[music] I atop the Rock of Infinity comes the comic book showdown of alternate destiny! Every week three Kickstarter are chosen by the spin of fate! Your dedicated stewards of destiny are Mr. Matt Cumbull and Smurf! Now prepare yourself for that it can be only one victor! The comic book showdown of alternate destiny! [music] Hey everyone, making comics is hard. Getting people to buy your comics is even harder, but we're here to help. Today, destiny will choose three indie comic campaigns for us to look at and review, but stay with us till the end of the show. We want to see which one that we're going to give our money to. Yeah, that's just as horrible. We're going to give our money to somebody, see who it is! There can be only one! [music] Welcome everyone to the comic book showdown of ultimate destiny! My name is Matt Cumbull. Smurf here! How are you doing today Smurf? You know, I thought I was doing okay. I really did. I need an adult. I really do. If you're an adult in the market for a new adult to look over and just, you know, please submit your applications to the link below. Yay! My buddy, Dead Cosmos, finally made it to a live. That's awesome. Welcome. You guys be sure and go check him out on Instagram. He does a stream on, what is it, Twitch? He's an awesome artist. John W part-time comics, welcome, welcome. Man, we have got a big show today. Can you believe this? How many entries do you think you have this week Smurf? You haven't got to see, so you don't know the answer this time. So have we, well, if we continue on an upward trend, we've got to be in the 20s by now. Not quite. Not quite. We still have a lot, but we, I think, do you remember what the record was? I don't know if we broke 15 or 16? Okay, that's what I thought. So if that's true, then we broke the record again. Nice. Z. Yes. Yeah, me too, me too. Kazisloth, welcome, welcome. Before we get started, I want to say congratulations to last week's winner, Pendragon, the legend foretold. That was a great winner. There it is right there. Did you like my, my, my scrolling kind of mythic art? I didn't know. But it was chef's kiss, beautiful job, I am a writer. I am not an artist, not try this at home, kids. Although every week you take the attempt to draw something, even though I do art, I just write the name down. So see, and that's what I think the irony of it is you are the ying, I am the yang, and sometimes I'm the yang and you're the ying, it, it works out well. Hey guys, this is our 15th episode, bringing you some of the best indie comics out there. So be sure and hit like, hit subscribe, hit follow, hit all the buttons. Hit share. Hit share. Give us a like. Hit share. That's right. Be sure and share this live stream if you're on Facebook, especially to groups, but especially if you hear one of the campaigns that we're about to announce, if you know the people that are part of the campaign, be sure and go tag them, let them know, hey, you're live on one of these Hindi shows. There aren't enough indie shows. Shows ever premiere, premiere shows for indie comics. John says, very tied McFarland Scroll. Okay. Oh, oh, oh, oh, the drawing that you did. Yes, it is very Todd fatherish. Todd fatherish, yes, right on. So yeah, we have, I didn't tell you the answer, we have 17 entries today. Nice. All right. Yes. Constantly growing the shows, picking up momentum. If you don't know, we also have the show on the YouTube channel, you can follow it at Matt Campbell Arts and try to build that channel up, get people over there, be sure and check that out if you're not already over there. But also here on Facebook and it's on my personal page, it's on our podcasting channel. We can get update or 5280 geek available on all podcasting platforms. Yes. We take the audio from the show and put it on the podcast. So try to spread it out there as much as we can. Full spread, baby. Stay with us. Stay with us. All of us need adults today. That's all I'm saying. And of course, let's not forget our super producer who is sitting behind the scenes behind the scenes buttons and doing well. Sometimes the other person that helps us out tremendously, Emi Anastasia, who helps collect all of these submissions from all these different places, put them on the wheel of destiny and keep track of all the things going on on the action line studios Facebook page. Much love, Emi. Couldn't do without you. Oh, we could. It just, we saw how much of a train wreck that was without you. So yeah, we can't let you, sorry. With those cheeks, that's all right. So let's get, let's drive in. Let's get to it. Let me share this wheel of destiny and I'll go down the list of all the different campaigns that we have today. Let's switch over to this one here. There we go. So going down the list, we have Xanthas, the light of joy. No future number one, crit, robo renaissance, capable one through six, war lion returns to battle. This comic is asinine two, steel victory number one, geek love number one, love stories about death. That reminds me of like love, death and robots, phenomenal issue one, LCS number one and two, the embraced number two, storm chasers number two, the sagaverse chronicles volume one, Beowulf trade paperback, take the house and zombie kid. What a list. Thank you everybody for submitting your submissions help keep this show going. We got some great names on this list, as Ray said. Welcome, Henri. All right. So let's get to it. The first wheel of destiny, destiny will choose three of these names and now we're going to take a look at them and choose one, two, back and support this week. So let's jump right into the wheel of destiny and see the first person is, dun dun dun. Looks like phenomena, congratulations phenomena, issue one, lightning strikes, a 68 page comic book, all right, it's very loquacious, I'm going to write that down just in case. Yeah. Everything goes wrong here. Trying to do a good job here, trying to do my job. All right, going on to the next one. 68 pages, this is quite a bit, looks like, oh, oh, did it Smith's warm lion returns to battle prices. Look, I was really