Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dc, Kablam, kickstarter, The Uncanny, William Hodge

The Uncanny And How A Creator Decided To Give It One More Try

William Hodge writes for Bleeding Cool:

Villains have all the fun.

"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." ― Harvey Dent

I love comic books.  I have been addicted to them since I was 5 years old.

I have a twelve year old son who wants to create video games when he grows up.  There was a time he wanted to be a professional wrestler and he's also wanted to be an animator.  He even wanted to be a teacher.  Most kids go through this.  At one point or another they want to be  a cowboy or an astronaut.  Not me.  All my life all I ever wanted to be was a comic book artist.  Ever since my mind was blown by a group of teenagers in a super hero club in the future, led by Superboy, I have always loved comic books.

In my early adult years I attended conventions, showing my art samples to editors and any professional who was generous enough to give some of their time for a critique.  Despite the fact that this was the extreme 90s and the industry was booming, I was barely able to get any work.  I did a Showcase '94 story for DC Comics and I did some work on Dr. Weird for Gary Carlson at Caliber Press.  Eventually, adult life got in the way and real world work took priority over finding comic book work.  There was less and less time to work on my skills.  I was trapped in the matrix.  A slave to the real world.  And before you know it, years have passed and the dream has faded.

I tried to walk away from it.  A few times.  But you never forget your first love.  The desire to create was still there.  The fire still burned.  A couple of years ago, when the government contract I was working on as a web developer came to an end, I found myself out of work, but with time on my hands.  I decided to give one more shot at being a comic book creator.  I vowed that I would be productive and produce my comic book.  I sat down and dusted off my super hero team that had been with me since my youth.

This is how "The Uncanny" was born.  The Uncanny is a different take, my take, on the super hero genre.  They did not get their powers from radiation, accident or mutation.  All of the members of The Uncanny have achieved their powers through achievement, discipline and hard work.

Now, a little over two years later, I have pubilshed 7 issues of the comic book and 3 collections.  I did everything on the books.  Wrote, illustrated, lettered and even colored the covers. When you don't have the money to pay people, you have do things yourself.  As my mother in law says, "If you don't have a dog, you have to hunt with the cat."   I am very proud of the work I have done.  I used Ka-Blam, an on demand printer to publish.  This way I didn't have to print up 500 copies of my book, like how it was back in the day.  It is very inexpensive to get a book on their site, Indyplanet.com, for sale.

Which brings me to why I am here.  I have joined the Kickstarter revolution.  I consider it a revolution, because it puts the power back into the hands of the people and the creators.  Out of pure love for comic books, there are many people who produce comic books and web comics for very little or no money.  Kickstarter has changed that.  There is now an alternative to going through the direct market.

A big part of promoting your book, is going to conventions and getting to meet the fans face to face and sell directly to them.  What I want to do with this Kickstarter is print up a larger print run for all of my published issues.  It takes a lot more money to print up 10 different books.  They will have special convention only covers.  As for the people who pledge and back me, they will get copies of the books with special Kickstarter only covers.  The covers will interlock to make one large image of The Uncanny and their villains that appear in the series.

Another cool reward I have is the Villain package.  I am creating and publishing the latest story about The Uncanny through my updates.  Everyday I add a new page to the story.  At the end, the villain will be revealed on the final page and I have included a reward level where you can be the villain.  I will draw your likeness onto the bad guy and I will create a cover, plus give you 10 copies of the issue.  With on demand publishing, I can do more than one version, so there are 5 slots available for $250.

What I would like to offer to the Bleeding Cool people who pledge and help spread the word this weekend, I have a $25 pledge level where your picture will be in the book.  Today I published page 10 where the Monitor Headed Guardians have appeared and on their screens are pictures of people who support this.  The Uncanny will be fighting more of these Guardians over the next few pages.  If you pledge, the cool thing about this is that you don't have to wait months to see yourself in the story.  Starting Monday, I will publish page 12 which will have the pictures of the first to pledge this weekend and more pages will be published the preceeding day.

My goal is $3000 and I am about $1300 away.  If I can hit my $3000, I can start adding some cool stretch goals.  I will send a choice of three cool items and let the fans vote on what they would want.  Bookmarks, trading cards, t-shirts, the sky's the limit.

So, if you'd like to have some fun and do something a little different, stop by my Kickstarter page and check out The Uncanny:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/williamhodge/the-uncanny-convention-special-comics

To catch up on the story, I have been publishing the pages at my site:

http://wyldcardstudio.com/uncanny/?webcomic1_storyline=the-uncanny-kickstarter

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