Q & A: M.D. Bright The artist known for his work on Green Lantern, Power Man & Iron Fist and Quantum & Woody talks about his digital comic, The Last Second, and the challenges he's faced in bringing it to the public. Randy and Don recently reviewed the first two issues of a digital comic book called The Last Second, written and illustrated by M.D. Bright (click HERE to go to the review). Now, Bright himself sounds off on the project and his experiences. THE FOURTH RAIL: So why did you decide to develop, write, draw and market a digital comic book? M.D. BRIGHT: Long, three-part answer here: 1) I'm doing it because I've had a lot of free time on my hands comic book-wise. I have updated my look over the years and the only point in time where I think I drew better than I do now is a few issues in the middle of my run on Icon for Milestone Comics but I'm still doing comics via "Jim Shooter 101," which isn't the way to be "hot" in comics in 2001. If Shooter was the Brad Pitt character from Fight Club he would have said, "The first rule in drawing comics is TELL THE STORY, the second rule in drawing comics is TELL THE STORY CLEARLY." Those rules are number 8 and 9 on the list now, if they're on the list at all. Now comic-book art is pin-up shots of the characters striking a pose and "out there" page/panel layouts. 2) Online was the only place where I could do The Last Second. Publishers were hesitant to do new properties five years ago, today I don't know who could coax a publisher into printing a title with an entirely new character and universe. Everyone is looking for "something completely different, fresh, never been seen before, ," but NOT TOO different or fresh" to bring to the market. What I could bring to the table was a new set of characters and a new story. Nothing radically different but hopefully something well thought-out and fueled with fun and adventure. 3) I wanted to write the story as well as draw it. No one was going to let me do that because I have no credentials as a writer aside from a few Icon and Static stories that I did for Milestone. 4R: What factors have proven to be the biggest challenges in getting people to buy/read The Last Second? BRIGHT: 1) Taking myself away from making the comic and really figuring out where to market it online. Message boards and newsgroups seemed to be the first place to try at first but that meant making a first-time appearance in those areas and coming in not as a member of that community but as someone looking for something. At best that would most likely create... I don't know -- hostility? 2) Another consideration is that the price point for the download version is probably too high. I had thought that a $1.50 credit-card purchase would be something that no one would give a second thought to but obviously I was wrong. People still see this as buying a comic book where they don't really "have" something to show for their purchase. That said, I might drop the price of the comic to around $1.00. I'm considering a setup where people can get a password and download the book themselves. That would solve the problem of how much time is needed for me to send out a 6- to 9- meg bulk e-mail broken into at least two parts twice a week. The only problem that might occur would be exceeding my monthly server bandwidth and having my site shut down until the next cycle; 6 or 9 meg downloads would really eat up bandwidth. 3) Everything online is supposed to be for free. Despite what I considered to be a fairly generous 12 preview pages available to potential buyers, the actual sales numbers were dismal. I could have done the first few issues and put them up as free downloads but I didn't see how I would ever break the "free comic online" mindset of the people reading it when I started to charge money for each issue. I was absolutely NUTS to do a second issue but it's difficult to just give up on it. After all of these years I finally started the ball rolling, how could I give up after just one issue ? Issue #3 is a lot of fun so far, I'm doing a little bit of experimenting with the look of the art in the opening sequence. 4R: What advantages does an online comic offer the creator and reader, and what disadvantages? There are a few advantages for me: 1) Complete and total control over what I do; you can't beat that. 2) I can make changes to things if they are needed. If something goes completely over the head of the readers, that can be addressed and corrected like a patch/update for your software and plugged right into everyone's copy of the book. 3) It doesn't cost me anything but my time to produce but, of course, time is your most precious asset because you can never get it back once you've used it to do something. The disadvantages for me: 1) Since I'm self-publishing and doing it online, I get two strikes for the price of one -- obviously since I'm doing it on my own, it must stink. I mean, if it was any good DC, Marvel or Image would be publishing it, right? 2) Everything online is supposed to be for free. For the people who would read The Last Second, there are a couple or three advantages: 1) You never have to worry that it's sold out at your comic book shop. 2) You have direct contact with the guy producing the book. I'm a one-man company. I do the comic, I send it out, I read and reply to all comments. (If I ever get more than 15 people reading this book, I'm in a world of trouble in terms of handling feedback.) 3) You're at your computer more and more each day. Now you can read a comic book there as well. The disadvantages are: 1) You can't read it anywhere but on your computer, which rules out everyone's "favorite reading room" unless you want to take your laptop in there. 2) There's no collector's value to a downloaded copy of a comic book. I underestimated the collector aspect of this in that even if you don't intend to resell the comic in a year or three, you still have something tangible. Doing The Last Second and selling it on a CD would probably work better than downloads from online and so that is an option that I am now offering on my website, though without much better numbers than the first issue did as a downloaded file only. 4R: What have you learned thus far in the Last Second experiment? BRIGHT: That slamming my fingers in a car door is much less painful. All kidding aside, I learned that I should have put a marketing plan together. Know who might be interested in seeing the comic and have the ability to pass along a well regarded word about it. 4R: What else are you working on now, any traditional print comics or other illustration work? BRIGHT: So far, in comics, it's all a matter of making call after call looking for fill-in work. Outside of comics, I do infrequent spot illustrations for magazines and I'm trying to move over to a career in storyboard work. 4R: Will we ever see any more Quantum & Woody? BRIGHT: I doubt it, at least not from Acclaim. The rights to Quantum & Woody revert back to (writer) Priest and I sometime down the road, under various sets of circumstances but I can't remember the particulars right now. The Last Second is available through M.D. Bright's website, www.mdbright.com. Email Randy and Don comments about this column, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board.