close that that was going to be with the one right before it. You never know when destiny calls. All right, and that brings us to our last one. Which one will it be? Looks like storm chasers, volume two. All right, congratulations to all of you were selected by the wheel of destiny. Now keep in mind that if you didn't get selected in a wheel of destiny, if your campaign is still active next Friday when we do the show, then you are welcome to submit again. If you've been on the show like these three that are chosen, then you cannot. We're just going to remove it if you do, okay. I'm moving this tab up. We've got phenomenon over ready to go. So I'm going to switch to this tab. And let's dive in. Now, for those of you that are watching that aren't one of these three that were picked, if you are an indie comic creator, the reason that you want to continue to tune in is one is see which one we back, but two, we also go through these and pick or talk about what's hooking us how this campaign is working effectively to get our attention to make us want to buy it or how it's not. This is all about reviewing campaigns from the point of view of a consumer, okay. Some constructive criticism. We're not here to bag. We're not here to poke fun. We're not here to throw any shade on anyone because this takes a lot of hard work. No doubts about it. This is hard to do, especially when dealing with creatives, you're putting everything into this. So take it personally. We know we've been there. We've done this. And that Mr. Matt Campbell and I have a very long history in comics, production and all of this stuff. So all we want to do is help and spread indie comic love because that's all we're all about. And spread it, spread it, baby, spread it, spread it, spread it, spread the cheeks. That's not no, Brian says sounds cool marketing is hard. That's right. I mean, people forget that making a comic is hard enough, but then afterwards, there's a bunch of other things you have to do. You got to market. You got to promote it. You got to pitch it. And I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. So I want to help share the things that I've learned with you guys, right? Ted Kamo says our new catch phrase is spread it, baby, spread it, baby. All right, let's dive in. Let's dive into this. Start theme song. I don't know how I'm, I don't know what the card is going to be, but I'm going to make a theme song. I swear to God spread it, baby. Oh, man, I, I, I, I, I shudder to think where this is going. All right. Let's dive in. What we've got here. Phenomenova issue number one, lightning strikes, 60 H page comic book. So real quickly from experience, if any of you guys have thought about making a book this big, that means that you cannot staple about it because staple binding ends at about 54 pages, a staple can't close anymore after that. So that means that this book has to go to what we call glue bound or perfect bound, which means it's going to cost a little bit more. And just so you know, that's a huge, that's a huge cost. I mean, that's, that's a decision. I mean, that is literally a decision. It is literally a decision. A decision, that's deep, good or bad. It is a decision. All right, it says, the pitch here says 20 years after World War three, the idealistic son of a war hero strikes out to become a superhero inspired by his father's legacy. All right. So that gives us that information about the who, the when, the setting. You know, it's, it's after World War three, although when I think of something after World War three, I think of something very desolate, like, you know, Mad Max, you know, things are pretty destroyed. So he's tracking out to become a superhero. Let's see what the video tells us. Wow, that's a lot to do. When the whole world was dragged into World War three, brave men like my father fought on the front lines and they weren't alone. That was 20 years ago. Now it's up to us to carry on their legacy. And every so walked, the earth from which we come, gives way for something new, something greater to be born, and with them, he even greater threats to face. Phenomen over. For you, Dad. I'm pretty impressed by that video. Wow, that was gorgeous. I read it immediately like, Oh, we're going to get shazam. I like this. This is wild. I mean, all right, everything, so many boxes were checked on this video. I loved the production value. There were two things that kind of annoyed me that I think, I don't know how I would do it differently, but I think it needs a little polishing, like the opening. I didn't know if we were getting audio or not. So that huge, you know, die tribe of words is like, okay, I mean, even if you switch up narration, you don't have to have the same narrator doing, you know, like the intro or anything else like you did with the rest of the amazing video, but that's a lot to like read through. And then, you know, the testimonials from readers and all of that, that's great. I would almost even cut to something different or a different, again, different pitch or person reading that, but it and it went by very quickly, almost too quickly. If you're going to do testimonials, make them impactful. There's a message there. Let that message speak for itself, but damn, the art was great, characterizations great. I'm Captain America meets Captain Marvel and the world is one big toilet bowl. I love it. Yeah, I'm all on board with everything you just said, basically, the art was beautiful. The video was exactly what you want out of a video. It hits hard. It had audio narration. So you could listen while you looked, you didn't have to try and read. My, the only thing I didn't really like was the reading of the text. Both times beginning and at the end were too long to read in the timeframe that we had given to us. I get it. I mean, Billy Tucci's a pretty big name. So I get why do you want to put his name up there? Maybe just, you know, shorten that down to a couple words that he said and then put Billy Tucci and then put the big quote down, you know, in the content section. But yeah, this video, I mean, the