Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s been a
long time coming, but the first full story arc of Freedom Fighter is now available
for purchase! With the release of
Freedom Fighter #4 from Insane Comics last month, it’s all out there and ready
for you to divulge! If you’re one who
hasn’t got a copy yet, here’s the link: Click Here
The task of getting Freedom Fighter
onto the page has been a long and at times an uncertain one. Not exactly sure, but best guess is eight
years ago, AJ Fulcher and I met online and pretty much instantly, a friendship
in making comics was born. We were both
novices (still consider myself so) and we knew just enough about the business
of making comics to be dangerous. Sadly,
I don’t know how Freedom Fighter was truly conceived. I remember we wanted to create a superhero
book, and we wanted to build a history with the character. I’ve always liked conspiracies, so wanting to
do something along those lines clearly had something to do with Freedom Fighter’s
creative birth. At the time, AJ and I
had both considered the book to just be a practice book; something to get our
feet wet. We figured we would break out
with something much bigger in the future; but as we built our story and
creative team, Freedom Fighter took on a life of his own. When I finished the first drafts of the
scripts I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. It tuned into something much more exciting
and original than I had expected for a superhero story. Weird, right?
Shortly afterwards, AJ finished the character designs; at that point it
was clear that Freedom Fighter was more real than we had anticipated he would
ever be. He was there to stay.
Obviously, we thought that our book was going to be great at that point, but
the big question was: Would we be able to convince anyone else that they should
check it out? Reality was sinking in,
and we realized that an Indie Super Hero comic book was going to be a hard sell. There are so many bigger mainstream options
out there, there was no doubt our little practice book would be swallowed up. But once again Freedom Fighter was destined to
surprise us. We submitted Freedom
Fighter #1 to nine publishers at first (Three of which were bigger publishers
that were most likely out of our meager reach).
About a month later, Freedom Fighter was picked up by Outpouring
Comics. AJ and I felt like we had made
it. We were going to be published comic
book creators. And just as amazing,
Freedom Fighter was going to see print.
A few more months passed and we
were knee deep in promoting the release of Freedom Fighter #1! It was an amazing feeling to have a printed
copy of our character’s book in our hands. And the feeling was only amplified by the fact
that we had a team of people inside out publisher’s company that were
supporting us and helping us push the book out there. The whole experience was extremely
satisfying. But even with a great publisher
helping us promote the book, AJ and I still didn’t know if we were making the
impact we needed to. I had promoted my
books in the past to book sellers and readers on the internet, but selling a
comic book felt like an entirely different animal. But more on promoting later…
Outpouring Comics took our book to
several shows in the course of our time with them. In all honesty, I had low expectations of how
the book would perform; I wanted to keep them that way in case of a massive
failure. But once again, Freedom Fighter
pulled his surprising tricks. Sales were
great! Better than great, the publisher
informed us that Freedom Fighter was one of its top 3 sellers in print! And to ice the cake, Freedom Fighter #1 held
the number 3 spot on DriveThruComics.com for digital sales! Talk about feeling on top of the world! How was that for a surprise?! Alas it’s true what they say: The higher you are, the further you have to
fall.
I wasn’t ready for what would
happen next. We were gearing up for the
release of Freedom Fighter #2 which was less than a week away. I’d scheduled appearances to a few cons in
the near future, and ordered plenty of copies of Freedom Fighter #1 to stock
up. Out of nowhere, (No Warning Signs,
Period!) I get a call from our publisher.
He explains to me that they are changing the direction of their company
to publishing books of their own creations, rather than everyone else’s. Long story short, Freedom Fighter, along with
a handful of other books, would be dropped from their roster. Yeah, that happened!
Re-submitting Freedom Fighter to
other independent publishers seemed like a dead end to both of us. It wasn’t long ago that we were realizing
that an Indy Superhero book was tough sell, and on top of that, what publisher
was going to pick up a book that had apparently been dropped by another publisher? That being said, we sent out about a dozen
more submissions for the hell of it. In
the meantime, AJ and I had decided that self-publishing Freedom Fighter was our
best option.
For the next few weeks we worked on
page formatting and placement building the print files for Freedom Fighter from
scratch. We worked out the numbers, and
it appeared to be most profitable and suitable to publish the entire story as a
graphic novel. It wasn’t what we preferred,
but it was what made the most sense.
After finally formatting the book to our liking, we sent the file to be
proofed. There was nothing more to do
but wait. It would take a few days
before we heard back from the printer, even so, I checked my email daily hoping
to find the final proof ready. What I
found instead was that Freedom Fighter had yet another surprise in store!
Opening my email one afternoon, I found
that Insane Comics, a fairly new publisher that was making big waves in the
industry, was interested in publishing Freedom Fighter. After answering a few questions and a little
back and forth through email, Freedom Fighter had found a new home! Insane, right!? And as it turns out, it was the perfect home.
We’ve now published Freedom Fighter
#1 - #4 with Insane Comics. I’ve
attended two comic cons with the publisher, and have tables reserved at a few
shows later this year to promote the book.
We’re also talking about putting together a Trade Paperback of the first
story arc which will include a ton of extras!
More on that later… But Freedom Fighter
in TBP form will open several other sales platforms for the book which is nothing
short of super! And get this, later this
year we’re expected to release Freedom Fighter #5! That’s right, surprising us once again, this
little indie superhero practice book has warranted a second story arc, at
least! Surprised? I’m not anymore. In fact, I think Freedom Fighter is going to
be turning a lot more heads in the very near future. Let’s see what else this little book that
could has up its sleeves!