchcock, and with me, as always, is my good friend,

[00:52] John Barber: John Barber.

[00:53] David: My good friend and only professional on the podcast, outside of the guest we’ll be introducing in just a minute, but before we introduce the guest, John, I have something to shake my fist at once again. Actually, I already shake my fist at this, but I wanted to backup my fist shaking with proof. As you know, and as our listeners probably know, at this point, Spider Boy is my new jam. I love the book. I recently read issue 2. Enjoyed it. That was great. Can't wait for issue three, but at a certain point, as I mentioned on another podcast, I decided I wanted to collect the book as well, and I think most of our listeners know, collecting a comic book is different from reading a comic book. When you read a comic book, you just get the issue, read it, you enjoy it, put it away, wait for the next one. Collecting a comic book is like “okay, there's a couple different covers, and maybe there's some other appearances of Spider Boy in other comic books, so you try to collect the thing and get all of his appearances or trying to get all the covers.”

So, I thought, “Spider Boy? I haven't collected a comic book in a long time. Maybe I'll try to collect Spider Boy.” So, I set out on my journey, my quest, to get all of the Spider Boy #1 cover variants, and within about five hours, I was done with my quest because it was going to be impossible to do. At least that's what I determined at the time, and that's what I said on the podcast when I was talking about it the other day. I felt bad because I was like “maybe a knee jerk judgment. Maybe I should look into this a little bit more.” So, I did, and John, I'm here to tell you that I was not wrong. So, after going through it, there are a total of 38 different covers for Spider Boy #1.

[02:38] John: Is that a lot?

[02:42] David: As the former editor in chief of IDW, the answer is no. As a comic book collector, the answer is yes, 38 is a lot. Not only did Marvel produce 11 different variants just on their own, but there are another 27 variants produced by various comic book shops and artists, so as an example, there's Jay Anacleto. Is that how you say his name? Love his art. He's got a variant. Carrie Andrews did a variant with Unknown Comics. Trinity comics, Sad Lemon Comics, Jonathan Comics, Comic Xposure, Spectral Comics, all these guys did different variants, and not only did they do variants, but then they did variants of the variants. So, you have the eight-bit game homage by Matthew Waite, with the trade dress on it, and then you've got the virgin variant of that as well. Now, because some of these variants are very limited, I noticed that some of them were limited, even 300 copies a couple of them, so they asked a premium price for it, so I went through eBay and other various sources, I did way more homework than I probably should have on this, but I wanted to be honest and true to what I was saying, and I took the average price, so not the super steals and the great deals and not the high-end, pay the super high premium, took the average price and, if you were to find and buy all 38 copies, 38 covers of Spider Boy #1, it would cost you about $851.

[04:20] John: So, when do they arrive?

[04:25] David: You're the guy that's throwing away stuff when it's not near mint, not me. So, John, I was right. That's insane, and I don't know what to do. I really want to collect comic books. Spider Boy, in particular. Now, I’m just not going to. I refuse. That's crazy, and then I was thinking, some of this stuff, if you're getting a 1 of 300 copies, and there's a CGC 9.8 variant available, suddenly that $100 book is $250, because if you want to basically guarantee yourself to get the 9.8, because then you're collecting. If you're going to spend 100 bucks, you might as well spend 200 bucks on it, and I didn’t add this into the mix, but if let's say you get two of those 38 covers slabbed, because you really want to do the hardcore collecting, add a couple $100 on to the price point of that 851, you're over $1000 for Spider Boy #1, if you tried to do it all. So, I'm out. I'm out.

[05:31] John: That is genuinely, I mean, as we've talked about, that's just not where I come from on that. I was super excited. I've got a complete set of the Steve Ditko Shade, the Changing Man comics this week for $8. So, that's where I'm at. I think somebody wrote on the back of one of them, but that's cool. I don't mind. Yeah, I guess probably nature selected for whoever wanted to go and chase down, although I don't know, Zebra or whatever we ate when we were not quite Homo Sapiens yet. That ties in with it. Maybe there's a genetic thing that makes people want to collect all these, but other people like doing it. I’m assuming, and I think that the question that we were going to do we're asking for was, does that eliminate the ability to collect things? Does that make it from something that's fun to chase down 12 variants or 13 variants of Gen13 #1, to spending $900 on Spider Boy #1.

[06:25] David: There’s a wide gap between those two things. Thankfully, we brought in an expert, John, to help us understand not only cover variants, but a plethora of other things around comic books. I'd like to introduce our guest for today, Murphey Luedke.

[06:41] Murphey Luedke: Hi, guys.

[06:42] John: Good to meet you.

[06:3] Murphey: Nice to meet you, too.

[06:44] David: So, Murphey is a crowdfunding expert and her company, My Krowd Control, is one of the, in my opinion, premier facilitators, I'm not sure what I would call it, facilitators of Kickstarter campaigns and Kickstarter delivery services and marketing, and I'm very excited that we get to have her on here. She's written some comic books. She's designed stuff. She's a quadruple threat. What's your take on the variant cover situation going on in today's marketplace?

[07:20] Murphey: No, I wish I could say 38 was a high #. I will say it's pretty high for Marvel, nowadays, but when you get into the indie comic sphere, especially with Kickstarter comics, and especially when you get into the more adult comics, the variant covers are endless. I think it's cool to see so many retailers jumping on this because, I think, it's been a while since there's been a Marvel issue that has so much excitement around it. As far as being a collector, and what is a collector of comic, what does that mean? Do you guys think it's innately in the nature of being a collector that you strive to have the complete collection?

