Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, Holidaze, kickstarter

Holidaze, It Could Be Alright

Published Sun, 21 Jun 2015 15:00:37 -0500

Holidaze: Volume 1. Creators: Dave Dellecese (Writer), Andrew Cieslinski (Artist, Colorist and Letterer). Close Date: July 15, 2015, Publishing Date: October 2015.

Dave Dellecese writes,

About 12-14 years ago, I was in college in New England studying screenwriting and film. My aspirations were huge. Before long I'd be directing the next sleeper comedy hit, palling around with Kevin Smith, and before I graduated, I'd make a short film about holiday characters hanging out at the same bar.

Can you believe it? None of those things happened.

I ended up changing my degree to Broadcast Journalism and spent several years working in the field (as a newspaper reporter, and for the longest part of that career, as a television journalist), leaving that holiday bar an unfinished idea gathering cobwebs in the back of my brain.

It was more than a decade later, while working in television news, that a friend of mine made a suggestion. He knew I was feeling a bit run down by the all-day, all-consuming news cycle, and all the tragedies, deaths, assaults, etc that go with it, and I needed something else to write about. An outlet for something lighter.

He suggested meeting with a mutual friend who was an artist and seeing if we could come up with a comic book idea.

So, on a cold, rainy afternoon under the canopy of a local cafe, I met with artist Andrew Cieslinski, who was looking for his own outlet for his art abilities. I made several pitches, none of which hit the mark with him. It seemed like this wasn't going to work.

Then, in the back of my head came that old idea from college for a short film about the bar where holiday characters hung out. Andrew liked it and with the help of digital comics services like comiXology Submit andAmazon Digital Services/Kindle, Holidaze, the comic book series was born.

The first issue was essentially what the plot of the short film in college was going to be. Santa passes out drunk on Christmas Eve, and fellow mythical icons (because why just limit it to holiday icons?) like Cupid, the Tooth Fairy, St. Paddy and the Easter Bunny, step up to try and fix the holiday, only to make it worse.

It was no monthly and we knew it wouldn't, or couldn't, be. We both had full time jobs. I had a family on the way, which now is expanding even more. But we devoted whatever time we could and kept at it, anyway. A new issue came out whenever it could be completed.

The tone of our stories changed a bit. The very early stuff was a bit more 'extreme' (hey, look, holiday icons being bad!), but the nice thing about writing a series is that you have the opportunity to find your voice as you go, developing the characters. It's taken us a little while to get there, but I think we're finally finding that in our more recent efforts, most notably The Odd Couple, which beyond the hijinks between Cupid and the Easter Bunny trying to live together is, at its heart, about friendship and tolerance for each other's flaws.

It's terrible of me not to remember, but somewhere, during the film school days, I read a quote that the best way to learn movie making is by making movies. That meant regardless of your resources, you just do it. Because you learn as you go.

I think the same is true of comics and there's no better time to do that than now, when you have the ability to get those comics into people's hands like never before.

Andrew and I are still learning. We've been very fortunate that our book has received some really great reviews (and sometimes, some lackluster ones), but every issue we make, we learn more about how to do it.

Five issues later, we've got 140 pages worth of material (made up of stories and bonus material) that we've put together into a Trade Paperback collection and are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to create.

The campaign serves to not just cover printing cost, but offer some form of delayed compensation to Andrew, for all the tireless work he's put in penciling, inking, coloring and lettering the series thus far.

Naturally, I'd love to see it succeed. Heck, I'd be so happy, I'd do the Dance of Joy. (Come on, you remember Perfect Strangers and the "Dance of Joy," right?) I'd even call it a Bleeding Cool Kickstarter Goal, in fact. If this campaign can somehow reach from the depths of the murky swamp to 50% in the next week, I'll do the Dance of Joy. In fact, I'll do the Dance of Joy with one of the book's characters and post it to the KS page.