UPDATE 23 February 2008:

In the year or so since I last exchanged emails with Hilary and Poe, a few things have changed over at Caffeine Angel Studios. It was a fairly hectic time for those two, and some of the items that came up in our conversation were forward-looking statements about plans they had for their company (well, companies - plural) and not everything they thought probable for 2007 actually turned out to be practical, profitable, or possible (any one of the three or all at once, take your pick).

Out of the blue (but certainly not unwelcome) Hilary sent me an email recently with a few corrections for us to bring the profile on Poe, Herself, and Caffeine Angel up to date. The changes are relatively minor, but editorially speaking I thought it best to note that the interview was updated.

Um. The interview’s been updated. Full post after the break. -M.

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It was a couple of weeks ago that I was shocked to find an errant copy of Michael Poe’s Errant Story, vol. 1 for sale at a local bookstore. Of course I snapped it up. I remembered reading quite a few chapters on-line (@ www.errantstory.com, natch) but had lost track of the story and site, hm, it seems to me right around the time my old desktop system died and I lost my first decade-or-thereabouts of bookmarks. I was glad to find a reminder of Errant Story, and in handy dead-tree form, at that.

Volume one of Errant Story is published by Keenspot (Who knew Keenspot did comics? — Well, I guess I was vaguely aware of it since I saw their name crop up in an article about Free Comics Day); both it and the self-published volume two can be had from Poe’s own web store, the aptly named Selling Out for Fun and Profit.

It’s not often I get to talk with the owner of his own art studio, or a self-published comic artist, or a web comicker, but since an interview with Michael Poe offered an opportunity to do all three, I sent off an email. Not only did we score an interview with the writer-slash-artist, as a bonus we also got responses from Hilary Hatch, his wife–and a professional in publishing in her own right. (2-for-1! or would that be 5-for-2? I’m confusing myself…)

In the interview, Michael is listed as Poe, Hilary as Impy (if you’re a regular on their forums one supposes you already knew that) and our questions are designated by italics, just so you know who’s “talking”

And here we go:

- I’ll be leading the article with one or two paragraphs about the two of you and Errant Story, which out of laziness I will likely copy from your website. Is there anything you’d care to add?

[In deference to my laziness, or my honesty, Hilary was kind enough to type most of this up for me]

Michael Poe is the creator of the popular online graphic novels Exploitation Now and Errant Story. He is best known for the consistently high quality of both his art and his writing, particularly in Errant Story, and he has received several Webcartoonist’s Choice Awards for this and past work. His work has been published both in print and on the web, and he has a devout following for both media. Poe has been an established name in webcomics for the past six years, and a professional graphic novelist full-time since 2004.

Hilary Hatch, Poe’s wife and business partner, has been involved in webcomics since 2001, but has gradually shifted her focus from managing a collaborative webcomic project to managing Poe’s career in comics. In 2005 she quit her own full time job to take over the business & marketing side of their business; as owner of Caffeine Angel Studios LLC she runs the company — taking care of strategic planning, some of the editing, and dealing with agents (if and when) for licensing rights.

- (Icebreaker) So, what are you reading?

Poe: Unfortunately, I spend so much time working on the comic that I really don’t have much time to do any reading lately. I used to read on trips to conventions and stuff but I haven’t had a chance to do that recently either.

Impy: I’ve been reading pretty much constantly. I read a lot of sci-fi, fantasy, or humorous romance novels usually, but lately I’ve also added a fair bit of nonfiction relating to writing and publishing. I also read a LOT of blogs, usually by comic artists, agents, publishers, or writers. And, of course, I also read a bloody ton of e-mail, a bunch of webcomics, and every single post on the Errant Story forum. ^-^’

- You’ve been on the web a long time. Back in 2000, when you started Exploitation Now, did it seem like the obvious thing for an aspiring comic artist to be doing, or was it something new?

Poe: I first started putting comics on the internet for a small group of friends that I talked with, and you know, just for the sake of drawing something. At that time my putting up new comics was rather sporadic and just for the hell of it, but then Keenspot was announcing the beginning of their whole Keenspace thing, and since I was having hosting problems at the time I registered for that and began posting comics on that site on a much more regular basis than I had before. Eventually I got upgraded to Keenspot, and the rest is history.

