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-Hello, and welcome to "Book Lust".
I'm Nancy Pearl.
My guest today at Folio in downtown Seattle is
Kel McDonald,
a comic artist and editor.
Kel, thank you for joining us.
-I'm happy to be here.
-I know you're in Portland,
so you're probably getting the same terrible weather there,
rain wise, that we are here, but --
-Yep. -...we're used to it, I'm sure.
So your new book,
the new book that you edited
is "Failure to Launch: A Tour of Ill-Fated Futures".
I love -- First of all,
what drew me to the book was the title and the subtitle.
-Yeah. -Did you have trouble coming --
So let's talk about the genesis of this book
because I found it just fascinating and fun.
-So the way -- I'm the managing editor at Iron Circus.
And the way we usually pick our topics for our anthologies
is Spike, the owner and founder of Iron Circus, will say, like,
kind of a general thing that she wants to do,
and then we'll like -- that's broader,
and then we'll refine it and go back and forth, as, like,
"Is this too niche or is this one too broad?"
Because we really like to try to find that nice spot
where the stories aren't going to be too repetitive,
but it's also easy to sell to a person.
-Mm-hmm.
-So Spike really likes weird history.
And I like to hear stories about --
It depends on the history story,
but I also like to dabble in it a little bit.
And I especially like history about stuff
that didn't go anywhere or that, like --
Because people always talk about the success stories.
And one of the things, like,
while we were refining it is there's a YouTuber
I really like Hbomberguy, who --
He is in "Failure to Launch".
He wrote a story.
And while talking about how broad we want it to be,
he has an older video that he put up
that is about the guy
who did the programming for a video game called
"Dragon's Lair"
and how that guy basically went bankrupt
after that one big success.
And so if we have some modern examples,
the thing about that guy's story in particular
is a lot of the stuff he wanted to do,
our iPhone or Alexa can do now.
He just wanted it to happen in the '80s,
so the tech wasn't quite there.
And so you have stuff that's, like, completely ridiculous.
Like, there's the baby birthing machine
that's mentioned, trying to use centrifugal force
to help women in childbirth.
And that is, like, all bad ideas all the way down.
But then you have also ideas like, "This thing would be cool,
but we just haven't quite gotten there yet to make it viable."
And so using those as sort of the two benchmarks
was kind of our setting.
-The ridiculous to the sublime,
basically.
Did you then reach out to different comic artists or
writers that you --
-Usually, we invite about ten people,
and then we have open submissions.
So like I mentioned the YouTuber, Hbomberguy,
we invited him. He was one of the invites.
And then we also invited Ryan North,
who has won several Eisners and written some best sellers.
And I actually drew his story in the "Failure to Launch" book.
And then we use those sort of bigger names to be like,
"You could be in a book with so and so"
to get people to submit their pitch ideas.
And then we go through them, and with this one,
we made sure that they were things that actually happened.
We had a few people that accidentally submitted
sci-fi pitches in general, rather than,
like, just ideas that never got off the ground, non-fiction.
And we have, like,
a process that we go through to pick people.
-So when those people
who submitted science fictiony stuff,
do you, like, save those for another anthology,
you know?
-No, because we don't always know what
the next anthology is going to be.
So, I'm in the middle of editing the next anthology,
and it's called "Perfect Crime Party".
And that one's, like, comedic crime stories, like,
tonally like the movie "Clue".
So those sci-fi pitches,
like, they're not relevant to the next anthology,
and stuff that got rejected from "Perfect Crime Party"
will probably not be relevant to the next one after that.
So if they are people that are really good,
we do, like, maybe we want to reach out to them
for a future anthology,
but we don't necessarily, like keep --
-You don't save -- Right. Okay.
And how did you -- How did you get into all of this?
Like, did you did you begin -- Were you a reader as a kid
or did you --
-Oh, I actually -- I'm very dyslexic,
so I hated reading as a kid.
-I hear that a lot, actually.
-Until I discovered audio books,
I didn't really, like, consume a lot of prose.
And then, I started to read comics
after I tried making them.
