Author: Scott Harris

Well, it’s been awhile since the last update, thanks in part to our old enemy COVID-19, and in part due to the fact that I’m doing something a bit different with issue #3. For the first two issues of The Crimebusters, I basically did the books in the Marvel Method — I drew all the pages and then went back and wrote all the dialogue

This time around, though, I decided the story was too complex for that, so I needed to do all the dialogue first. And that’s taken a lot longer than usual, as changes to the text necessitated reworking significant portions of the story.

After a couple extensive rewrites, though, issue #3 is finally in place to be drawn. And the good news is that the art is now the last step, so once the art is done, the book will be done and ready to go to Kickstarter!

Just when that will happen I’m not quite sure, as I don’t want to commit to anything given the nature of the world right now. But I have finished the first three pages in addition to the two covers I’ve shown previously, so I thought I’d give a little sneak preview of “The Spell of the Sorcerer!”

ENJOY!

And the covers!

And the back cover!

There’s a lot of things happening right now here at Crimebusters central. I had my first brief convention experience in August, and have my first solo shows coming up, first at Catamount Comics Expo in Burlington, Vermont on Saturday, September 14, and then at Northeast ComicCon in Boxboro, Massachusetts on Thanksgiving weekend. For those, I’ve been working on a ton of new stuff, including my first prints. And meanwhile I’ve also been plugging away on the second issue of The Crimebusters. Not to mention I finished fulfillment on the first issue Kickstarter!

So all of that is interesting and exciting and normally I would be spending the rest of this update giving you all the details and sharing images and everything. However, over the last few weeks, my comic book stuff has all been put on the back burner because of some real life stuff. Today, then, I’m going to get personal and talk about something important to me.

Those of you who backed the first issue of The Crimebusters on Kickstarter probably read my project update talking about my Dad’s illness. For those who didn’t, on June 21, about halfway through the first issue Kickstarter launch, I got a call that a family friend had found my Dad passed out in his car. He had been in his car overnight, delirious from what turned out to be a blood infection. It turned into septic shock, and at the time I posted, things were very touch and go and it was unclear if he would make it.

Unfortunately, my father passed away on Monday, August 19.

Those two months between his initial illness and his death were very difficult for me, for my family, and most of all, for my Dad. He was in the hospital the entire time, recovering from one infection only to get another, and then another. Treatment was very difficult due to complete renal failure, as Dad had been on a kidney transplant list for nearly two years prior to his illness. That would have been his second kidney transplant, as he previously received one in 1997.

The ultimate cause of his kidney failure was a severe wound he received in combat during his second tour of duty in Vietnam on the night of February 29, 1968. He spent the next 18 months in recovery in one military hospital after another. He regained his ability to walk, got married, had kids, and lived a full life over the next 51 years. But the strain on his system, including recurring infections at the time (and possibly exposure to Agent Orange), ultimately led to his kidneys failing.

That, for me, is emblematic of the man my Dad was. He was quiet and unassuming, but he gave everything of himself for the people he loved. When he finished his first tour of service in Vietnam, he signed up for a second tour because he didn’t want to leave his friends behind. When my mom fell ill with cancer, he gave all his his strength caring for her; it’s no coincidence that his kidneys failed again in the year following her death. He wore himself out for her, and never complained.

And he did the same, in small ways and large, for my brother and myself. He wasn’t demonstrative with affection, but he was always present. When he entered the Marines in 1966, he became an OG Marvel fan, reading comics like Thor with his buddies in the service. So when I became obsessed with comics as a kid, something that didn’t necessarily sit well with certain people in my conservative religious community, Dad was always supportive.

When I just had to go to a comic book show in New Hampshire, even though I didn’t have a dime to buy comics, he drove me there. When I just had to have the latest hot comic — Batman #427 — he drove me to Rhode Island to buy the only overpriced copy I could track down. There’s an auction in Connecticut that might have comics? We went, and wasted a whole day for the chance to lose a low bid on a trashed copy of House of Secrets #92. When I wanted desperately to meet Stan Lee at a show in 1989? He drove me to Boston, and then waited for hours with me until Stan finally arrived.

He’d sit down with me and go through my comics, helping me strategize which back issues to buy next. And he’d read them with me too. Every month, after I finished reading the new issue of Groo the Wanderer, I’d pass it to Dad so he could have a laugh as well.

