MOTIONARY MEDIA

The nefarious Dr. Lupus, rumored to be attending the event.

I think the organizers of Motionary Comics (see previous entry), myself included, were worried that the local media wasn't picking up the story of our interesting and unique event.

"Where's the beef?" I said, using an 80's catch phrase. Well, we ended up doing pretty well. The first entry was a small blurb with a picture in the calendar section of the Riverwest Currents. The weekly Shepherd Express listed us in their two page "pick of the week" spread yesterday. Media sponsors Yelp.com included us as their featured event this week (HERE), and the heroine known as Yelp Girl will be attending the event.

Today we had a triple whammy:

Myself and Moct art director Chad Edwards appeared on WUWM's program "Lake Effect," interviewed by host Bonnie North: HERE

RLSH critics, but also stand up guys, the Milwaukee AV Club gave the event a boost in a write up by Matt Wild: HERE

And also a write up by our friends at Third Coast Digest, penned by DJ Hostettler: HERE

Tomorrow is the big day!

HERO PROFILE #53: The Fox

Illustrations by David Beyer, Jr.

Operated out of: Aurora, Illinois and along the Fox River

Alias: Rey Fox

Died: 2001, age 70

Activities: The Fox staged a battle against industrial polluters of the Fox River, using direct action like capping smokestacks, clogging sewage drains, leaving dead skunks on the front doorstep of company executives, hanging handmade banners and signs, a sticker campaign, and even a mock funeral for the river.

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/LegendoftheFox

Author's notes: I wrote a lengthy article on The Fox for the Riverwest Currents, a local monthly community newspaper. You can find it free at businesses throughout Milwaukee. The article is largely based on a blog entry posted previously on this blog that reviewed The Fox's 1999 autobiography. The article is also posted on a Facebook fan page that documentary film maker Matthew Pniewski and I set up for The Fox HERE, which will also be updated with links to other articles on The Fox.

Needless to say I've found The Fox to be an interesting and brave character. He mentions in his autobiography that someone produced a comic book about him in 1971, so I'm keeping my eyes open for leads on that.
Included here are illustrations by David Beyer, Jr. who will be drawing a few graphics for the book.

RIVERWEST CURRENTS STORY

Note: Heroes in the Night partners Currents, Inc. published a nice short article on the project on page 2 of their monthly neighborhood newspaper, the Riverwest Currents for their October issue, which hit the stands today.

Support Your Local Hero: Heroes In The Night
By Currents staff

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a superhero?
Over the last year and a half, Riverwest author Tea Krulos has had a chance to find out as he explored a unique movement of people that call themselves “real life superheroes.” Krulos traveled coast to coast to meet the heroes in person , and joined them as they tried to make the world a better place. He is finishing up a book on his experience, Heroes in the Night: Inside the Real Life Superhero Movement.

The two heroes he has spent the most time with have been Milwaukee’s own Blackbird and The Watchman. He has joined them on several patrols of Riverwest, keeping an eye open for trouble- car break- ins, muggings, any situation that would call for someone to help.

Besides crime prevention, a lot of these superheroes also do charity events, participate in walks or causes, and hand out food and supplies to the homeless. In keeping with the generous nature of the subject matter, Krulos will be donating a percentage of book sales to a local charity.

Krulos is working with Currents, Inc. to publish the book and he is raising funds via the site Kickstarter, which allows you – the literature-supporting public- to pledge money toward the project. The money is only collected if the project is funded in full.

The Kickstarter is open until October 12 and you can check out the page here:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/162004565/heroes-in-the-night
There are a number of different pledge levels. One of the most basic is $35, which gets you an autographed copy of the book. At other levels you can get your own custom designed superhero mask, among other things.

A Superhero Party to help raise funds is being planned for Oct. 10 at the Y-Not III, 1854 E. Kenilworth Pl. Check for details at heroesinthenight.blogspot.com or check the heroes in the Night Facebook page.

Shadowed faces and guys in masks- this has been Tea Krulos's world for the past year and a half. You can help him publish his book, Heroes in the Night: Inside the Real Life Superhero Movement, by pledging at Kickstarter.com. -Photo by Paul Kjelland

Announcement 1- "Self Publishing"

I have made the executive decision to self publish Heroes in the Night. Actually, self publish isn't entirely accurate. I will be working with a small, local publication house called Currents, inc. This company publishes the Riverwest Currents, a small community newspaper. They have been publishing the paper almost ten years now and gave yours truly many of his first gigs. They have a lot of social capital and experience, but things have always been rough for them financially. Most print media is crumpling up so just the fact that they are hanging in there is amazing. They are going to help me produce the book and I am raising funds to publish it through the site Kickstarter. More on that in a moment.