[08:07] David: Well, that's what I thought it was for me, but it can't be that now. So, I think, what it is for me now, and I don't know what it is for other people, because I was telling John, as John's already described, John doesn't have it in his DNA. I have a little bit of it, for sure, but I haven't tried to really collect comic books in a really long time, probably 10/15 years, since I started working really hardcore professionally in the industry. I stopped trying to be a collector because I was so busy reading everything that I needed to read for my job and staying up on everything that was happening in the industry. I didn't have time to be a fan, if that makes sense. Certainly was reading everything and enjoying a lot of stuff, but now I’m back to a space where I can be more of a fan and I wanted to explore collecting with Spider Boy, not to say that I don't try to collect other stuff, but it's different when you're dealing with stuff that's pre- 2000 because there's one cover, maybe there's the direct market variant versus the newsstand version, but that's it. It's just a matter of finding the thing you like and making sure it's a good copy, so you can read it and it looks decent.

[09:17] Murphey: I think it comes down to a difference of, are you collecting something because you enjoy it? Are you collecting something for status? Are you collecting it as an investment? If you're collecting something as an investment, yeah, having 38 variants of a book like that, it hurts all of them, and we're also in a state of the collecting world where the standards that everyone has respected are shaky. CGC has had more than a few big dramas in the last two years, and a lot of people are complaining about the books that the big two are putting out, and that makes me really happy to hear that Spider Boy is a really good read. That makes me want to get back and maybe start picking up some Marvel stuff again, but for me personally, I was never a single-issue reader. I was always a trade paperback reader. The only thing I ever collected was Tako comics, and I have the first printing of the first series, and that's my prized possession, and besides that, it's just, anytime I see something Tako, I'm, “Oh, hell yeah,” and I pick it up when I buy it, but I've never been the kind of person that has a list of every single book and then checking them off as I go. I just think it's fun to “Oh, I found a new one.” Sometimes, I end up buying multiples, just because it's there.

[10:41] David: Yeah, I hadn't actually thought about that one, Murphey, and when I was thinking about the investor piece. I actually hadn’t considered that one. You're right. Maybe that is what the driving force could be for trying to get all 38. Just so eventually, 20 years from now, I guess, you're selling all 38 copies for some premium. I don't know. I guess maybe there's an angle there that I haven't considered.

[11:06] Murphey: I think a lot of people look at the comics industry as their stock market, especially when it comes to collectors and resellers that started as collectors. They're always looking for “Okay, is this a key issue? Is this a first appearance?” and that's probably why this is a #1, and a #1 has potential to be a very, very special book in five years or 10 years when they make the new Spider Boy TV show, and all of a sudden, those go up 100% in value.

[11:35] David: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. I remember having several conversations with people during the pandemic, where people were getting those extra stimulus checks, and they were making a little bit extra money during that time. Some people were, and you saw the collector's market boom around that time, and what are people doing wasting their money on buying old comic books and old trading cards, and Pokemon cards? And no, I don't think that's a waste of money necessarily, because if somebody if you've got an extra 200 bucks in your pocket, and you want to invest it, and you're not used to having an extra 200 bucks in your pocket, you're not going to invest in the stock market. You don't know anything about the stock market, but you might know something about Pokemon cards. You might have played the heck out of those things. You might know exactly what an expensive Pokemon card looks like, so you've got the extra 200 bucks, get that card, because that's how you're investing your money. That makes a lot of sense to me. I think it's totally valid way to invest, to your point. 

[12:32] Murphey: I will say, some of those people, really, why are you spending your money on comics or trading cards? I'll bet you, some of those people went and they invested their money into crypto and NFT's and they had a really bad time when that crashed in 2022.

[12:46] David: Exactly. Yeah. Which one's probably holding more value right now? In a lot of cases, it's certainly possible.

[12:53] John: Pokémon will ever fail you, but it's not investment advice. Legally, I just want to make that clear.

[13:00] Murphey: No, John wants to give you investment advice, to go and invest all of it into, what were the little teddy bears? Beanie Babies. They’re going to come back.

[13:13] David: Oh, man, is this where somebody throws in the pod joke? Murphey, what was your comic book origin story? How did you discover comics? Or how did you get into comics? And then how did you become a working professional in comic books?

[13:30] Murphey: So, my dad was an indie publisher. He had a comic shop in Dallas in the 90s called Kaboom Comics, that I have little flashes of memory of being a little kid running around, and he went from there to selling his comics at conventions. Did that for 10 years, and then I was a little bit of a bigger kid running around Comic Con. So, I grew up at Comic Con, and I absolutely loved it. So, now, since probably about 2012, he moved from doing comics to doing print artwork and would just travel the country selling prints. When I took vacation time from my job, I was a retail store manager, my vacation time would be going to do a convention for him or with him, and I loved it, and I hated retail, because working retail is awful, especially once you go up the chain. I'm the store manager, 20/23 years old. Do I want to be here for the next 10 years trying to become a district manager? No. I told my parents, “Hey, come on over. I want to talk to you guys,” and I get there and they're, “Oh, no. Are you pregnant?” “No. I want to quit my job,” and then he goes, “Okay, that's better.” That's always an assumption, by the way, “Oh, no. She's pregnant.” No, stop it. Don't wish that upon me. So, I quit my job, and I worked Cons for my dad and a couple other artists. I would go and just sling artwork, and that's how I met Jamie Tyndall, who I have had a working relationship, now, for eight years.

[15:17] David: I didn't realize it had been that long.

[15:19] Murphey: Yeah, by 2018, I was his total business manager, still doing Cons, but also running his website, and working with retailers, and doing wholesale, and doing all that stuff, but my main job was being his convention manager. When the fated, February of 2020 came around, and Emerald City Comic Con canceled, I moved our entire business online, which, we had a store, but it was very in the background. It was there, we'd make sales every once in a while, and so we had to completely change the business model and move everything online, and then within probably about five months, I think it was May of that year, he and a retailer that he did a lot of business with started throwing around some ideas for making their own comic, and after a couple of months of hearing him say, “yeah, we just need to find a writer. We just couldn't find a writer.” I was, “Can I do it?” And he's like, “can you?” and I've written some for myself. I had done not anything professional, but I've always been good at writing. I understand grammar, and I understand structures and story elements, and so I wrote the first comic within that month, and we made it, and it was not great, but it ended up being a hit on Kickstarter, and the reason for that is because it had some really, really awesome cover art all the way back, and then that just shot us into a whole new world of publishing. In June of 2022, we got a distributor deal and put our first comic out, and I actually had a really special chance to go back and rewrite and completely redo that first comic. So, the Miss Meow #1 on Kickstarter is a totally different book than what you find now.

