Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art and business of comics and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.

[00:28] David Hedgecock: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, David Hedgecock. With me, as always, is my good friend, John Barber, and we are joined by the amazing, incredibly hard-working, Pat Shand. If you weren't here last time, we had a great start to our interview with Pat, talking all things comic books and comic-related materials. In this episode, we're going to wrap that interview up. So, listen in, and enjoy the show.

So, you did an exclusive with Zenescope for several years, and it sounds like, man, that was running the crucible right there. There's this thing that I have noticed about comic book people, and I truly believe this. I think if you have spent any reasonable amount of time working in comic books, with success, as a professional, if you have done that for, let's say, three to five years, just really worked it, you can literally do any job on this planet. I feel like, tomorrow, I could probably be a nuclear physicist. With just a little bit of training, I’m pretty sure, I can handle that, because there's nothing harder than making comics on a four-week schedule—mass-produce comics on a four-week scale. There’s nothing harder. It takes so much internal drive to be able to do that sort of thing, that once you've built that muscle—because it is a muscle. I think it's a muscle that you have to build—once you've built that muscle up, man, you can just apply it to anything, and you’re going to have success. I truly believe that. Maybe it's because I worked in comic books for so long. I need something to make me feel like it was worth it.

[02:04] Pat Shand: It trained me to run a business. I never pictured myself as a publisher, until I was working at Zenescope, and I was looking at all the shit that I was doing, because what I reached out for was, “hey, I want to write for you,” and then all of a sudden, I was on their job assistant, approving pages for print for a book I haven't seen before, and I'm looking for errors. So, I'm editing and copy-editing, and sending-to-print, and then I was drafting contracts for artists, and like, “I'm publishing right now.” So, I realized that I could do that, too, and then I took things, both positive and negative—I'll do this and I won't do this—from my time there, and working with other publishers, and I went into my business with the knowledge of who I want to be, and who don't want to be.

[02:59] David: So, you ended your exclusive with Zenescope, and then jumped right into the self-publishing, or was there an in-between time there, where you were doing other stuff? How did that all go down, and what was the timeline for that?

[03:10] Pat: So, how it started was this: I, over time, broached the topic with Zenescope, of doing other stuff, and then maybe pulling back and going part-time with them, while I focused on other work, as well, and what it was, for a while, was, I would float a gig I was offered to Zenescope, show them where I was at in my Zenescope work, and they would either approve or do a counteroffer, to me. So, the novel stuff was easy. That, to them, was not competitive. So, while working at Zenescope, I also did the five Marvel novels that I had written for Joe Books, and then, I think it was, Harper Collins did the Spider-Man one.

[03:51] David: In a space of what time did you write five prose books?

[03:54] Pat: So, the Marvel ones, I did them in about 3 weeks to a month, each, per novel, and what didn't happen, though—I was origin hit up by Joe Books to do their Charmed novels, because I was working on Charmed for Zenescope. So, I wrote those first. I wrote two Charmed novels in, essentially, a month and a half, and then they lost the license. So, those never came out, and then they followed up with the Marvel offer. So, I essentially wrote six novels for them. It was an October to the following August.

[04:28] David: So, it was about 8 months.

[04:30] Pat: 8 months.

[04:31] David: So, John, he was writing five comic books a month, and then knocked out six more novels, in the span of eight months, while also writing about 30 issues worth of material. I don't even have that many ideas in a year. I just don't. I have written 120 pages worth of comic book in the last 12 months, and I am maxed out. That's my top speed, at this point. I don't know how it's even humanly possible to do that, Pat. That’s insane. What is wrong with you?

