Salgood Sam's Blog, page 12

October 27, 2012

RevolveЯ One 3.0 – $15 or $2.50 digital

RevolveЯ, 3.0
A personal anthology project.

[ See sub site for the book here to keep up on developments regarding the series. ]

Revolver One edition 3.0

$15.00 + shipping

52+ pgs 8×10 Color – Comes with digital copy.
Revolver One the Digital Edition

$2.50!

52 pages 120 dpi PDF or CBR

Full Color – 46.4 MB DRM free!:

Revolver One full preview

I first attempted to launch an early iteration of RevolveЯ in 2004.

It was sold at Expozine and TCAF and a few cool comic shops. A handmade zine with screen printed covers. Nice little book if I say so myself & It got lots of positive attention. But even with a well received proof of concept I was unable at the time to get the publishers I approached to take it on and was too swamped to distribute and publish it myself. Work and life kept me busy and RevolveЯ stalled. It did not help that a lot of the talk these days is how the personal anthology comic is dead. But after reading that TCJ post this past year, I became even more determined to make my book a reality. A little wiser [or not] and with far far better tools at my disposal, I’ve relaunched it. So here’s what i’m doing.

A Quarterly comics anthology.

All stories will be written or drawn by me.

A focused central venue to publish in print and digital formats, whatever I’m working on at the moment.

That’s what RevolveЯ will be. New issues available Quarterly, 32-64 pages.

Order RevolveЯ One from Amazon CreateSpace [ i get the best royalty from this link by the way ], this site directly through me, and in finer participating bookstores and specialty shops.

Suggested cover price between $10 and $15, depending on the issues page count. Digital!: I’m offering directly from my site, high quality PDF & CBR DRM free digital Editions for between $2.50 & $2 depending on the size of the issue. And I’ve set it up on graphicly too. But people want books! I know, me too. You can order a print edition for $15, CND, flat rate, until Dec 1st & i’ll pay the shipping!

If you would like your local comic shop to stock it please let them know about RevolveЯ! I’ll have a printable ordering coupon for them soon, that you can download and present to help make that happen yourself! I also plan to try to get it in local libraries. If you are a librarian, contact me about procuring a deeply discounted wholesale order for your collection! I very much believe Libraries are the perfect setting for RevolveЯ, and plan to make it extra easy them to stock it.

Digital Subscriptions will be forthcoming, and print ones available in time as well, once i’ve delivered on more than one issue.The next two issues of RevolveЯ are all pretty much done. They collect short stories spanning the last 6 or so years along with some new material. Here’s the current publishing schedule.

One - already out official Launch at Expozine their 10th anniversary show btw.

Two - Late December. collects short stories published in Popgun and elsewhere.

Three - May, TCAF, alongside Dream Life book one. Collects shorts published in Comic Book Tattoo and elsewhere.

Two and Three are done save for some of the packaging.

Four - Early July. First instalment of Dream Life book 2, and Dracula:

Son of the Dragon with Mark Sable.

Five and Six don’t have release months slated yet, don’t want to get too ahead of myself. Will include more of Dream Life and Dracula, and the return of Bliss [Pin City] - the sci-fi story. And possibly The Rise and fall of it all.

A new full size edition of RevolveЯ Two will be launched in December. There was a mini version released for a time but i’ve pulled it to add a new cover and a few things, & size it up to roughly standard comic dimensions. RevolveЯ Three will be launched along with Dream Life in May at TCAF 2012.

In Praise of RevolveЯ

“Best First Issue!”

CBG’s Year end round table: The Best of 2004

Best” Emerging Talent”

Salgood Sam nominated for the 2005 Doug Wright Award

& Short listed for the 2005 Prix Expozine

4.5/5 : “RevolveЯ 1 is a compact package … packed with 52 pages of stories, sketches and a thoughtful text piece that closes out the issue. I was intrigued from the cover alone, a black and gold image of a cityscape that wraps around to the back cover, where someone is seen drowning in the immensity of it all.”

