Failed book prototype (Patreon)

I'm making a huge move and packing up my entire life at the moment, and found this book... This is a rare one. To be honest I completely forgot it existed. 

Back when I was starting out, I got preyed upon by a terrible publisher. They put out low quality print products, didn't let me proof anything that was being made before it went to print, had me doing most of my own book packing (stuff that I realize now as a publisher is a huge chunk of the labor, that artists should never be responsible for without being compensated), and was taking about 70% of my profits off of 100% of my licensing at the peak of my comic's popularity. It's easy now to say that younger artists should know better and have such and such lawyers reading contracts and never sign this or that but in addition to not having any of those resources, I was unfortunately also straight up lied to, and he'd go out of his way to avoid emails as well so there was not a lot of paper trail. Nowadays I'm extremely grateful that there are so many resources for starting artists, agent lists flying around everywhere, open discussion of what constitutes a fair or abusive contract, mentorships, etc. Not having those things available in the mid-2000's completely derailed my career in ways I'm still recovering from, esp when it comes to working with publishers now. I'm really terrified of someone stealing my work again to this magnitude and prefer to overwork if it means I don't have to deal with that kinda thing... It's sad in some ways, but I'm also very glad that the next generation of webcomic artists turned mainstream comic artists have more protections than I did. 

Anyways, this is a rough prototype of the book I had made with that company, which led to me finally severing ties with them. After all that bullshit and free labor and unwanted sexual conversation, this was what got me to finally take a stand... the quality was so low and I was being pressured heavily into doing things I didn't want to do. He wanted me to try and aim for a packaging Eisner (I was told that my comic wasn't good/ popular enough to try for a content-based one), so he wanted the first book of 3 chapters to come slip cased with a cut out front and transparent vellum this and that, which is so over the top for what amounts to a first volume. I mean... are all 10 books supposed to be individually slipcased? ? i just

Usually publishers will get your book print-ready for you... the publisher here (for the umpteenth time) did no adjustments to the colors on their end, just used my raw files (RGB), so everything printed dark and muddy and they had no problem with that. I'd give them benefit of the doubt that it's a proof, but they had messed up the colors on multiple floppies and a friend's book at this point. They also ignored all of my notes for how the book was to be laid out, and made the one thing they were responsible for (the indicia) completely tacky and gigantic, cartoon font... argh. 

Because of the contract I had with them, the eventual Volume 1 that was Kickstarted had to be pretty much completely modified from the files I'd used for this book. Since the pages are exactly the same that meant I had to make adjustments to all the art, update the formatting, and remove a lot of the extra content that was originally included in this version of the book since it was technically created for/ under their publisher. I think I uploaded most of these illustrations to Patreon at some point, you can probably find them under the Meek tag. 

Took a long time to get my license back, and took a longer time to get the Kickstarter version made due to all the changes, but I'm so grateful this was not my first book release. I'm not a very outspoken person and it's hard for me to get angry or fight for myself, but watching them destroy my art to make a quick buck and bait the Eisner committee on something I didn't care about was just too much for me. 

And, I won't name the company here (and prefer if you didn't either if you know who they are)... they are pretty much dead to the comics world now and have as far as I know no growth or IP except for one comic, so I think future US artists will be safe from them. 

Anyways, enjoy this look into one of my failures, and please don't hesitate to fight for your vision. If someone is asking you to compromise in a way that you just don't feel comfortable doing, it's okay to say no. Sometimes the consequences can be severe, but it's easier to live with a setback you can recover from, than to live with something you hate for the rest of your life.

obligatory V1 baby that is beautiful and which i love with all my heart, haha <3

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BTW, today is the last day I'm selling books that don't suck at a 15% discount, ahead of my move. Patrons get an additional 10% off by using the coupon "catdrugs" on any of the books in this listing, and the shop is closing until June or so around 4pm PST.