D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

I want to get moving here and away from the internet, but as always, this is the place where I drop the clutter of my brain out, and usually before coffee. Here we go…

Health status: Still under the friggin weather, but feeling better. The nagging cough has kept me away from the gym and I’m not happy about that. Hopefully the cough goes away today. They don’t call me Coffman for nothin! — My wife has it worse, losing her voice off and on again, even nyquil doesn’t help her kick her nagging cough, so sleep has been touch and go. Suck is life.

Politics Update: I think some sort of big news is gonna break before the end of the day. Just a feeling. Maybe an endorsement? It feels like NOW would be the right time for that. And yes, my wife and I are still in awe over meeting and talking with Senator Obama. The sketchcard he signed is now framed all nice along with the ticket stub and hanging in my living room. I feel like I have a piece of HISTORY in my living room now and something my great grandkids can have or keep in the family… a Presidential signature, and an original work of art by their own blood.

Work update: I’m planning on cracking into our issue 4 ongoing today and getting the ball moving on that. Not sure when issue 3 hits stands, soon though, as it’s been turned in for a bit now.

I keep resisting the urge to “launch” something else because honestly it wouldn’t be prudent. I think these are false urges– meaning, I’ll get this rush of energy and great ideas and plans and it revs my mind up, but then I sleep on it and the next morning the idea feels like, MEH.

I guess I’m professional enough to know that my time is best spent in building the Hero By Night universe more and more, laying down a solid foundation here for things to come. Sometimes that vacuum feeling sets in, where it feels like it’s just Jason and I trucking along and high fiving each other with little feedback, but then we get the fan letters, comments, etc and it puts fuel in our fires. I just keep pushing for MORE… every day we need new readers. And you know what’s frustrating as heck? We have more readers online than the Batman print books– but that doesn’t translate to us having more sales than Batman or Superman– but still, that’s remarkable. If I didn’t have a full on comic universe to draw here, I’m betting I could send more and more of our online readers into shops…

Comic Shops…. there’s this weird stigma with some of them out there. Readers online tell me in private messages that they might know of a comic store in their area but they don’t want to go there for various reasons. Bad customer service, high prices, lack of what they want– and forget about trying to get the online folks to preorder, when I explain to a new guy that they have to preorder RIGHT NOW for books shipping in June, they think it’s too long of a wait to pay now. And it kinda is… they want to buy direct from me or the publisher when the books available. — marketing online, not many people GET. You can’t “tease” for weeks, months, maybe even days. You should wait until your book or physical product is in your hands and then put up a for sale link for the best performance with your core audience. It’s tricky– and my hands are kinda tied on that front a bit. The important thing is, pushing this old system so our preorder and reorder sales. It’s ridiculously backward, but that’s how it is. — I was explaining to Bob over the weekend, it’s why when I was approached by Diamond to distribute my Yirmumah monthlies I was doing I declined. It makes so much more sense to deliver direct and NOW. Maybe a short preorder period to gather some print cost money or such, but I’m talking 2 weeks, run a 2 week push special— with Diamond, it’s a 2 month wait. And I don’t even want to get into the people who complain that they preordered but their shop didn’t get the book in….. UGH. Makes for a grumpy me.

I guess that comes from my indy viewpoint, where I see opportunities where our brand could be making a lot more money. I also think my publisher could be making a lot more money from our website, but it would probably have to leave the Drunk Duck network to do so. Not a slight on Duck, but it would be hard to sell the type of advertising I’m thinking of with certain mature content sharing the network there. That’s something that’s a little annoying to me, that my kids or someone else could be reading HBN there and then click on some comic with language or adult themes pretty fast. I know it’s 2008 and we’re all grownups online now, but still, from a marketing perspective, that’s bad news. - The remarkable thing, again, about Hero By Night, or about MANY webcomics for that matter is, we have more readers than things that have been in print for 60 years. Comic books and comic strips. That’s what makes webcomics remarkable as a message that a good salesman could push and deliver— I see absolutely no reason why Nabisco or Frito-Lay or a meriad of other “young” companies aren’t advertising to this new youth oriented market. It’s just that they don’t KNOW yet. — Whoever lets them know, in the right way, would be wealthy.–

Ok– I’d better get to something that I CAN control… and that’s drawing awesome fun comics that you will remember forever. That you just don’t come to once a month or tuck away in a mylar bag.

Woops— school just called… gotta go pick up a sick kid. FANTASTIC!