Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, kickstarter

Kickstart from the Heart: Clint Hilinski of Pirate Queen of the Star Raider

Published Fri, 17 Aug 2012 08:00:55 -0500

Bleeding Cool's Kickstarter Correspondent, Shawn Demumbrum has lead three Kickstarter campaigns to launch comic books, two successfully funded and one that wasn't. Each week he will point out some of the unique Kickstarter projects that wouldn't normally be published by the big comic book companies, but deserve your attention. Shawn's current project Break the Walls: Stories Inspired by the Songs of the Pixies is also being funded through Kickstarter.

Pirate Queen of the Star Raider was spotlighted in last week's Kickstart from the Heart. With only a few days left in his campaign, I talked with Clint Hilinski about his comic.

Tell me about Pirate Queen of the Star Raider. The description makes it seems like Star Wars if it were based on a pirate genre instead of a spaghetti western.

Good, then I wasn't too subtle. I was definitely going for a Star Wars vibe, kind of Star Wars meets Pirates of the Caribbean. I'm a big fan of J. Scott Campbell, if you didn't notice in the art, and I liked what he did with Danger Girl having it kind of be a cross between James Bond and GIJoe with hot girls, so that definitely influenced Pirate Queen. Plus I was 9 when Star Wars came out, so like a lot of people it will probably influence everything I do in life. It had that kind of effect.

This isn't the first comic book you've worked on. Is it your first self-published comic? Tell us about the comics you've worked on previously.

Yeah, this is my first creator owned work, I've kicked around the industry a bit. I like to think of myself as a pencil for hire. I've worked for everybody from DC and Dark Horse, to Image and Devil's Due, Arcana and Bleeding Cool's own backer in Avatar. I worked on JLA at DC, Xena at Dark Horse, also Voltron, GI Joe, Kiss, Lady Death, Youngblood back in the day, and probably one of the coolest was Greatest American Hero, I got to meet the whole cast and do my first panel with them at San Diego, so that was pretty damn cool.

Had you considered pitching this book to a publisher or was it always your intent to self-publish it?

Yeah, actually I was going to probably go with a publisher when it's done, I've got pretty good connections with my prior work, and my experience with self publishing is pretty limited, I know there's a lot of mistakes you can make and I wanted to try and avoid those. They can be expensive mistakes.

What challenges have you faced with the Kickstarter campaign?

Mostly just my own ignorance of the process, from putting the rewards for pledges together in a really confusing manner, to not having a better idea of how to use 'social media' to its best ability. Hell, I started twitter and facebook the day I started Kickstarter. So I've been learning a lot as I go. Which has been great, but I can see the potential and a lot of opportunities I missed just because of lack of experience.

The book seems like it is your comic book that would be accessible for any comic reader of mainstream comics. What went into the decision to create regular and topless prints for the comic?

Simple supply and demand. I'm all about capitalism at its best. The book was always going to push the edge of being a 'hot babe' book, but no nudity in the book. But with the prints, there was plenty of questions about that and I am trying to raise money, so you want to give the reader what they want. It's pretty tasteful and harmless in my opinion, just topless stuff. There's plenty of artists out there making a good living at conventions drawing the same stuff.

Graphic novels seem to have more success through Kickstarter than single issues. Your campaign funds both 4 single issues and a trade paperback. What went into your decision to fund the entire series vs. funding the first issue?

I've got to plead ignorance again. This is the point in the interview where I sound like a moron. But, yeah, I should've done more research and this is one of the mistakes that I mentioned earlier. Looking back now, I'd have set that up differently.

As someone who might have an established fanbase based on your previous work, how did you mobilize support for the book? What kinds of promotion have you done for the book? What has been the most successful for you?

Well, finally dipping my toes into social media was a really good start. I'd avoided getting into that but finally enough people telling me what a great tool it could be, especially for comic creators, to allow fans to interact with them, I just couldn't avoid it any longer. And it really has been great. And luckily we've got a great convention up here in Minnesota, the MCBA throws the SpringCon and FallCon each year, and they've been great for getting the word out for me also.

What are you plans for the book if you don't successfully meet your Kickstarter goal?

Learn from my mistakes. If it doesn't make it this time, I'll know what I did wrong and Pirate Queen will be back, better than before.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. How can people find out more about Pirate Queen of the Star Raider?