artwork and the video both look very clean, professional and polished. I'm really, really impressed. And that, you know, as someone said that freedom sting is hot. Yeah, like I'm going to try and find that here again. I mean, even like the sound effects, everything that went into the audio levels were, were spot on. It wasn't too bright. It wasn't too hard to hear. It really, really blended and worked well. I mean, yeah, I don't know if he did it himself or if he had somebody do it for him, but this was really well done right here. Yeah, very, very, really reminded me of very anime, you know, kind of thing. It was great. Yep. So yeah, they did a fantastic job with this. I have, you know, no complaints. Now, like I said, the only thing that we've pointed out so far that could be better is is the text reading, right? These are both great bits of text, but they are a lot to read. And he did try, or I assume it's a he I shouldn't, but they did try to, you know, put all this information in there and give us some time, but it needs to be a little bit longer. I would just say like, you know, in that first quote, where is that first one? Oh, yeah, read comic your superheroes and that thing went by quick. I was like, wow. So right here, um, right here, you could just put like take note of von Coleman's passion and enthusiasm and then put Billy Tucci. Yeah. And then go down to the rest of it. I think that would be a little bit easier, plus you still get that, that legitimacy. And that's the thing. Like if you've got people that have reviewed your work, whether it's sites, you know, review sites or someone that's well known, and they give a quote, obviously you want to use that. It's going to give legitimacy to your campaign. Now, the other thing that I think would benefit for me anyways is what's the conflict? Like I really fell in love with the presentation of this story, where it was, you know, after World War three and, you know, he, his father was a superhero. Now he wants to be a superhero and this is a new generation. All right. But like, what are you fighting? Like, what stands in your way? Like what, you know, what's the conflict? Did they win? Did they lose? Are there, are there some bad guys, you know, something, you know, to let us know like what, what this is against. I think that would be a, what something that could take this a step higher, step further as far as engagement. The emotional engagement is there with the, I want to be like, my dad, this is for you, dad. That's a really great hook, you know, for, especially for us young boys, you know, think in about our fathers, right? But the, the, the idea of like, well, what is it that they're facing? What's the challenge? You know, that's what this story ultimately is going to be about. Right. So, but they could say that in the content sections, we're going to give a little bit of a glance to what this tells us in the content section and see if it gets us any more information. It says under story. Let me see if I can zoom in on this one a little bit. One second. Oops. There we go. There we go. All right. 20 years after World War three, Miles Hanksley, the idealistic son of a war hero, is struck by lightning while holding a mysterious crystal galvanized with electricity powers and lightning speed, a sense of adventure and the drive to make the world a better place, Miles dawns a makeshift superhero costume and the name Galvanite, inspired by his father and other heroes that came before him. However, he's soon slammed with a harsh reality when his first heroic escapade leads to him charging blindly into a nuclear reactor heist, nuclear reactor heist. Why would you heist to nuclear? And the crosshairs of a super villain for of his league. So we're introduced to his, his villain in the story. All right. So here on that last sentence, we're told a little bit about the conflict, right? So there is some information there that was, so that's also good, right? And it's not too far down. I mean, you're within the first paragraph. So again, you know, doing good to not, not bury the lead or anything like that. Everything is really well. So this is a celebration of heroic ideals that the super genre is built upon. Okay. So again, this looks great. I don't know if I have any other, and the other things to add on this now. I really don't. I mean, this, this is a total package. It's got a pretty bow. How much left to, to we have to see if it funds? I mean, that's, that's literally the only question. I'm like, curious how, how well it's doing. Yeah. Now, I feel like looking at the numbers, they've, they've doubled their goal. Their goal is 500. I have to, you know, say this, this is one of those things with Kickstarter campaigns. You have to decide what your goal is going to be because on Kickstarter, if you don't hit your goal, you don't get any money. So it's always scary to actually set your goal to what you need, which may be like a few thousand dollars, if you want to print some books, and you're going to be expensive because there's no staples in this book. Right. Um, however, like, if you set your goal too low, you have two potential issues. One is that people don't really see it as sometimes as legitimate. They're like, if you only need $500, can't you just go ask a family member to borrow some money? You only, well, you need 500 bucks. Um, another one is that once you hit that goal, people don't feel a reason to give you more money. They're like, you've doubled goal already. What do you need more for? Or do you need? How much do you need? Yeah, it's, it's a slip clip. So the two things that I'm seeing here that could benefit this campaign besides the video stuff that we already talked about is number one, um, this person. Looks like they have, oh, remember the campaign, like a couple of weeks ago, that was just absolutely professional, it was made by an animator. Yeah. Uh, look beautiful, but he didn't have a following. And so he barely had any, any backers. This one feels like it's suffering from a similar thing where this person's art writing video is all on