If you know anything about Ryan’s work you’ll know that he loves writing about himself (kidding!), but more than that he loves the ideas behind autobiography, and playing with those ideas through graphic storytelling. Now you can help him bring his unique brand of comics goodness to the masses!

Ryan’s just launched his first ever crowdfunding project over at Indiegogo to support his monstrous 96-page Autobiographical Conversations and he explains it better over there than I ever could:

Autobiographical Conversations centers on a discussion between Harry Polkinhorn (a professor of English who teaches classes on the personal essay) and me (at the time, a graduate student studying Comics and Fine Art) about autobiography, comics, and the intersection of the two. 

I have spent several years researching, developing, and illustrating this project and I’m eager to share it with you in its final collected edition, as I envisioned it from the start.  My hope is that the comics medium will provide a more visual approach to understanding autobiographical theory and framing the subject matter in the context of a conversation will allow the reader to feel more engaged, almost as though they were part of that conversation unfolding. 

There’s also a brilliant little Youtube video Ryan made that further delves into the work going into this awesome book.

Head on over to Ryan’s Indiegogo page and consider donating. He’s got some awesome rewards at a host of price points, including collections of his existing work, and the big kahuna, a shot at flying Ryan anywhere in the US for an hour long talk about comics! If supporting independent comics creators is your thing, look no further than Autobiographical Conversations.

You can also check out Ryan’s official website at Elephant Eater Comics and follow him on Twitter at ElephantEater!

Second thing, remember my interview with Symbolia’s Erin Polgreen? Well I was so smitten with what they were doing over there I asked if I could help them out. They totally said yes! Now I’m a Digital Fellow working on all kinds of cool stuff, copy editing, social media, secret fun projects, the whole deal. You can check out the announcement over at Symbolia’s Tumblr and while you’re at it, if you’ve got a tablet device, why don’t you check out some issues and see if you’re into the mag? It’s pretty righteous so if you get a chance you absolutely should!

Oh and did I mention that Symbolia’s other co-creator Joyce Rice did this awesome illustration of me? Sweet mother of grud it’s awesome!

It’s a me!

I’ve got more awesome stuff coming down the pipeline, though I may be moving this blog somewhere else in the near future, but no worries, I’ll be talking to you soon. Stay classy.

I Speak Comics: Would you mind giving us a quick rundown of Ellerbisms? Why did you decide to create a diary comic?

Marc Ellerby: During my second year of university Top Shelf was bringing out a bunch of autobio graphic novels and I got into them in a big way. American Elf had just started to pick up steam, Jeffrey Brown’s books were coming out and then Blankets hit and everyone and their mate wanted to draw autobio comics about girls.

I liked the way they were relatable to me even though I had never met the author, I connected with them in a way that I could see correlations with my own life. Sometimes the comics were heartbreaking and sometimes they were hilarious and I couldn’t get enough of them. So I did some diary comics for my third year project and I enjoyed making them so much that I thought I’d pick them up a few years later as a web comic.

ISC: Ellerbisms ended in 2010, but it just made it to print in November of 2012. Did it take two years to find a publisher or were you just content to have the comic live on the web?

ME: I ended Ellerbisms as I needed a break from it as I really had enough of looking at my life and putting it out to the general public – it had just stopped being fun. The two year gap in part was to get my head around “how is this going to work as a book; with a beginning, middle and end?” as it’s a diary comic and narrative is sometimes lost due to the spiralling nature of the genre.

Also about a year after the strip ended the relationship that I was in for the majority of the comic was falling apart and that was pretty hard to go through. I knew I wanted to deal with that in the book, and that in itself was the most difficult part of the book to do so I just put it off for a while. So even though the comic ended in 2010, I wanted to do a lot of new material for the book to give it context and a definitive narrative as opposed to just “hey look at this funny thing that happened to me”. When the relationship ended I knew what the book’s focus was going to be (and in a lot of ways drawing those comics helped me work through a lot of things and put it all in perspective).

I actually ended up self-publishing the book and starting a publishing company with my good friend Adam Cadwell called Great Beast so we could release these sort of projects.

I tried to get it in with a couple of publishers but none got back to me so I thought I’d do it myself and make the print edition the best I possibly could. So it has nice paper, it’s got rounded corners (to ape the sketchbook that I drew the comics in) and it has a spot varnish element on the cover. With Great Beast the creator is the publisher, so the person/s behind the comic pay for the print runs and the digital costs ourselves and then reap all the cash back. No one else takes a cut other than the printers, the apps and the stores etc.

