Kel McDonald | Misfits of Avalon

COMIXOLOGY: CONVERSATIONS is an interview-type show with comic book writers, artists, colorists, letterers, storytellers, and just about anyone making or reading amazing books. Portions of the interview have been abridged for maximum hilarity and you can FIND LINKS TO THE BOOKS MENTIONED HERE. Enjoy our conversation with Kel McDonald!

Kara Szamborski: Welcome back to comiXology Conversations. Coming to you not live from New York City it’s Slim and Kzam. We’re here with web comics legend Kel McDonald. Welcome to the show.

Kel McDonald: Hi.

Matt Kolowski: Webcomics legend, Kickstarter pioneer. I think that was another thing that was super fascinating to me, Kel. Now we have you on the show.

Kel: I was on Kickstarter back when you had to be invited to be on Kickstarter.

Kara: Ooh.

Matt: That’s old school. That’s like saying you could dial a phone number without a zip code in your area. That’s how old school that is. [Editor’s Note: Matt is old.]

Kel: It’s basically Spike Trotman, who runs Smut Peddler and Iron Circus comics, she got an invite. Since we’re buds, I was like, “Hey, this Kickstarter thing, can you send me an invite?”

Back then when you joined Kickstarter you could invite five people.

Kara: It’s nice to see that you got in early and could explore that opportunity. We’ll get into that a little bit later but I wanted to ask you about “Misfits of Avalon” because when I was reading it my first impression was, “Oh my gosh, where have these characters been?” because it’s pretty rare to see a book about women where they’re jerks.

You see books about evil women but they’re never really obnoxious about it. These girls are really obnoxious. I love it. What made you want to take this direction with these characters?

Kel: It’s because I don’t see that very often. Whenever there’s a girl that’s mean in a story it’s kind of like Cordelia on Buffy who’d be catty and gossipy but she’s never really super duper obnoxious. Basically, a lot of my favorite shows are about people that are terrible. I really like Archer, and I really like Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

It’s always dudes starring in those roles. I just wanted to have an example of girls that were obnoxious and loud and weren’t fitting that definition of what a jerk girl would be. Basically, Misfits grew from that.

Kara: The story, for our listeners who haven’t experienced Misfits of Avalon yet, I’m sure they could tell from the title, is based on Arthurian legend. Have you always been a fan of those stories? Is there a particular version that inspired your take on it?

Kel: Basically when I was coming up with the idea for Misfits of Avalon I started with magical girls that are mean and not just…

Kara: Thank you for that.

Kel: I started there and then basically I looked at the magical girl stories that I was familiar with and saw that having a theme for the villains and the heroes helps build the structure of the story.

I sat down and tried to figure out, “OK, what would this team be?” I was originally going to go with music since punk rock would fit in with the obnoxious attitude a lot of these girls have but I realized I don’t know enough about music and I’m not particularly super duper interested in learning a lot about music to go in that direction.

There was a bit of trial and error for the team theme. When I got to King Arthur I was originally going to have them be Knights of the Round Table. That didn’t quite work, but then I thought of, “Oh, what if they’re the ‘bad guys’ in a King Arthur legend?” That helped structure the whole story and everything fell into place.

Kara: Can we talk about the costumes for a minute? It’s like Highlander meets Sailor Moon. What was your design process for those?

Kel: After deciding that it was going to be all King Arthur based I realized that King Arthur legends overlap with a lot of Celtic mythology in general or it’s a few steps away. Basing it off Celtic mythology combined with Arthurian legend made me be like, “Clearly they should have old school Celtic outfit inspiration.” That’s why there’s a Highlander bit in it.

Matt: I also feel like Highlander/Sailor Moon needs to be a mashup that we can all read and enjoy and love.

Kara: It’s basically here. It’s right in front of you. You can just pick up Misfits of Avalon.

Matt: Let’s just change the solicit to this book to “Highlander + Sailor Moon = NOW.” I feel like that could be a great poster we could ship around, too.

Kara: Love it.

Matt: To switch a little further back, Sorcery 101 has been running forever.

Kel: 10 years.

Matt: Oh my God. I don’t even know people that have doing anything for that long.

How do you keep it going? How did you, for that long, get excited to keep producing content for that? What was your schedule like for that?

Kel: It started out three days a week, and then while in college I would run a donation bar, which would buy extra updates during my summer break. I explained to people, “This is how much I would make at a summer job. If you can cover a summer part time job, then you get extra updates.”

By the time I graduated from college it was paying all of my bills. I never had a real job.

Kara: That’s OK. You’re living the dream. It’s fine.

Kel: I am ruined if comics don’t work out.

It went for three times a week and then, in the summer, five times a week. Then around the time I was graduating college I realized, “Oh sh*t , I saved the first 460 pages the wrong resolution for print,” so I had to redo them all.

Matt: Oh my God.