[17:21] David: Interesting, so it was Miss Meow? Yeah, I've heard of that one. I apologize. I didn't do as much research as I thought I should’ve. I knew you’d written a couple of those books, but I didn't know which one. Miss Meow has seven or eight issues out. Are you still writing it?

[17:37] Murphey: So, I wrote Miss Meow 1 til 4, and then I wrote Death Rage 1 through 4, which is my pride and joy. It’s my favorite. It's the thing I'm most proud of in the world, but when we got the deal for a distributor, we ended up hiring an editorial team that we hadn't had up until that point. It was literally just me and one other guy just making comics. So, his name is Aaron Sparrow. He's become a very close friend, wrote the rest of Miss Meow and Death Rage, and then we brought on Pat Shand, he’s actually writing the next series of Miss Meow that's in production right now.

[18:14] David: Was Pat at Zenescope at a certain point?

[18:17] Murphey: I wouldn't be surprised. He does actually have a comic that's live on Kickstarter right now, that I think he might have worked on with Aaron. I don't know if that's true.

[18:25] David: I've met Pat a couple of times. Either he was just visiting San Diego or he lives in San Diego. Good dude. I like Pat. Aaron used to actually work for me.

[18:35] Murphey: Was that at IDW?

[18:37] David: No, it was when I owned my own company, Ape Entertainment. Aaron was was one of my editors at Ape Entertainment. I really love and respect that guy. He's a good dude.

[18:48] Murphey: I have learned so much from him. He also made me feel really good because, once we actually hired real comic writers, I started to get that imposter syndrome. He would constantly be, “no, no, the bones are there. You're doing fine.” Thank you.

[19:06] David: Yeah, he's good. He’s a good editor. I didn't realize that you two guys were connected. That's cool. So, you've been doing that with Jamie Tyndall’s group? Are you still there? Are you still working with them?

[19:16] Murphey: So, I left Merc Publishing back in October, and that is when I started Krowd Control. I really, really love making comics, and I love doing Kickstarter, and I got to a point where I really wanted to do it for myself, and also, just what started as me passionately making comics turned more and more into it being focused on more adult themes, and that's just not what I wanted to be doing. So, they're still making Miss Meow, as far as I know, but they’ve started focusing on some new series that I just didn't really enjoy being a part of. So, that is why I started my own company and now I’m the process of grading somebody on comics.

[20:03] David: Yeah. John, in the interest of full disclosure, I actually did hire Murphey's company to help with the marketing of my Kickstarter campaign. So, yeah, there's no hidden agenda here whatsoever, John.

[20:20] John: Just going to go back to, we had Dave Baker the other day. It was just about ethics in comics journalism. Is that what you're getting at David?

[20:29] David: Ethics. I'm just joking. So, Murphey, just since October, I must have been one of your earliest clients. Was I your first client?

[20:43] Murphey: You were my first customer message. I was so excited.

[20:47] David: That's great. I didn't know that. Cool. 

[20:50] Murphey: I was trying very hard to keep it together and seem very calm and put together when we first met, but I was shaking. I was so nervous.

[20:57] David: It's just comics, and you definitely know what you're doing, and I've been very impressed with the follow-up and follow through, and so far, I'm very excited about the campaign coming soon, and a lot of that has do with the way you've been able to help me and guide me and all the assets that you've helped create for the marketing, it's been really great. I wanted to just talk a little bit about what it means to start a Kickstarter campaign, and what does it mean to manage a campaign? Can you give us a one-on-one of what's it like to do Kickstarter, and just how the heck do you do it well? I asked that question, knowing a little bit about it, but John and I have talked earlier. One of the podcasts we did, we talked earlier about, personally, I think Kickstarter is one of the most viable distribution platforms that we have available to everybody in the comic book world, because I think the local comic shop is still a great place to go. It's a great place to pick up certain types of comic books, but not all comic books are meant for the local comic shop, and so what Kickstarter and IndieGogo, and platforms like that do, in my opinion, is they allow for things to exist that might not normally get an opportunity, A, and then, B, it also is this incredible way for the creative talent to engage with the end customer in a way that you just can't in the more traditional distribution models. I'm fascinated by that. I love the idea of having that direct one-to-one connection with the end customer, the guy that's reading it, being able to just send out a message to everybody who picked up the book and say, “Man, I'm so happy that you have this. I can't wait to hear how you received it,” and just have that easier direct one to one contact with them to hear back from them. Whereas, if they're picking up in their comic shop, there's multiple layers between the person that made it and the people that are reading it, and those things don't always allow for a connection, and then there's the business side of it, the economics of scale, and things like that, I think are vastly improved when you go direct to consumer for the business. So, I'm saying all that, but what I don't know, really, because I haven't really done it, at least not in a while, what does that mean? What does it look like today, as a business trying to get on Kickstarter?