So in 2005, I ran a webcomic for 12 -- Starting in 2005,
I ran a webcomic that ran for 12 years.
And while that did take a lot of time,
I didn't want to put all my career eggs in one basket
with this one title.
So I started an anthology comic series called
"Cautionary Fables & Fairytales",
which Iron Circus also puts out.
But I was originally self publishing it,
and sort of the fourth volume into that,
Iron Circus picked up the series,
kept reprinted the old ones that were falling out of print.
And then I started to edit other anthologies
for Iron Circus,
since I had proven that I can run an anthology
on my own successfully.
-And go back to when you were a child.
Did you draw all the time?
I mean, was that -- -Yeah. All the time.
-Yeah? -All the time. Yeah.
Got yelled at by teachers for drawing in class.
-But the comics at that time, like,
when I think about the comics when I was a kid,
it was, like, "Little Lulu",
and you know, things -- Have you ever heard of "Little Lulu"?
-Yeah, I've heard of "Little Lulu". So the thing is,
is I also -- I majored in comic books in college.
So even the comics that I was not familiar with as a kid,
I got a history lesson of comics.
So it was a major at Savannah College of Art and Design.
-Uh-huh.
And then -- Wow.
Could you choose your own, like,
major there in the sense of what you were going to specialize in?
I mean, were there like,
artists of all kinds at that --
So, Savannah College of Art and Design
was -- they have preset majors that you pick.
And so I say I majored in comics,
but technically, my degree says sequential art.
So that's comics,
but it's also, like, how to storyboard for movies.
So some of the folks in the sequential art department
ended up getting jobs storyboarding commercials.
And so it was more about using images in sequence
to tell a story clearly.
But there are also animation majors, illustration majors,
fashion majors, architecture majors, like, graphic design --
-But you knew that you really wanted to be --
you wanted to do comics? -Yes.
-And do you ever think about how fortunate in many ways
it is that you're living now
because of the intersection of comics and technology,
you know, like your webcomic,
you couldn't have done in the 1980s?
-I started a webcomic at just the right time
because right now, due to social media being in a big flux --
But people have been -- There are some people out there
who think the Internet is Facebook
or the Internet is Twitter.
And it's been that way for, like, over a decade.
So you have a bunch of newer artists now
who are so used to using social media to promote their stuff
that they don't have their own website.
So as Twitter falls apart,
and Facebook has gotten --
their algorithm is weird, and Instagram
won't put stuff in order, like --
Basically, they're at the whims of the algorithm.
Whereas when I started my comic,
it was a few years before those became a big force.
So I do have my own website.
And I also --
Ads on websites used to pay better before the pivot
to video movement.
So I actually made a decent amount of money
off of my webcomic
when I was starting out compared to other people
who were starting out in comics.
But now, ads don't really pay that well on your own website
because Facebook and Google's algorithm stuff
has sort of dampened them down a bunch,
or there's priority for video.
And also --
So that's sort of kickstarted things for me.
And then I was there when Kickstarter first started.
When I was ready to have a book made, Kickstarter was there,
or like, I think I was the third comic project on Kickstarter.
-Oh, wow.
-And so I was good enough at it that even while in college,
one of my professors asked me to do, like,
a presentation on how to start a webcomic.
And recently, I was asked back to SCAD
to give a similar presentation.
And now instead of being like,
"These are the things I used to get the word out
about my comic,"
I'm like, "These are things I use that don't exist anymore."
Like, "Here's a slide show of Internet companies
that came and went in the time that I was making my webcomic."
So the lesson is diversify and make sure
that you have your own website
because they could -- any other website
you don't control could get sold to an idiot and fall apart.
-Do you find that you have a kind of advantage
in the sense that you write
and draw your own -- all that material is yours?
It's not that you -- -Yeah.
-Talk about that.
Talk about, you know, what that would be like
or what you understand from other people.
Like some of the -- in "Failure to Launch",
I don't know how many of the stories,
histories that are in there are written
and drawn by different people.
But there are, you know?
And what is that --
I can't imagine --
I know children's picture books are,
you know, the artist and the illustrator
and the writer frequently, most often are not the same person.