[05:02] Pat: I mean, the other gigs showed me that it doesn't—and I never thought it did—but I did get the sense, in some conversations with editors—I drove out to LA, back when I was in California, to have a meeting with Boom!, and at the time, there was this big conversation of “sexy covers are the devil.” So, essentially, in every meeting I had with an editor, they would say, “hey, we're going to float these ideas to the team, but the Zenescope stuff does hold you back. So, just be careful of that,” and at the time, I was locked into Zenescope, because I was exclusive, and even though I was toying with the idea of what I would do next, everyone around me was telling me that what I had done with them was actually working against me, as opposed to for me. Now, I learned, in the later years, that those eras of thought pass. So, now the sexy covers don't have the same controversy. If that Spider-Woman cover by Milo came out now, it would be nothing. That wouldn't be a conversation, but back then, it was the front page of all these comic book news sites that nobody even reads anymore, but back then, it was a conversation. So, I was, at the time, worried that I wouldn't be able to get non-Zenescope work, and then as soon as I really pushed, it all happened right away, and I got gigs writing Disney comics, gigs writing Disney storybooks. So, I was like, “if Disney, of all people, doesn't care, this fear of, ‘Pat worked for Zenescope,’ that's going to go away.” So, that emboldened me to keep pushing.

While I was finishing up the novels, I started talking to Avatar Press. William, at Avatar, wanted me to come on and write for their Boundless imprint, which is their darker, horror, and sexier comics, and he wanted me to write the revival of this book, Hellina, and I told him that my interest at Avatar was to work on the Avatar stuff. I saw that they were working with Kieron Gillen, Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, and I wanted to be considered like that, so I could start to build industry respect, and he was like, “well, yes. Start on these, though, and then maybe we'll talk about those,” and that's what happened. I did the first script for Hellina, and then he offered me an 11-book contract for a year, and as I began to work on that, with Zenescope’s approval, after some tugging—they had a little back-and-forth, where Zenescope, they said, “hey, Pat’s our writer. If you want to use him, put an ad for Zenescope in the back of the Boundless books,” and Boundless was like, “No.”

So, I essentially had to talk to Zenescope, and be like, “hey, I want to do this. Look how far ahead I am on all your stuff. I really want to start making some more money, outside of what I'm making here.” So, they approved it. Very gracious for that, and for Boundless and Avatar, in the last year of my Zenescope work, to about a year after, I wrote the Hellina miniseries, which was three issues, a Belladonna maxi, which was 13 issues, Lookers, which was 11. So, I thought, “wow, this company is giving me work, because I worked for Zenescope.” So, now I realized that I could take what I had done, and if someone says no, that’s them. That's okay. I get it, but I'm going to push, no matter what, and I had the idea that I would be successful.

[08:51] David: So, you had a year or two there, where you were doing some stuff for Boundless, and then, where did you go from there?

[08:57] Pat: So, the Zenescope contract ended May 2016, and I did a few freelance things for them, that year after that, but then I took a long break, and I went to Kickstarter pretty immediately. Earlier that year, I was working on the conversation with Zenescope to be like, “hey, this is not a competitive project. Would you be cool if I did this while I'm with you?” and then, it just so happened that months passed, and it was time to leave. I felt confident in the money I was making freelance. So, I left there, and in September 2016, I launched our Destiny, NY, Volume 1 on Kickstarter, for a full graphic novel, and that is the only campaign that almost didn't fund, because I set the goal in ceiling high. My goal was $20,000. On the last day, I think we were at sub-20, we were around 18, and then our letterer pledged $1000, and as soon as everyone saw that it was so close, the pledges flooded in and put us up over 21, to the point where Jim was able to remove his pledge, and we still hit 21-and-change. So, when I saw that succeed, I was like, “this is what I'm doing now. So, now I'm going to do at least two or three of these per year, and keep this going, and build a library, and make this my main focus of work, while still doing freelance, elsewhere.”

[10:35] David: Nice, but you're not doing freelance elsewhere now, are you?

[10:38] Pat: Funny enough, the freelance that I do is mostly for other Kickstarter creators. So, there's this Zenescope fan who I met at one of the VIP events. Great guy, and he runs a company--Prizmatic is the main title. I'm not sure […] his company. His name is David Sweet. He brought me on to develop some new titles for him, and I've been writing for him, and he Kickstarts those, and they do great, but yeah, my primary focus of work is my own stuff. I'm relatively off freelance. There's a few things I take, here and there. I did a video game, a while back, that I wrote dialogue for. This is crazy, because the name, at the time, it was Giants, but I worked on it for about 6 months, and then the contract was over. So, I stopped paying attention, and then 2-3 days ago, I was just sitting, thinking “I wonder if the game ever came out.” So, I searched ‘Giants,’ and it hadn't come out, and then I searched the character names, and it had come out, and it's out, actively. I had no idea. It's this interactive game—I don't even know what it's called—but it's out. That kind of stuff, where it's different from the comics, that I'm interested in doing, because it's just a weird oddity, and the gamers pay very well.

