Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Evan Young, kickstarter, Lou Iovino, stephen king, The Last West

Two Ad Men, One Professor, And A Comic Book Called The Last West

Evan Young and Lou Iovino write for Bleeding Cool:

Let's be fair and put full disclosure at the top: Our names are Evan Young and Lou Iovino and we work in advertising. But by the time you're done reading this, we hope to not only have your sympathy but also your support for our comic on Kickstarter.

Now is when you say, "Hi Evan and Lou"—as a way of welcoming us, two ad men, into the warmth of your hearts. (Because we know you love advertising, and you have a secure and cuddly place in your souls for things like Facebook interrupter ads for Lucky Slots. You do, right? Right?)

But we digress.

We are also, in our own hearts, comic book creators. And our latest and greatest story we are desperately trying, through Kickstarter, to bring into the world is a 10-issue original comic book series called The Last West.

(A quick synopsis: The Last West is a 10-issue alternate-history comic book that imagines a world where all technological and cultural progress ground to a halt in 1945, but only one man knows why. More details at bottom.)

So, to put it mildly, we live in two very different worlds each and every day. Advertising by day, comic books by night.

Sure, we could try to connect these worlds by saying "it's all about storytelling." A 30-second spot with a cute teddy bear falling into a warm, inviting, fluffy towel is just as much a story as Stephen King's The Stand, right?

But, that'd be stretching it. The day job, the advertising one, is about getting your money into someone else's pocket. We don't love it, but it pays the bills.

The night job—our passion—is the one we love. And it's not about moving money; it's about moving hearts and minds.

So rather than fabricate the way our two worlds connect, we thought we'd tell you the truth. The truth about advertising, first, then the truth about our comic book.

3 truths about advertising:

1: Advertising is exactly 375% less interesting than you think it is. Matt Weiner and his evil offspring, Don Draper, are liars.

2: Nine times out of 10, if you just make the client's logo bigger, they go from thinking you're a moron to a steely-eyed, creative, marketing genius. It's really that easy.

3: The key to selling something – be it a sugary beverage, sneakers, cars, pharmaceutical products, or virtually any idea at all – is to find someone more convincing and downright awesome than you to sell it for you. Then you let them do it and don't get in their way.

1 secret about The Last West:

It's awesome. To tell you how awesome, we'd like to introduce you to a man named John Barber, PhD.

John is on the faculty of the Digital Media and Culture Program at the University of Washington in Vancouver, WA. He uses comic books and graphic novels regularly in his classroom, and is a rare find in the world: a comic-book-loving serious academic.

We sent the script for The Last West and the first two issues to Dr. Barber. And this is what he wrote for us to share with the world:

"The Last West is full of potential to arrest the slow but visible loss we are seeing in the world of comics; the loss of compelling narrative arcs featuring characters with whom we would actually want to discuss story aspects or consequences of interaction; the loss of graphic design, drawing, and coloring in just the right combination to provide engaging narrative visualization, edgy and cool yet still realistic enough to provide unmistakable immersion.

The Last West is a pioneering effort, designed to stretch our awareness of what can result from the overlay of more traditional literary genres onto the comics medium. It is art. It is literature.

It is, one hopes, the first of many more graphic novels written by Evan and Lou that we can read in the future.

For those reasons, you, as a fan of full-on awesome graphic novels, should know about, care about, and support Evan and Lou's effort to publish The Last West."

How could we possibly advertise this story to you any better than Dr. Barber just did? (And if you want, you can read his full essay here: www.lastwestcomic.com.)

The answer is… We can't. Unless maybe we hired Christina Hendricks.

So here we are. If you've gotten this far, we'd love for you to go a little further.

The Last West is on Kickstarter right now, and we would love to have your support for our comic and your preorder of an Absolute Edition. We have surpassed our initial funding goal, and it's looking like this very real project of ours will indeed come alive. Which is amazing, and fantastic, and terrifying. But perhaps, we think, not as amazing and fantastic as the very special Bleeding Cool Stretch Goal we have literally just added completely without Rich Johnston's permission:

If we hit $14,500, we will have Rich drawn into Volume 1 of The Last West… as a Dust-Bowl-era American tractor salesman named Roy West, the man responsible for the Dust Bowl in America!

Sound like fun? It does to us.

You can find out more about The Last West, our full team and our other exclusive rewards and stretch goals, here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evanyoung/the-last-west-relaunched-volume-one?ref=live

But you'd better hurry. The campaign ends on Wednesday, August 21st!

Thanks for your time, and thank you very much in advance for your support.

Sincerely,

Evan and Lou

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