February
26 A Tale Beyond Time: Part 1

Many fans or peripheral readers of comics may wonder how certain books make it to the shelves. The old adage "if it's a good story, someone will find it" is partially true, but nowadays if your title doesn't have an "X-" attached or a Batman cameo, it's hard to get noticed, let alone be successful.

So we decided to follow Beyond Time Comics as they prepare for the launch of their first title, Black Tiger: Legacy of Fury.

The principals involved are John E. Hervey II (director of finance and operations, and book's writer) and Priscilla A. Tjio (director of sales and marketing). They are nearing the March 10 date when the series (4-issue limited) hits the shelves, so much of the hard work has been done. But it was not an easy road ...

How did you come up with the concept for the book?
John E. Hervey II: Initially, it was an idea that was intended to be made into a screenplay, but as I developed the characters and the world around them it became apparent that a single screenplay could not do the story justice.
Priscilla A. Tjio: John had asked me what I thought about his idea, and the more we talked about it, the story began to come together. I remember John commenting that he would like to put it into comic book form, and next thing I knew, he had contacted some artists and the book started production.

What were your first thoughts about how you'd bring the comic book to the shelf?
JH: The idea of self-publishing can be a daunting one. Priscilla and I began discussing the pros and cons of self-publishing versus looking for a publisher the first day we committed to producing a comic book. Priscilla was always a staunch believer that we should self-publish, and as production of the book progressed I came to the same conclusion.
PT: I think aside from the self-publishing issue, we were also concerned about how to market our book so that retailers would order it from Diamond Distributors. We had to figure out how we, as a new independent publisher, would generate interest for our book considering the hundreds of books that are put out every month. We are still working on that.

Who did you contact first and why?
JH: Being the writer, the next link in the chain that we needed was a penciler. We contacted a couple of pencilers initially, but weren't able to get the kind of consistency we needed to publish a series. Via the wonder that is the internet, we contacted Rod Pereira, who was just coming off another project. He liked the vision of our Black Tiger series and showed he could consistently produce quality work.

How'd you choose an artist, a cover artist, describe the book's tone in relation to the cover.
JH: Previous to contacting any artist, I would evaluate their style to see if I thought it would be appropriate for the book. There is so much diversity in the characters within the series, that it requires a team of artists that can do justice to these diverse elements. At times, the book has a dark edge to it, and the book needed artists who could deliver that as well as portray some good old fashioned martial arts ... Regarding cover artists, I had a dream list that consisted of no more than four artists. I took a chance and reached out to them. Greg Horn was gracious enough to respond to my email. From there we developed a discourse online and when he saw we were committed to making comic books, he agreed to do the covers for our first four issue mini-series. This was fortunate for us, because about a month later he received a large influx of work from movie and video game companies that has not let up. I talked with numerous people when looking for an inker and chose Arne Starr because not only is he a comic book veteran, but he had the most fire for the project. I was fortunate when it came to letters and inks because Legio Studio was one of the first companies I reached out [to], and they quickly responded with high quality work.

[Seems simple to hear it explained, but success comes from following a process when creating a book. We'll cover some of the pitfalls and unexpected hurdles they encountered, next week.]