[11:59] David: I have a friend who worked in comics and has, in the last couple years, been working for a video game company—and this goes back to my saying, ‘if you've worked in comics, you can do anything’—his experience with working in the video game industry is, somebody will come back to him with some notes, like “we need to change this, and what do you think about—do you think you can do this?” My buddy’s like, “yeah,” and then, the next day, he hands the revisions in, and the first time he did that, everybody in the game company lost their minds, because it's like, “we didn't expect to get this for another six months.” So, yeah, the video game timelines and money, I think, are definitely a good place to be, if you can get in there.

[12:41] Pat: It is crazy. The stuff they paid me for, because they were paying per hour, and they would give me a character's name and a list of actions, and be like, “all right. Write what he says when this happens. It can only be one syllable.” So, I write, […], and I was in a meeting, and I was like, “how many different syllables are there? There's not much that I could do,” and then they expanded it, “then also write a small utterance that would take 1.5 seconds.” I’m like, “all right. So, maybe he could say, ‘oh, man,’” and write a 2-second sentence. So, I was able to write some dialogue, but mostly, it was so different from the comics. It was a lot of world development and character development, where I would figure out how the world works, and the logic of the world, and a lot of the times, where I was writing the stuff, the project was so big that I would just jump in on one thing, and they'd be like, “all right. We'll pay you for the week. Just tell us what you did, and then we'll tell you what to do next week.” There's a lot of money in writing. It's just not what you would really expect, and I always tell this story, too. This is what put me on to that idea, speaking of Brian Lynch before.

I went to Universal Studios with my wife, Amy, years and years, and years, ago. It was when Brian was working on the Minions screenplay, and I knew his writing very well, from having read his work on Angel, Spike, Everybody's Dead, and I went into this ride—it was a Despicable Me ride—and there was this Gru voiceover and animation, and as Amy and I were in the ride, from the dialogue, I looked at her, I went, “I am sure that Brian wrote this ride,” and she's like, “what?” I'm like, “the cadence of his punchlines, it's very Brian Lynch.” So, I went back, and I asked him. I was like, “did you write that ride?” He was like, “yeah.”

[14:46] David: That's awesome.

[14:47] Pat: That showed me that there's writing everywhere. It's not just things that you pick up and read. There's writing that could be creative, everywhere, because that ride didn't have to be as funny as it was, but he brought himself to it, to the point where I could tell it was him, from a few lines of dialogue. It was just so Brian that I thought, “when I get the chance to write things that are like that, that's weird and unique, and more of an experience, I want to make sure to put as much of myself into that as I would into something where you could see my name and know it's me.”

[15:20] David: That makes sense. I don't know how you're getting that with “uh,” but I’m sure you did your best. I do want us to talk a little bit about Kickstarter, in general. Like I said, when we started at the beginning, you are quite the mogul in the space. I don’t know what else—You’re the wizard of the space. In terms of advice, for people thinking about doing Kickstarter, creative, what are some interesting things that you learned about it, that really moved the needle for you, in one way or another?

[15:50] Pat: Publishing comics in the direct market, there is this idea of the genres that don't sell in stores. Those genres are what sells directly to customers, because NSFW comics, the romance stuff, the manga-adjacent American comics, on some levels—definitely comedy—those are books that, historically, the traditional publishers have said, “these are hard to sell through Diamond, the stores aren't buying these.” Sometimes there are books that people feel weird to buy. I mean, there’s exceptions, like Sunstone by Šejić—Major exception, but the romance and erotica section of the comic shop is not popping the way it would be at a prose bookstore. The prose bookstore is different. The readers exist, though. They're just not in the shop. So, Kickstarter, and all these direct-to-consumer platforms, the best things to publish are what doesn't work in the shop. The things that work in the shop are for the shop, and those same customers can easily get it by walking into a shop. The books that would do amazing on the shelves are not necessarily going to do great on Kickstarter. Those trending artists on the shelves, it’s not the same.