ISC: How does it feel to hold three years of work? Literally hundreds of daily snippets of your life. Has there been any sort of catharsis as you reread your strips? Are you embarrassed about anything? Would you say that you’ve grown?

ME: Oh it’s a mixed feeling for sure. In some ways it’s great to hold a body of work and see your artwork progress but at the same time there’s the early strips that are just awful and I skim past them. Skip to the good bits!

I know there’s some super personal stuff in there and that’s a worry but I knew that was going to come with the territory with autobio, you’re not always the hero of your own story and sometimes you’re a dick because you’re human. You have to be honest not only with yourself but with your reader and it’s easy to brush the bad times aside but that’s not how life goes.

I think I’ve grown artistically but I don’t know about personally. I feel like I could quite easily make the same mistakes as before (though I’d try really hard not to).

ISC: What do you like about web comics? I mean why start Ellerbisms on the Internet as opposed to print minicomics or something along those lines?

ME: I did a few mini comics when Ellerbisms started online and I tried to make them as appealing as possible with recycled cardboard covers and nice paper but yeah no one really wanted them, they just wanted a book! I like the immediacy of webcomics, the best feedback I’ve got from my readers is in the comment sections (and also the opposite of that is true I guess) and it’s nice to build up an audience and interact with them online and at conventions. There’s not a huge amount of outgoings for publishing on the web (apart from the hosting and domain fees) and you can reach more people than you could with print comics for sure.

ISC: But you’ve also done work in print, like Love the Way You Love for Oni. What are some of the awesome things about working in print? Crappy things?

ME: I think with black and white comics you still can’t beat print for the reproduction quality and up until a few years ago I’d say the same about colour comics, but now with HD screen tablets I’m not sure that’s the case (though I hate the reflection you get on those screens, there’s nothing like reading Hawkeye and seeing your face all big in the reflection). I still love print, I love the smell of the ink on the paper and there’s nothing like a good quality paper-stock.

Books are still exciting objects to hold and I think that’ll be the future of the industry, publishers are just going to have to make the best book they possibly can. Print’s declining but it can still be relevant and sustainable by doing super-nice editions, you gotta make your books Kindle-proof, you’ve got to give the reader a reason to buy it physically.

ISC: Now just last month you released Ellerbisms digitally, on digital platforms like Graphicly and comiXology. Can you talk a little bit about that process? Why move Ellerbisms to digital comics readers if people can just go to your site and read everything for free?

ME: Ah but they can’t read it all for free. There’s loads of new stuff in the book and you also get all those pages if you buy the book digitally. So, yes you can read the majority of it for free but I think if you’re going to charge people for it you have to give them something extra, something that they can’t get online.

So in the case of Ellerbisms it’s, well, it’s the rest of the story. I make another comic called Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter and that came out as black and white mini comics first but for the digital edition I coloured all 130 pages to entice people drop £3 on it. It looks snazzy in colour and great to read on the tablets.

It’s important to offer your comics digitally as well as in print, the way people are reading books is changing and you have to adapt to that. It’s still in it’s infancy but it’s accelerating at such a speed that as a creator you can’t afford to not offer your books as ebooks. I’m still testing the waters to see what works and what doesn’t and what platforms are worth the headaches.

ISC: So now you’ve got Ellerbisms for free on the web, in a beautiful s0ftcover, and as a digital comic. I mean we can’t escape your books! But that’s a great thing right? 

ME: Yeah it’s a good thing! Though I think my Twitter followers are just so sick of me mentioning the bloody thing now. “No, we get it, you have a book out, well done, you” But going back to my earlier point, you have to cater to all audiences, some people want it as a book, some want to read it on their phone, some want to read parts of it for free. Publishing isn’t just about doing one thing anymore it’s about offering people options, the reader dictates how they want to read their books and not the publisher. Which is exciting and scary and kind of really cool if you think about it. The shift in power has changed.

ISC: Last question, I swear. How do you feel about the future of digital comics? About the medium in general? Are we going to see more digital comics? More web comic creators moving their work to comics readers?

