Gathering my thoughts

...on crowdfunding, queer comics, free will, and more.

Hi everyone!

So. Where am I, work-wise?

LOVE: to Kickstart or not to Kickstart?

First of all: thanks to all of you who responded in my latest poll about what to do with my Love-book!

Many of you answered that you WOULD buy it in a Kickstarter, so I went ahead and... put together a Kickstarter! I even did a consultation with the knowledgeable Brad Guigar and was basically ready to go, when the quote from the distributor came in with the price of sending a physical book to, say, the U.S.:

I knew it was going to be high, but it turned out to be TWICE as high as I had anticipated - which makes it really ridiculous to plan to send anything over any ocean, at the moment. And it doesn't look as if this postal situation will get any better soon - which means I’m going to shelve my plans for Kickstarter for now.

Which is too bad, as I had longterm Kickstarter-plans for my Philosophy book which I'm posting here on Substack. But it's also not THAT bad, since my first and foremost goal is getting it out into the world, and I love how it's gaining an audience here. I hope many teachers and students find it useful.

Crowdfunding

This does not mean I'm done with crowdfunding! Over the past six months I have been involved in no less than three crowdfunding campaigns for comics here in Holland (on voordekunst): in two I was very behind-the-scenes, and the third one I told you about, for magazine StripGlossy.

All three of them were a success!

I learned a lot:

- One campaign didn't look like it was going to make it. Then, in the last week, as we communicated that only a Maecenas could save us - lo and behold, a Maecenas appeared and donated thousands of euros!

Which goes to show: it pays to ask, you only need one benefactor to push you over the finish line, and a crowdfunding campaign is the ideal place to get your fans involved to the point of making miracles happen for you!

- That said: the other campaign was driven by the fact that the comic it was crowdfunding was being pre-published in no less than three newspapers. For this reason, we dared to set a high goal, which was achieved relatively easy. This proves that first comes the crowd, then comes the funding!

All in all, I still hold my theory that a mid-level artist (like myself, with a career of a few decades, good visibility on social media and at least 100 true fans) can achieve a crowdfunding goal of between 5000 and 10.000 euros with about 100 backers. When you aim for more money, you need something extraordinary, like that one Maecenas OR some solid visibility elsewhere.

- The third campaign, in which I was in the foreground as the 'in-house' comic artist of StripGlossy, was very fun to do but a lot more time-consuming than I thought (which always happens in crowdfundings).

The result of my sponsor wall for the StripGlossy crowdfunding

By the end, I found myself longing to do a crowdfunding for my own work again, where I have all the control.

And this will happen very soon, as I'm preparing a campaign for a new (Dutch) album of Mijntje! This will kick off somewhere in the coming months. I'll keep you posted.

Mijntje = Minnie

For those of you who don't know Mijntje: she is my oldest and most beloved comic character. I created her for lesbian magazine Zij aan Zij, where she has been a twenty-two-year-old bisexual redhead for twenty-one years already!

Mijntje was translated into English as Minnie and had a digital publication with Northwest Press in 2014. I also posted her comics in English on Tapastic, where she was pretty popular until the platform changed its rules on Not Safe For Work comics. Minnie is by no means a pornographic comic, but it does show nudity and has some (very funny) bed scenes.

I still can't believe that this is deemed Too Much for Our Impressionable Youth - I think the world need to be exposed to more comics like Minnie, where sex and relationships are depicted in a real, fun way.

That's why I decided to start posting Minnie on Substack.

You can subscribe for free here.

I promise you won't regret it. Minnie features some of the best comics I ever made. Read her. Spread the word. Let's bring a little light in the darkness.

Free Will

As long as I'm asking you to subscribe to my stuff: have you signed up for my Philosophy Substack already?

This not only features my comics on the lives of some historical philosophers but also scenes from my own life: I just posted a chapter on Free Will, where I tell about my youthful aspiration to move to the U.S. - only to find myself pulled back inexorably to Europe within two weeks. What happened to my Free Will? Was this what Predestination feels like?

Yiri sets me straight on Predestination

Poll

It's been almost two years since I started posting on Substack.

I love it here. It has unleashed a whole new comics creativity for me.

I don't overthink posting too much - I usually just produce what I feel like. That's why you'll find comics about end-of-life thoughts with my mom next to comics about my sex life; comics about funerals close to comics about dancing; comics with deep thoughts as well as comics that are just plain silly.

All of it is me.

But you, reader, are you here mostly for one specific sort of comic?

I'd love to know!

(And I love polls; whenever other artists do them I just have to respond; what kind of human instinct does that appeal to, I wonder…?)

Thanks for reading all the way to here!

Here's a badge!

Thank you for being here for my stuff! I love comicking for you!

P.S.

What am I doing with my Love?

I'm spreading it around!

Like here in Kopenhagen, where I dropped a pile at comic store Fantask for Free Comic Book Day:

And here on the isle of Texel, where it was given to the guests of the wedding of my friend Mimi and her Gijs:

If you want Love, the best way to get your own free copy is to catch me somewhere between Germany and Amsterdam.

Let me know when you’re around!

😀