A massive thank you to everyone who’s pledged to support our first ever Kickstarter campaign so far.
We’re so close to half way funded… if you haven’t yet backed the project, this would be a great time to do it! Have a look here.

This week we’ve been sharing more information about the second of our 2022 books – Sleeping While Standing by Taki Soma. It’s a collection of funny and moving autobiographical stories, and we’re really excited about it. In the book Taki leads us through her early childhood in Japan in the 80s, to moving to Minnesota, the separation of her parents, childhood trauma, teenage angst, death, drugs, comics, health issues, love, fertility, pets and zombies; all of life is here in this book!

Taki Soma is a HUGO award nominated artist, writer, and a colorist. She’s worked on projects such as Rapture, Sinergy, The Victories, United States vs. Murder, Inc., Bitch Planet, Dick Tracy, The After Realm, Iron Man and others – her work can be found throughout publishers such as Image, IDW, Marvel, Dark Horse, Jinxworld at DC and more! She lives surrounded by furry critters and a husband who shares the same passion in comics.

Sleeping While Standing will be 100 pages long, paperback, full colour. Page size 158mm x 240mm.

Here’s an interview with Taki about the book, and some sample artwork.

Is Sleeping While Standing your first autobiographical book? What was it like working autobiographically after so much time working on fiction? Was it something you’d always been interested in doing?

Sleeping While Standing is my first autobiographical book, yes. Working in this way was an intimate and visceral experience on the surface, but I realized that part of how I approach both nonfiction and fiction is by processing everything life throws at me, so it didn’t feel all that different from fictional works from the past; was it something I have always wanted to do? I don’t think so. I worked on one story just to help me process it a couple of years ago, and many more subjects just kept popping up that I just had to follow that instinct.

What did you most enjoy about the project, and what were the biggest struggles?

The joy I experienced from this project is many – challenges I set for myself to tell each subject in four pages or less was at the top. It was also the biggest hurdle because the details of each story in this book are so much more than what I was able to portray in such limited space.

How did you approach the project… what was your starting point?

The very first story I worked on was the one called ‘Box’. I was in pain in many ways and I needed an outlet to express and process it and the result was Box. This story set the precedent for the rest of the book; the fact that it’s four pages and talks about very difficult memories from my life.

Did you show your work-in-progress to many people for feedback, or did you prefer to mostly go it alone?

I shared parts of it with trusted friends, yes. And then there are people I shared the whole thing with who guided and supported me – they are my husband Michael Avon Oeming, Brian Michael Bendis, and David Walker. I am eternally in their debt… except for my kidney. Stop asking me, Brian.

Were there any particular influences on this project, either from the world of comics or from other art-forms?

I always say this to questions like these – practically everything in life is my influence. I cannot imagine that I had no influence when I was working on it but I also didn’t have any particular thing in mind, either.

How did you create the artwork for the book, what tools did you use?

With age and Multiple Sclerosis, I reluctantly integrated digital art into my practice. Until one day, it’s one hundred percent digital. It’s much easier on my body and energy level this way. So, I created Sleeping While Standing using my lovely Wacom.

Did you learn anything from making this book?

I processed traumas while working on this book in a way I never imagined. Nothing will replace therapy with a psychologist, but this was the icing to mending scars. I learned that you can’t undo what’s been, but I can live with them if I continue to work on them.

And finally we asked Taki to fill in one of our Creator Profile questionnaires!
Here’s more about Taki:

To find out more about this book and the other upcoming titles we’re raising money for, visit our Kickstarter page.

A huge thank you to everyone who’s pledged to support our first ever Kickstarter campaign so far!
You can watch a fantastic video that the three creators made about their books by going to our Kickstarter campaign page here.

This week we’ve been sharing more information about the first of our 2022 books – 2120 by George Wylesol. It’s an interactive book in which George continues exploring the the boundaries of what can be done with sequential storytelling. His last book Internet Crusader was highly acclaimed for its originality, being called “a masterpiece of intricate design” and “a revelation.” 2120 will be 500 pages long, paperback, full colour. Page size W:195 x H:271mm.

Here’s an interview with George about the book, and some sample artwork.

2120 is your third book with Avery Hill, and it’s clear to see that there are some thematic crossovers with your second book Internet Crusader, with the interest in gaming and reader interactivity and pushing the form of comics in new directions. What is it about gaming that you find compelling? And do you think comics are an art-form particularly well-suited to exploring these themes?

