Athena Voltaire

by Josh Crawley

Making comics isn’t always easy. Making comics doesn’t just end once they’ve been made. There’s printing, advertising, distribution, and following up on each and every one of those; repeatedly. Giant multinational corporations have it easier, but some people don’t want to give up control of those comics to someone else.

Sometimes personal work has to be shelved for corporate jobs that pay the bills.

Anyone who’s met Steve Bryant knows he’s worked hard on Athena Voltaire. You also know he’s one of the nicest guys in comics. (I know that’s said a lot, but I think that speaks well for this industry when there are so many nicest guys. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not saying that to take anything away from Steve. He’s put up with me after an entire night of me being “social,” and he was great about it!)

For those of you who don’t know (Steve or Athena), Athena Voltaire is a sassy, tough-as-nails aviatrix adventurer whose stories are set in the tumultuous 1930s, full of globe-trotting heroes, supernatural creatures, and villainous Nazis! (And now this column can’t be read in Germany; oops.) Steve has been illustrating for years, including 24: Cold Warriors, along with regular Westfield Comics Blog contributor Beau Smith.

New Athena Voltaire adventures have been missing in the States now long enough you might think some of those Nazis finally punched her ticket. Thankfully that isn’t the case. The culprit is a much more horrendous fiend: the shelf.

You can help fight the shelf. Steve is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for his next mini-series: Athena Voltaire and the Volcano Goddess! With your donation (which only gets processed if the entire donation amount is reached by the deadline), you aren’t just paying someone to sit and draw what he likes. True, he does enjoy drawing Athena Voltaire, but you also get other compensation for that donation. You’re helping to fuel a new economic model of entertainment.

Have you ever noticed how many obtrusive advertisements are in the standard corporate comic book, and then compared it to the price of the book? Have you also looked at a comparable small press comic book? The corporate comics seem to be getting more expensive even though they have that ad revenue while most of the small press books aren’t about answering to shareholders but about entertaining you.

Athena Voltaire is near and dear to Steve, so much so that it amazes me he’s selling his original art. But that’s how important it is to Steve to create new Athena Voltaire adventures to entertain you.

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Josh Crawley is the tenured Master of Disaster (whether he’s heroic or evil remains to be seen) for Westfield Comics, not to be confused with Josh Crawley, the keyboardist for Everclear.

http://www.twitter.com/joshcrawley

josh@westfieldcomics.com

Westfield Comics
ATTN: JOSH
7475 Mineral Point Rd STE 22
Madison WI 53717

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