Black Gate

There’s an argument brewing again here at Black Gate’s L.A. offices, and yes, it’s about the Avengers. Ryan Harvey, Mr. Captain America himself, seems to think it’s ok that Black Widow is the token female member of the Avengers in the upcoming movie, while I ardently believe that Wasp should have gotten the nod.

Now that’s not to say there’s anything wrong with Black Widow, or Scarlet Johansson for that matter, but Wasp WAS a founding member of the team and she’s certainly one of my favorite comic book heroines.

There are several reason for this, primarily because she was the very first comic book heroine I had a crush on when I bought my first comic, Avengers #195. But putting first crushes aside, there is another reason I love Wasp, and that’s because she isn’t static.

In the world of animation, be it on TV or in comic books, there is a static formula for most characters involved, the basis of which is uniform. It’s rare that a character gets to change their clothes, and for some reason that always rubbed me that wrong way.

Wasp, however, has certainly had the most uniform changes of any comic book hero ever, and I truly dig that about here because it makes her more human.

I remember watching the G.I. Joe cartoon when I was a kid and thinking, “You know, Cover Girl was a freaking super model and she’s always in the same damn outfit!” And don’t get me started on Scarlet, bless her, because she had to wear the same stupid unitard on every assault. Then there was Lady Jaye who looked great in her army gear but you’d think she might change it up a bit once in a while.

…

Read More Read More

So a bit over a month ago I started my first every Kickstarter, a retro-fantasy book launch with Jeff Easley that ended earlier this week. It was a very interesting month and as people seem interested in Kickstarter’s and the possibilities that the Kickstarter site provides, I thought I’d continue blogging about it on Saturdays as long as I find out new and applicable facts concerning the program.

That being said, I’ll take you into the process once more and even append some of the numbers I initially reported during my first discourse into this topic.

This post will be about percentages, and how they can affect your project.

When I started my Kickstarter, my pledge numbers [which is to say those who became backers of the project and gave money] were mostly rolling in from feeds on Facebook. This was a cool fact, and showed that viral marketing through your social network does pay off. The percentage was roughly 70% Facebook and 30% Kickstarter internal marketing, and I was happy with that. As the month continued, however, the numbers started to realign with less and less Facebook traffic and more and more Kickstarter original pledging taking place.

Why is this, you might ask? Well, it’s an interesting thing. You see, Kickstarter has a tag it calls ‘Discover’ on its Home Page, and from that tag you can find various categories that might interest you as a possible backer. There are a bevy of them including Art, Music, Photography, Publishing, etc. One of these categories is ‘Recently Launched’ which is a nice way for Kickstarter to promote new projects and give them a bit of a boost when they start out. Still, as a Kickstarter page is laid out, a viewer can see only three projects across the top of their screen per category and perhaps another three below those before the ‘cut’. These first three projects featured at the top of the page are called ‘Staff Picks’ which are prime real estate for any project looking to draw the eye of a backer.

…

Read More Read More