-I think that doing both helps me as an editor
because one thing is that a lot of editors, especially now,
if they're transferring to prose,
into graphic novels and comics,
they don't have the vocabulary to articulate
what's maybe not working in art. So talking to other artists,
they have shared with me frustrations
that they get notes to change stuff
when the drawing is almost done.
So they have to redo everything.
And I had an artist
that I worked for compliment me on the fact
that I only asked for big story changes in the script stage
because I understood, like, how long it takes to draw a drawing.
It takes much less time to write,
"They walk down the street"
than it takes to draw people walking down the street.
-Right.
-And so if there is, like,
a plot hole or, like, a theme isn't resonating,
I try to catch that in the script stage.
And with big art changes,
I try to do it in the pencil, rougher stage,
and try to save my notes for the stage that we're focusing on,
so that way, there's minimal revisions
when the book is close to done.
-Mm-hmm.
-So, like, for -- if someone is sending me colors,
I will only give notes on the colors.
And also, doing both I think helps me recognize,
you have stuff -- like, I mentioned Hbomberguy.
This was his first comic.
And since he's used to writing video essays on YouTube,
he can just talk forever.
And obviously, he can clean up the script,
but he doesn't worry about the physical space
that the text takes up.
So there was some back and forth with him with, like,
"This page has too much text on it,
so you need to break it into two pages" and stuff like that.
And I feel like I frequently -- If I have someone
who's writing their first comic,
that is a frequent note that I end up giving,
is just think about how much space the text is taking up.
-So when somebody sends you a manuscript for one of these,
did people send in what they saw as the finished product
in the sense that they sent you,
you know, the text and the pictures?
-So it will say, like, "Panel one --
they're walking down a street.
Panel two -- this character says this.
Panel two -- close up on this character."
So it's closer to a movie script.
-Mm-hmm.
-And not everyone likes to submit scripts like that.
One of the benefits for someone who is
both an artist and a writer is I tell them
they can send me, like, a very rough layout,
like, kind of stick figure theater
and just put the dialogue in so I can at least see
how much dialogue is going on the page.
-I thought that one of the great -- one
of the best things about "Failure to Launch"
is that for somebody
who isn't really deep into the world of comics and, you know,
graphic stuff,
it just is an introduction to so many different comic artists.
And what you see, you know, just sort of paging through the book
is the variety of illustrations.
I mean, I thought that was just, like, amazing.
And, you know, I started making lists of artists and writers
that I wanted to check out more,
which I'm sure was one of the goals.
-And that's kind of the deal with these anthologies,
is making sure
that we have that large variety.
And part of why we take submissions is
their submission might be the first time we hear about them.
So it also helps us know who we might want to invite
to pitch a full book to us
rather than just a short story in one of our anthologies.
-Right. Yeah.
Do you have a -- How do you feel about, you know,
talking about this -- I mean,
we always talk about graphic novels,
and so many of what's come out are not novels.
You know, they're graphic.
And, you know, there's been this sort of trying
to figure out what to call them,
and indeed, where to keep them. Yeah, go ahead.
-So, I feel like when I talk to other comic creators,
there's a mix of do they like the term graphic novel or not?
And I do like graphic novel,
but I would like it if graphic became, like,
the adjective rather than
graphic novel being the catch all.
So like graphic memoir, graphic novela, graphic short stories.
I'm not particularly fond of the word comic
because it implies comedic.
And while there are some jokes in my comics,
they're not usually that funny. I prefer a graphic novel just
because I think comic implies humor.
-Uh-huh. Right.
-And also people to start saying graphic memoir,
graphic novela, graphic nonfiction.
Something like that.
-Why do you think that there are so many graphic memoirs?
And why do you think
that that's a particularly -- a genre of writing
that is particularly suited
to these, to the graphic part?
They're easier to promote?
Okay, talk about that.
-Because the creator talking about their life
is also the plot of the book.
So you don't have to ask creators
about their life and the story.
You just have to ask them about their life.
So it's like the creator is also
the walking advertisement for the book.