- Did you know then that web comics were going to become your full time job?

Poe: No, the possibility really didn’t enter my mind until after the very first EN collection sold so well. And then later while attending a convention, a group of fans pretty much just threatened to start a donation drive FOR me if I didn’t start one myself to get starting capital to try doing the comic as my full time job.

Impy: I remember that… they basically cornered you, though actually it was really sweet and supportive of them to do so. As for my full time job… I guess I always sortof hoped to make my involvement in webcomics self-sustaining, since part of the point was to make it that way for the artists in my project, but I never really knew it would go as far as it has.

- Did you start Errant Story with the background & setting, the character, or the story in mind first?

Poe: Hmmm… I would have to say character first, since I had already created Meji as a joke for a site I was already involved in, and Jon was a character that I had been trying to build a series around for several years.

- Do you write “scripts” or immediately start drawing panels?

Poe: I was on my way to work one night when a scene involving the two completely unrelated characters interacting came to me (Jon and Meji). I pulled over at a gas station and scripted out a couple pages worth of dialogue. Later, when I was at work, I started scripting out even more pages, and over the following week more or less the entire idea for the story began to form in my head as I wrote out scripts for the first several chapters.

- About how long does it take you to finish a page? — and just out of curiosity, what are your tools and processes? All-digital, paper drafts and digital processing, or all-paper with a final scan?

Poe: Probably at least a day, I’d say. It depends on how quickly the dialogue can form in my head, sometimes it’s minutes and sometimes it’s hours. Then I do a quick little layout sketch to establish panels and camera angles and such, then I do the pencils (using just a regular mechanical pencil, not the blue photocopy pencils). Then I ink, scan, and do the rest in Photoshop.

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- Comics vs Manga…is there a difference?

Impy: I think there started out being a difference, but as manga becomes more of a presence in the West the two forms are merging a great deal. Graphic novels are tough to judge, because there’s both the writing aspect and the visual aspect to evaluate. There’s still a lot of differences between the two forms visually, but in terms of writing I see them getting closer and closer as time goes on. The classic superhero comics are different, of course, as they’re really their own separate genre.

Poe: I really don’t think there’s that much of a difference. A lot of people base manga solely on the art style, but I’ve always been one of those people who defined manga as comics that happened to have been published in Japan rather than being a separate genre of their own.

- With manga titles outselling conventional (DC, Marvel, Dark Horse) graphic novels, particularly with younger fans, do you think that US publishers will eventually take on more and more licensed foreign titles at the expense of American art and artists?

Impy: No, I don’t really think so. Right now, manga is this big new thing still so most of the established titles are foreign, but as it gains exposure I think publishers will take on fewer and fewer foreign titles in favor of more accessible domestic works. Of course, as graphic novels continue to grow in popularity, the standards for what comprises a salable title will change, and you’ll probably see graphic novel lines start to more closely resemble what we see in the rest of publishing in that there will be a variety of genres within the category of “graphic novels.”

Poe: I believe that the US comic industry is being a little bit self-defeating currently. They often seem like they can’t decide whether they want to attract new readers or preserve the form for the fanboys who have been reading for decades and love seeing references to things they read when they were twelve, even though that turns off the younger, newer readers. They also seem to be unable to decide on a content level for a lot of their flagship titles. I think one of the reasons they’re buying so many Japanese titles right now is because most of the domestic material is failing to reach new audiences.

- How would you classify Errant Story?

Impy: Actually, I’d classify it first as fantasy, and second as a graphic novel. In fact, I think that’s exactly the sort of classification problem that we’ll start seeing more and more often… graphic novels aren’t a genre, they’re a storytelling medium, and eventually bookstore shelves will need to reflect that.

Poe: I’ve always just considered it fantasy.

Impy: To be fair about the importance of the graphic novel format, I think Errant Story would translate pretty well to being published as a work in text, but a lot of the depth and brilliance for this particular work comes from the fact that Poe thinks in panels, not paragraphs. That’s going to be true for any graphic novel… part of the spirit is in the form.