ME: I was never a successful webcomicker for many reasons (diary comics don’t reach high-audience numbers, I’m not great at doing t-shirts and it’s hard to market merchandise on a character that is essentially me) and I know it’s old-fashioned, I know I’m in the minority but what’s wrong with paying for the actual comics? Do I really have to make t-shirts and cups and coasters and tote-bags (though I do like making tote-bags) to make my comic profitable? So I see selling comics digitally as a vital step and it’s one that I hope stays and flourishes, especially for indie creators. I’m working on a new Chloe Noonan series to launch later this year and it was going to be a webcomic but now I’m not so sure, especially now that comiXology’s submit program has launched. It’ll be interesting to see if a digital comic can breakout in the same way that Kate Beaton did online and The Walking Dead did in print.

You can see everything Marc’s up to at his website – http://www.marcellerby.com - and all the Ellerbisms awesome you can handle over at http://www.ellerbisms.com. Be sure to check out Marc’s publishing company Great Beast for more incredible books, and if you’re into digital you can browse their digital collection over at comiXology. Need to get your hands on a print copy of Ellerbisms? Grab one here!

Marc Ellerby is a cartoonist based in Essex, England. His comic book work (or “graphic novels” or “graphic stories” or whatever the buzz word of the moment is) includes Ellerbisms, Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter as well as illustrating comics such as Love The Way You Love for Oni Press and various short stories in anthologies published by Image Comics, Boom! Studios, Solipsistic Pop and We Are Words + Pictures.

This week in our uncanny Unlimited Highlights I got to talk about one of my current favorite series hitting newsstands, Daredevil! Post-Shadowlands I wasn’t sure where Matt Murdock was going. He went off and did a little soul searching, kicked some ass, then he decided Hell’s Kitchen was still the place to be. That’s when Waid took over and charted a course for the crimson clad crusader that has remained solid over 25 issues. It doesn’t hurt that he has an absolutely crack team of phenomenal artists backing him up, Chris Samnee, Paolo Rivera, Khoi Pham, killers all.

My favorite issue this week? I mean it’s gotta be Daredevil #1. The artistic use of onomatopoeia in that issue, and really the entire run, is really just beautiful but that was the first I had seen it so I’m definitely giving it the mention. I mean just look at that cover! Ok that’s a tiny image, click the link and you’ll see I swear! Not only that but it sets the stage for this new Matt, one who has decided to be happy, against all odds and in the face of his own brutal history.

If you haven’t gotten out and grabbed up #25 absolutely do. Matt goes up against a new foe with his own set of super senses and kung fu power and is pushed to his limits. And go check out Unlimited Highlights folks, you’ll be glad you did!

I mean where the heck did these two years go? However, before I don my second cap and gown and blow out of East Lansing for parts unknown, there are still a couple of important obstacles I must overcome. Specifically I need to submit a five to seven piece portfolio for review by my graduate committee as well as reflective essay tying the pieces together, and answer two specific committee ok’d questions at 10 pages a pop.

Doesn’t sound too bad right? That’s cause it’s not. At least I don’t think it is. I think I can do this! The beautiful thing about the portfolio review is that it’s already finished. I mean not totally finished, but the component parts are done. I’m thinking about including:

• A SIGDOC Experience Report on Digital Comics
• My “The Problems with Digital Comics” Video
• Interviews with Becky Jewell (Graphicly) and Erin Polgreen (Symbolia)
• Track Changes from a Friend’s Scholarship Essay
• A Fighting Game Vid and Community Response

And I’m even looking forward to my reflective essay. It’s going to be fun tying all of these pieces together because very rarely do we get to articulate what our work means to us to an audience that’s willing to listen. Here I can trace a narrative through my time here at MSU and hopefully show my growth as a student, scholar, and writer.

I also turned in six questions to my grad committee, of which they’ll choose three, and I’ll choose two of those to write on. They went a little like this:

1. Use the work of three rhet/comp scholars, specifically those who do work in digital rhetorics, to articulate one or two potential futures for digital comics.
2. Choose a particular web comic and using it as an example, explore what digital rhetoric is in light of this web comic. How do the different modes of meaning-making in this web comic (e.g., visuals, audio, interactive experiences) change our understanding of digital rhetoric?
3. How do technical communicators use comics? What industries utilize comics? What is valuable about comics that is able to translate across industries and disciplines?
4. Due to the financial disparity between print and webcomics, most webcomic creators can’t afford professional editors to edit their work; thus they rely on family, friends, and fans. How do these non-professionals change what it means to be a comics editor? What sort of tasks do they engage in, what literacies to they bring to the table, and how does the immediacy of the internet and fan culture change the editorial experience?
5. Editors are tasked with a multitude of duties and employ a variety of skill sets to accomplish their work. How has your own editorial understanding and philosophy grown, changed, or been influenced by experiences in the Writing Center and DRPW coursework?
6. Look at your AL 805 final project, your Personal History of Rhetoric. AL 805 was the first class you took as a graduate student. In light of that, what have you learned about rhetoric and writing in the following three semesters? Specifically, address the five main points outlined in the Personal History: Questions, self-consciousness, appeal to classmates, an attempt at understanding historical contexts, a connection with comics.

