I’m a Backer: Monstrology
Welcome to another installment of “I’m a Backer.” This week we have managed to resist the allure of the games category yet again, and are exploring a comic project for the third week in a row. This week’s project of choice is “Monstrology, an Anthology of Monsters.” I should point out that this project had me at the title and cover, so for some of you, I have already given enough information to make a choice one way or another. For everyone else though, read on for all the information on both the graphic novel and the project and why think the people behind it did a hell of a job.
Monstrology is, in the words of it’s creator:
Monstrology is 112 pages of pure terror. The monsters are the driving theme of every story. This collection isn’t about twist endings–though we have some–nor is it about a good scare or gore–we have those, too. These stories mix and match monsters in new milieus that bring out new and interesting twists on the monsters and their victims.
In a nut shell. this is an anthology project with a clever and engaging theme. The author of each story was given a setting and a location, and then they wrote. The resulting stories were included for our reading pleasure:
- Troll Behavior
- The Abomination Denomination
- White Widow
- What Fools These Mortals Be
- Yolk
- Darkest Corners
- The View of Mumbichi Valley
- Children of Russia
If you look at these stories, you will see that each of them contains high quality art across a spectrum of styles. In fact, one of things I appreciate most about this project, is that the creator largely lets the book speak for itself. This is usually the best policy when it comes to comic books, and certainly doesn’t disappoint in this case!
The rest of the project is just well done save for one thing: It has no video. Though this is hardly a deal breaker for me, it might be for some people. Several articles have talked about the correlation between videos and successful projects in the past. It will be interesting to see if this one bucks the trend.
I had a chance to sit down with Scott and ask him a couple questions:
Monstrology is a wonderfully theme for a compilation project. How did it come about?
Earlier this year, Rachel Deering, my co-editor, asked me to give her a hand with bringing the project together. Rachel recruited most of us, and we pulled together our themes and teams for the anthology. I worked with these fantastic writers and artists to bring it all together when she had to move on to other projects.
Any particular reasons you chose the monsters you did? Which one got left on the cutting room floor?
We threw a bunch into a hat, and just drew at random! We tried to avoid obvious things like zombies, and went for the weirdest mix we could muster. We have a great mix, some more obvious than others, but I’m quite fond of the twist in “Troll Behavior”, which was our “trolls in a junkyard” combo. There was a really nice vampire story that almost made it in, but circumstances didn’t work out.
With this project so close to completion why not go to a traditional publisher, rather than crowd funding?
We took the risk in putting it all together, so we wanted the reward, so to speak. It’s a bit more work on our part, but ultimately, when this book is done, we can present it in the format we prefer (and by extension, our supporters on Kickstarter), and the rights remain with us.
We live in a day and age where ANYONE can publish high-quality print publications on a manageable budget if they put the effort behind it. And we’re not just anyone–we’re a motley bunch of comics, publishing, and film professionals with several decades of combined experience to make it work.
Why did you opt not to add a video to your project?
No other reason than technical failures. We wanted to get the project up and running by Halloween, so we went ahead and launched without one. And II’ll be honest, I’ve NEVER watched a Kickstarter video for any of the projects I’ve backed–making my choices based on the quality of work that was presented–so I felt it wasn’t as important as presenting samples of all of the artists and giving an overview of the stories.
I see from your website that your publishing company is just getting off the ground. Any exciting future plans?
My wife, April, and I are actually launching a new digital comics magazine called Off Registration. We have a lot of great folks lined up with amazing comics to launch in February 2013. We’ll have more information and a formal announcement soon, but we are encouraging everyone to sign up at www.off-registration.com
Believe me, you’ll be seeing a lot more of all the Monstrology contributors in the future! This is the moment to get in on the ground floor.
Thank you for taking the time to talk about the project with us, David. We appreciate your support!
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