So, I learned that hot concepts and hot artists in the direct market don't translate to Kickstarter, its own market, and it's a growing market that's still fighting itself. So, I think that my main advice is just to do the weird stuff, do a book that you would want to do or want to read, that you don't see in the shop. If you're going to just do your version of Batman, or your version, say, the Brubaker or Brian Azzarello crime stories, there's a lot of those. Those guys that are already doing that, and that market is flooded in the shop, where people can easily go and have the book in 15 minutes. You want to make a book that people are eager for, thirsty for, that they don't have. Make the books that don't exist, yet. There’s holes in the market. Fill them. That, as a creator, is an inspiration, to me, as opposed to a limitation. I don't want to just do shit that already exists. The idea of being able to do the weird shit, to me, is awesome.

There's this conversation in the comic book Twittersphere about, “I don't want to have to try to do NSFW to succeed on Kickstarter,” and my thought is, “Don’t. Don't do a thing that you don't want to do, because you won't do it right.” The stories I tell, I want to be telling those stories. It just so happens that some of my interests, right now, are what's trending in that market. That wasn't always the case, though. When I first hit my trilogy that I wrote with my wife. Amy, we did a Thirsty, Cheeky, and Steamy are these interconnected stories about love and lust, and when we did that, the first one, Thirsty, we were like, “this is a risk. We've been doing this more fantasy and genre stuff, and this is more spicy romance. It works better for novels. We're not seeing this do great in comics. So, this is a risk for us,” and now what we thought of as a risk is the most popular genre in Kickstarter comics, right now. So, that wasn't always the case. These trends move, they balloon, they deflate. So, what I would say is, don't follow the trend. Just find the holes. Find the holes that you want to fill, the book that doesn't exist yet.

[19:31] John: That's smart.

[19:32] David: I like that. What would you say has been your most successful outreach? What is the way that you have brought in the most people, or feel like, “wow, we did that,” and that really was helpful, in terms of bringing numbers to a specific campaign, or your campaigns, overall?

[19:54] Pat: All right. So, I have a vague answer, and a specific answer. The vague answer, I think, works for anything—any platform. I think that you should be making iconic characters. Make a character who people want to see over and over, and over again. On our series, Private Dance, we started that based on this character, Sabby, and she has become a character who people are invested in, she has a very unique look, she stands out, and people want more of her. I look at Terry Moore’s work. He has Francine and Katchoo from Strangers in Paradise. People see those characters, and they invest in their story, and they just want more of them. So, the idea of building characters that people can latch onto and care about, as vague as that is, is A, number one, most important. More specific things—I think that building a platform that has multiple avenues of direct consumer outreach. For example, the easiest thing is a mailing list. Just have a platform to engage with your customers, reach out, create interesting content, and just bring the little emails in, and tell them when you launch again. If you've done four campaigns, with people who haven't backed all four, just focusing on doing an update through the campaign, “Hey, guys. We're live on this one,” that's going to limit it. Take all of the emails, build it into one list, and reach out when you go live, and then on a more personal note, we do a Discord.

So, our Discord has multiple channels where our readers can come in, they get age-verified, they can go into our Cheeky comics section, and talk directly with me and my team about our characters, their favorite covers, who they want to see more from, or they can go into Destiny, NY, and talk about 10 years of stories, and just having that platform, where you complete the transaction with the customer on Kickstarter, because it's a different kind of transaction. In the shop, they go in, they pay somebody else, and leave. On Kickstarter, they're supporting your vision, and they feel closely tied to you. They're paying you directly. They're bringing your vision to life. They feel like both customer and producer. Now, bring them into a personal conversation, and validating that, and bringing them into your team, in a way—it builds a connection that is rare, between creator and customer. That, I think, is very important.