And then I’ve just got to write ten pages on those bad boys and we call it a day! I’m not particularly fond of the third question, but I really like my fifth and sixth questions, and one and two are pretty awesome as well. Best part? I’m nearly ready to answer all of these, right meow!

Basically I just wanted to get all this stuff out into the ether so I can take a look at it. I’ve got some crazy busy weeks ahead of me, a conference to prepare for, big assignments due and everything, but like I said, I got this. Wish me luck folks.

That being said, my wish list is slowly getting filled out. If you follow me on Twitter at all (@kingofbreaker) you might remember I predicted everyone from MK vs. DC was going to be making it back for round two. That wasn’t hard to figure though, I mean NetherRealm already had character models and move sets to work with. Why throw the baby out with the bathwater you know? With that being said, my wish list didn’t include Batman, Superman, the obvious big guns that would be making their inevitable appearance and instead I tried to think a little out of the box. How did I do?

Well for heroes I wanted: Shazam (Captain Marvel), Guy Gardner, Aquaman, Hawkman (Hawkwoman/Hawkgirl), Beastboy (Animal Man, Vixen), Swamp Thing, Black Canary, Zatanna, Starfire, and Etrigan. For villains I was looking for: Lobo, Black Adam, Sinestro, Metallo (Cyborg Superman), Darkseid, Doomsday, Gorilla Grodd, Cheetah, Poison Ivy, and Clayface.

Shazam, Aquaman, and Hawkwoman have been confirmed, so I got a couple right, which is awesome. It doesn’t look like very many of my villains will be seeing the light, and that may be just due to the fact that in Injustice, some heroes are acting as the baddies. I did guess Sinestro and Doomsday though, and I’m hoping that we see a little more variety in future villain reveals.

Who do we have right now? Joker, Harley Quinn, Sinestro, Solomon Grundy, Bane, Lex Luthor, and Doomsday. That makes four Batman villains (I’m including Grundy just for the fact that he lives in Gotham), two Superman villains, and a Green Lantern villain. Let’s see what DC and NetherRealm have in store for us.

I don’t know about you guys but I’m very excited for April. I’m more than ready to blast people with lightning as Shazam, shove tridents where the sun don’t shine, and shoot people in the face with arrows! Come on April!

The MSU Comics Forum, and if I’m being serious really any comic con, reinvigorates my drive to write critically about comics. This year I answered ROMOCOCO’s (Rocky Mountain Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels) call for papers. The theme for the conference is violence, and they were specifically looking for essays “that investigate the representation of violence in comic books and graphic novels.” I’d like to applaud ROMOCOCO for embracing this topic given the tragedy in Aurora and for contributing to this national debate in such a potentially rewarding way. Really, my hat is off to the coordinators of the conference.

In light of this I dusted off an idea that I’ve been nurturing off and on for a couple of years. It’s based on a book very close to my heart, the one tale that has undoubtedly had the most profound effect on my understandings of comics and the potential for the medium, Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta. I read it every 5th of November and just talking about it still gives me goosebumps. It’s gorgeous, visceral, and thought provoking and I could go on and on about why I love V, but I’ll try to focus on just what I want to talk about at the conference should I get accepted.

The threat of brutal violence permeates every page of V for Vendetta. The majority of the characters aren’t actually living their lives, but rather merely reacting to the terrifying society that surrounds them. V aims to change all that, and in doing so free dystopian London from the government’s heavy hand. He fights fire with fire, murdering and torturing his enemies and former tormentors. Violence is intrinsic to Moore and Lloyd’s crumbling London, but it is also the path to freedom for V, Evey, and Eric Finch. I’ve included my abstract below:

“Violence is rife within the pages of Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta. Set in a dystopian future England ruled by a brutal and corrupt government, the titular character, a Fawksian-masked vigilante known only as V, embarks on a quest for vengeance. Evey Hammond, a young girl intimately familiar with the vicious world around her, and Eric Finch, the inspector tasked with tracking down V, are swept into the veneered terrorist’s wake and yet, unlike so many others, they do not drown. No, instead they surface from their trials born again, freed from the bonds of fear and society’s heavy chains. In the cases of V, Evey, and Eric, violence is never just violence for its own sake, but rather a complex series of motivations, interactions, and repercussions that lead each character on their own path to a unique type of freedom. 