point, yet they only have 25 backers for however long this campaign's been running. I don't, I don't know how long it's been running. But that seems awfully low, which means that they probably didn't build an audience up all this time building up to their campaign and just relied on Kickstarter to, to bring it all in. Right. So I'm sure several of those people are probably just some family members. So my point is, is it's super important that you get out there and you engage with the community and you get involved and you start sharing what you're working on, share your story, build up an interest in your product before you launch one of these campaigns. You have to bring your audience to Kickstarter or to whatever campaign you're building so that it'll, it'll really take off. The other thing, oh, go ahead. Is that like, and on top of that, the only thing I can really suggest, given where they're currently at, I wouldn't rule out doing some kind of special Kickstarter event at your local comic shop. You've got Billy Tucci who's tooting your horn, I mean, I honestly at this stage, because everything is going well, it's not just word of mouth that you need, I would do some kind of special event, local comic book shop, hand out an ash can or two, do some door prizes and make like a halfway there or, you know, stretch goal announcements or something, something in, in engaging and something energetic to just push you just that little bit further. That's, as a marketing guy, that is immediately what I would be already considering doing. Absolutely. I mean, I think a lot of people overlook the power of doing something in person to promote a campaign. Like if you are doing a show during your campaign, then consider a giveaway that has, you know, barcode or, you know, QR code on it that you can give to people is that, hey, here's my campaign, help, goes help support it, you know, printing off some, some cover samples or things like that to give away. Those are very powerful and people are, you've got their undivided attention, whereas on the internet, they're all over the place. Yeah. Now the other thing that I would add to this that can continue to build momentum is, like I said, with a low goal of only 500, they've already doubled that goal at a thousand. Where do you go from there? One of the things that can also boost this campaign that I'm not seeing on the page anywhere as I scroll through is stretch goals. Hey, if we get to a thousand, everyone gets this. If we get to 1500, everyone gets this, you know, that kind of stuff keeps a momentum going. And also the people that are already there, they're more likely to go share it because they want to get those stretch goals, you know. So a few little things could really bring this campaign up, but the main thing is keep building your audience. And I feel like this is really high quality stuff. And if this person keeps making stuff, I'm sure the audience will build itself. So just getting it out there, all right? I'm going to set up for the next one. But if you got anything to add to storm chasers, go ahead. I think it's just storm chasers, or do you need Filmanova Nova? Sorry. Yeah. Phenomenova. I was looking at the next one. No, I mean, I think stretch goals are great. I mean, the world is built now on on stretch goals, a perfect example has lab announced the new Rattler for G.I Joe figures and one of the stretch goals is a fairness in flight gear. So I'm like, God, we got to get that. There's patches. There's all sorts of things. So it works. It keeps people engaged. And now you need to go, you know, back the Rattler from has lab. So cool looking cop in myself. Michael Oden says, what up, guys? Welcome. Welcome to the show. All right. Next up, we have war line returns to battle crisis. This is another good looking one right out of the gate. Yeah. A brutal martial arts dystopian epic continues with a bloody showdown of cataclysmic proportions. So, yes, so this is one of those quotes I've used one. I've used this kind of pitch before where you throw out all the big words, brutal dystopian epic cataclysmic and just leave it at that. But in the end, you're just like, I have an idea of the genre, but I really don't know what's going on here yet. Right. I was like world ending that one, that one, that one's like, I always have it in the back pocket just in case world ending events. Here we go. Right. Right. Now, this did say, it says it's continuing. So maybe that means that there's like more before. They currently have 86 bankers, seven days to go, a little over halfway to go. Their goal is 10 times what the last one was. This is a goal of 5,000, which means that they're trying to raise the money that they need to get the art to pay for the artist or maybe the writers, the books, everything. And they put that out there, right? So let's see what the video tells us. Where is the video? I'm going to show you how to do it. All right, my man. What did you get from the video for a war line returns to battle crisis? There's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of stuff. I don't know who I'm rooting for on this, but let me say this. The art is spectacular, okay? I really, I mean, there's some image quality art happening between those pages. And I appreciate, I appreciate the details for the backgrounds and the setting and where this happens is just as important as how it happens. So when I see something like this where they take the time to lay it out and put it all together like this, I absolutely applaud the creative team on this. But I don't know who I'm rooting for, and I like the voiceover, but the audio for the music bed is a little bit higher than the voiceover. It's kind of up and down, yeah. And I understand you're trying to build a sense of power and of, you know, just kind of crisis and it's a buildup to the crescendo, the payoff at the end where we're all in this. But you need your audio levels to maintain that line and your music bed just to be a little bit lower because it washes out your words. You're using them for a reason. Let them be heard. Drop