All week we'll be presenting mini-interviews with some of the independent voices in comics, those artists and writers who provide the creative lifeblood of the medium and publish comics for the love of the craft. Today's special guest, who we caught up to at the recent Boston Comic Con: Everett Soares, creator and writer of the small press title Sky Pirates of Valendor. Let's go to the tape!
Hi, Everett. If you don’t mind, could you take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers?
My name is Everett Soares and I am the writer and creator of Sky Pirates.
And is Sky Pirates a title that you publish yourself?
Oh, no. We are published through Free Lunch Comics out of Granby, Connecticut.
So they have a whole line of comics?
Sure. There’s everything from Only in Whispers, which is horror short stories, Beyond the Kuiper Belt, which is science fiction stories, The Blood Rider, which is a vampire western, Pork and Beans and Bigger, which is the humor section of our line. Sky Pirates of Valendor is the action/adventure area of the comics.
And what’s that about? I mean, I can see it’s about sky pirates, but…
It’s about Tobin Mannheim, he’s captain of a ship that gets a job and he discovers that he’s working with his ex-wife. Then, as the job goes on he finds out that everything is going wrong, where his ship blows up, he gets a bounty put on his head, and by issue five he’s ready to fight back.
And you’re the writer? Who does the art for Sky Pirates?
Yes, I’m the writer, the artist is Brian Brindley, out of Texas.
And how did you get in touch with him? Online? Was there a certain site you use to make connections with artists?
You use any site from deviantart to ComicSpace to craigslist… there are different forums you can utilize. I went through about three or four different forums and about 16 artists. Brian was actually number 15. So we were able to work well with each other and that’s pretty much what you have to do. You have to try out artists, find one that really likes your story and wants to put some effort into it.
Now, about your publisher, Free Lunch Comics. Do they mostly publish books by local (New England) creators?
Yes, most of the creators are local to New England. Because Matt Ryan and Steve Kanaras, the writer and artist for a lot of these, they’re based out of Granby, Connecticut. So they’re locals.
And what kind of distribution system does Free Lunch use? Is it mostly online? Or do you go to a lot of shows to get your product out there?
Shows, internet, driving to local shops to see who will buy a batch of books. Because that’s the whole thing – Diamond is very unhelpful when it comes to the independent crowd. Haven is a good distributor to use but sometimes you just gotta hoof it to the nearest store and say, hey, I do this book, I’m local…
What kind of feedback have you been getting on Sky Pirates?
Oh, we’ve been getting really good feedback on the series. We have multiple review on the website, Broken Frontier has done reviews of all the books, Geeks of Doom have done reviews. We’ve been getting quite a bit of good reviews so I’m kind of happy. Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head, but we do have a website and all of the links are on our website that have done reviews for us. It’s skypiratesofvalendor.com.
Okay, great. Well, thank you very much, Everett, and hopefully some of our readers will check out your work.
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