[22:24] David: I actually think that that's the thing that I love the most about the Kickstarter platform, and I've said this a couple times—is the ability to have that direct one-to-one conversation with your end-customer, in a way that you just cannot do with the direct market, or more traditional forms of publishing. I love that you can have a Discord or private Facebook group, or public Facebook group, where people can go, who have bought your product, and they can ask you questions, or engage with you, in certain ways, and say, “hey, I love this, or would like to see more of this,” and just being able to do that, and then also, the ability, through the campaigns themselves, to be able to create things and offer things—just signed and remarked books—something as simple as that. There's no mechanism for me to be able to do that through the direct market. I don't know if Gary in Indiana wants me to sign and remark his book, and there's no way for me to get that to him, in any normal fashion, through traditional distribution channels, where with Kickstarter, dude, Gary clicks a button, and then I'm signing and remarking his book for him, and everybody's happy. I love that about the Kickstarter platform. I know John's like, “yes, David. We know,” but I do love that.

[23:42] Pat: I have my team, but I'm very hands-on in shipping, still. So, I still see all the names. Right now, for example, this is my childhood home. When I moved back to New York, I lived about an hour away—I moved a bit closer now. So, I'm about 20 minutes out, but my mother gave us the back half of her house, to use as our office. So, in about 45 minutes, my team of guys is going to come here. I have labels prepped for them. They're going to go in the back and start getting orders out, and as they're doing that, I'll be able to pop in there and see them building a big order, and go, “Hey, who's that?” They'll say a name, and I'll know the name from having seen them for years. So, I'll be like, “give them an extra print. Throw in some cards. Treat them right.” Being able to recognize the customers, by name, that is, I wouldn't say unique to Kickstarter, but I think it's unique to indie, because I also learned a bit of that from Zenescope. As a freelancer, I left Zenescope in 2016, but I started to do some work-for-hire for them in the past three years, and they'll invite me out sometime to the VIP events, and they have their biggest customers come to a location, and they have a little mini convention, and they'll know them all, by name, by face, and that's what I want. In our Discord, our biggest backer talked in our lounge chat, which is just general chat, that they had a dream about my friend, Twon. Twon is our events manager. So, now we have a community, where people who buy our books are having dreams about our employees. That, to me, shows this connection that would be difficult to find, if I was just freelancing, or just direct market publishing.

[25:32] David: Yeah, for sure. 100%. That's crazy. Is there anything else, Pat, that you've learned about Kickstarter, where you're like, “oh, man. People just are missing the boat on this,” or “this is the secret sauce,” that you’re willing to share, of course?

[25:46] Pat: It sounds so basic, but it's so important. Just, clarity. I think that the layout of a campaign page is so important. I think that sometimes creators get so passionate about their idea that they write their Kickstarter like it's a GoFundMe, when really, it's a little bit that—it's 2% that—but largely, it's become a pre-order platform. You’ve got to sell your books. You’ve got to put out good art. You’ve got to sell your story in an effective way. Talk about your story in a way that would make you want to read it. The truth is, the story is the first connection. No one's going to go through Kickstarter, and go, “Oh, you know what? That guy needs my help. Of these 125 campaigns live, I'm going to donate to this guy.” No. Sell to them how you would want to be sold to. Create easy-to-understand campaigns. Have a sidebar, where it says “covers.” You click it, and it goes down—"Cover A by this artist.” Show the cover. “Cover B by this artist.” Show the cover. Then, “interior preview.” Show the interiors. Sell it in a way where it shows the actual book, and how it's going to be. That’s step one, but people skip it, so many times. They want to do this plea to the audience, “Help me get funded,” when really, the way to be helped is to look at the audience, and go, “I have an awesome book. This is the book. You'll judge me based on this book, before you know me. Later on, after you read and enjoy the book, we can form that creator-to-reader relationship, but first, here is an excellent book, with art that you do not want to miss.”

[27:32] David: Yeah. Good stuff. I'm feeling inspired, John.

[27:35] John: Yeah, that is awesome.

[27:37] David: John's writing notes on his computer. He’s frantically typing. Well, Pat, thank you so much for sharing, with us, your story and your knowledge. It's been wonderful. I’ve really enjoyed it. John, did you have any other questions before […]?

[27:52] John: I’ve been a bit quiet this whole time, but it’s just been fascinating. It’s been great.