Kara: What was that like?

Kel: Terrible, terrible, terrible. Don’t ever, ever redraw anything.

Matt: I remember seeing that update on your Kickstarter. It was pretty cool to see the original and the updated piece, side by side and next to each other.

Kel: Yeah, but they’re still a pain in the butt to do.

The thing is, yes, while the art is a lot better I didn’t change the writing all that much. I had to go back through and see all my writing mistakes and then I couldn’t fix them because that would create plot holes for the story later on.

I cleaned up some of the dialogue and maybe cut out a page that’s just filler but for the most part the story does not change.

Matt: The omni for that is gigantic.

Kel: It is 800 pages.

Matt: You could kill a human being just by dropping it on their foot. It’s amazing.

Kara: It’s the size of The Order of the Phoenix. I think it’s absolutely a weapon.

Matt: You have been doing this for a long time. The Kickstarter campaign was very early on. When you first were doing Kickstarter, did you have a firm grip on being able to get money for your work so that you can do it for a long time? What was the Kickstarter experience for you, almost being a seasoned veteran by that point?

Kel: My first Kickstarter, I wasn’t super confident that people wanted a book, which is why I went to Kickstarter because it’s all or nothing. If I only got half the funds I need I could be like, “Well, there I know. I have an answer and I can move on and focus on other things,” and then wouldn’t have to redraw 400 pages.

But since it was successful, I quickly realized that you need something new at a convention because you get the same people come up to you every year. They’ll be like, “I bought this last year. What do you have that’s new?”

I Kickstarted a few shorter projects in the meantime while I was finishing redrawing Sorcery 101. All those smaller Kickstarter projects definitely helped me build up street cred and proof that I’m reliable when it came to Kickstarting the giant omnibus.

While the giant omnibus was huge and a big undertaking to get funded, it helped that I could be like, “But you know I’m not going anywhere because I have completed and fulfilled these six other Kickstarters.”

Kara: You mentioned that the thing that you noticed is people would come up to you at conventions and say, “What do you have that’s new?” How much overlap would you say there is between people who find your work through conventions versus people who are just discovering you online?

Kel: I don’t think there’s that much of an overlap. There’s a handful of people at conventions but I feel like they’re mostly separate.

What was funny is I recently wrote an issue of Angel and Faith for Dark Horse. When I announced that on my Sorcery 101 site the first comment I got was someone who clearly only pays attention to webcomics, he doesn’t pay attention to anything print comic related, because their question was, “Wait, there are 'Buffy’ comics?”

I feel like if you’re paying attention to print comics at all it would be hard to miss that there are Buffy comics.

Matt: I feel like you could easily say, obviously, the reverse of people that buy those comics or maybe have found Misfits of Avalon in our app. They find out that you have this huge library of web comics.

They may never have even tried reading a webcomic, or maybe don’t even know how, or even know how to do that on a regular basis. It probably blows their mind.

Kel: What was interesting is Sorcery 101’s on comiXology’s Submit and it goes up one chapter every month. Someone has been reviewing every chapter of Sorcery 101.

It’s funny for me to read those reviews because, first of all, they’re critiquing my work from six years ago. Second of all, they definitely seem completely unaware that it was a webcomic first.

Kara: I was really into webcomics when I was in college. I think you’re right, I think there is a certain webcomic audience that doesn’t necessarily always translate to print sales.

Did you think that you were able to maybe introduce some of those webcomic people to the concept of printed comics through your Kickstarters?

Kel: I think Kickstarter is where they come together, because I definitely get people that have found me through my Kickstarter campaigns. Having the webcomic there for them to read before they back, I’ve gotten a few people that are like, “I don’t really read webcomics all that much, but I read yours because of your Kickstarter campaign and now I want the book.”

Matt: Plus I think if you go to that reviewer that didn’t realize it was a webcomic, you could probably throw the Sorcery 101 Omnibus at him. That’ll really put him in his place I think.

Or break his spine.

Kara: Wow, that escalated a lot there.

You’re in a dark place. We’ll take that back a little bit.

Kel, you’ve contributed to, or organized, several anthologies, like Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales. You’ve contributed to Smut Peddler, Womanthology Space.

What is it about this type of storytelling that appeals to you?

Kel: I like it when stuff is finished. One downside to writing a big, long thing like Sorcery 101 is, while you are practicing storytelling in general, there’s an important part of storytelling that you’re not getting practice on, and that’s ending a story.

I feel like endings are super important. Those short stories help me focus on working on ending a story.

Also, I use a lot of the stuff I do for anthologies to experiment with a new art technique, because I usually don’t have a lot of time because I’m working on stuff that’s due and pays the rent. Unless I’m getting a paycheck out of a thing I usually don’t have time to work on it.

Womanthology: Space, that was all digital. I usually work inking traditional and do penciling digitally. Basically Womanthology: Space was me figuring out Manga Studio.

