Subscribe to the Pencil Kings Podcast: | iTunes | Stitcher
“You’re doing it because it’s what you want to do, and you know you want to do it. And anything anybody else can say really doesn’t matter to you.“
~ Alex Banchitta
Want to know how to create your own comic books?
In this interview with Fright Comics founder, Alex Banchitta, you’ll learn exactly what it takes to get your dream project off the ground and into publication.
Thanks to his insights into the comic book industry, you’ll discover what you really need to be doing…and how to avoid the pitfalls that stop many potentially great comic book projects in their tracks.
Alex Banchitta on How to Create Your Own Comic Books
Although he’s an artist too, Alex Banchitta describes himself as more of a comic book creator these days.
After studying cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, he soon began to really understand how the comic book industry really works.
He says: “So the way the comic book industry works is that it’s all divided up. You have your penciler, your inker, your letterer, and your writer. In addition to that, you have your editor and the people in charge of production and publishing.
Now, you can certainly do all those things by yourself, but the reason it developed the way it did is because it increases production speed and people start to get specialized in certain fields (such as penciling or inking) and they tend to get very good at that.”
So how do you get your first project out of your head and onto the page?
Here are some of the questions we asked Alex Banchitta on how to create your own comic books…
- How are comics actually made? (02:29 – 05:06)
- How do you put together a team to work on your comic book idea? (06:15 – 10:14)
- How do you get people to really believe in your comic book project? (10:45 – 22:11)
- Why is it so important to finish a project? (30:52 – 34:10)
We hope this week’s podcast interview with Alex Banchitta from Fright Comics helps teach you everything you need to know about how to create your own comic books.
And, if you enjoyed this podcast, why not leave us a comment below? We’d love to know what you guys think 🙂
Here’s to your art!
People on this Episode:
Links From This Episode:
Subscribe via iTunes.
Listen on Stitcher Radio.
Android users can grab our RSS feed here.
Right-click and “save file as” for direct download.
Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Wednesday morning 8AM EST.
Cheers,
Mitch
PS, there is also Pencil Kings content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
I work with artists every single day. So far I haven’t met one that “wants to do everything” and definitely not “wants to do everything perfectly”. In fact, all artists – amateurs and pros – that I have ever worked with (well over 1000 over more than 30 years) knew perfectly well that they can only do ONE THING, maybe two or three, really good.
Some might “love to be able to do everything”, but even children learn very fast and realize that this is NOT FUN.
A suggestion to Mr. Banchitta: Put a clause into the contract making the artist pay a fine if she does not deliver within the agreed time at the quality proofed. Everyone everywhere else has to act professionally – why not expect that from an artist, too? That’s just a professional approach and actually puts the artist into a position where she HAS to quote the right price to begin with, where she HAS to block the time needed, where she HAS to be upfront and correct.
There just is no need to deal with “false calculations”, as Mr. Banchitta seems to have experienced.
There seems to be a logic gap at the money point: If you see publishing as a business, you don’t publish something that is going to be a loss. Every once in a while you WILL take risks, sure. But that’s not a business foundation. If on the other hand, you look at publishing as a way to show your OWN writing skills, you are not talking about business, you are talking about PR. That’s two different worlds. The discussion seems to completely mix up “publishing” and “writing and hiring artists for advertising purpose”.
Mr. Banchitta seems to suggest that his business is to make money ELSEWHERE and then losing it on publishing comics. That sounds like a weird business idea. If he’s about getting PR for his stories, he shouldn’t call it “publishing comics” but “pay artists to illustrate his stories”. That would be honest and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just a different story. Again: It’s FINE if you are talking about cooperation, hiring people etc. I subscribe to paying money for work – always. It just shudders me to hear someone calling himself a publisher if he knows he’s going to lose money on every product he publishes. Since he pays the artist, it’s kind of fine on that side, but it is still unfair to the reader (if the reader wants more but the publisher goes out of business due to lack of money, it’s a lose:lose thing).
In short: What Mr. Banchitta seems to be doing is FINE. He should be honest to the artists he hires that he is not going to be successful with their work (else he would make money), which – again – would probably make them calculate their pricing correctly. It would be unfair to make them BELIEVE (even inadvertantly) that they get publicity by working for him. Being fair is not just about the money, I think.