the music bed probably about five decibels and you'd be right about right where you need to on that, but I don't know who to root for. I don't know what's going on, but damn it. Yeah. I feel like this is a case of one of those things and a few people are saying this in the chat that it's got good vibes. This dead cosmo said it's giving them old valiant comic vibes. Somebody said that, you know, they're not sure what it's about, but it has a good ambiance. And that's all true. It's setting the genre, setting the tone, and they're doing a great job with that, but we really don't know anything about what's really the premise of this, you know? So what you're missing in that is like you're tickling us with the visuals and the sound. This is the same way that, you know, Transformers movies make us want to go watch Transformers movies or like check out this cool stuff and this cool stuff and you're like, oh, wow. And then later on, you're like, wait, what is this about? And so I feel like keeping, trying to keep all that energy, keep all that by, but somehow giving a little bit more information about what's at stake, what's the person trying to accomplish? Well, and I like the, I want to keep them safe. Okay. Safe from what? Who are you keeping safe? Is it your, your auntie, your family, your family dead? I mean, keeping yourself safe. I mean, I'm all about security, but I need to, I need just a little foothold of, okay, I'm ready, I'm ready to walk further with you on this because, again, all of the right hooks, all of the boxes are checked. I just, I just don't, I just don't know enough. And I probably, again, first issue off the rack, absolutely. I, I bite off the rack just to see because it looks great, right. It looks beautiful. It looks intriguing. It has those like visual tickling things and honorees here with us today, which is great. I always love when we see that great job. So before I dive in any deeper into some feedback, I want to look at the, the contents, the story section and see if it tells us any bit anymore. So after watching the video, we come down in the story section and let me see if I can zoom in just a touch here. There we go. So it says, "Last year, war line number one was unleashed upon the world. As the dystopian martial arts epic tells the tale of an old warrior returning from exile with his daughter to settle the score with a vicious tyrant that destroyed their lives and controls their city with an iron fist." There's the premise. There's the story right there. We have who and what and why, right? Yep. And so if we can put some of that and mix some of that in with that exciting video, then I think you've got some gold here. Actually, with what he's got, he just changed phrases of, you know, and I return and I want to make sure that she has, I've returned to a broken city or, or just to, you know, build on, obviously you have a following if this is the second book. So you're taken for granted that all of them are coming along, but nobody else is jumping in and you never want to alienate people during these, these events. So just to give them that little kernel of I'm coming back, I didn't know that this was a part two. Now I want to read part one to see what the hell happened. So this, this is perfect. And I think that should have just, just lightly been in just a couple of phrases. You got to kept that entire video, add a couple words and boom, done. And drop. Yeah. I mean, this is absolutely fun and exciting stuff. And like one of the things that, you know, you've heard me say is until we know what a character wants, we don't really know what the story is about. Now we know what he wants. He wants to settle the score with a vicious tyrant. Until we know what's at stake, we don't care. Well, what's at stake? Well, one, he's returning with his daughter. I imagine keeping her safe is part of what's at stake, right? And so knowing both of those parts is crucial to getting people engaged because the visuals are what hook us, the visuals and the audio sounds. That's what gets people's attention and go, ooh, that looks fun. The emotional connection is what invests us and says, I got to read this. I want to know what's going on and I want to read more. So and I believe that it's all there. It's in the story, but it's not up in the video part. However, to give credit for credit stew, he says this within the first two sentences of his campaign. So that's always a good thing too. Again, he's doing very the lead, which is one of our pet peeves, don't bury the lead and it is right. Right. I mean, paragraph, but you've got to hopefully, and I'm sure they would, but how many people did you lose at the end of the video and okay, that's cool. And, you know, getting bothered to scroll down. Right. Yeah, because because people are, they have short attention spans, but I want to scroll down and give you another glimpse at some of these covers. We've got, here we got war lion number one, and I have to assume, I haven't looked at the pledges yet, but I have to assume that some of these pledges come with number one as well. But he does have a big team and that's why he has that big goal to reach. And so it definitely needs, needs help hitting that goal. Yeah. Henri says the trailer was meant to be a teaser for issue two. There was a lot I didn't include in the video, it definitely won't make that mistake again. You know, I made a ton of mistakes making my videos in the past, and I'll probably continue to make more. So we're just trying to share the lessons I've learned the hard way. And that's all you can do, you know, try again better next time. This is our version of Empire Strikes Back. I like that. Yes. And then we got another really cool, cool cover here. This is very action oriented. It's got kind of a for Zeta vibe with like the big creature and the hero facing off. I like the glimpses colors grab me. See if I see that on the shelf, I'm picking that up. That's a great choice of power right there. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. All in those, those red tones, right? Yeah. So yeah, I think this comic looks beautiful. It has exciting, exciting premise. So just great, some great things all the way around. And again, they've got a big goal to reach. And so something else that I find that is, is can I've learned over the years can be helpful. We've got a quick glance at the rewards one, you always want to make sure to have a digital edition because some people just want to try it out generally on this show. We usually end up supporting digital because we have so many to support. So that's always a good thing. Here you've got digital with number one. That's awesome. Then we have the physical edition and then. So here's something that I've learned over the years that I recommend is find that that sweet spot. For me, it's different for every campaign, but for me, it's around like $30. The average that the people will spend. And so I'll go to that particular $30 reward and I make sure to load that one up with things that don't end up actually costing me a lot. So for instance, instead of just getting a book, they might also get the digital edition. They might also get a thank you letter from me personally or they might get things that don't cost you a lot like adding them in the thank you section or whatever. And you really pack this $30 reward because that's the one that you really want to get the majority of your people on and you give them stuff that doesn't really end up costing you a lot of extra, you know, digital things, stuff like that. So that they feel like they're getting their money's worth the value out of it, right? I mean, even if it's an autographed, you know, headshot, I do that a lot, you know, just even if they don't pledge, I'll just sign it and send it out to people. All right, so sweet spot reward advice. Yeah, you guys, I mean, I learned that, you know, it took me a couple campaigns to figure that out. But basically, you know, you go through and you look at all your campaigns, you look at your average, you know, spending and you can even compare it to some other campaigns that are similar and find that area where, you know, you're getting the most benefit and they're getting the most benefit, you know. So if, if a book, you know, generally might cost you your charge $10, but on Kickstarter, you usually charge a little bit more because you're trying to raise funds, what can you pile in there that's going to really like add more benefit to it? And especially things that don't end up end up costing you too much more because it doesn't take a lot to make people feel like they're getting value, right? So, and I think the average trade paperback these days is what, 20, 25 bucks and usually people don't have a problem of, you know, dropping 25 bucks for a good story and something that that's compelling. So I would use that as a great basis platform to kind of do additional stretches and that's absolutely right. If I get, if I'm getting a little extra pay and I'd spend 25 bucks anyway in and over time and you get more of that than just regular $5, $10, like, oh, hey, for an only an extra 20 bucks, I can get all of this, you'll see that it moves rather quickly, rather well. Yeah. All in all, really great job, Michael, another really impressive campaign. This week might be a little bit hard to make a choice because that we've gotten a couple of good ones. I'm going to have to flip a coin there in a second because I have no clue. All right, so we've got one more left before we make our decision of which one we're going to back this week. It's going to be a tough call. I can tell you that right now. Yeah. Chasers. We had twisters come out. This almost seems like serendipitous, man. This is just like, whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So here we are onto the third one, which is storm chasers, volume two, collecting and remastering the superhero action comic book, the storm chasers issues five through eight. So this sounds like a trade collecting four issues, which means that there's storm chasers volume one out there somewhere as well. But that's impressive. And I've got eight issues out of this. So there should be plenty of story. Apparently, there's enough story that there's no video. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. All right. Well, all right. So what let's see. Let's see what it tells us. We've got storm chasers and simple comics. Simple as 1800, they've got 650 now at 23 backers. Now this one does surprise me a little bit in that eight issues in. They've only got 23 backers. However, they've only got looks like they just got started because it says there's 29 days to go back. So that could mean that they're just getting started and there's still more backers out there. So we'll have to see. If your comic is gaining momentum, that means people are enjoying your story and they want to come back. If your numbers are dropping, then that means that people are losing interest and you might want to consider why, you know, what's going on. But I don't have a basis for comparison, other than the fact that, like I said, it's eight issues in and there are 23 backers. So let's see if the story part tells us anything. This is from JD Rosario. I believe I have seen JD on some of the other indie shows. There's several JD's though. So I'm not exactly sure. In fact, I've been on one show where there was two or three JD's all in the same show. So I'm not really sure which one this is. But we've got Storm Chasers Volume 2, some nice artwork, collects issues, 5-8, full color, creating cards, this is all just telling us what we're getting here. Who are the Storm Chasers? Let's see. I'll zoom in on this just a little bit. Storm Chasers are a team of heroes gathered to operate as a peacekeeping unit with a fictional world of unstoppable comics. Individuals with powers are selected from all over the world, trained user abilities for good. They've operated for decades. All right, here we go. The story so far. For a while, the Storm Chasers were not operating as a complete team and it's beginning to cost them. A mysterious figure has taken advantage of this. I