[23:28] Murphey: To answer the question of how to how to get on Kickstarter, one of the reasons why Kickstarter is such a positive thing for the industry, for a lot of industries, is anyone can do it, and as long as you have something that you yourself have made, or that you created, or an idea that is yours, you can go and you can put it on Kickstarter, and it's changed indie comics completely. It used to be that you make a comic, you go to Cons, you get it in people's hands, you submit it to publishers, and that was always the end goal, was to get a publisher, get it distributed. Nowadays, if you try to get an Image, you're not going to. You're not going to get your book through Image, unless it is completely done, or unless you have at least six issues, and that is an expensive undertaking. With Kickstarter, you can make your comic, give it directly to people that actually want it, and then hopefully, use that funding to fund your next issue. There's two different ways that people use Kickstarter. There is going to Kickstarter over something that you've already created, something that you funded yourself, you're going to Kickstarter, and you're trying to recoup some of that, and then put that towards continuing on to make the next thing, or there's using Kickstarter for the way it was intended, which is “here are some sample pages of what I want to do. Help me on this project,” and that's what I see is the most pure form of Kickstarting something, is “I have the thing that I'm really passionate about and really excited about. Here's a little bit of what we can do,” and then having fans come in and say, “yeah, I want to see that,” and giving you funding to actually go and make it happen. It's a really cool thing. As far as the business goes, Kickstarter, I don't actually know how long Kickstarter has been around. Say, probably at least a decade, but really, since the pandemic, it has just blown up. A lot of people that were doing ComicCons for a living went to Kickstarter with their comic, and the competition now for comics on Kickstarter is big.

[25:42] David: What do you mean that it's big? What does that mean?

[25:45] Murphey: I think it was the month of October was the most comic book campaigns live at one time on Kickstarter ever, which that's just a lot of competition on there, but the thing about Kickstarter that I like is, it doesn't necessarily have to be looked at as competition. When you get to the really big campaigns, these guys that are bringing in 50,000/75,000/100/400,000, those guys are definitely in competition with each other, but for smaller, independent creators, like myself or other people that are just a team of a couple of people that are going on there for a single comic, it doesn't necessarily have to be competition. Whenever you start a new campaign, you are going to get messages from other people who are starting their campaign saying, “hey, you put your campaign on my update,” or “I’ll put your campaign in my update and then you put mine on yours,” and you see these people working together to try to help push each other up, and that's a beautiful thing, but I think the most important thing for people to know, if you are an independent creator, and you want to go take your comic to Kickstarter, realistic goals, important to keep in mind, because unless you have the marketing power of being in the industry for years, and you have a fan base, you have an email list, you have 10,000 followers on Instagram, getting $50,000 on a Kickstarter is not something that is going to be realistic. I've been making comics myself on Kickstarter for years, but I've never made one just myself, and so I'm, “Oh, can I get $6,000? That would be so great.” I think a lot of people see comics making $50,000 on Kickstarter, and expect that for themselves, and I'm here with the unfortunate news to say, probably not.

[27:40] David: Yeah, this is very distressing to hear, for me. I have to admit, I feel my bubble bursting as you speak.

[27:47] Murphey: I think you you're in a good position.

[27:51] David: I think I have reasonable expectations, and I know that I've got just one of the hottest artists, Rollo’s stuff. I mean, you've seen it, Murphey. Rolo’s stuff is so good. So, I think that's going to carry the day out quite a bit.

[28:05] Murphey: Well, that gets into a whole other conversation about comics and cover art is “look at this beautiful cover,” you open up the book and you're, “oh.”

[28:12] David: Yeah, I hate that. That drives me nuts.

[28:17] John: Happened to you 38 times in this one comic, I heard.

[28:21] David: No, it's Paco Medina art. So, when you open it up, it's pretty good. I'm okay with it.

[28:25] John: I know Paco. He's one of the nicest people in the world. I'm sorry, Paco.

[28:33] David: We lost the listener. One of our 3 listeners. We lost him. Steve Leialoha also. He's no joke too, you guys. That guy’s so good.

[28:42] John: One thing I'm curious about, when you were talking about the way the pandemic changed Kickstarter, is there a scene on Kickstarter? Is it just the new people you were talking about? Some of the newer people that just happen to know each other, or I've seen people describing there being a Kickstarter comics being a place people go. I mean, that in the sense of a scene, I don't know, the punk scene in Berkeley in 1990, or something, or for me, webcomics in the late 90s, that kind of thing, where everybody knew each other. Was that something that had existed? It struck me odd to hear that Kickstarter describe that because I'd always just imagined it being a lot of people coming in from different vectors. I don't know. Do you have a take on that? Does that make sense? David’s shaking his head. No. Thank you. Yeah, it's probably nonsense, Murphey. So, I'm sorry.

[29:36] David: To be fair, I stopped paying attention. I’m kidding, John. I hang on your every word.

[29:43] Murphey: Here's a good way to answer that. If you go look at a comic, and there are 10 cover artists on it, and then you go look at another comic and they've got five of the same cover artists, there's a really good chance that those two people that made those books work together or know each other, or just spitball ideas in some capacity. There's a lot of looking up to the creator that's doing bigger campaigns than you, to see “Okay, what are they doing? And how do I make that work for me?” In the Kickstarter sphere that I lived the last four years of my life in, was the T&A books, and it all comes down from, Lady Death is making $400,000, and if you look at every book that comes in underneath that, in that sphere of comics, they all pull little things from those campaigns. It really comes down to, “how much of this can I afford to do?” A really good example of that in real life is, when Dan Mendoza got married, you look at the guestlist, the kings of Kickstarter were all there. The kings of the comics world. That's it. That, right there, that's what everyone's striving for, is to get into that crowd.

[30:57] David: Where does that community get together and talk? Where's the conversation being had? Because it can't be really hard on Kickstarter.

[31:03] Murphey: No, I will say a lot of it. There was a lot on Twitter when it was still Twitter. Personally, I was never active in that space. So, I can't speak too much to that, but I know that, as far as with cover artists and creators, Facebook is just where I keep up with everything, and then YouTube, and that was also something that really blew up in the Pandemic, was everyone started doing these livestreams and live conversations and I did some myself, and there's some guys that still have active channels now that have boomed that started as just, “I am bored, and I need to talk to people.” So, that's what a lot of these conversations about Kickstarter, they happen on YouTube, and they happen on livestreams.

[31:58] David: Well, John, now you know where all the cool kids hang out. So, you won't find me there, unfortunately,

[32:03] Murphey: I was really worried coming in today. Do I need to do makeup? I'm so used to all these guys now livestream everything.

[32:09] David: No, nobody wants to see this face. We're strictly podcast around here. John's a handsome devil, but nobody wants to see this.

