One of the difficulties in starting out as a new webcomic creator is just getting some name recognition. So back in the early days of webcomics, you saw several groups of creators band together as a collective. They would all do their own thing, but perhaps share a common web host or portal site; something that would loosely link all the comics under one banner, so that the audience from one webcomic might pop over to check out another.
While they’re still around, they’re not as popular any more; creators have found other means, like social media, to find audiences. But the guys over at Imminent Press are putting a slightly different spin on the idea.
Like many creators in recent years, they’re working on a Kickstarter project. It’s an anthology book called Terminal, and will consist of ten stories, all loosely connected around a single train station. The creators, by and large, all have their own projects they’ve worked/are working on, but Terminal won’t be related to those. Rather, they’re using the location hook here to get and keep readers interested (a perennial complaint about anthologies is that they’re all over the map creatively, and there’s little cohesion to keep a reader engaged throughout the whole book). The reader can then go back to check out the Imminent Press website (not yet active as of this writing) and check out what else they’re working on.
And simultaneously coming at it from the other side, readers who are familiar with some of the webcomics might be engaged enough to support the Kickstarter… and then learn about the other creators and their work. So whereas many webcomickers use a model that starts with the free webcomic and hopefully leads to purchasing individual collections or related goods, the guys at Imminent Press want to take that a step further with pooling their respective audiences to help crowdfund additional projects.
Co-founder Steve Ekstrom told me…
We’re doing this collectively. We signal boost for each other. And by creating a label… we’re creating “Strength in Numbers” that can lead to palpable success by way of growing your audiences by merging them together and cross-pollinating them with various genres.
As with any comic project, much of its success lies in the talent of those working on it. But with guys like CW Cooke, Justin Gray, Larry Watts, and Matt Brady on board, it seems like they’ve got more than a good head start. The question will mainly be in seeing how they’re able to execute on everything, and then whether their collective/publishing house takes off.
The Terminal Kickstarter ends in less than a week and, full disclosure, Ekstrom is one of the editors here at FreakSugar.