This is blog post asking for your support for a project that I’m involved in. I have written lots of blog posts like this. I’m normally shilling something, a new grahic novel, a new web site, or something else that I’ve created and now I’m hoping that you’ll adore. I normally want your money too, as well as your love.
Today, I’m taking a break from the normal self promotion to try and help out a project that is hugely important to a lot of other people too. The project is “Survival Stories”, and before I rattle on for too long, I’m going to let Peter Forbes pitch the project to you. He does it a lot better than I am about to.
Peter does a great job of navigating some of the thorny issues surrounding Insomnia at the moment. Insomnia made a big splash in the UK independent comics scene over the past two years, giving a lot of new talent a first shot at a publishing deal and giving a lot of more established creators a home for dream projects. Their tables are conventions were buzzing, and they reported great things. It seemed that the industry had a new and powerful player, one that creators were flocking to.
At the 2010 Bristol Comic Con however, things took a turn. There had been rumours circulating for some time amongst the creators that there were problems at Insomnia. There had been team changes, the loss of an investor/shareholder, and strange communications telling everyone “not to worry, and not to listen to the rumours”. Of course, there is no more terrifying pair of words in the English language than “don’t worry”, especially when you don’t know what you were supposed to be worrying about.
News was patchy at best, slowly breaking across news sites, via Twitter, and being emailed amongst creators. MegaComicsNews.com has a good collection of Insomnia Publications news articles that broke.
The end result was a publishing company that had disappeared in a puff a smoke, taking with it the hopes, ambitions, and dreams of a large number of writers and artists. For many, this was their break, their first opportunity to work with a known publisher and to bring their work to a wide audience. This was their weekends, their evenings, their nights. It was time that would have been spent with their families, their friends, and it was a million other tiny sacrifices all made in pursuit of the same dream. They just wanted to make good comics.
Of course, the comics still exist. There was no warehouse to burn down, no critical server lost. The problem facing the creators now is that their right to publish the work they have created is still tied, contractually, to the mouldering corpse of Insomnia Publications. In a ditch, somewhere, this decaying figure clutches to its breast sheaths of signed paper that give it, and only it, the right to publish what has been created under its auspice. No publisher will touch any of the material until the contracts are null and void and so, and the creators do not even have the right to self publish the material. The work is lost.
Sadly, this is not the first time a situation like this has occurred and so there are people who sacrifice their days, weekends, nights, and evenings in helping creators who find themselves caught in legal log jams. They’re called the COMIC BOOK ALLIANCE. They have offered their time and support to the surviving Insomnia creators, and they are working diligently right now to try and resolve things amicably. Their work is tireless and ultimately they will not profit from it one iota. They are simply good people, passionate about the same medium that we are passionate about, who want to help creators do what they do best … create. They are offering a chance to creators who will otherwise find themselves knocked back to square one, with anything up to two years of work lost in limbo.
You can help.
Your options are clear. Pre-order Survival Stories to support the creators and support the CBA because you find their plight moving. Pre-order Survival Stories to support the CBA because you might need them some day too. Pre-order Survival Stories because you want 192 pages of bloody good comics from creators who *just might* be the next generation of the UK comics industry. Pre-order Survival Stories so that you can say “I was there.”
Or, let another piece of the UK comics industry die and drag down with the hopes of a lot of good people. If you go for that option, remember that you chose it.