Right to the end, Dad was supportive. As stressful and trying as the past two months were, I’m grateful I had the chance to send those days with Dad, even as sick as he was. We were able to talk about things and say things that whenever had the chance — or the pressing need — to talk about before. And I also got to give him a copy of my first comic, which was a dream come true for me.

I don’t know whether Dad actually cared about comics, but he cared about me, and showed it by spending his time with me doing what I loved. That was Dad.

I miss him.

After all these months of work, the first issue of The Crimebusters is now LIVE on Kickstarter!

I’ll certainly be posting plenty more over the next few weeks, and will go into detail about the Kickstarter experience for those interested in the process, but for now the only thing I have to say is: YAY!

Thanks for all the support, everyone!

Just a few days left until The Crimebusters launches on Kickstarter on June 11, and I’m busy crossing all the i’s and dotting all the t’s, or however that works.

I’ve learned a lot about the process so far, both in terms of printing, and the Kickstarter campaign itself. One big thing I discovered is the review period for Kickstarter. They list it as 1-3 business days, so I worked feverishly to get my page done a full week in advance in case there were any problems and it had to be reviewed twice.

In fact, it turns out the main part of the process is automated, and took about 30 seconds. Apparently, their bots check to make sure everything is done correctly from a procedural point of view, but the actual content isn’t really reviewed. Which I guess is nice, as it gives me a few more days leeway than I expected. And it also explains why I occasionally see Kickstarter campaigns that are clearly breaking one or more Kickstarter rules with their rewards, as it seems no person actually looked to see if those rewards were allowed.

The upshot of all this is that my Kickstarter campaign has been approved and is ready to launch! I’ll be pressing the shiny red button to go live on the morning of June 11, and when I do, I’ll be shouting it to the four winds.

That’s not the most exciting news of the week, though…

Yes, there it is, the first (proof) copy of The Crimebusters #1!

I received this from the printer I am using, Comix Wellspring, which is a branch of Greko Printing in Michigan. Overall, I’m very pleased with the quality of the printing. There are a couple wrinkles I’m sorting out — I realized I had miscolored something on the back cover, for instance, and a few of the margins were off either due to my error, or my lack of understanding the printing process. Still, nothing major — everything took about 45 minutes total to fix — and it’s all part of the process. That’s what proof copies are for!

Now I’ll be going back with the corrections, and once I receive and approve the digital proof of the corrected edition, I’ll be placing my order. I expect by the time the proof process is complete, I’ll be a few days at least into the campaign and will have a rough idea of how many copies I’ll need (or can afford).

Plus, I’ll also be sending them the variant covers so those can be printed up as well. And speaking of that, as I promised last time, here’s a look at all four covers for The Crimebusters #1!

I’m also putting the finishing touches on the final reward, which I am super excited to show off. Once that reward is ready, I’ll be making a video to show it off, which I will probably share both here and as a Kickstarter update after the campaign launches.

I’m so excited! And I thank you all for sharing this journey with me. See you on June 11 for the launch!

So, I have now completed 16 pages, leaving me with just 14 pages that need inking and shading added. Yes, I am officially past the halfway mark! At this pace, I expect to be done with the main story in two weeks. I still have a few things to do after that’s completed — the inside front cover, a two-page text feature, and a four page comic backup story — but the bulk of the first issue will be done. The next step is getting ready for Kickstarter, and right now I am aiming for the first week of June to launch the book.

It’s all very exciting! But this week I found myself spending some time on a part of the comic I usually don’t think about at all: the back cover.

As a long time comic book reader, I am used to back covers being advertisements. And while some of those back cover ads have become kind of iconic to comic book collectors — the art lesson ad from late 60’s Marvel just screams back cover to me, as does the Red Ryder BB gun ad from the golden age — usually, I don’t even notice them.

With that in mind, I had just presumed the best way to go for my comic would be advertising. I’m planning on doing a small print-on-demand run for the book, as I don’t think demand will warrant a full offset print run, and many on demand comic book printers offer a discount if you advertise their company on the back cover. It’s not a huge discount on a per book basis, but if you’re doing a hundred or two hundred copies, it can add up pretty quick. So that seemed like a decent deal.

As part of my research into Kickstarter, though, I’ve spent a fair amount of time listening to the Comix Launch podcast by Tyler James. This is a podcast that has a very specific niche: it’s specifically about how to launch comic books on Kickstarter. And there’s almost 200 episodes! Who knew there was that much to say about launching comics on Kickstarter, right?