[32:19] Murphey: Yeah, come on, John, you can put your shirt back on.

[32:26] John: This whole time, I've been doing these salmon pull ups, like Stephen Amell in Arrow going up that thing, and nobody's been seeing it? Are you serious?

[32:37] Murphey: It’s been incredible the way that you can’t even hear it in your voice?

[32:40] John: I know, I practice.

[32:46] David: When you get a client for My Krowd Control, what do you do to help them get started? If you're dealing with somebody who, unlike me, who knows everything, what do you do? I had no idea what I was doing when I talked to you. What do you do, in terms of just helping them out? How do you find out what they need? And what kind of stuff do you do for them?

[33:08] Murphey: Really, a lot of what I have to offer is just guidance. A lot of people, they go to Kickstarter, and they do their research. Most of the research you're going to find about how to promote or how to build are for the technologies or for board games, and a lot of people try to look at popular board game Kickstarters as guidance for how to set up their comic Kickstarter, and I actually, just recently, this week, had this conversation with somebody that almost every other thing on Kickstarter, the first thing someone's going to make is a mock up of their product, but you don't want to do that with comics, because if you have a beautiful piece of art, and you skew it, then you’re taking away from it, and you're not going to have the same advertising pull with your image if it looks it's a comic laying on a table. You want the art to be what's pulling them in, and it's all about wowing them with your interior art, with your cover art, with process videos, that's the stuff that's going to get people to your comic book Kickstarter. Little pieces of knowledge like that are just stuff that I've learned from doing it for six years. I did my first Kickstarter campaign for Jamie Tyndall’s art book back in 2018, and if you go look at that campaign versus my most recent campaign, it's night and day. I look at that now. Anyone who is in a creative sphere, you look at something you drew six years ago, and you're, “Oh, what was I thinking?” I've had 30-plus campaigns to learn what to do, but more importantly, what not to.

[34:47] David: I like to say it's charming when I go back. There’s a sweet new Kickstarter. Somebody sent me a text yesterday. Right now, on Kickstarter, there's a Gargoyles comic book campaign, collecting all the Gargoyle comics from, I don't know, the last 20 years, and I drew, I don't know, five or six issues of one of the Gargoyle series, so they've got some art displayed in the campaign, and I'm like, “oh, that's charming. That is very charming.” I pray to God no one sees what I was doing. Not that I'm any better now, but oh, man.

[35:25] Murphey: Good thing you’re not talking about it in any public place where someone can go find it. Gargoyles on Kickstarter, go look now.

[35:35] John: Good thing you didn't used to have a page of that hanging on your wall in your office.

[35:39] David: I don't think I did. No, that was other stuff. I wouldn't put it past me to display my own art in a frame on a wall, but I have never done that.

[35:51] Murphey: I’ve never thought about that. I have their stuff up. 

[35:56] David: It’s like wearing the T-shirt of the band you're part of onstage. I just don't think you do it. I don't think that's what you do.

[36:04] John: One that I fully respected and really liked, in Joe Quesada’s apartment, he had a bunch of pages that Kevin Nolan had inked of him, because he was such a Nolan fan, and that was where he felt like those pages meant something different than just putting his own art up on there.

[36:21] David: Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's the version that that is totally appropriate. For sure. Yeah, Kevin Nolan inks over Joe Quesada’s pencils were pretty damn fantastic. Joe's right. That was a great team.

[36:38] John: Not to put anything down on you. Compared to Kevin Nolan and Joe Quesada.

[36:44] David: Thanks, John.

[36:45] John: Apples to Apples.

[36:46] David: Thanks, John. Check’s in the mail, buddy. Murphey, are you reading comic books these days?

[36:53] Murphey: I went out to C2E2 last year, and I picked up a bunch of books, but it's like what you said earlier, when you're making comics constantly, you get home and if I open a book, I feel like I'm editing it. I just checked out, but see, I have a stack about probably a foot high of books that I'm like, “going to get into those.”

[37:20] David: Only a foot high?

[37:21] Murphey: Well, there's a bookcase full of tons and tons and tons of books that haven't been read.

[37:26] David: What are some of the Kickstarter campaigns that you've seen recently, where you’re like “props,” maybe ones that you weren't involved with, where you thought, “Oh, that was a really well-run campaign or that campaign looks cool, or whatever”?

[37:40] Murphey: See, this is where we get into that, I'm part of some Kickstarter crowds myself. So, it's hard for me not to just say, “oh, my friend this and my friend that.” I'm going to do that. Ryan Kincaid is a friend of mine. He has a book, Con Artists. I think he just had issue #4, and I really like watching his Kickstarters because a lot of the big ones, they do their Kickstarter for #1, and it makes a ton of money, and then it gets just smaller as they go through till later issues because it's a collector space, but his Con Artist is getting bigger and bigger every time he does another issue, and that makes me really excited. It's also a really cool book, one that everyone who has worked at ComicCons has thought about making a comic about Comic Con, but he did it and it's really fun. I really liked that series. There's Gargoyles, first thing when I open Kickstarter. Great. Later. There's one that I couldn't back because it was in the middle of me trying to move and doing all this stuff, but it was The Expanse series. They did a full graphic novel for The Expanse that looks so cool that I wanted to back and hopefully you can pick that up later on.

[38:55] David: Was it a TV show, The Expanse?

[38:59] Murphey: It was a book series, turned into a TV show, now turned into a comic, and I'm sure we're going to see a video game.

[39:08] David: A radio play, theatrical production. Is it all the same story? They're just telling it in different formats or are they expanding The Expanse?

[39:18] Murphey: I believe it is the same story. The Expanse book series, I think, has six books, and the TV show ended at five seasons, but obviously you've got that many books, there's a ton of stuff that they skipped out on.

[39:34] John: I've read the first book and saw the first couple episodes. They were super close at that point, and I think it's like Game of Thrones, when it was when there were books that they were tracking, weren’t straight-up adapting. I think some of the comics fill in origin stories and stuff. I haven't read those though.

