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Post by starbrand on Nov 29, 2008 16:30:33 GMT -5
For reasons of my own, which center mainly around wanting a fresh start, I've decided to drop the LandMark Comics name and relaunch as Surprising Comics. The Surprising Comics site is located at, not surprisingly, www.surprisingcomics.com. Here's the vision for the company as I posted to the site. A number of years ago I ran accross a comic book publisher on the internet called Blue Moon Comics. Blue Moon Comics was the brainchild of Lloyd Smith. I was immediately inspired. Lloyd published six, maybe eight ongoing bimonthly titles, each were 32 pages. Lloyd was publisher and EIC, and wrote a lot of the stories himself. Lloyd printed all the comics he published himself on his home computer, and Blue Moon Comics gained a degree of notoriety. Several times I read online interviews he did, and I remember it was even said some of Blue Moon's stuff was better than some main stream stuff. More than one Blue Moon creator went on to work in mainstream comics, and the portfolio-building exposure the creators gained being published by Blue Moon was certainly beneficial to them. I'm going to try to capture some of that same magic Blue Moon Comics had with Surprising Comics. It should be a fun ride. I hope you'll join me. Surprising Comics are black and white digest-sized comics.
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Post by azbatx on Nov 29, 2008 17:02:20 GMT -5
got anything to show us?
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Post by G on Nov 30, 2008 11:01:07 GMT -5
For reasons of my own, which center mainly around wanting a fresh start, I've decided to drop the LandMark Comics name and relaunch as Surprising Comics. The Surprising Comics site is located at, not surprisingly, www.surprisingcomics.com. Here's the vision for the company as I posted to the site. A number of years ago I ran accross a comic book publisher on the internet called Blue Moon Comics. Blue Moon Comics was the brainchild of Lloyd Smith. I was immediately inspired. Lloyd published six, maybe eight ongoing bimonthly titles, each were 32 pages. Lloyd was publisher and EIC, and wrote a lot of the stories himself. Lloyd printed all the comics he published himself on his home computer, and Blue Moon Comics gained a degree of notoriety. Several times I read online interviews he did, and I remember it was even said some of Blue Moon's stuff was better than some main stream stuff. More than one Blue Moon creator went on to work in mainstream comics, and the portfolio-building exposure the creators gained being published by Blue Moon was certainly beneficial to them. I'm going to try to capture some of that same magic Blue Moon Comics had with Surprising Comics. It should be a fun ride. I hope you'll join me. Surprising Comics are black and white digest-sized comics. Cool, I'll add this link to the Quick Links menu so we can keep up. I'd also would like to see and learn more about Landmark. I remember one time you posted some covers from the actual comics. Do you have any of the original artwork? What are the stories that came from creating that? How much did that cost to put together a book? I think you have been muting too much about this. There may be people out there that have visions of doing stuff like this themselves but never do it or never know what it takes. You have... That is why I'd like to see you say stuff about how you went from scratch to having a comic produced and a finished product. To be honest, I'm personally curious. But I also see it from my boards viewpoint. I think its great material for my board!
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Post by starbrand on Dec 2, 2008 21:51:11 GMT -5
Hey guys, I really appreciate your interest. There are times I wonder if I should've devoted my time away from my job more to my vision for a small press company rather than my mail order comics business, which really eats a lot of my time. I'll try to come back and write more about my experiences here over the next week or so.
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Post by starbrand on Dec 2, 2008 21:52:51 GMT -5
Im not overly adept on computers. I can scan and post something to my website, but I don't know how to scan and post something on a message board.
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Post by starbrand on Dec 2, 2008 22:01:23 GMT -5
There was a time LandMark Comics was kind of popping. The site had fairly strong traffic, and maybe 10-15 creators were involved. Unfortunately I was really struggling financially at the time and eventually ended things. I think we put out maybe 6 or 8 books. My original plan at LandMark, which is the same at Surprising, was to find creators to participate in exchange for exposure. That's the plan presently at Surprising Comics. I need a few creators to get going again. I take the stories we end up making and print them at Kinko's, and could end up picking and choosing stories at some point to print professionally. I could also occasionally hire a pro to do a cover or write a story or the like.
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Post by G on Dec 3, 2008 13:42:19 GMT -5
Although I can appreciate wanting a fresh start especially since I just quit my job in tough economic times, when it comes to comics, I have a hard time understanding why you wouldnt want to continue with Landmark especially since you already have published works under that name. I would think its more impressive to add to that collection of books than to have to start over and 1 book would be that, 1 book with no other history around it. It's not easy to do what you've been doing. I wouldnt want to separate books I did now from ones I have done in the past. That is just me. I could re-evolve with what has happened in the past, but I think Landmark already has a legacy and I would want to continue with that. Thats just me.
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Post by starbrand on Dec 3, 2008 22:34:27 GMT -5
Although I can appreciate wanting a fresh start especially since I just quit my job in tough economic times, when it comes to comics, I have a hard time understanding why you wouldnt want to continue with Landmark especially since you already have published works under that name. I would think its more impressive to add to that collection of books than to have to start over and 1 book would be that, 1 book with no other history around it. It's not easy to do what you've been doing. I wouldnt want to separate books I did now from ones I have done in the past. That is just me. I could re-evolve with what has happened in the past, but I think Landmark already has a legacy and I would want to continue with that. Thats just me. Hmmm. I'm going to consider this point. It may be a bit psychological, but I feel I'd like a clean start. I'd like to take my LandMark experience and add to it, maybe even top it, and want to move ahead with Surprising Comics. There's still plenty of time to think about your point, though, as we've several months or more before putting out a comic.
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Post by starbrand on Dec 5, 2008 8:38:20 GMT -5
Creative Chris Tinkler, a good friend of mine, has joined Surprising Comics as senior writer. He takes a lot of pressure off me, as he not only brings a lot of creative juices into play at Surprising, he helps run the company in many ways. I bounced the relaunch idea off him as a restart with a new company and he liked it. LandMark was a series of trial and error, and Surprising should go much smoother now that we've got that experience. One of the main reasons to go with Surprising instead of LandMark is we had creators start stories and then stop working on them, never finishing the stories they started. I don't intend to let that happen with Surprising. Our stories will all be self-contained, unless it's something I feel certain the creators will stick around to finish.
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Post by starbrand on Dec 13, 2008 21:59:05 GMT -5
Work will begin shortly on a Surprising Comics exclusive story premiering a character we could only call The Maniacal Manster. I can only say the artist and co-creator is someone very familiar to those who read this board. Is that enough of a hint, oh unsung ones?
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