- Even though Errant Story is an on-line comic, it has a lot of “book sensibilities”: the “pages” are the same size, you post a page at a time, the experience reading on-line is a lot like flipping through a graphic novel. Is that strictly an artistic choice? Given the wide-open potential of publishing on the web, why limit yourself?

Poe: I intend Errant Story to be published in book form. I enjoy reading it in dead tree format, and while I realize there’s all kinds of unique options available to me posting it on the web, I’d rather work on it as though I were working on a book.

- Have you adjusted your art style since 2004, to make the adaptation to printed comics easier?

Poe: Mm, not really. I adjusted my style in 2004 because I finally had the freedom to work on the comic full-time, so I was able to do a lot of things that I’d been wanting to do but had never been able to try.

- Will you ever do a print-version-only comic, if the opportunity presents itself?

Poe: Sure, I see no reason why I couldn’t do a book-only thing. I have no real exclusive preference for publishing on the web, it’s just about the comics for me.

Impy: Having heard a little more about the Errant Story universe than most readers, I certainly hope Poe will eventually write a few short one-off graphic novels about some of the incidental characters and events from Errant Story. If he does, those will probably be comics for print only. Webcomics really do better overall when they’re gag-a-day humor than when they’re a finite story.

- Are print comics dying? Do you think the future of comics is on the web?

Poe: No, I really don’t see such a massive paradigm shift happening anytime in the future. Every time some sort of new medium comes out people ask if the old equivalent will be wiped out… will radio dramas replace books, will TV replace newspapers… None of that has happened, and I really don’t see it happening with print comics, either.

Impy: I think the future of comics is just being more integrated with mainstream publishing. Webcomics are a wonderfully free medium, but they aren’t exactly a healthy business model. I don’t see many professionals staying with “just a webcomic” for very long, they all branch out into donations, ad sales, merchandise, or print comics because it’s the only way to pay the bills.

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- Since April of 2005, the two of you have been running your own company,Caffeine Angel Studios. What are the biggest challenges you face as a self-publisher?

Impy: Capital and cash flow. When you own a business, it’s like being a parent… every little decision about your life has to be weighed against what the company needs, and you wind up making some choices you otherwise wouldn’t have just because the company needed you to. Plus, everything you do costs a LOT of money compared to what you can bring in at any given time. It gets to the point where you have a choice between doing something for the business, or paying your bills, and that’s not always an easy decision. Expenses tend to hit in clusters, but income really doesn’t. Just look at what’s happening with us this month! Technically, any money the company makes we COULD take for ourselves, but realistically almost all of it stays in the company and gets allocated to different areas like new products or hosting costs, and the result is a constant balancing act between the company’s needs and ours.

It’s actually because of cash flow that Poe’s looking for a new publisher. With a publisher assuming the expense (and admittedly also much of the profit) from publishing the books, Errant Story can reach a wider market and will actually provide a more stable income for Poe than it would if it continued to be sloooowly self-published. Plus, there’s this magical thing called an advance, which simply isn’t possible with self-publishing.

Poe: I’m not sure there’s anything I could add to that.

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- Any future projects, or anything you’ve already got in the pipeline that folks really need to know about?

Poe: Right now we’re running a big fund drive, and a lot of art auctions are running at once. Once the drive is over, I have a new limited edition print that will come out that I think is pretty powerful. The big thing for me right now is still Errant Story, though.

Impy: We just finally got the store site redesigned, and we put in a lot of new functionality when we did it. And, yeah, we can’t stress that fund drive enough… not only does it help us through a bunch of those payments that have to happen all at once, it also gives us just enough security for future crunches, so that as long as donations and the store STAY active, we shouldn’t have to hold one of these things again.

I also really wish we could get invited to more conventions so that we could attend more places and meet more of the fans (hint hint). There’s a whole range of topics I want to hold panels on, and it’s always so great to get a chance to hang out with the people who read the comics. Every time we go as just vendors we get so swamped with running the booth that there’s very little time to just enjoy the people who are the best part of the cons.

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I’d like to thank Michael and Hilary (yes, again!) for taking the time to do our interview over email. I hope a few of our readers will return the favor and check out Errant Story in a little more detail for themselves: Since I know some of you are too lazy to page back to the top, here are those links again:

Errant Story
Selling Out for Fun and Profit