[39:51] David: It’s a sci fi series. I don't know why I haven't checked that out. I'm pretty much a sucker for any sci fi.

[39:57] Murphey: I'm much more of a TV watcher than a reader nowadays, but The Expanse show is crazy. When you you watch the first season, and it has just the most wild finale, and then season two feels like an entirely different show because the finale of season one was so wild. It's completely reset, but it's still in line, and it's not to say that season one is bad or anything, I've never seen something like that take such a massive turn, and then still continue to be good and exciting. One book that is not recent, this was last year or possibly even the year before, I think Shelly Bond put a book on Kickstarter about editing comics that I picked up, and it is wonderful. That campaign is, I think, one of the best examples of branding the campaign to look and feel like what your product is going to be, and the whole thing just screams “Yes, go good grammar.” If you look through that book, and look at the pages, and then you go look at the campaign, you can tell, they match. If you want an example of how to brand yourself on your Kickstarter, go look at Filth & Grammar. It is perfect.

[41:17] David: Shelly knows what she's talking about. John and I both had the opportunity to work with her for a couple of years at IDW, and she's a wealth of knowledge when it comes to editing comic books. I've never seen somebody who is so meticulous in their craft. She really spends a lot of time thinking about what the book is and what it's supposed to be, and what it's supposed to do. It's admirable to see her work. Sometimes, I'm, “Man, I can't bring myself to do what she's doing.”

[41:49] Murphey: I haven't had the pleasure, but just from reading that and seeing the campaign and reading her updates, she's passionate and funny, and that is such a great combo. That's someone that people want to work with.

[42:03] John: Is there a mainstream of what sells on Kickstarter?

[42:06] Murphey: So, the category of comics on Kickstarter can be broken down in a few ways. There are single issues, and then there are graphic novels. Those are really the same to audiences that just comics break down to, in general. Your graphic novels are, you are promoting to people that are readers. They want to open it up and they want to read your book. When you're promoting a single-issue comic, you are promoting primarily to collectors. You are going to get some readers but majority of people that buy that book are buying it because they liked the cover, and as someone who writes comics, I understand that that is sad, but you do what you’ve got to do to get that funding to keep making books, and then, if you can fund each one of your issues, then you can come back and do your graphic novel. Some people would worry about, “okay, if I Kickstarted the single issues, well, I can't go and Kickstart the graphic novel. It's already been on Kickstarter,” and to go all the way back to how this stuff all started, you can Kickstart what you want, and if you've already done it in the single issue form, that's different than putting it together in your trade paperback form, and any editor of comics knows that trade paperback is when you can go and edit those little mistakes that were missed before it hit press. So, you can hit both of those angles, and then as far as the categories of genre, there's really three major ones on Kickstarter. There is the T&A, which has got a massive, massive fan base, and also a lot of creators. Sci Fi is really, really big on Kickstarter, and then LGBTQIA comics have a very, very big space on Kickstarter as well. So, if your comic falls into one of those categories, you're going to have more eyes on it on Kickstarter.

[43:56] David: Trying to be a student of Kickstarter a little bit more lately, because I do want to use it as a distribution platform. I agree with you. That's what I'm seeing, too, is it seems like art books tend to do pretty well on Kickstarter, at least recently. Part of that's probably because the art books are by people like David Finch, or Terry Moore, who've got a big fan following. So, they're going to show up. I remember just recently, I saw the David Nakayama art book, and I think David's work, I love his stuff, beautiful stuff, but I did not think it was going to do what it did, and it did over 200,000, and I was, “wow, that seems outsized for what maybe I thought David was right now, in terms of poll,” so I think that Kickstarter crowd just gravitated to that look of that art.

[44:48] Murphey: So, when I first started my business, I did my launch, I went to New York ComicCon, and start handing out cards to everybody I could find and that's actually the primary thing that I am advertising to artists is, let me make you an art book, and let's go take it to Kickstarter. Someone that has even a little bit of a fan base, if you take everything that you've already done and put it together into a book, that is almost no work on the front end, and an art book is really great, because your price point on that is much different than what your price point’s going to be on a comic. Even a hardcover comic book, you can not sell for as much as you could sell a hardcover art book, and it's just, I guess, because that's just a standard. People have always looked at art books as, that is 100%, you are buying that to collect, unless you're an artist who's buying it for references, but primarily, it's going to be for fans that just want to collect your art, and you can sell $30 for a 60-page hardcover, or put it all together in a slipcase and sell that bad boy for $100. It’s a great way to take something that you've already done, and package it in a way that people are people really like.

[46:02] David: Repackaging is a great way to monetize stuff. I agree. Have you seen any price resistance? Are there certain bridges that go too far, in terms of, for the regular comic book, do you see people going, where there's, “No, not paying that much for that comic book.” Does that exist?

[46:24] Murphey: So, a little bit, yes. I always recommend, if you go look at any of the campaigns that I've created, I always have a PDF tier, that's going to be the cheapest one, and then a basic comic tier, that is half the price of the variants, and that's when you get into, I say, the single issues are for collectors, there are still readers, and they're going to want either that PDF comic or that regular book, and so, generally on Kickstarter, if you're doing a Kickstarter Special Edition 32-page, or something that's a little bit bigger than just the standard 24-page issue, you can price that at $10, and people on Kickstarter are used to paying that. I will say, and I think this is what is really going to surprise you, when you were talking about the 38 covers, and that's going to cost $800. That's wild. Who would do that? People on Kickstarter do that. Big giant campaigns that hit $100,000/$400,000, if you go and look at them, they're going to have that complete collector tier that comes with every single cover, every single variant, all of that, and they're charging hundreds of dollars for those, and people love it. Oh, yeah, a ton.

[47:40] David: Do you see those, let's call them whales, for lack of a better term, do you see those guys come back? Do you have regulars, basically, to those types of campaigns?