This paper will focus on each of these character’s intricate journeys through brutality, murder, torture, and eventual freedom. It will draw upon visualizations of specific pages and panels to explore the complex, multifaceted nature of systemic societal violence found in V in an attempt to understand the ways in which horrendous acts can be horrible, but also liberating, both physically and psychologically. 

Alan Moore and David Lloyd have crafted a brilliantly dark and horrifying thriller in V for Vendetta, one that defies simple black and white, good or bad, notions of violence. Instead the pain and anguish is compellingly complex and morally ambiguous, showing that while acts of murder and terror are absolutely deplorable and oftentimes terribly tragic, they are sometimes necessary vehicles for change. V for Vendetta, through its use of explicit violence, glorifies the strength of the human spirit and lays bare a simple unavoidable truth – Freedom is not free.”

There’s just so much to focus on there. Really there is! If I get accepted expect a full rundown after the gig. If not, I’ll likely be posting up a long write-up of my ideas here. I can’t wait either way!

On Friday night Nick Bertozzi gave a rousing keynote speech on the importance of the narrative arc, applying it to his own life and the seemingly endless string of failures he faced on his quest for comics glory. A gentleman and a scholar than one. Then Saturday rolled around and we really kicked the Forum into gear, the culmination of months and months of planning, hundreds of emails, and more planning. And it went off without a hitch!

I was sequestered in our Panel Discussion room for a majority of the Forum, but never have I been more happy to moderate such an esteemed host of professionals and scholars. I’d like to give a huge shout out to our individual presenters Zack Kruse (a fellow first-year writing warrior and writer of Mystery Solved), Justin Wigard, and Andre Peltier for their incredible scholarship. Also esteemed librarians Lisa Rabey, Kristin LaLonde, and Andrew McBride deserve a round of applause for preserving our rich comics history in their respective libraries.

Also I’d like to thank our Artist Spotlight panelists Nick Bertozzi, Josh Neufield, and Jerzy Drozd for imparting what I imagine was invaluable advice for aspiring artists everywhere. The Artist Spotlight is the only chance I get to wander the Alley, Jay takes over the moderator reigns, so I always try to grab as much as I can before I’m back in the saddle. This year I picked up work from: Chad Sell (Manta-Man), Darryl Holliday (The Illustrated Press), Matt Feazell (Cynical Man), Joe Foo (Desmond’s Comic), and Zack Kruse (Mystery Solved).

MSU Comics Forum Swag!

And let’s not forget our Comics Journalism panelists Joyce Rice, one of the big brains behind Symbolia (read my interview with her partner in crime Erin Polgreen here), Darryl Holliday of the Chicago Illustrated Press, and Josh Neufield, pulling double panel duty like a champ. We had a great round table discussion with these folks, and particularly interesting was the conversation about what makes comics journalism so compelling? What kind of stories lend themselves to the art form?

Lastly I’d like to thank Shawn Huston for bringing his film, Comic Book City, Portland, Oregon USA to the Forum and for closing out our panels in such a satisfying fashion. I really can’t say enough about everyone who contributed this year. I’m honored you graced our Forum with your work and and I’m very proud to have met you all.

Finally, thanks to my fellow organizers Ryan Claytor and Jay Jacot, because without you guys we wouldn’t even be doing this bad boy. Thanks for letting me be a part of it. And Ethan Watrall, thanks for manning the website and giving us a launchpad for our digital presence. Last but not least, thanks to my incredible girlfriend for helping clean up at the end of the day. You are the bee’s knees.

Thanks again folks, and here’s to another incredible Forum!

MSU Comics Forum Poster

What’s going on everyone, I just wanted to make sure that if you’re in East Lansing this evening you’re gonna drop by the MSU Comics Forum. Tonight it’s all going down in the auditorium beneath Snyder/Phillips Hall. The inimitable Nick Bertozzi is giving our kickoff keynote speech starting at 7 p.m. Then tomorrow we start right back up at 11 a.m. for Panel Discussions and our incredible Artist’s Alley.