Smut Peddler’s story I was playing with pure black and white. Then my Sleep of Reason story is–I wanted to try to tone with markers, which is how Misfits of Avalon is toned.

My Sleep of Reason story is: “Can I pull this off, and is it practical?”, before doing it for an entire book.

Matt: You do a ton in comics, in webcomics, and then in Kickstarter, and publishing. Is there a certain aspect of any of those processes that you prefer doing over the others?

Kel: I don’t like coloring. That’s the one thing that I’ve learned, is I think next time I work on a color story I’m going to pitch it to a publisher that will pay for a colorist, or Kickstart it so that way I have money to pay a colorist.

I’ve found that I really don’t like to color. All my stuff is either going to be black and white or somehow pay for a colorist.

The other stuff, I really like writing, and I really like penciling, and I really like inking.

Kara: Did you study all of those in the school that you went to, or did you start with those techniques in high school with an art teacher, or teaching yourself?

Kel: Basically the way I got Sorcery 101 online is because in high school I went up to someone who had a webcomic and said: “Hey, how do you put your comics online?” Web design stuff I figured out on my own on the fly.

I changed what techniques I was using throughout working on Sorcery 101 because I went to Savannah College of Art and Design and encountered new stuff that I wanted to use and was more comfortable with.

Matt: I’ve read previous interviews with you about creating a webcomic and not checking your own stats so that it doesn’t become the only thing you worry about. That feels like the most impossible thing ever, to put your work out there and not worry about how it’s being received, and keep doing it.

I feel like that, for me, would be the hardest part of doing a webcomic.

Kel: The thing is that stats will trick you into thinking: “You’re doing better or doing worse than you are”, because I’ve noticed that those numbers are just numbers.

There’s a lot of people out there who read hundreds of webcomics. They will keep reading your comic as long as it’s free, but they’re not going to pay for it.

That’s fine, they’re bored at work in their cubicle and they’ve got to kill some time. There’s definitely stuff that I will read until it is not free anymore, but you can only make money off those people through ad views.

If you go to my site and you have ad blocker on I have a little note that says, “Hey, maybe please turn off your ad blocker. That helps keep the comic free.” Most people are willing to do that.

Then there’s a completely different group of people where they’re fans of you, rather than webcomics as an entity. Those are the people that are going to buy a book or buy a print…

Matt: We are back at Kickstarter.

Kara: It’s so fascinating, all the different overlap that you personally, as a creator, seem to be experiencing with exposure to all these different graphic art audiences.

Kel: I recently started a podcast with Spike Trotman and Amanda Lafrenais called Dirty Old Ladies. We have been talking about all of our comic processes and stuff. On one of those episodes I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really read comics and I wasn’t really invested in them until I started to make them.

Because of that, I never got starry eyed and thought, “Well, this is how you do it.” I never became like, “This will be the path that I follow.” I was just like, “I want to tell this story and make these comics. How do I get them out to people?”

And so, I’m more willing to try new things quicker because I’m not like, “This is the goal.”

Kara: It’s very entrepreneurial of you. Well done.

Kel: Spike talked in the same episode how she put…when she was growing up she really wanted to be published by Slave Labor Graphics. It took her a while to realize: “Oh, I’m more successful if I do it this way.”

Matt: What do you seek out yourself to read? What’s on the top of your list that you have to read this?

Kel: What have I read recently or what…?

Matt: Yeah, or even webcomics.

Kel: What’s on my to read list.

Matt: Yeah.

Kel: I actually don’t read a lot of webcomics because I don’t like to read things on my screen. The webcomics that I like I usually follow the person on Twitter or Tumblr and then buy their book when it happens. I’ll read the first 20 pages and then buy their book.

Widdershins- which is by my friend Kate Ashwin. I finally told her that I’m never caught up with her comic but I’m buying it every book. She probably likes that better.

Then I really enjoyed Faith Erin Hicks’ work. Those are the kind of comics that I almost always buy if her name is on it.

Kara: Yeah, she’s amazing.

Kel: I’ve got to think of authors.

Kara: Take your time.

Kel: I like the manga series Pluto.

Matt: Oh my God, yes. I read that for the first time this year. It immediately became my top three comic book I’ve ever read.

Kel: I feel bad because I feel I’m so busy making comics I don’t have time to read a lot of comics. I have a box that’s my to-read box. There’s a lot of stuff in there.

Kara: I’ve got a to-read bookcase. I feel your pain.

Kel: It doesn’t go on my bookcase until I’ve read it.

Matt: That’s still a pretty good list. I’m glad that we were able to chat today to help people discover Misfits of Avalon and also Sorcery 101.

Kel, I appreciate you taking the time out today to speak with us.

Kel: Thank you for having me.

Kara: Absolutely. Thank you.

FIND LINKS TO THE BOOKS MENTIONED HERE.