“Douglas’s drawings of buildings are magnificent things, and thankfully much on display throughout the issue, although not to the detriment of the storytelling. The cartoonist clearly has spent a lot of time in a city environment and has been hugely successful in translating what the weight of all that architecture feels like when pressing down on the people below — heavy, imposing, all-dominating and yet strangely liberating in its majesty. The two-page spread that occupies pages 8-9, of a character entering a diner on the first floor of a large building, is the most impressive drawing in the issue, and one of the most well-realized images I’ve seen in a comic this year.”

Alan David Doane @ comicbookgalaxy.com

“Throughout this issue, you can feel Max Douglas’s joy in experimenting with line, tone and page design, in a way that is simpatico with other big names of the small press like Tomer Hanuka or Farel Dalrymple. This is the kind of comics I unashamedly love, dense work by a creator following his vision and sharing the journey with his readers. The paper stock, cover design and overall production values show Douglas cares deeply about his work and how it is presented, and it’s work worth caring about. RevolveЯ 1 is one of the best titles to debut this year, and it could very well change how you think about comics.”

John Martz from his blog robotjohnny.com

“All the mini stories are told from the perspective of lonely characters reflecting on their place in the world. … Max is clearly someone who is passionate about what he does, and is one of those people who tries to blur the lines between comics and literature … The artwork is wonderful and has a lively loose feel to it that makes it easy to miss how well planned and creative the layout of the panels are. RevolveЯ is a refreshing change of pace from the usual batch of men in tights and frogs with boners.”

” … the layouts in RevolveЯ are consistently thrilling, playing with the frames, the gutter, the entire page. They pull the reader on swoops that S down a page, or simulate the vertigo of a big city by distending the horizon or dangling skyscrapers from above. Here is a pro exalting in his craft.”

Guy Leshinski in a Eye magazine review [a now defunct Toronto free weekly]

Sequential tectonic shift: RevolveЯ by salgood sam

“Salgood’s drifting vision has an incredible sense of space and freedom. Your eye moves across the page continuously, an angel floating through worlds. Usually the dynamic movement of the images themselves direct your vision, like little signposts that bounce you around the worlds Sam has created. The narratives sometimes unmoor themselves from everyday reality, moving into poetic or existentialist territory, but never loses its grounding in very concrete images. RevolveЯ plays with how we perceive things, and where we anchor ourselves. This is reflected in the way panels bleed into other panels, if there are panels at all. It suggests that sometimes the dream world or the worlds we create in our narratives appear realer than our actual lives, that the membrane between the world we live and the worlds we see ourselves living in is very thin.”

First impressions by Sherwin Tjia

Revolver One edition 3.0

$15.00 + shipping

52+ pgs 8×10 Color – Comes with digital copy.
Revolver One the Digital Edition

$2.50!

52 pages 120 dpi PDF or CBR

Full Color – 46.4 MB DRM free!:

View more on Salgood Sam's website »

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Published on October 27, 2012 18:31

September 15, 2012

Dream Life Indiegogo funding drive is live!

Text from Indiegogo page
I’m just 30 pages shy of completing Dream Life | a late coming of age.

Hi, my name is Max Douglas, I’m a cartoonist, working under the pen name Salgood Sam, and with your help I’d like to get the first half of the longest story I’ve ever tried to tell completed in time for TCAF 2013.

I’m very close already, over 115 pages are done, just a mere thirty left to complete the first three chapters. I hope with this campaign I can dedicate the rest of this year to making those thirty pages my primary focus.

This story is a labour of love. A work of fiction with fantastic and adventure elements. It borrows from my own life–as close to autobiography as I’ve dared in many ways. The cast is an amalgam of people I’ve known and myself, played off archetypes. The situations and conflicts borrow from my own experiences and stories I’ve been close to.

Charlie’s childhood friend is about to die.

Hitch hiking in BC PJ’s luck runs out.

Lionel is in existential free-fall.

Leslie is a therapist and part time drug dealer.

It’s just occurring to her she hates her job.

Dan’s daughter thinks he needs to grow up.

The story of five friends.

Dreams, drugs, & denial

all failing to weather

the arc of life unscathed.

