Whatever happened to The Three Princes?

Near the end of August 2008, I became involved in a crime comics anthology project. My comic that would appear in the anthology was The Three Princes, the creation of which has been covered extensively within my blog. The last post on the topic was March 15, 2009 in which I stated the artwork had been completed.

I was very excited about the project and very fond of the story I had written, which was then illustrated expertly by Manoel Magalhães. You might think the lack of updates means the project is dead, but it actually is still very much a reality.

The Three Princes is one of four stories that will appear in the anthology. It was also the first to be completed. Artwork on two of the remaining three stories was completed this summer and the final story’s artwork should be wrapped up before winter sets in. All of us involved are still very excited about the project. We had hoped to have the anthology published before the end of 2009, but it is looking more likely that it will be an early 2010 release. I can also say we originally intended to self-publish the anthology but due to the quality of the finished material we are now looking for a publisher.

I am sure I will have further updates in the near future.

The Artwork is Finished

Manoel Magalhães sent me the last page of The Three Princes earlier this week. As you may recall, Manoel has been drawing the pages out of sequence. The final page he sent me was, in fact, page 19, which is just past the halfway point in the thirty page story. The arrival of this page means the artwork for The Three Princesis finished. All thirty pages have been pencilled and inked by Manoel.

I zipped the thirty pages of artwork and sent them via yousendit.com to Ed Brisson, who is doing the lettering. He’s currently working on a client project so he will get started on The Three Princes in early to mid April.

Here is panel 4 from Page 19 of The Three Princes. This character is Paddy Duke. Who he is and why he has a gun I am not going to say. You will have to read the comic when it is available.

Artwork by Manoel Magalhães

Diamond benchmark increased

Manoel is very close to being finished the artwork on The Three Princes.  He has six more pages to go and then it will be Ed Brisson’s turn; he is doing the lettering. The three other stories planned for the anthology are progressing nicely as well, with art chores on Dino Caruso’s Six O’Clock Noose almost being finished. With so much excitement building, it was disheartening to learn in mid-January that Diamond Comics (the number one distributor of comics) raised their purchase benchmark from $1500 USD to $2500 USD. The $1500 USD was already considered too steep for many small publishers. To compare, the benchmark that had been around until 2005 was $600 USD.

Let us take a step back for a moment in case you are not familiar with Diamond Comics. They have a mononlopy on the distribution of comics. They are the power. You want to get your comics into comic shops your only real option is Diamond.

Ed Brisson, the organizer of the crime comics anthology in which The Three Princes will appear, explained what this new benchmark means for our project. As a publisher (New Reliable Press is his outfit) he gets 36% of the cover price of a comic he is publishing. If the comic was listed at $12.99 USD (which would be a good price for the crime comics anthology), the publisher would get $4.68 USD per copy. That means we would need to sell 535 copies through Diamond in order to reach the new benchmark of $2500 USD (4.68×535=$2503.80). If the benchmark is not reached, Diamond will still fill the order but would not carry any further books in the series. There is also a low threshold, which is $1500 USD, or, in our example, 320 copies ordered. If the book performs below the low threshold the listing is cancelled and Diamond will not fill the orders.

32o t0 535 copies sold might not seem like a lot but for a small publisher looking to sell a book by a bunch of unknowns (relatively speaking) it is a daunting task because DC, Marvel and Dark Horse have the majority share of comic sales, with Image, IDW and a handful of others making up the rest. The outlook is a grim one for small publishers. Ed Brisson also happily reminded us that the world economy is currently in the toilet, which means comic shops and readers are tightening up their belts and are thus less likely to order or buy comics from smaller publishers.

I do feel our anthology project is a good one, with strong stories and great artwork, and if we do not manage to meet the benchmarks that just means each creator will have to beat the streets and get the comic into readers’ hands in other ways. Still, this is a stinging blow not just to us but to all creators looking to get their comics into comic shops.

The Shootout

There is within The Three Princes an intense shootout. Imagine the sudden roar of approaching vehicles, the rattle of tommy-guns echoing off the buildings that line the narrow city street. A man goes down and his companions rush to his aide, one helping him off the ground and into the safety of a vehicle, the others laying down covering fire with their own machine guns.

The whole affair unfolds over three pages. As Manoel submitted the page sketches I could see the elements of my script were accounted for but something just didn’t seem right. The placement of one of the vehicles and the characters’ positions relative to it were confusing me. There appeared to be an issue with continuity.

We exchanged a number of emails about these three pages, I describing what I felt was wrong and Manoel trying to explain how he approached and interpreted the script. We were both communicating openly and honestly but we just couldn’t get those pages to click even after a couple major revisions.

Then Manoel had an idea. He drew a sketch that showed the position of the vehicles and the characters during the scene. I took one look at it and realized why Manoel and I weren’t seeing eye to eye. I envisioned The Boxer’s car as being parked, and Manoel was envisioning it as being in motion, meaning that Twitchy was pulling up to pick up The Boxer, and in doing so was shielding Grady and The Boxer from the Italians’ gunfire.

I was trying to see the pages as I had written them. I wasn’t thinking about how Manoel drew them. I wasn’t seeing those pages as he saw them. Once I saw his sketch though it clicked and I could understand the artwork. All that remained were a couple minor tweaks and then we had three stellar pages. Manoel has since inked those pages and they are among my favorites in The Three Princes. 

Shootout sketch by Manoel Magalhães

Halfway there!

At the end of November, Manoel Magalhães inked the fifteenth page of The Three Princes, signaling the halfway point of our project and cuing me to pay him. As agreed to in our terms, I paid Manoel half of the agreed to amount upon the completion of the first fifteen pages. We had decided to use xoom.com to transact. I am happy to report the service was easy to use and that Manoel received his money in less than a week. I’d recommend xoom.com to anyone needing to send money to somone in Brazil.