[47:47] Murphey: Oh, yeah. There's people that back Miss Meow #1 at the highest tier, and they continue to back every single campaign at the highest tier. It's really just one of those things where I'm, “thank you, and what do you do?”

[48:03] David: That is one of the things that I that I love about Kickstarter, though, is that you can make those really cool high-end things that are just unique and special, and something that as a creator, you just want to do, just want to see. I want to make that action figure so bad. Let's just make it. Let's see if a couple of people will help out, and you get a couple people on board to help out with that, and then you've got this cool action figure, just as an example. That's what I love about Kickstarter, is exactly that direct interaction with the customers, “Hey, do you guys want this? Because I would love to make it,” and if the answer is no, then the answer is no, but if the answer is yes, hooray, we all win. I love that.

[48:40] Murphey: I don't know why that made me think of this, but I do have one piece of advice for people that are maybe going to a Kickstarter for the first time and thinking about spending their hard-earned money on a campaign. Go look at the creator. While there are many wonderful people on Kickstarter, like any sales space, there are people that do not deliver, and all it takes is just go look at their history. I'm not going to call out anyone specifically, but there are people that will go and spend $600 on the campaign, and then that money is just gone. So, most of the time, you're going to get what you pay for, eventually, in some way. So, yeah, if you are one of those people that are thinking about going and shelling out a lot of money, just make sure you go and just look at the creator's history before you do that.

[49:35] David: Yeah, that's a good piece of advice. I definitely feel like the wheat gets separated from the chaff a little bit on Kickstarter, in that the stuff that's performing well on Kickstarter is usually the stuff that's professional looking and it seems to have the right people involved, people that are serious business people, or serious creative people who are going to make and deliver what they think they're going to make and deliver. That's not 100% guaranteed, for sure. So, definitely a buyer beware situation.

[50:03] Murphey: Like I said, most people do deliver, and the thing is, too, if you're late or if you're behind your schedule, people on Kickstarter are actually really understanding, as long as you just communicate. Like you said before, you have a way to go on and send a message out to every single person who got your campaign. If things go wrong, you just tell them. People just don't want to be lied to and they don't want to just hear bullshit. I had one campaign that was cursed by everything. After the campaign ended, it was just, everything went wrong. We’d gotten books, and they were just destroyed, and we had tried a new printer and they were not doing anything to fix the problem, and we ended up having to pay to get the entire run reprinted, so it got to the point of actually fulfilling, we were months behind what we had promised people, and we have maybe had a couple of people that we're being crappy but everybody else was wildly understanding and nice and gracious, when they finally got their books. It was like “yeah, finally here.” It's good. It's just because we kept everyone up to date, and they can very much hear us just being so stressed out, and “We're sorry, guys. We're literally doing everything we can,” and there was a lot of people in the comments that were just, “hey, look, we understand. I'm sorry you're going through this,” which was very surprising to see. It's like running any business. Just showing people that they can trust you is all about communications and your actions.

[54:44] David: I'm a huge fan of Keith Knight. He does this book called the K Chronicles, also Knight Life. It's got a couple different names. He Kickstarted a book called, I Was a Michael Jackson Impersonator, and Keith Knight does cartoon strips, and so it was a series of cartoon strips around like him, when he was a teenager, he was a Michael Jackson impersonator, and made a boatload of money doing this, and I love his stuff, and I was definitely on board for the Kickstarter, and it took two years for him to deliver on it, but he did eventually, and there was not a single disparaging comment anywhere, because he was just good about every month or two, he check in and be, “yeah, not ready yet, but I'm working on it,” kind of thing, and so I agree. For me, as a customer, that communication, “Oh, I know, you haven't forgotten about me. There were times where I have forgotten about it. Oh, yeah. Thanks for reminding me, Keith. Still waiting for that book from you.” John, I think we are getting pretty close to the end time.

[52:46] John: You answered my non-question earlier wonderfully because I never thought about that division between the audiences of the comics and paperbacks in that way. I mean, specifically to Kickstarter, and it's really smart. Right now, comics are divided out into a lot of different places. I mean, things you could classify as comics. I don't mean the comics industry, but I mean, people reading Manga. That's probably the biggest section in Barnes & Noble, followed by middle grade graphic novels, and YA graphic novels. People reading stuff on Tapas and people subscribing to Substacks, which I think is the worst way to read comics that anyone has ever developed in the 150 years. You have to go back to Mayan temples that have comics written on pillars that you have read, it would be worse.

[53:37] David: I think Marvel's infinity comics are making a run for worst.

[53:41] John: When David and I were coming up, if you wanted to read comics, you went to the comic bookstore and got comics because that's where they were. If you wanted to read Dan Clowes comics, that's where you went. If you wanted to read indie self-published comics, that's where you went. If you wanted to read Batman, that's where you went. If you wanted to read Manga, that's where you went, but the audiences, I think, are divided up more than they have before, where there's probably almost certainly more people reading comics now than ever have before, but they're not reading them in the same concentrated place that they were from 1975 through 2000 or something. Do any of those other places show up on Kickstarter? Do you know or is the evolution of the indie comic book scene evolving into Kickstarter? Kickstarter so big. There's so many things going on there that we won't necessarily see that stuff.

[54:27] Murphey: Manga is massive. I mean, number one, just to say, when comic creators start talking about competition, the biggest competition to Western comics is Manga because it is huge. Like you said, it's taken over. It's taken over almost the whole comic section in bookstores, and it's because they can put them out so much faster. A big majority of them are made black and white with just ink or just grayscale. They can put them out faster, and there are series that have been going on for hundreds of issues, but an issue of a Manga is 200 pages and not 24 pages. It's got so many, just a leg up on the way that it's made, and the fact that the art style is wildly popular for many different reasons. I read Manga a ton when I was in school. Tokyopop was just so different back then, and now it’s just such an accepted, regular form of entertainment, especially for young girls. I don't really see it on Kickstarter. I think it's because it is so popular, they can make it so quickly, and they have such a strong base, I don't really see Manga on there. You see anime style on there, but there's not Tokyopop coming and putting a book on Kickstarter, the way that you see Image Comics on Kickstarter. I've never seen that. Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't really even thought about it until now.