We’ve had tons of awesome press supporting our event. You can check out an awesome article in CityPulse magazine by Lawrence Cosentino that details some of the coolest aspects of the Forum. There was also an article in The State News detailing The 99, a international comic starring Islamic Heroes, and the movie screening that went down in the library yesterday evening. Yours truly even got interviewed for the article. Cool beans.

So check out the Panel Schedule, take a gander at the Artist’s Alley lineup, come hang out with us tonight at SnyPhi, and make sure you drop by tomorrow when the Forum really gets cooking.

I Speak Comics: For all the readers out there unfamiliar with your new digital magazine, just what is Symbolia?

Erin Polgreen: So Symbolia is a digital journal that merges comics and recording to present investigative news stories in new ways. We report stories from all around the world – from India to Zambia to Iraqi Kurdistan – and it’s really a way for people to experience other cultures, places, and interact with issues in a way that doesn’t necessarily happen with print journalism alone.

ISC: Now I’ve never really heard of comics journalism, except for maybe in the work of Joe Sacco, or rather I’ve never heard of a publication that’s specifically dedicated to comics journalism, so I guess, why Symbolia?

EP: First off I think that this is a trend that’s been coming for a few years now. Definitely it started with Joe Sacco, but even before that some of the comics greats did work that was either strongly based in fact, or relied on some reporting itself. If you think about Joe Kubert that was specifically focused on, I believe Bosnia a few years ago. I noticed that there was a trend of comics makers that were either trained as journalists or were telling non-fiction stories, and it was kind of an evolution of diary comics on the web. It wasn’t just, “this is my life as I experience it” but “this is the world around me.”

It was coming along with the rise of tumblr and Pinterest and all these social networks really really geared towards visual sharing. Add tablets to the mix and suddenly the environment for visual journalism is very different and the possibilities are greatly expanded. I had seen creators like Wendy McNaughton and Susie Cagle, even Matt Bors or Ted Rall, their work in Afghanistan totally fits within this purview of comics journalism. So I just had this light bulb moment, I went from reading a digital comic on my first iPad to reading a magazine of photojournalism and it just all clicked together.

I’ve been following and working with these comics journalists for some time and I suddenly saw a place and an opportunity and something that we could do that would really brand the field.

ISC: How long have you guys been doing this?

EP: I’ve been following the comics journalism space for the past two and a half years or so and about a year and a half ago and I realized that this was something that I wanted to do so I went out and raised $34,000 and began working on it in March of last year. We just passed our first anniversary of bringing in our initial round of funding. We officially launched in December of last year. We’re still very young and there’s so many possibilities. It’s really exciting.

ISC: Is there anyone else doing this sort of thing? Doing comics journalism?

EP: Comics journalism is actually fairly popular abroad, and in fact there are comics used as news in India, so this is something that’s been around for a little bit. Cartoon Movement, which is based out of the Netherlands, they used to have an arm of comics journalism that they were publishing but now they’re just editorial cartoons. Symbolia is to my knowledge the first digital publication in the US that’s dedicated to specifically illustration and news.

ISC: I suppose then my next question is, why digital? What do you like about the new medium?

EP: What I love about tablets and specifically in working with digital comics is that with the new retina screen with the iPad you get the same quality of art as you do with a fine print for much less. And not only that, but you’re able to layer on these subtle interactive elements that heighten the mood or allow the reader to kind of choose their own adventure and dive deeper into a story and we do that with everything from easter egg animations that are hidden throughout the piece to interactive timelines to actual soundtracks or music that accompany a piece. In the latest issue (which you can check out here) we pair audio and video with comics to tell the story of a family that is separated because the father has been deported from the US.

ISC: It’s interesting that you bring up interactive elements like video and sound. Mark Waid recently gave a speech all about what makes comics comics, and one of the things that he said was that comics make their own time. The reader chooses the pace of the story. How do you handle that in Symbolia?

EP: That’s totally a great point and ties to our process in that we rigorously test our issues to see what the reader experience actually is and what Mark Waid says is very true, that comics exist in their own time and I use the time “chose your own adventure” very deliberately when I talk about the work that we produce because very rarely do we use autoplay. We use it sometimes as a surprise but we have rules like no more than 20 seconds, the user needs to manipulate or click, it’s their choice to take the story in a different direction.

