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A Not-So-Simple Plan

Published Mon, 09 Mar 2020 13:00:06 -0500

Terry Cronin writes,

It seemed like a simple idea and nothing is ever simple but let me start at the beginning. I've had a modicum of success in the independent comic book scene creating titles like Students of the Unusual, Recalcitrant Jones & the Dead Beats, and Horse Power G. I've written novels, screenplays, stories for Indie Comics Magazine, and other people's anthologies. I've been a featured guest of some of the biggest comic shows in America and I got to meet so many talented creators in the realm of comics, film, television, and literature. Despite these successes, I realized that I may never get a chance to write one of every comic book fan's dream -a superhero story! In fact, I was warned against it at almost every indie comic panel discussion I attended. "It's been done to death." "No one's interested if it's outside the Big Two!" "It's the kiss of death!"

Despite these warnings, or maybe even because of them, I decided to try my hand at a super hero story about an everyman whose superpower just stinks. Everywhere he goes anything electrical or mechanical breaks down and stops working. I've had my own share of technological difficulties but this would be a massive imposition. This kind of curse would be kind of depressing to say the least and I wondered if a story could be told where this person could use this curse to become a hero.

Well, I shared my story with an independent filmmaker friend and we thought about it as a screenplay and he liked the world I was creating. If there were heroes in this new world then we needed villains for them to come in conflict with. This became the idea of a cult called The Healing who had set their minds on world domination. A world where everyone thinks the same.

The fateful idea came to me to create a graphic novel where each chapter is written and illustrated by a different writer/artist team. This concept sounded great but what if I included some of the independent friends I'd made and team them up with some of the seasoned pros I knew? It seemed like a dream project but convincing creators to come on board wasn't easy because desire and time constraints hampered many of the great men and women, I invited to take part.

Despite that we put together a super team and I thought that with this great network we would do well in the crowd-funding arena. There was already a built-in network of fanbases for each of these creators and maybe by synergizing with numerous small fan-bases we could capitalize with a newly-formed big fan-base!

The Healing became a comic book project that is really our love letter to the superhero genre. The writers of these chapters include veterans of the industry as well as popular indie creators like Mike Baron (Nexus, The Punisher), Gary Scott Beatty (Gods of Aazurn), Mike Broder (GalaxyCon), Chuck Dixon (Batman, Birds of Prey), James Hudnall (Alpha Flight, The Age of Heroes), Jeff Kaufman (Big City Comics), Michael Kingston (Headlocked), Pat Martin (Students of the Unusual), Russ Rollins (WTKS-FM The Monsters in The Morning), Steven Shea (Abyssmal Entertainment), and John Taddeo (Zoom Suit).

Fan-favorite artists include Allen Bellman (Captain America, All-Winners), Sergio Cariello (The Lone Ranger, The Action Bible), Derec Donovan (Cyborg, Venom), Frank Fosco (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Drew Geraci (JLA), Jack Herbert (Superman Wonder Woman), Ben Herrera (Obey Me), Georges Jeanty (Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Barry Kitson (Empire, Doctor Strange), Val Mayerik (Howard the Duck, Man-Thing), Savannah McKendree (HorsePower G) Lee Oaks (Thunder Monkey), Alex Saviuk (Spider-man, Venom), Karl Story (Tom Strong), David Williams (Batman, Uncanny X-Force) and Larry Watts (Robyn Hood, Army of Darkness) and more!

Our Kickstarter campaign ran the month of February and I'm happy to sing the praises of our success but, as it was our first, there were many hard lessons learned. The first one was not to start your campaign at midnight because Kickstarter actually starts measuring your campaign at 11:59 pm and so your first day of the campaign is only a minute long and this messes with their platform's analytics when it comes to measuring your momentum and this determines if Kickstarter promotes you or not. The second was I was severely lacking in understanding how to communicate with potential backers and where to find them but I learned. I had so many mentors and veterans of Kickstarter and IndieGoGo help me that it warmed my heart for our sense of comic book community. Despite these pitfalls, we were funded in three days and many stretch goals were achieved. There seemed to be a remarkable appetite for a new superhero story. We plan to ship this incredible graphic novel in June! Rather than the kiss of death we are so excited to bring this story to life!