Thanks for the answer.
Its what i already guessed. I know its not about me, but i would rather see an Ant book drawn by someone else then no Ant book at all.
With that being said, the most important thing is that SD continues.
I guess if Erik wanted to, he could draw a short 8 pager of Ant and place it in the regular Savage Dragon book.
Yeah--but everything comes with a price tag. If I'm getting pages lettered and colored--that money has to come from somewhere. It's not as though the book suddenly generates more money when there's a backup and if I'm drawing more pages in Savage Dragon that means more time and, again, that doesn't materialize. When the Savage Dragon miniseries was launched in 1992 I added all kinds of pages and while that was great--every hour spent on this issue meant the next was that much later and it was later. In retrospect, I would have been better off doing a set number of pages every month and staying on a more regular schedule.
If I have time to draw eight pages of Ant, I'll bank those and wait until I have 20 pages so I can put out an issue.
Yeah, for many illustrators, work is basically like going to the casino. They come and go as they please and are there for a quick buck.
Even if money wasn't a problem, if Erik hired someone else to draw Ant and he write, there is no guarantee the artists will be reliable. The artist might end up leaving at the worst possible time. Then he's gotta go around searching for another artist and delay the book. Then fans would be disappointed, saying, "Why did you relaunch the book only for there to be endless delays?"
With Netflix being on the back of the issues. I wonder how long it would take until the announcement for the tv series
Erik, I thought about you a lot while watching Spider-verse. The obvious bit is the prominent use of a page from your run right near the start. But the film also has large sections where completely different kinds of art coexist -- including 2D and hand drawn and cartoony and black & white. Since I read your letters column every issue of TSD (reed not red) I remember that being a goal of yours, when Dragon comics would have some characters interacting in the same panel and you would mix your famous style with some fun newspaper strip style people and faces. I saw on Facebook that you enjoyed this movie, did that aspect of it play into this for you at all? I'd be curious to read any thoughts you might have on it. Thanks! Dan
Sorry if this has come up before, but is there any chance Savage Dragon will get collected in Compendium editions like Invincible or Walking Dead? I'd buy those in a heartbeat . . .
Blue text denotes sarcasm
It might not be financially feasible for Erik to publish them.
Part of that is that I understand there is an issue with some early issues in that no usable file (or w/e it's called) of the colored versions exist. So they would have to be recolored, which is a significant extra cost.
And then the question is, how many will likely sell. A big chunk of the series is already available in color through smaller collected trades -- many fans (especially long-time fans) that want to collect trades will have gone that route. For those looking for a more budget-friendly version, or one that will catch them up quick, the SD Archives run is the ticket. Even though it's in black and white, a lot of more casual fans or fans on a budget may already have those.
So not only would a compendium run be pricey to make, but who would be the audience buying it? By my reckoning, it's those people who are such huge fans that they just need to have everything SD, and those who are just coming to the series fresh and want to start their collection. And for some from the latter group, a large (semi?)-expensive compendium style might even be off-putting rather than helpful, because it's intimidating to buy in so much if you're not sure you're going to like the series or not. That's why vol.1s of Image series collections are often to be found at a very reasonable price point. Sure, it's because they can generally rely on selling a decent number of vol.1's, but also because they want to encourage people to try by making it a modest investment.
And don't forget -- despite the large size of compendium editions, there would still need to be several volumes to account for the full run of SD. If they were roughly the size of the Invincible Compendiums for example, that's 5-ish big books to catch up to where SD is at the moment. So a big investment in production, for an uncertain return. Yeah, it could attract some renewed buyer interest but maybe not. I remember reading a post from EL a while back that many of his collected trades take a while before they even break even on production costs. And that's on the first run -- never mind on subsequent collections where many fans already own the material in one form or another.
EDIT: Plus, the economy.
Last edited by OceanMachine; 03-30-2019 at 09:15 PM.
Erik already explained in a previous post that everything he does comes with a price. He doesn't have a big bad company to cover all the costs of this venture, he has to pay for everything out of his pocket. It's no good for him to gamble on a possible low selling collection.