Comics - Doing it Yourself

It's been quite an amazing experience to reprint all of the Solar Wind comics in two professional looking volumes and I have to say I'm only sorry I didn't do it sooner. Perhaps if the 250-page collections had come about earlier I might have continued. But that's a big perhaps :)

However I can't help but think that companies like Lulu.com represent a real revolution for people putting out their own comics. No longer hindered by problems of low print runs and able to put out books as professional looking as any publisher. It makes the creative process democratic, which is probably going to make many publishers increasingly nervous about their 'meritocracy' as time goes on.

Yes, there will be a lot of rubbish produced as a result, but then, there already is a lot of rubbish in the professional arena, even if it is higher than average quality (and nicely edited) rubbish. When J K Rowling can be driven into depression by seemingly endless rejection notes before going on to become one of the most successful novelists of our age, then you have to start wondering how much chance has played in giving us or depriving us of many great untold stories as well as the whims and prejudices of publishers.

I hope to put an small article on the site in due course (once OVS4 is in the can) about self publishing on lulu. In fact I hope to put a few articles about my experiences of putting out my own comics as I get a few enquires about this from time to time, and do my best to answer them (please let me know if my comments are of any use).

It's going to be interesting to see where we end up in five years time. Chaos, strangeness and madness in all likelihood. Excellent...