So it makes advertising it easier.
-Do you include autobiographical stuff
in the comics that you do?
-I don't like to do auto-bio stuff.
I like to write about werewolves and vampires.
-[ Laughs ]
But, like, I know talking to fiction writers, for example,
you know, while they're not -- Well, my own example,
my own experience writing fiction is that,
you know, you borrow a little bit of this
from somebody and a little bit of that
and a little bit of yourself and, you know,
mix it all together in a blender and out comes something new.
Not a werewolf or a vampire, but --
-I do think,
like, every author puts a little bit of themself
into everything that's their fiction.
It's just --
I try to -- 'Cause I really like vampires and werewolves,
I'm also thinking about the genre as a whole more than
my life in general.
-Yeah.
-And I always try to -- when editing,
try to help someone, like, refine the story
they want to tell rather than push them to what's easier
to sell or what reflects who they are more.
-So you write and illustrate, I mean,
like your webcomic and, you know, the stuff that you do,
you're creating something that you as a reader, viewer
would want to read and view.
Basically, I mean, to me,
that's always the best -- I mean,
I always think -- The only way
to go is to write something for yourself.
-Because I feel like people can tell
if you're not passionate about the subject.
-Yeah. Yeah.
Do you have a favorite --
Like, my favorite vampire novel is "Sunshine".
Did you ever...
-I have read "Sunshine".
Trying to think.
-Wouldn't that be a good graphic novel?
You could put in the recipe for cinnamon rolls
that, you know, you just really want.
[ Laughs ]
-So I really like Seanan McGuire's work.
And she wrote a story about
how werewolves aren't allowed in Australia
because they're an invasive species.
-[ Laughs ]
And was that illustrated or --
-No, that was prose.
So I have the audio book of that.
And then, as far as comics,
I really like "Artie and the Wolf Moon" by Olivia Stevens.
And she just put out another werewolf comic called "Darling
and Her Other Names". "Darling and Her Other Names"
is about Black werewolves in the 1800s
fighting against white supremacy and colonialism.
So it's using the over-hunting of wolves
as like a connection/metaphor
to the oppression of black people.
and it's really, really good. -Sounds great.
It sounds really good.
-And she's self publishing that
on her Patreon a chapter at a time.
So I highly recommend people go check that out.
-And do you think that Patreon is the way
to go where you pay for the web content
from individual creators or podcasters, whatever?
-So the thing is, is I always put my stuff up for free
because that makes it easier for people to find.
And then I have my Patreon is you get to read it early.
-Uh-huh.
-Because I think the dangers of Patreon
for a creator is
if you're making too much extra stuff just for Patreon,
you can burn out that way.
So I think it's more of a do what works.
So like, keeping "Darling" behind a paywall
is working for Olivia.
But for me, I have too much to do,
so I can't make stuff exclusive for Patreon.
I just give it to people early.
-Uh-huh. Okay. This is my last question.
With "Failure to Launch",
one of the things that I always enjoy reading in anthologies
is who the various contributors are and, you know,
what their background is.
And this is a particularly diverse group,
would you agree, of -- -Yeah, that's intentional.
-Yeah. And that's essential.
So is the comic industry, as you see it, a very diverse world,
or does it need to have more diversity?
-It needs to have more diversity
in the official publishing sphere.
I feel like if you get into self publishing, it is super diverse.
It's just people, like, publishers
aren't funding as many diverse people as they should be.
-Yeah.
Well, on that maybe down note,
let me say, thank you, Kel,
so much for being on the show today,
and good luck with "Failure to Launch",
and I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work
and going back and reading the fairy tale anthologies.
-Yeah, the fairy tale anthologies are kid friendly.
-So if anyone wants to get some comic anthologies
for their kid,
each volume is folklore from a different continent.
And we just finished the series.
So we've covered all the continents now.
-I love it. I love it. All right.
Thank you so much, Kel.
-And people can read my free comics at kelmcdonald.com.
-Yes. kelmcdonald.com. M-C-D-O-N-A-L-D. No A.
-Yes. -[ Laughs ] Bye-bye.
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