think there's a typo right there. And his freeing villains that have been captured or locked up by Storm Chasers. As a solution, former members of Storm Chasers have been invited back, causing a shakeup with the team, investigating who has released those incarcerated by the Storm Chasers, led to the team, defining a former member who went missing. There's a little mouthful. It's a lot there. Okay. Okay. So that's, that's really, that's really it when it comes to what we're getting. There's a lot of effort being put into the rewards, the, all the stuff, T-shirts. Look at all these digital catalog covers. Looks like they've had tons of different covers, tons of different books, but right off the bat, this feels like it's marketed to people who already have been following. We don't see any information about like what's really going on in this particular, even in this book, like the four through eight, except for this, this one thing, but this says the story so far. Right. I'm assuming that that happened in book one, I'm not super clear on that. So I feel like the biggest thing here for me is I don't really know what's about, I don't have a reason to be invested. This little bit about them being superheroes to protect and they weren't working together and a villain took advantage of that isn't enough. It doesn't give me what's at stake, like is the villain going to, you know, take over the world again, going back to, is it the end of the world? I don't know. There's really no stakes shown. So there's no way for nothing for me to get emotionally invested in, and that's what's missing. And it's really hard to do this with a team book. Sometimes team books tend to be just about, here's another character design that I made, and here's another character design that I made, and it's just about showing all these cool characters and creating this vast universe instead of giving us something to latch on to emotionally, you know, that's a big thing. But what do you think? Well, I've seen this story before, and it's usually the go-to for any Avengers story. I mean, I looked at this and I'm like, okay, great ideas, but I don't know who you're marketing this to because if you're trying to bring in new readers, you definitely haven't given them enough to want to get in. They have no idea. And I think if all of these previous campaigns you have your backers, they've already got all of this material. So I'm confused as to what the objective is. If you're doing a Kickstarter just for the sake of doing a Kickstarter, rethink your plan because this doesn't achieve anything because all these people that have backed you prior have all of these issues. Is there something new? Is there an ash can, is there some kind of sneak peek to what we can expect? Are we getting like a small exclusive, you know, a print that's signed by you guys? I mean, that would be like one of the things, that would be one of the things that I'd be going after. But as far as a new reader, I don't see a benefit here because I don't see anything that is grabbing me. Right, right. If you guys are hearing a sound, you're not going crazy. There's roof work being done above smurf. And I can hear the tapping of the hammers above him. So yeah, you're not going crazy with me, man. This week, yeah, the roof gets blown off. Great. Can't you do that later? Brian Wolf says T-shirts as a reward seem expensive. I offer T-shirts in a way on my campaign. I have print on demand set up. And so in my upcoming campaign, if someone selects that as an add-on, then I'm just going to order it and they're going to end up being here when I package everything else up. They actually don't weigh a whole lot more. It's just a matter of making sure that you charge enough to cover the cost of getting it printed and shipped. But I could see people adding that on if you have the right printer. And that's fine, but yeah, because it's merch, like T-shirts, that's an expensive overhead. I mean, unless you're doing the print on demand or you've got a small, you know, company in Indonesia that can send you the shirts at a relatively inexpensive cost, yeah, usually the production cost is about a wash with what you're charging for. Yeah, if you're going to print them yourself, it's going to, you're going to have to print a bunch in order to be affordable. So that's unnecessary cost, that's unnecessary inventory, because now you're lugging around all these extra T-shirts that didn't sell. And I don't know, I mean, in all the extra covers, they're great, they're cool, but after a while, you just get too many of them and it just seems like, okay, it's the same issue, but I've got 17 different covers. Narrow that down a little bit, give me, you know, spread it out a little bit, but it's just, I don't. Spread it. Spread it. Spread it around. All right, guys, I'm also going to give you a little secret about Kickstarter. This is for Kickstarter specifically, I don't know if this works on the other platforms for crowdfunding, but this is a secret I've learned on Kickstarter. So if any of you guys are creators and you're listening, here it is, I'm going to show this campaign so you can see what I'm talking about. All right. We'll go here, oops, that's not the one I want, here we go. All right, now, some of you might know that Kickstarter recently set up this story section or this, this, this, it's not called story section, it's this jumping to these different parts on the side, but what you may not know is that just like every other platform, Kickstarter has algorithms that will go through and look at the things that are on your page when people do searches. So if they say, I'm looking for superhero comics and you mentioned the word superhero in your story, then that's going to be part of what pushes you up on their list, okay, and arranges, you know, the popularity. Now here's the thing, I see this a lot. Obviously, we want to share imagery and put these images up here, but every single one of these sections in his piece, every single one, even this part right here is an image, which means that the algorithm