While not all of it is relevant to my particular project, one tip that Tyler shared was that you should never put the printer’s ad on the back cover of your book. Why? Because he felt that the back cover is the best selling point you have for your book other than, of course, the front cover.

The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. If the front cover grabs you, what are you likely to do? Well, open the book and flip through it, of course. But also, turn the book over. While this is maybe less common with comics, think about all the graphic novels and paperbacks you’ve purchased over the years. The back cover has the synopsis and pull quotes from other creators and critics recommending why you should read the book.

Well, I don’t have any pull quotes, because the issue isn’t done, much less read by anyone else. But the other half I can do — give potential readers information about the story and why they should read it. The back cover functions differently than the front, which is a good thing; it doesn’t have to follow the rules of comic design, it can get into the nitty gritty. The front cover brings them in, and the back cover cinches the sale.

With that idea in mind, I designed my back cover, and spent the last few days working on it. It’s possible I may make some minor tweaks to this before publishing, but for now, I’m pretty happy with the results.

And who knows? Maybe by next issue, I’ll have some cool pull quotes to put on the back cover!

Thanks for reading! I’ll be back soon with another project update. I’m not sure what it will be about, but in the coming weeks, I plan to share some of the other features in the book, such as the inside front cover and the text features, and I will also discuss Kickstarter itself and the rewards I’ll be offering. If you have any ideas for rewards you might want, let me know!

See you next time!

First, a project update. I’m almost done adding all the dialogue to the whole book. All the dialogue is written, and I have just a couple pages left where I need to add the word balloons.

One thing that delayed this stage of the process as long as it did was simply not knowing what font I wanted to use. That will be the focus of this week’s blog post. Before I get to that, though, I also took a small detour from dialoguing the book to finish the art on the splash page. I’m sure I’ll be tweaking the art right up until print time to make sure it’s as good as it can be, but here’s a taste of what the book will look like when it’s all done:

Now, about those fonts. Eagle eyed readers will notice that the font I’m using for Chuck and Stu’d dialogue has changed since I first posted the rough draft version of this page last year.

At the time, I had the idea that I wanted a font with lowercase letters, as I thought it would allow me to fit more dialogue. And since there’s a lot of dialogue in this issue, space is at a premium.

However, it just didn’t look right, so I set about trying to find a better option. And the problem wasn’t finding a better option, it was choosing from among what seemed like an endless array of options.

There are actually several websites online that have tons of free comic book fonts, plus a couple that specialize in comic book fonts, both free and paid premium. Blambot is probably my favorite of these sites. They have a very cool feature where some of their fonts are free if you are going to make comic books with them, and are only paid if you want to use the for some other purpose. I love that they are supporting independent comic book self-publishing in this manner.

Another great source for comic book fonts is Richard Starkings’ Comicraft. Most of their fonts are paid only, as they have been one of the top resources for the big publishers since the 90’s. They have some great looking fonts, though, so depending on your project, they may be a good option.

For me, though, I didn’t want to spend money mainly because I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted from a font. So I ended up running a font test. i downloaded a dozen of the most promising fonts, and then lettered the same panel over and over using each font, so I could compare directly like vs. like.

In the end, I went with a Blambot font called Letteromatic. It felt the most like a comic book to me, while still presenting a high degree of readability. The only thing I don’t love about it is how the letter Z looks, but it doesn’t come up enough to really matter.

Even then, I still had work to do. Though Letteromatic was mostly great, it was actually a little too wide for my needs. Luckily, in Clip Studio Art, the program I use, you can adjust all the details of the fonts. I first changed the kerning, which is the space between letters, and then adjusted the horizontal ratio, which squeezed things in horizontally without changing the vertical size and shape.

The end result is what you see in this sample – other than the italic font I used for the opening scroll speech. That is done in Komika. I tried to keep things consistent throughout the book by using Letteromatic across the board, but in a couple of places I went with special fonts to highlight certain things. This includes the use of a couple weird fonts that essentially act as a cipher code.

Don’t worry, though. If you want to break the code I will be offering an official Crimebusters Fan Club membership kit that includes a Junior Crimebuster Decoder book to allow you to read along at home.

But I’ll talk about that more some other time. Next week I hope to post another project update with a look at some more art in process. Thanks for reading!