[27:57] David: And Pat, that is from the guy who has written more Transformers comic books than anybody else on the planet saying that. So, that is quite a compliment. Pat, thank you so much for coming. Thank you, again, for sharing your knowledge and your story. Is there anything, in particular, that you’ve got coming up?

[28:13] Pat: Yes. So, right now, we have a new campaign launching next week. It is for the hardcover of our Cheeky comic series. It’s called Private Dance. This is a funny, emotional, and spicy story about an exotic dancer, Sabby. That's our first hardcover through our Cheeky Comics imprint. I just got a video of the book itself from overseas, and it looks amazing. I can't wait to have it in my hands. This is truly going to be a collector’s piece. I'm happy to be taking our most successful single-issue story and giving it this premium treatment. At the same time, through our Dark Veil Universe imprint, we have a horror/dark fantasy book, called Vampire Queen of Miami. That's live now, and that is just a bunch of fun. The idea of that is this ancient vampire, she's given up on the whole supernatural, evil, war, hunting-type shit, and instead now, she has dedicated her life to partying. She wants to live in Miami and hold this endless party, and she's funding it by selling her immortality to the rich. She'll have a pop star come down, and in exchange for, say, $2,000,000, she’ll turn him into a vampire, and she'll be able to fund her bloody, alcohol-soaked parties. So, that's that book that's live right now, and then, we have Private Dance hardcover for Season 1, launching next week.

[29:42] David: That's awesome. I saw that Vampire Queen of Miami campaign, and you’ve got some great cover artists on this one. I’m jealous. Drax Gal is one of my favorite artists right now. I think he's just fantastic. You’ve got one from him in there, I think. There was somebody else in there that I really liked. Leirix, maybe. Do you have a Leirix cover on that one, too?

[30:01] Pat: Yeah, we do. We work with Leirix a lot. We took her out to New York ComiCon, and she appeared with us, at our booth, in New York. Great artist. Great person. So, we're definitely heavy into the Leirix collaborations. So, the Dark Veil Universe has this set of connecting Leirix covers. If you buy the Vampire Queen cover by her, it stands alone, but if you buy her covers for Dark Veil #1, Death Goddess of Cthulhu #1, Vampire Queen of Miami #1, Demon Time #1, and then Death Goddess vs the Dark Veil—Those five connect into a single piece.

[30:36] David: I love that. I love that. All right. That’s good stuff. All right, Pat. Well, thanks again, for coming. Everybody, check out Private Dance Hardcover. It will be out no later than February 25th, it sounds like, 2025, and then Vampire Queen of Miami’s live right now. When does that one end?

[30:52] Pat: Vampire Queen of Miami is going to end next Friday.

[30:56] David: Next Friday, February 28th. So, if you happen to miss that one, it's probably okay. You're probably going to have a Back It After the Campaign's Ended button, for a little bit, I'm assuming. Do you do those?

[31:07] Pat: Possibly, sometimes. Here's a quirk of Kickstarter that I've noticed. Sometimes, when you have the Late Pledges button live, it has a glitch, where people whose card failed on the first part of the campaign, cannot repledge. I'm not sure if that's being worked on, but we have actually lost more pledges from people who can't repledge, than gaining them through late pledges. So, what we'll do is, we'll have that as an add-on through our next Dark Veil Universe campaign, which will be Demon Time, launching in April or May.

[31:39] David: Yeah, but unfortunately, you miss all the stretch goals, and stuff, for that, which is half the fun. I’m excited for Vampire Queen of Miami. I think I already pledged for that one. I’m definitely going to pick up that Drax Gal cover, and Private Dance Hardcover, as well, looks very cool. Can’t wait for that campaign to start. Thanks, again, Pat. I hope to have you on again soon, and thanks, everybody, for joining us today, and listening in on our conversation, and John, thank you for being you.

[32:07] John: And for just taking a couple tries, but figuring out how to spell “Miami.”

[32:12] David: That's what the copyeditor is for, John. Thanks, everybody, for coming. Like, subscribe, do all that stuff. John loves you. I love you. Goodbye.

[32:20] John: Bye.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, rate, and tell your friends about us. You can find updates and links at www.thecornerbox.club and we’ll be back next week with more from David and John, here at The Corner Box.