Each coming to terms with lives peter panned,

and in danger of going off the rails.

I’ve worked both commercially and independently for others most of the 20+ years that I’ve been a cartoonist. I’ve been lucky to often make my living doing that but there are always trade-offs and limits to the work.

With Dream Life I’m trying to do all the things i’ve always wanted to, tell a story that I’d want to read–without compromise or conditions.

I‘ve been very lucky to receive grant funding for Dream Life in the past. That had been a huge help getting this far. But life throws us unforeseen curves: In early 2011, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and had an operation to remove it. I got lucky, hopefully will stay lucky. But I did lose a lot of time to that, dealing with the stress, distractions, and recovering from the operation.

And just as I was getting back to feeling normal, I got slammed by a bacterial infection in my stomach in the fall, lost fifteen pounds in two weeks, and a couple months due to being laid out and exhausted by that. So while the grant made getting as far as I have possible, and recovering a lot less stressful, I did not get as far as I had wanted to. So close though. So so close.

So it goes. I’m grateful and I’ll keep at it one way or another, but the grant funds are gone now. Working as a freelancer takes up most of my time. Between finding the next job and doing the jobs, I’m left with little space to squeak out pages.

So I thought I’d try crowdfunding to make room to wrap up this first half of the book, and put a small run of 100 B&W first editions in time for TCAF 2013. To do that I need to finance 3 months of focused work on this and this alone.

I also plan to upload the book to Create Space [Amazon] so it will be available to all right away, either in print or digitally via their app market.

On my own I’ll get there one day but probably not in time for TCAF, and I have other obligations in 2013 that will probably cause even more delays. So now’s the time to make this happen.

What I Need & What You Get

[update: i've added printed edtions care of Create Space for some!]

The minimum to ensure this all happens is I think, $3500.

I’ve set the goal here at $3800 because of the site fees. If we reach $3800, what I’ll get is just a bit over $3500. If we fall short the fees are a bit higher [4% if we match the goal, 9% if we fall short].

If we can surpass the goal, the surplus initially will go into better printing and/or a larger run for the first edition, and a bit more time/peace of mind.

If it looks like we’re really going to knock it out of the park I’ll think of some new worthy expanded goals, and perks. More art and reserved copies of the first edition are the first likely candidates.

For now I want to keep the bar low, so $3000 to cover living expenses while I do the work, and $500 to go mostly towards perks, maybe a bit left over for printing the first editions.

The smallest support option is $5, with the perk of getting a digital edition [PDF or CBR, specify your preference when you dontate] of Dream Life | a late coming of age, book one. And all supporters will get your name listed on the thank you page in the book and on my site unless you request otherwise.

For the supporters backing with $15 or more, their digital editions will be personalized, with a scanned handwritten signature, note, and sketch inside the “front page”.

The physical copy of signature pages will be mailed to you via regular letter post [no express or registered mail].

Starting at $25, due to eary demand for the option, most packages now come with the option to get a copy of the book!

Attention: If you’re outside of the contenental US, shipping is $10 extra.

There is also an all digital option at $25, good for Ipad lovers and haters of sipping costs.

For $35 you get both the digital copy with signature page AND an edition of the printed book! You can paste the signature page into your copy, almost like you got it signed in person!

For $45 or more, you will get a full digital set of my self published and independent books and zines. The 150-page graphic novel Therefore Repent! with author Jim Munroe, my personal anthology Revolver-books one and two, and the personalized digital edition of Dream Life-book one & a copy of the book from create space.

Probably a few other digital goodies too like my early zines and Jam comix. When it gets done you’ll also be sent a digital copy of book two of Dream Life, but I can’t tell you exactly when that will be.

For $80, instead of a copy of the book you will get you a print of my art from society6, along with the digital catalog of my comics.

$85 gets you a post card and a copy of the book instead of the print. Digtal catolog including personalized Dream Life-book one.

$90 and it’s the print and book, along with the digital catolog including personalized Dream Life-book one.

For $100, you will get you a bit part as an extra for one or more panels in Dream Life. There are about seven pages with scenes that call for extras in the final thirty pages. You also get Dream Life-book one, the the digital catalog of my comics and I’ll send you a small print of your cameo along with the signature page in the mail.

