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Kickstarter-Palooza

It should come as no shock to any regular readers of this blog that Kickstarter (which I profiled in my Insurgent Creative series of articles back in early December) is absolutely revolutionizing creative work. The record-breaking success of the Double Fine Adventure (earning a million dollars in a single day) has opened the flood gates — and the great thing is, as Kickstarter recently shared on their blog, almost a quarter of the first-time backers that Double Fine brought to the site have stuck around, pledging over $875,000 to over 1200 other projects so far. The rising tide truly lifts all boats.

Of course, the increased use of Kickstarter has lead to a small problem: too much awesome. In the past few weeks, a number of really great projects have launched. I figured I’d take this opportunity to spread the signal a bit.

First off, my friend Tim Byrd is using Kickstarter to relaunch his pulp-inspired all-ages novel series, Doc Wilde, the first book of which was originally published by Penguin/Putnam. Here’s the video:

 

[iframe src=”http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1310269043/the-astonishing-adventures-of-doc-wilde/widget/video.html” width=”100%” ]

Second, the folks over at Evil Hat are producing a series of novels related to their Spirit of the Century neo-pulp property. They’ve got a Kickstarter up for the Dinopocalypse Trilogy, which is going gangbusters — so much so that they’ve “unlocked” additional books beyond the trilogy, featuring other heroes from the setting. Authors include Chuck Wendig, Brian Clevinger, C.E. Murphy, Harry Connoly and Stephen Blackmoore. The video:

[iframe src=”http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evilhat/spirit-of-the-century-presents-the-dinocalypse-tri/widget/video.html” width=”100%” ]

Thirdly (see? I told ya — too much awesome), Academic super-researcher Jess Nevins (author of The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana and the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes) is fundraising for a third volume, The Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes. The video for his project:

[iframe src=”http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1651697370/the-encyclopedia-of-golden-age-superheroes/widget/video.html” width=”100%” ]

And (you knew it was coming) fourthly, Darren Watts (formerly of HERO games and IPR) has a new company, Silverback Press, which is specifically dedicated to releasing games via Kickstarter. First up from him is Champions Live Action, a superhero LARP based on the much-beloved Champions RPG. The video:

[iframe src=”http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1832603818/champions-live-action/widget/video.html” width=”100%” ]

…and there’s more coming every week. A revolution is occurring — one creating a world where creators go directly to their audiences to fund projects, gathering enthusiastic fans into an unstoppable force. It shows no signs of slowing. Kickstarter themselves are making more effort to reach out to the creative community: they’re doing an entire slate of events at PAX East this weekend, featuring demos from Kickstarter creators, panel discussions and more. Here’s hoping they decide to do the same at GenCon this August.

Lastly — I’ll take this opportunity to reward those of you who have read this entry all the way to the bottom to publicly announce that yes, Adamant will be launching another Kickstarter soon: More fiction, as part of our continuing FAR WEST property. Keep your eyes peeled for the official launch.

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John Carter

Around 20 years ago, Disney released a film, based on a property only familiar to a few. The film was a nearly-perfect adaptation of the source material, and a great film in its own right. The studio, however, didn’t support it that much, and when it opened at #4 in the box office, it quickly sank. That film was The Rocketeer, and to this day, Disney continues to give the film a short shrift — most recently releasing a bare-bones no-extra-features BluRay for the 20th anniversary — despite the fact that it stands as one of the studio’s best-realized productions.

I see a lot of The Rocketeer in John Carter.

I’ve been a fan of the John Carter stories since I first read “A Princess of Mars” at age 11 or 12. My wife and I saw the midnight premiere of John Carter last night, in IMAX 3D — and despite reservations that I had, from awareness of the studio’s dumping the film in a traditional dead zone for releases which traditionally presages a dud that they’re looking to forget quickly, what I saw was a nearly perfect distillation of the themes and images that have been in my head for 30 years. Some changes were made, of course — such things are inevitable in film — but the changes (especially an updating of Dejah Thoris into a more active and capable character, while still maintaining her traditional allure) actually serve to make the film better than the source novel in some respects.

In many ways, it’s a bit like Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring in that way — a film that gets the look and feel of the work so very right, but with slight changes that make it a better film.