The reason I have gone this route is my interactions with agents and publishers haven't been fulfilling. Some of them just don't "get it." One agent told me he liked the book, but wanted me to completely rewrite the narrative and feature no more than five RLSHs in the book. The other day I walked through a Borders bookstore and kind of had a panic attack looking at all the crap on the shelves- teenie bopper vampire books and cat joke books- who wants to negotiate with people who produce that?!

I'd rather do it my way, creative control means a lot to me. That will insure that the exact book that I want to happen will happen. So that is the advantage of self publishing. The disadvantage is that it is A LOT of work. Fortunately, I've been assembling a X-Men style team to help me for awhile now.

This team includes editor Jan Christensen who is also the editor of the Riverwest Currents. She is going crazy with the red ink, correcting spelling, grammar, and continuity errors. Graphic designer J. Jason Groschopf is doing the entire lay out for the book. Besides the writing, I want Heroes in the Night to be very visually dynamic. It will almost be like a fun to read textbook. Comic book artist David Beyer, Jr. will be contributing some comic book style illustrations to the book, and there will be a lot of great photos from a variety of photographers including Peter Tangen, Paul Kjelland, and Pierre-Elie de Pibrac. Videographer Matthew Miller has been helping make promotional videos. I also have a team of two lawyers reading the entire book, a book keeper, someone working on a more official looking website, and for the last team member I'm looking for someone to handle my least favorite job- PR/ publicity.

These people are all doing work for free or at a discounted rate, but there still are expenses. It is impossible to think a quality job in producing a 250-300 page book is going to happen for nothing. I have to pay the lay out guys something, I have to pay the lawyers, I need a small budget for PR, etc., etc. I added this up and it came to approx. 8,000 dollars. I also want to do a large enough print run that I will have some copies to send out to people, including reviewers, as well as a stock to sell online and at bookstores, which will fund a second print run.

Matthew Miller pointed me in the direction of Kickstarter, a website that helps people raise funding for their projects (they take a 5% fee)- Kickstarter approved my project and today is day 1 of 35 days of fund raising. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing affair, you either get all of the funding or you get zip.
There are several levels people can donate at, with different incentives. I think the most sensible one is Level 2, which is basically just preordering the book.

Well, that is all I have to say on it now. I will have more announcements that I will be making this week, namely about the charity I am partnered with and some details on the book itself. I will also be writing about some of the books I've used to research my own.

I will be updating this blog with content as much as possible over the next month.

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE HEROES IN THE NIGHT KICKSTARTER PAGE
Bonus feature: Video of me speaking awkwardly about the project!

Please pass it on if you feel inclined.

Your pal,
Tea Krulos

Heroes in the Night Referenced on Mental_Floss

Here is Milwaukee's Watchman posing with a statue of Arthur Fonzarelli, commonly called the "Bronze Fonz" and...hey, I took this picture!

Mental_Floss is a magazine "where knowledge junkies get their fix" and one of their bloggers, Miss Cellania (sounds like an RLSH name to me) has been fixin' to write a series on RLSH, taking a geographical approach. Her blog is titled Miss Cellania's Files, and her first entry was a look at "Real Life Superheroes of the South" on Aug. 17 which rounded up Master Legend, Danger Woman, Superhero, Hardwire, Daddy Man (?!), Enigma, Viper, Amazonia, DC's Guardian, Knight Vigil, and The Crimson Fist. Links within the post lead to Hero Profiles I wrote on Superhero, Amazonia, and Viper.

Moving along, Miss Cellania followed up two days later with "Real Life Superheroes of the Midwest" and included in the round up are Shadow Hare (who disappeared last year after intense media snark and it's after effects) Geist, Razorhawk, Foxfire (who disappeared after claiming to be fighting supernatural forces in the deserts of Utah), Mr. Silent and Dr. Discord (who simply disappeared), Captain Jackson and the Queen of Hearts (who you would have thought disappeared by now but haven't) and The Watchman.

The blog links to my profile on Watchman- (#1, way back in November!) as well as a post reprinting an article on him I wrote for the Riverwest Currents.

Miss Cellania ends the blog by saying "Coming soon: more real world superheroes of the US and around the world."