Finally, $200 will get you either a piece of original art from Dream Life, or a private commision. Anything you like within reason [I won’t draw something I find offensive or otherwise objectionable]. This perk also comes with the printed book, and the digtial catolog including personalized Dream Life-book one.

I’ve been tweeking the perks and added a few more stages. Have a look and see what fits you! Feel free to make suggestions too!

What will be the Impact?

Well put simply, you will make my day, life, etc. It’s really frustrating to be so close to being done this chunk of the book, and have to work on it in dribs and drabs.

I want Dream Life to be my BEST work. So, having the freedom to dedicate my energy to it alone for any amount of time will be awesome.

I can’t promise you this book will change the world or solve poverty, but it will change my life; getting as far as I have already has, as it’s already been noticed and got me nominated for an award last year as a web comic. Completing it and being able to present it in time for TCAF next year will mean the accomplishment of a major life and career goal. And for what it’s worth, I do think work that aspires to the standards and richness I hope to bring to Dream Life, enriches our world over all. Stories that have heart and integrity and try to make us think while being entertaining and beautiful.

With your help that’s what I hope to bring forth.

Other Ways You Can Help

I’ve made it easy to pitch in even a little, but if you’re really unable to support Dream Life financially, you can always help by telling as many other people as you can about this funding drive, and Dream Life generally. Use the Indiegogo social sharing tools, ‘like’ the fan page on Facebook, and share this link to the first 100+ pages online, on Facebook, Google+, or the webcomic page here, free to read.

Many thanks.

————————————

I would not have gotten this far without help.

Thanks to Jonathan Sugarman, who helped inspire this story, started the adventure with me and left lots of fun words to play with.

Thanks to Sadoceanspacebear, for the beautiful sounds.

To a.j.duric for showing me how to craft a grant application.

& A.J.Murphy for checking my grammar.

And many more too numerous to name.

And far from least, the generous funding of

the Canadian Council for the Arts

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $154 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 154 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

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Published on September 15, 2012 14:00

August 5, 2012

New comics, rejected art, prints, and an Interview!

Neglected the blog here a bit.
Been swamped trying to get in some new work.

Thought i’d post a round of catch up!

Ok, well to start, PRESS! Not sure if the timing helped or hurt,

but weekend of SDCC I had an interview with Chris Arrant posted on Robot6!

It’s pretty good I think?

If you’re looking to introduce someone to my work it’s almost perfect, though I wish the art linked to the sites more. A good little talk about past a future plans.

Also I’ve uploaded

a new 8 page sequence to Dream Life!

Over due I know! Sorry about that.

This brings the story to 113 pages.

One of the dark nightmare pages i’ve made available as a print as well along with a few other new items expanding on my line on Society6. Only been set with them a short time this summer, and sold 6 prints so far. Not sure what to measure it against but not bad for a start. Could be better?

Also a few prints of my father’s work has sold too. Need to get back to scanning his negatives, something i’ve been bumping down the priority list as I look for more work. But really should put some more prints up from the stuff I already have scanned.

Being kind of broke i’m pondering whether to go ahead and publish the new edition of Revolver i’ve gotten as far as the digital proof on CreateSpace. It would be best to have a print proof but things are too tight right now.

Also thinking, is this is the right time to start an indiegogo campaign for Dream Life? Need to make a clip if i’m going to do it.

I almost thought i’d landed a YA adventure series!

Doing illustrations for the chapter heads and some graphics.

Sadly the job fell through though. Really sucks, would have taken care of me for work for a nice long stretch. Here’s bellow is a slide show of the two illustrations I did for them, and some of the concept sketches too. Going to add the final art to my portfolio under line, and I’ll think start a YA sections too soon… Won’t say what the book or publisher was, as they decided to go in a “younger direction”. But they were best sellers. Wonder though what they had in mind. I tested these out on some YA readers I know, my girlfriends many nieces and nephews. They seemed to dig them! Ah well. Hope something else like it comes up again.