cannot read the words. So if you want to get algorithms to be able to see what's going on, you need to put some of the words typed on Kickstarter and you need to alternate between typing some words and posting some images, typing some words and posting some images so that it goes back and forth and it has something to read. If you put everything as images, it sees nothing, right? Think about your hashtags. This is very similar to that because now AI has gotten way too smart and it's scanning what you're putting in there to build an algorithm. Absolutely, absolutely. That's a little secret that you could use to your advantage to rank a little bit higher on the Kickstarter search engine when people are looking and searching for books, okay? So that's the three comics that we have for today. Congratulations to all three of you for making it to the Wheel of Destiny, but now it's time to decide. Two Gargos says you guys really bring some great advice. That makes me happy. I'd love to hear that. It makes you feel like I have some value in those worlds. Most web designers know this, but not laymen. Hey, man, most guys are laymen. Hey, man, how are we? So now, now comes the hard part. We have to decide one of these and if we don't decide the same one, then we're going to have to do a Wheel of Destiny spin for just two of them, all right? Brances, I am the latest of the laymen. All right, so again, to recap, we've got Phenomenova, which was a Phenomenal Campaign introduction video, we have Warline Returns to Battle, which is very exciting. And we have Storm Chasers. Which one are we going to back? So I'm deciding right now, if you guys have a pick, feel free to put your pick in the comments section and participate. I have decided, races, he'll be the tiebreaker if we have a tie. Okay. I mean, if I guess, no, not if we have a tie, it wouldn't be a tiebreaker. It would be if we can't decide, he'll be the third book, all right? But, I am ready. Are you ready? Don't touch it. All right. Drum roll, please. Oh, and just like that, we do have two different ones. Now, I'll tell you why I picked Warline. I really wanted to pick Phenomenova too. They were both fantastic. I think Phenomenova was a little bit more professionally put together. It was exciting, action-packed. The reason I went with Warline was that it still had money to raise. It needed more campaign money and it was definitely worth it. I've already hit their goal. I remember I brought this up earlier. They're like, they don't have any stretch goals. They don't have any, they've hit their goals, so I don't know why they would need more money other than to just buy more books or to own the book. And I want the book to be clear. I think it's awesome. I still might want to go get it. But as far as this show goes, I'm like, this guy is still trying to get his book made and he needs the money to pay his artists. And so that's why I went with that. All right, but that doesn't mean that we have not come to a decision we need to decide. So Ray, go ahead and jump on in here for a second. I'm going to invite you to be on the stream with us. Ladies and gentlemen, super producer Ray, yeah, here it works. Here it works. All right, Ray, what's your choice? Based on the rules of the show and being, they both have really good campaigns that were built well, but I think phenomena of us video is just a little bit above war lions. All right, how am I right with that? I haven't read with that. I mean, and that's kind of the reason why I went with it. Thank you, Ray. But it's hard. There's too many. I love war lions. It didn't get me wrong, but I just had one too many questions at the end of that video enough that I'm like, OK, I get it, and I know you're working towards your goal. I would keep an eye on it though. That one I would abandon. The other one, if I, you know, working on a budget this week, I can do one Kickstarter. Which Kickstarter am I going to back this? That would be it. And then maybe next week, hopefully, you know, war lion is still around. And then I can look at that and go, OK, it's still doing well and it looks like they're going to hit, then I jump in. But it's that video and everything they did is pretty damn impressive. I can't argue with that. I can't argue with that. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. This week's winner of the comic book showdown of Ultimate Destiny is Phenomenova. So congratulations. If you enjoy our show and you'd like to see more, be sure and check out Ashley. You can find us at 5280geek.com. You also can find us on Facebook at 5280geek.com. We have a podcast weekend geek update on all of the podcasting platforms. Where I ramble on about Lord knows what, and you can also find the audio version of this said broadcast. So give us a like, give us a share Instagram. We do share our Moment of Geek again, 5280geek. So you can have some chuckles, follow us, we'll follow you back. And thank you for the support. Thank you for the love. We do this for you guys and our love for comics. That's right. That's right. Thank you so much, guys. So Brian, look forward to seeing you next week. And like I said earlier, if you didn't get on to the Wheel of Destiny to be one of the chosen three, then you're welcome to jump on and try to support your campaign into the running again next week. As long as your campaign is live and we haven't already looked at it, then you can submit it. All right. Roll that next. You got to show this weekend, don't you? You're going to be busy tomorrow. I do. I do. I have a small show here in Colorado Springs. I'm looking forward to it. I'm debuting a new G.I. Joe Prince. So excited about that. And I'm going to have it on my website at actionlinestudies.com. Hopefully by the end of today, so you could also pick it up there. But that's it for today, folks. Thank you so much. And with that, Smurf, on that bombshell, we shall say goodbye. Come join us next week as we spin that wheel. But in the meantime, run fast, laugh hard and always be kind. Good night. Bye. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)