[56:09] John: I could see it being the way you're talking about The Expanse graphic novels. You can see somebody wanting to put together a super deluxe Naruto or something. This is putting that out on Kickstarter in a way that's interesting. It seems like there's a pipeline from online comics, webcomics, I'm thinking something like Lore Olympus, that's all over the place when you go into a bookstore, but there seems to be more of a path from that to the traditional publishers that are publishing a lot of middle grade YA graphic novels, and they don't seem to be touching Kickstarter the same way comic book specific publishers are touching Kickstarter, but I wasn't sure if the creators are doing that at all. I mean, if somebody that hasn’t done a lore at this level of popularity who online self-publishes their collection or something.

[56:57] Murphey: I think Kickstarter has a little bit of a blind spot. You'll see kids comics and kids focus things, and then it gets the young adult and goes to adult comics, like superhero, that stuff, and I think it's because you've got people buying for kids and people buying for themselves. Whereas, young adults don't necessarily spend a lot of time on Kickstarter.

[57:29] David: Or they don't necessarily have access to a credit card. I don't know.

[57:33] John: Yeah, I was thinking that. That makes sense, but my daughter puts all this stuff in a cart for whatever things she's buying, when she's shopping, whatever it is, whether it's books or clothes or whatever, she's putting it in a shopping cart online somewhere, and then asking permission. She's 12. I mean, interesting. I don't know, I'm sorry.

[57:53] Murphey: I don't really have a good answer for that.

[58:01] David: This is the end of the podcast. We're going to go. We won.

[58:04] Murphey: That's the whole goal, is to find a question that I can’t answer.

[58:07] David: Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

[58:09] John: Maybe the answer is just as simple as, Kickstarter is its own thing, the same way all these other places are their own thing, and they're just developing their own little ecosystems of how people are interacting with comics.

[58:21] Murphey: I do have one thing on that. So, the Kickstarter audience is wildly, I feel like I said wildly a lot, the Kickstarter audience, there's not a ton of crossover with the local comic shop audience. We were able to promote a book, sell it on Kickstarter, fulfill it on Kickstarter, and then go and take that same book and put it in the stores and still do fairly well in stores, and that got us in front of people that had never, ever heard of us before, and so those people don't spend any time on Kickstarter. That's what it is, is that Kickstarter is a specific audience that, they're growing their audience every day, I'm sure, but there are people who are just not interested in buying something and then waiting three months to get it.

[59:08] David: That makes sense. I think there's also a certain amount of, the name of my comic book, for example, is Super Kaiju Rock-N-Roller Derby Funtime Go! So, I can go out to people who are into kaiju movies and just say, “Hey, you want a Kaiju comic book?” and then send them a link to Kickstarter, where they can peruse and understand what the product is, and make a purchase there, and how do you do that with a comic bookshop? Kickstarter allows, in my mind, at least for you to reach audiences that are going to want your stuff but would normally not have any other way to even be aware of it or access it, I guess. I can't go on to social media and run a Facebook marketing campaign that says “hey, go to your local comic shop and maybe they're going to have a copy of my comic book.” Probably Batman, but maybe mine.

[60:05] Murphey: Yeah. Well, if they do, they buy five copies just to see, and if it sits on the shelf, they're not buying anymore.

[60:13] David: Exactly, and even if I said, “Hey, here's a Facebook marketing campaign, and go to my website and buy my comic book.” I don't know you from Adam. Maybe I'll go check to see if it's on Amazon, but if it's just somebody’s personal website, or some small business site, I don't know if I'm going to be putting my credit card information on that, but Kickstarter is a legitimate source where people spend money and time, all the time, and it's a much, I think, safer place to give your credit card information, as an example. So, I'm a big fan, obviously. We've talked about it a couple of times in here. We are talking about again. People are going to get sick of us talking about Kickstarter. 

[60:59] John: Well, this is actually something that's practical information, as opposed to us just being “Kickstarter is pretty cool.” This is somebody that knows what they're talking about. So, thank you for setting us straight. 

[61:11] David: Thanks, Murphey. Appreciate the talk, for sure.

[61:13] Murphey: Thanks for having me on.

[61:1] David: Murphey, is there anything else you want to add? I have to warn you now that John and I have this podcast, we wield immense power, so when you talk about anything on our podcast, that's a lot of people. It's very influential. So, I want you to talk about whatever you want to talk about, promote whatever you want to promote, but just be aware that ‘avalanche’ is a word that comes to mind, so I'm just giving you the caution.

[61:42] Murphey: To the seven people listening, if you go to mykrowdcampaign.com, you'll see the follow link for Super Kaiju Rock-N-Roller Derby Funtime Go! That is going to be coming soon to Kickstarter. If you are interested in hiring me to help you with your campaign, or if you want to stay up to date with all the campaigns that I am going to be working on, such as the Devil's Misfits # 2, Pink Power #1, and Unholy Nightmare, which has the backer kit preorder store live right now, you can go to mykrowdcampaign.com and sign up for my newsletter.

[62:20] David: We'll make sure to have show links on the website as well. If you're looking for those, you can just go to the site, thecornerbox.club, and we'll have everything in there. Thank you so much, Murphey, for joining us. Really appreciate you coming on and hanging out with us for a little bit.

[62:34] John: Yeah, thank you very much.

[62:36] Murphey: You're very welcome.

[62:37] David: and thanks, everybody, for joining us today on our 14th podcast about Kickstarter. We'll see y'all again soon. Next week. Guaranteed. Thanks, everybody. Bye.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, tell your friends about us, leave a review and comments. Check out www.cornerbox.club for updates, and come back and join us next week for another episode of The Corner Box with John and David.