Howdy

Hey people (I know there are not really any members yet but that will change soon.)

Any way. I am the artist for the Hook. I would just like to say that it is great fun and I hope that you guys are thoroughly entertained by an interesting story.

Hang with us, and I promise you will be entertained.

Congratulations to Scott, Neil, Mike, Gabe and Andie!

The site looks great and each story looks interesting, fresh and provocative. Best of luck and looking forward to seeing more!

Best,

Batton Lash

Ya! I like it so far, it could prove to be very interesting. The artwork is awesome too, but with that said, i'm not  much of an artist. 

Thanks for the kind words, Batton.

For those who don't know, Batton Lash is the creator of Supernatural Law, a comic about a small law-firm that serves a very special clientelle -- "things that go bump in the night." The series has been around for several years now and Batton has recently "gone to Web" with a serialized web-comic, which you can find at http://www.webcomicsnation.com/supernaturallaw/ . Highly recommended.

Cool site.  I learned about it from an ad at http://blisteringcheese.com/ about a month or so ago for The Architect, in case you wondered if your advertisement money was well spent. 

As an aspiring writer, I wondered how this site came to be. 

Were the writers, artists, and webmasters friends before hand or does Big Head take submissions and then team up artists and writers?

As a financial venture, do you think it’s going to be a moneymaker or are you guys using this to get your work out in hope of reaching the more mainstream comic market similar to how some self publishers take the leap to prove themselves before going after the big house publisher’s money? 

Are these appropriate questions, or am I a nosy jerk? 

Anyway, keep up the good work.

It all started when I met Neil Smith via the Internet back in '97, when I discovered his news website The Libertarian Enterprise (www.ncc-1776.org). I found that our political viewpoints synch up very closely so decided to get acquainted with him and see whether we could work together on some project or other. For a while Neil would feed me ideas for political cartoons and I'd draw them, and they'd turn up on The Libertarian Enterprise or KeepAndBearArms.com and a few other places. We also talked about some syndicated comic-strip ideas but never really got started on them.

In 2001, I think, the late and sorely missed "Lux Lucre" (aka Kerry Pierson) came up with the idea of adapting Neil's first (and so far most successful) novel, The Probability Broach, into a graphic novel. Neil and I both liked that idea so we worked up a project proposal and five sample story pages, and I shopped them around all the independent comics publishers (because we wanted to retain full ownership rights).

I wasn't able to find a publisher, and things were looking kinda bleak, but then my smarter brother Frank came to the rescue. Frank also likes the message in TPB and set up an independent publishing company in 2002 so that we could do this project.

Prior to my starting work on the TPB graphic novel, I had completed a 63-page educational comic on commission for Susan W. Wells, A Drug War Carol, which was presented originally as a web-comic (and is still available at www.adrugwarcarol.com). Shortly after I started working on TPB:TGN, Susan asked if I could get ADWC published in print. So I shopped it around, again got no positive response (man, I really need to get an agent), and so Frank agreed to publish ADWC under a special arrangement with Susan.

In 2005 Frank decided to expand our line a bit with some more books, including books with other creative teams besides Neil and myself. Providentially we stumbled across Mike Baron, who happens to live in the same town as Neil Smith. Mike's first comic, Nexus, was one of my inspirations back in the early 1980s and is one reason I became an illustrator rather than a shoe salesman. Mike is one of those guys who always has several projects in the works, and two of them -- The Architect and The Hook -- looked like stories that would work for us, and Mike and his artists were agreeable to the peanuts we pay them for publishing rights.

Meanwhile Neil and his friend Rex F. May (who goes by the handle "zen redneck" on this forum) had come up with a story about an alternative Texas and the famous 1947 Roswell incident. Originally it was going to be a prose story, for which I would provide one full-page illustration per chapter, but now we've re-worked it as a graphic novel. (One of those illustrations was re-worked into the panel you can see on "page 18" of the web-comic.)

The original prose story still exists, and may be published someday -- it contains a considerable amount of detail and historical background which we've had to cut from the graphic-novel story for reasons of space.  On the other hand, the character "Rattlesnake Pete" didn't exist in the original prose story. He was invented for the comic so that we could get some exposition in relatively painlessly, and as often happens in projects like this, he became such an interesting character that Neil has decided to include him in the prose version as well.

That pretty much sums up how Big Head Press and our stories came to be.

Were the writers, artists, and webmasters friends before hand or does Big Head take submissions and then team up artists and writers?

As a financial venture, do you think it’s going to be a moneymaker or are you guys using this to get your work out in hope of reaching the more mainstream comic market similar to how some self publishers take the leap to prove themselves before going after the big house publisher’s money?

To the question regarding Big Head Press as a financial venture, the answer is, "yes - the goal is to make heaps-o-money".  We are looking at the web not just as a way to "test the waters" for a given story before incurring the rather large investment of printing (though that's there), but also as a new medium of information exchange.  We are looking to the day when online comics don't just rival traditional print, but surpass it.

We're always interested in new story submissions.  That being said, we are still a small team, with a small budget.  So both time and money are scarce resources when evaluating what story to do next.  So, just because you send it in, like any publisher, there's a good chance it will be a message in a bottle.  But don't let that stop you.  As much as any good publisher likes to draw on experienced talent, we also know what finding lightning in a bottle can do for the business.  We do prefer stories which ultimately show the value to voluntary exchange, rather than coerced exchange in human interaction.  But if the story is exciting, and doesn't champion coercion, we may publish it anyway.

Glad you're enjoying the stories, please tell  all your friends, and don't forget to visit our online stores.

I found you guys after clicking on the Big Head Press banner ad in the Reason Online newsletter. It works! I definitely like what I've seen so far on the website. This looks very promising. I can ramble on about how cool I think your web comics are, but I'll do that on the appropriate sections of the board!