Let's Try This Again!
Thank you for joining Team Wood
I’m Back! Again…
Hello, I know most of you might already know me from Twitter or Kickstarter, but in case you don’t…I’m Doug Wood, a disabled comic writer and occasionally comic book anthology publisher. I was having a great 2022 with the launch of my first book in comic shops, my first comic shop signing, having that first issue sell fairly well, get invited by a larger publisher to pitch, and had a couple of big Kickstarter campaigns succeed. It was all looking up until my health took a dive.
What most of my mutuals might not have known was that I tried to get into writing comics earlier than they might have known. Back around 2014 or so, I had my first work published in an anthology. Encouraged by my promising start, I went out a hired a few artists to take the next step. Just after we started my health plummeted. I was so busy with doctors that I had to drop out of comics at the time.
Flash forward to 2019 and I thought I had this all beat. I was doing well health wise. I was making comics and everything was looking up. Until that late 2022. All the same health issues just came rushing back. This time though, I had kids. I just felt so bad that if something awful happened I needed to spend more time with them. And so, I thought I left comics for the last time.
I was in a dark place in 2023. I had multiple surgeries. I gained a ton of weight due to laying about so often as I recouped. I was sick so very often. But for some reason, my comics friends keep reaching out to see when I was coming back. I suddenly found out they had even organized and voted for me to win an award for Independent Comic Creator of the Year award. It really lifted my darkness.
1. Why this, why now
I’m still have a ton of passion to make comics and help others to do so as well. I’m still recovering health wise, but I want to give this another try. I hope you all will stick with me as I figure it all out. I know I do so many things and can be all over the place creatively, but I hope you find something you will enjoy as I am doing it. And if you have ever considered doing something creatively too, I hope this will be a starting point for you to try too.
2. What’s happening here and when?
I am gearing up to run Kickstarter campaigns and I’d love to talk to you about them. But also I have been writing news weekly for Comicbookyeti.com, maybe you’d like to see the news round up once a month? Hopefully monthly sneak peeks at what I am working on. Or I’d like to write about the process of making comics or how I failed until I figured it all out.
3. Please subscribe to stay in touch.
I’m never going to ask for money from you through this, this newsletter is strictly a way for me to stay up to date with you and do what I love to do, which is to show off what I am working on.
LOSER POOL #1 Kickstarter Pre-Launch
FAILURE IS WHERE WE START
Most people might not know but I have been trying to create comics for years before I involved on Twitter. I foolishly tried to lone wolf comic creation and found myself lost constantly. I have so many failed, or incomplete projects until I finally joined the comics community. So in this section each month I kind of perform an autopsy of some projects. Showing how things can go wrong and where to avoid potholes. Of course most people have to hit the potholes themselves before they will learn their lesson but maybe you’ll swerve after reading here. haha.
Broxton Jones Spirit Detective (Attempt 1)
One of the first comics I ever tried to make was about a spirit detective that is able to see demon possession. The thing that was meant to make it unique was that ghost were not real, but apparitions that people saw were actually moments in time that bleeds together. Kinda the time stack ideal you see in Jonathan Hickman’s Redwing. All moments at time are happening simultaneously. Anyways, I wrote a first issue comic and went on the PencilJack forums to find an artist. This was an old way to find artists community before Discord. I had heard Robert Kirkman talking about it at a San Diego Comic Con G-4 interview. (How many things don’t exist any more can this story have?)
Anyways, I was lucky to find an amazing artist to agree to work with me at an affordable price. I quickly realized that maybe I needed some more work on the script so the artist J. Trav Smith offered to work on a short story to see if we could gain some interest. The two of us had many ideas and tried to do too much at once. I struggled to come up with money to finish out the short, so this one kind of just slowly faded as we started working on something I’ll cover in a future newsletter. Check out this cool cover and interesting page art by J. Trav. I know spirit detectives were the go to starter pitch for a lot of us. I remember later on an open submission from Oni Press having a no spirit detective stories rule. But I wonder if the level of art Trav was pulling off, would have lead to a opportunity somewhere.
