Alex de Campi loves explosions and obscure film noir. She hates writing bios. She writes the comics
Smoke/Ashes and
Grindhouse for Dark Horse Comics. She has directed a bunch of music videos for indie bands famous and not so famous. Alex de Campi's vision was one of Thrillbent's strongest influences and helped Mark Waid recognize how successful a platform devoted to digital comics could be. De Campi has joined forces with Waid's digital comics company, Thrillbent, for the release of Valentine Volume 2. The second volume has launched on the one-stop showcase for creator-owned digital comics.
Valentine Volume Two has been serialized on Thrillbent - with a new chapter posting every Thursday. For Volume 2, de Campi has reunited with artist Christine Larson, who worked with her on Volume 1. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Alex about the re-relese of
Valentine, volume two and more.
It’s been a busy year for you moving Valentine from Comixology to Thrillbent, how crazy has it been?
It’s awesome because we stopped creating Comixology in late 2010, early 2011, because I lost my job and I could no longer self-finance it and it’s broken my heart that I haven’t been able to continue. It sat on Comixology and kept being downloaded… I think we were at half a million downloads by the time I took it down to take it over to Thrill bent, so it’s done really well for itself even with no marketing from me and no further episodes.
One of the people that Valentine inspired to become interested in digital comics was
Mark Waid and Mark founded Thrilbent and it came full circle when Mark came to me and said “Hey you and Christine should really finish Valentine.” Now we’re launching Valentine back onto Comixology, which makes me really happy, because that’s really like coming home. Thrillbent has been a massive supporter of ours and Comixology has always had our back. Those guys have been so kind to me over so many years and so supportive when nobody was taking my calls. We’re coming back onto Comixology via Thrillbent. For me this is a perfect world where I’m on Thrillbent who are instrumental in continuing Valentine because they’re supporting me, and I’m back on Comixology who have always been promoting me as a creator and promoting my vision of digital comics.
We’ll be weekly on Thrillbent in small doses and weekly with our normal sized chapters on Comixology until we catch up. We had 10 chapters in 2010 when we put everything on hiatus. We’ve completed two more and we’re finishing up chapter 13 right now. We’ve gone back and re-lettered all of it and tweaked it. It looks really pretty… It’s always been pretty because of Christine’s art, but now it really sings.
You mentioned re-lettering, was there other work that you had to do to get it ready for re-release?
Mostly just resizing things a little bit. Luckily we work really big, so it was really easy and I had all of the old art stored. The beginning of this year was spent in Valentine re-lettering hell. I had to cut it all up and re-lay it out because it wasn’t a comic that ever existed as a something that could be printed, it was just panels. So I had to take all of the panels and make pages, which was just weird and bizarre, but it turned out really well. I feel like I keep going back to it again and again and keep tweaking it, but I’m not going to tweak it anymore.
So volume one is what’s been re-released, you’re getting ready for volume two, right?
Thrillbent is up to the beginning of Chapter 6, the chapter where we move away from the 1812 opening setting of the book… Quite strongly away from it. You can go right now and read the first 5 chapters on Thrillbent and Comixology has Chapter 1 for free and Chapter 2 for $0.99, with weekly new chapters after that. We didn’t want to dump everything on. Even now I have people waiting for chapters 11 and 12. If we had dumped it all in one week we wouldn’t really be catching many new people.
How does the weekly schedule effect the production? Does it make it difficult?
We still think of it as a monthly book. It’s a little hard for people to get their heads around… Christine and I write and produce the book in chapters. We have 75 panels per chapter that Christine draws. Sometimes by the time I’m done with post-production it’s closer to 100 panels. Then I divide those chapters up into Thrillbent weekly installments, which are usually only about 20 panels long. Every chapter I write turns into about five weeks of content on Thrillbent. On Comixology we’re releasing them in chapters, which are the longer chunks and they’re coming out weekly just to catch up.
How many more chapters do you have in the story? Do you have it all planned out?
Absolutely. I’ve written through chapter 16. The end will probably be chapter 22. The story is epic. By the end it’s really exciting to be involved. I love endings. It’s the best thing in the world.
How much of your work is traditional print comics versus the web comics? IS Valentine one of your only web comics?
Valentine is my only web comic. I would love to do more, but nobody funds web comics and you don’t want to see me draw. I’m a mess in my own head as it is… If I only did a web comic I would feel weirdly like a slave. I would find that quite tough. My dream is that someone like Amazon, some company with money and vision, and if they have one they don’t have the other, trust me, comes and says “You were the first person to throw away the page and long form digital comics. What would you do next?” Believe me, I have a list. I would love to have the money to have a great artist and post-production person, a coder, money to hire friends of mine to write music for the piece and do this amazing next-generation comic that would be my story-telling abilities, something quite thrilling and mainstream, and not be nasty towards women, just generally fun and inclusive, but then with everything that technology would let us do.
With all of these projects and how busy you are, how do you balance that with family time, being a mom and all of those things outside of “work”?
It’s hard. It’s really hard. I don’t go to conventions because I can’t afford it. Going to a convention for me is like mapping a trip to the Crusade. There are dogs that have to be boarded, I have to get my mom to watch after my daughter, which is tiring for her and it’s expensive. It’s just a nightmare. I’m incredibly disciplined about what I do. I don’t have a social life besides the internet. I live in the middle of nowhere where it’s very cheap. You know all that time that people spend playing video games or watching TV series? That’s when I’m writing. I write, I take care of my daughter, and do fun stuff with her. While I’m with her I try to be 100% with her, which is always a battle. We’re all so distracted. I’m trying to do specifically fun things with her like crafts, or painting, or going for walks. I also volunteer for the dog rescue which takes up quite a lot of time.
You can read
Valentine on
Thrillbent or
Comixology. Head over to
Alex de Campi's web site to learn more about her and see some of her other great work, including
Grindhouse,
Lady Zorro and
Smoke/Ashes!