Of course, the press has passed judgement — they’ve read Disney’s intention (the neutering of the title, the early March release, the near-total lack of tie-in support), and, as ever eager to follow the lead of their betters, are lining up to belittle the film as gimmicky, one-dimensional, hokey, and even derivative. (Yes, a century-old story which influenced dozens of sci-fi blockbusters is now criticized as copying those blockbusters. This is the culture we’ve created, kids — welcome to it.)

Don’t believe it. John Carter is everything a Mars movie should be: mysterious, wondrous, exotic, thrilling, and filled with unabashed pulp heroism. Efforts like this should be rewarded.

The fans of NBC’s always-on-the-brink-of-cancellation Community have a saying: “Six seasons and a movie.” John Carter deserves a trilogy (at least) — but at this point it doesn’t look likely that it will even make back its budget on US box office. Which is a damned shame — because the lesson that Disney will learn from this is that films like this don’t make any money.

If you love science fiction, pulps, or just a good, old-fashioned tale of heroism, do your self a favor and go see this film, before it, like The Rocketeer before it, sinks out of view.

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The Last Nail

A week ago over on Google Plus I posted about the reasons why I wasn’t going to be seeing the Avengers film, despite my comics-geek nature, because of the absolute crap way that Marvel treated the man who co-created most of those characters, Jack Kirby. Add to that the bullshit news about DC doing Watchmen Prequels (their original contract with Alan Moore specified that he’d regain rights after Watchmen went out of print, which they then never allowed to happen, keeping it in print via graphic novels, a format which didn’t exist at the time the contract was signed. It’s pretty much no secret that “creator’s rights” in corporate media is a joke.

Now comes the last nail in the coffin — Gary Friedrich, the guy who created GHOST RIDER, is being made an example of by Marvel.

Friedrich brought suit against Marvel for a share of the money made by the first GHOST RIDER film — he didn’t see a penny from it. Everybody pretty much knew that this age of “Corporations are People” and “Money is Free Speech”, he had no chance in Hell, so it wasn’t surprising that he lost his case. Back when Gary worked for Marvel, they included a rights waver on your paycheck. That’s right: If you wanted to get paid, you had to endorse the check, which meant signing right below legal language that gave up the rights to anything you produced. Ethically bankrupt? Sure. Evil? Yes, I’ll even go there. But perfectly legal. So, naturally, Gary lost his case — he would see no money from the GHOST RIDER films, despite creating the character.

Marvel didn’t stop there, though. They countersued, and, outrageously, WON. Gary is now barred from making any money in association with the term or character “Ghost Rider” — which means he cannot do convention appearances as “the creator of Ghost Rider”, nor can he make any money from convention sketches, etc. In addition, the lawsuit hit him with a judgement that he owes Marvel $17,000 for past “merchandise sales.”

They cut the legs out from under a senior citizens SOLE source of income. If he can’t promote himself and make a living based on the character he created, what the hell is he supposed to do?

I don’t have words to express my fury. It is, as Bleeding Cool termed it, “the day that Marvel put a bullet in the head of Artists’ Alley.” Because make no mistake — this lawsuit will scare the shit out of convention organizers, who will (correctly) feel that they’re at risk of litigation by facilitating “unauthorized merchandise sales.” I expect to see policies barring original art sales at especially the big-prestige conventions soon.

So, I’m done. Marvel and DC will no longer get a cent of my money. No comics, no graphic novels, no books, no movies. Because it’s the only thing that the corporations understand — “money is speech”, after all.

If you’re interested in doing what you can to help Gary Friedrich, please visit Steve Niles’ fundraising page. Steve, the creator of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, is taking Paypal donations for Gary, who is broke and in danger of losing his home by the end of the month because of the judgement against him. Please donate.

As for comics? I will try to continue my comics geekery via creator-owned works where possible — there’s a lot of good stuff out there, like Atomic Robo for example. Feel free to add your recommendations in the comments below.

Marvel and DC, though? Never again. The only way we’re going to stop corporate exploitation of creators is to stop enabling it. It may not be much, but I can’t contribute to it any more.

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