For us linking and video and audio is sort of an extra layer that provides mood and context but also makes it easier to source our content but I totally agree, comics are their own time. When I’m actually working with contributors and working with pitches I request stories that are timely, like of this time, but not time sensitive. I don’t want something that’s tied to a 24-hour news cycle.

ISC: What are the kinds of stories that you like to tell? What sorts of stories can readers expect when they start flipping through an issue of Symbolia?

EP: Each issue revolves around a theme that allows us to weave several disparate threads together and I do like to think of Symbolia as providing stunning unexpected stories from around the globe. Our audience is international. The US makes up about 40% of our audience, but we also have readers in Canada, Germany, France, India, and South Africa, so for us, global makes sense.

We want to be connecting people in a community around the world, around the news, and around Symbolia. It’s really a democratic thing. Comics can work for people with many different reading levels and language facility. For us, we do publish our work in English, but it does play well with people who are learning English or don’t necessarily have the strongest grasp yet. They can catch emotion, they can catch situation.

ISC: How do you connect with creators? How do people tell their stories?

EP: It’s open submission. If you go to Symboliamag.com/pitchsymbolia, but it’s also in the side navigation. We’re currently accepting pitches for our Defense Issue and an issue called True Crime, which is going to be pretty exciting. We pair journalists with comics creators and some of our more successful pieces have happened that way, which is really exciting. We also with people like Dan Carino, Sarah Glidden, Susie Cagle, who’s a full-time reporter and illustrator. It runs the gauntlet.

Oh and we pay! They’re not amazing rates but part of me launching this publication was, I have too many friends that are artists, too many friends that are cartoonists that get asked to do things for free all the time. Our rates, right now we’re a startup and we’re growing but we pay and we pay on time.

ISC: Right on, well can you explain your business model?

EP: Issues are $1.99 for subscribers, $2.99 off the newsstands if you just want to get one and be done. This most recent issue is the first issue that’s been for pay so it’s been interesting to see where that’s coming from. We also offer a yearlong subscription for $11.99, so you can get six issues there.

We are currently working with subscribers and we’re going to be running ads. We have ads in our latest issue. It terms of revenue streams, looking at our business model, we have multiple different channels that we’re using: One is subscriptions (content purchasing across the platform), two is advertising, three is merchandising, and four is membership programs. So thinking about the added benefits and what are the different things that we can offer to our very dedicated community of subscribers to sweeten the pot for them?

How much should we charge for a one-on-one training to learn how to do comics journalism? Would we run a weekend long workshop, like The Sequential Artists Workshop or Center for Cartoon Studies to specifically teach people how to do digital comics? These are all different sources we’re drawing from and the overarching proponent for all of this is here at Symbolia, we also want to function as a consulting service, a consultancy, not just for publishers but for creators themselves. To help them find avenues for distribution and to connect with new audiences.

ISC: From your vantage point on the digital comics frontier, what are you excited about? What do you expect from the future?

EP: So what’s interesting is that before I started running my own magazine I was a strategist and worked for a publishing organization and helping them think about what the future was and what was happening out there. That was a really valuable roll, but one of the reasons I left it is that I missed working on the ground. Part of the challenge is that now keeping up is so hard! That said, I’m so fascinated by the People’s E-Book project. I think their Kickstarter campaign is closing in the next week (two days left to donate!). They are specifically trying to create an ebook publishing platform for anyone to use. With a specific mind toward brining zines to the masses, which is totally up my alley.

In terms of different creators that I love and am really excited to see work from them, Tom Hart and Leela Corman out of The Sequential Artists Workshop, they both do fantastic stuff and think about comics and pedagogy in a way that’s just fascinating.

In terms of platforms for publishing digitally, I’ve kind of been watching Vook and am very interested with what the Atavist is doing with their white label software solution.

ISC: Well I think that’s all I got. Anything else you’d like to say?

EP: We’re really excited to be a part of this community and really looking forward to building partnerships with other publishing organizations and creators as we go along. We have big things planned.

Erin Polgreen is co-founder of Symbolia Magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @ErinPolgreen. You can get all the official Symbolia news straight from the source at Symboliamag.com.

Want to check out Symbolia for yourself? You can get the iPad app right here! Not really feeling the whole app thing? No worries, PDF versions of the magazine are also available!