I really like writing and drawing, so graphic novels is a natural intersection of the two for me. But I realized that I really don’t like drawing the same characters over and over again. It gets really frustrating and tedious for me.

So I did Internet Crusader without drawing any characters really, and I thought it worked pretty well. In the 2nd half of that book, the viewer fights through the depths of hell in a 1st-person POV, and I was also surprised that it worked.

So for 2120, I decided to continue using that first-person POV. I played some ancient point-and-click games on the Internet Archive, and realized the format could work pretty well as a book. I’ve been interested in interactivity for a while – I did a short-lived choose-your-adventure narrative on Instagram a few years ago, and always wanted to make something bigger with the same kind of interactivity, so it all came together with 2120. I think there’s a lot of room in comics for more experimental work, so it was a good fit.

Do you see any ways in which your first book Ghosts Etc. informed the two subsequent books, even though it’s the most different?

Not that much. Ghosts, Etc. was a collection of some of the work I made for my MFA thesis. That body of work was focused on “bad” art; like ugly text, cheap materials, and printing errors. These themes have definitely continued to inform a lot of my work to this day.

In working on 2120, I realized that Ghosts is maybe a prequel to 2120? I didn’t know quite what I was doing with that story conceptually at the time, but in working out some of the themes and concepts in 2120, Ghosts started making more conceptual sense. There’s a subtle reference to Ghosts in one of the rooms in 2120.

What did you most enjoy about the project, and what were the biggest struggles?

I loved working on this project from start to finish. It was a bigger investigation of the “bad” art I mentioned above, and I really liked a chance to get more conceptual and philosophical than I have in the past. I was able to explore storytelling in a way I haven’t before, and there are certain surprising moments in the book that were really unique and exciting for me to work on.

The biggest struggle was the technical side. It was a nightmare lol from having these massive Adobe Illustrator documents that were so slow, to figuring out the pagination. The absolute hardest part of this was the 1st floor hallway; it was essentially 100 pages of almost identical hallways and it was so hard to keep track of everything and make sure all the pages connected!!

How did you approach the project… what was your starting point?

I had this idea first- environments where you’d turn the page to which direction you wanted to explore, or which thing you wanted to investigate. I made a little dummy book that was basically the outside of a building, the lobby, some halls. I thought it worked pretty well, so I started writing.

I wrote the whole narrative out and used it as a rough guide. Eventually I abandoned almost all of that original text and narrative, but it was a good starting point.

Did you show your work-in-progress to many people for feedback, or did you prefer to mostly go it alone?

No, I didn’t show anything to anyone. I might have shown that first dummy to some friends and my wife, but that’s about it.

Were there any particular influences on this project, either from the world of comics or from other art-forms?

Yeah definitely. I think Silent Hill 2 was actually the biggest influence, and the conceptual inspiration for this from the beginning. House of Leaves was as well; the author talked about how it was a love story disguised as a horror story, and I really liked that framing.

A lot of the visuals came from my time as a janitor; for a few years I used to clean this big half-empty office building. It was originally a bank, that a hospital bought later. They turned half of it into doctors offices that weren’t really used. The other half was administration that also wasn’t being used. So every night I was cleaning this mostly-unused office building that was just empty and kinda creepy. There were random things left behind, like paperwork, personal items, etc, and I used that as the visual inspiration from this. I took a lot of pictures back then; I didn’t even know why at the time but they came in handy!

How did you create the artwork for the book, what tools did you use?

I drew everything in Adobe Illustrator, then printed it and scanned it into Photoshop, to get the texture.

Do you think your illustration work and comics work influence each other, or are they quite separate processes for you?

I think they definitely influence each other. Illustration generally has to communicate well by “showing,” which can be really useful for a book like this, which has sparse dialog and narration. Technical things like composition and expressive color also come from illustration; it’s important to consider how the image is composed and you could use color to communicate emotion and tone.

But illustration can also be a little “safe,” visually, and making work like 2120 and other experimental personal pieces can help keep my illustrations from becoming too stale or repetitive.

Did you learn anything from making this book?

Definitely; there were parts of this that were really stressful, and the sheer size of it was daunting. But finishing it and being proud of the final result was a good confidence-booster. Whether or not it gets a good reception, this helped me realize that I can make something substantial, experimental, and work with more abstract concepts and philosophies.

I also learned AfterEffects and Audition just to make the trailer lol; I’m not interested in making animations, but I really had a blast making this and experimenting with sound.

Please have a look at our Kickstarter page and consider helping fund this epic interactive book!