Thursday 11 October 2012

HARDtalk: The Virtual Tour #22

Okay, I'm back at the Secret Mountainside AMOC Lair for a question from Dominick Man and Mr. Eric. As Avril Lavigne once said, "What's up, boys. Wanna trash the mall?"

Uh. Not really, Dave.  

No? Forgive me. Non-fasting day. It's the caffeine talking. Your question?

How will glamourpuss be collected? You have advertised a digital version of the first 25 issues and that the series will conclude (at least in print) with issue 26. Will the digital version include both the fashion satires and the history sections? Will each section be separate or will the collection closely approximate the issues as they appeared in serialized versions. Will the covers be included or any other supplementary material?

You're SURE you don't want to trash the mall? Sorry.

That was actually one of the Hail Mary passes that Sandeep and I came up with and he threw together a prototype of it.  Beautifully, I must say, the man does beautiful work.  Basically gp #1 to 25, all the covers, the unpublished two zombie covers, Zootanapuss covers.  The idea being that it would be my version of his MALCOLM X DVDs which don't always sell like gangbusters, but it's a steady revenue stream.  All of Malcolm X's speeches.  I mean, EXHAUSTIVE.  So he can get an order in by e-mail, dub off a copy, put it in its DVD folder, put that in an envelope and mail it and he's ahead by whatever number of dollars.

Of course, the Kickstarter campaign was another Hail Mary pass that REALLY connected.  So, that shifted my thinking in that direction.  Now it seems to make more sense as a Kickstarter reward -- the same package that you saw but, say, a $75 pledge item where however many of them sell, that's how many I sign and number.  I envisioned it, right away, as the NEXT Kickstarter campaign for THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND, because it would contain all of that material to date, plus all of glamourpuss. So it would be a way of doing a cost-effective package that actually, hopefully, would whet people's appetites for STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND.  The flaw was that the story isn't anywhere near finished, so you don't want to be whetting people's appetites for something that might not actually "land" until...well, I don't even know.

My three-subject notebook I started back then -- in May -- is now virtually full of  Kickstarter and HIGH SOCIETY DIGITAL stuff and still only three or four pages of STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND.  VERY valuable pages of what needs to be done to polish that part of the project.  But that's been it since May.  I'm HOPING that when the Virtual Tour is done October 10th that I can then put in some quality time on it.  I'll have to "fess up" to the Kickstarter pledge people.  I AM going to do CEREBUS AUDIO DIGITAL but it's not ALL I'm going to do. I'm going to have to strike a balance: here's what people have given me money to do, and here's what I consider to be my actual work, my, hopefully, Next Big Thing.

Sandeep was saying "We have all this room -- you can put everything on here."  And I said, "Great! I can bring over all of my pasted together mock-ups and three and four proof-reading copies that you couldn't WAIT to get out of your living room and you can start scanning it all in and retouching it in Photoshop."

You know, Sikhs don't blanche visibly, per se, but they are capable of getting that facial expression.  
Okay, now we're headed over to BLEEDING COOL for a question from Loren Visser. Loren, if you're over there, you MUST be "bleedin' cool". What's your question?

How does Dave fit into Cerebus' theology? In the end Cerebus never thinks to call out for Dave when the light has him. Has Cerebus forgotten all about Dave in the intervening 180+(?) years, or does Cerebus recognize God as a higher power than Dave?

Hit the link to BLEEDING COOL for the answer and be back here on Monday for more HARDtalk.

No comments: