An Interview with Steve Peters of Awakening Comics

I started in the small press with my Rabbit Hell mini-comics in 1992. My professional work started in 1997 with the self-published Awakening Comics and Everwinds for Amaze Ink. I’m a huge fan of jam comics, and you can see jams with independent comics artists of all types throughout my work. Most recently, I’ve been doing comics about a half-angel, half-devil creature called Sparky, who looks like a ’30’s-style cartoon character.

Awakening Comics is both the name of my self-publishing imprint, and the title of the first series I published. The first issue and part of the second were funded by a grant from the Xeric Foundation. It started out as an anthology; I was inspired by a magazine called D’artagnan that I read when I lived in Argentina for a couple of years. D’artagnan was an anthology with short stories about characters from various genres. Many of these characters were ongoing from issue to issue. I wanted to do something similar, with the main difference being that all the stories were written and drawn by me. I used different drawing styles in each story to make it look like it was drawn by a number of different artists. I published several issues and moved on to other projects. I just published Awakening Comics #0, which is a prologue to the series; eventually I’ll do a few more issues of A.C. to tie up any loose threads I’ve left hanging.

Awakening Comics, of course; I reprinted issue 2 and 3 of Everwinds in a comic called Everwinds: ‘Shrooms. More recently I published a series of one-off comics: Chemistry, The Origin of Sparky, Sparky In Love, and Runner’s Paradox. The Sparky comics have been popular enough that I’m giving him his own title, Tails of Sparky, starting in 2009. You can see preview pages from the first issue at my web site.

You can always get them from me at www.awakeningcomics.com. Some of these comics turn up on eBay occasionally, too.

I don’t publish other people’s comics, but I do have an open invitation to other creators to contribute to my Sparky comic books. The rules are that Sparky has to appear in the story in some way, and that it has to tie in with whatever theme I’m using for the next issue, but where the creator goes from there is completely up to him or her. Aside from the many Sparky jam comics I’ve passed around, there’s only been 3 people so far that have contributed stories that were completely their own, though all have been pretty spectacular. Creators can read submissions guidelines and find out what the current theme is by clicking the “CAN YOU DRAW SPARKY?” link at my website. Another way to get into a Sparky book is to contribute to my ComicSpace.com Sparky jam—I will always have one going at any given time. My ComicSpace name is StevePeters; you can find the jam in my galleries.

I was pretty thrilled to receive the Xeric Award in 1996 for Awakening Comic, and the Gene Day Memorial Prize in 2006 for my Chemistry comic and Chemistry CD Soundtrack. It’s always great to meet people I don’t know who picked up my comic somewhere and enjoyed it and who want to read more. Unfortunately, the market is dominated by superheroes and most small press publishers like myself can’t sell enough copies to make a living at it. Sales were so bad that I decided to take a break from comics in 1999 and started a band. Ultimately, my band brought me back to comics, and I recorded soundtrack CDs for my comics. The CDs sold even less than the comics, though, and I suppose it didn’t help that my music is pretty experimental.

Overall, I’m quite happy with the way things have turned out for me. I’d prefer to be making a living from my comics, but I’m not about to give up trying, even though it’s such a bad time for independent comics. There’s so many new options turning up all the time—web comics, Ebooks, digital printing, print-on-demand, etc. Life is too short for regrets. You learn from your mistakes and you move forward.

That would be Awakening Comics #0. I was planning a prequel issue for the A.C. series. I happened to be looking through some old, unused artwork and came across an old Rabbit Hell jam comic from 1993 that I never finished; it had a lot of jams with some pretty well-known independent comic creators. I realized that I could salvage the story and make it fit in well with the prequel theme. Since I get a lot of interest in my jam comics and these jams involved more heavy hitters than any of my other jams, I thought it would be good to sell as a charity comic. I’m giving proceeds from the comic to my favorite charity, Philabundance, the Greater Philadelphia Food Bank. I’m very pleased with how it’s been selling so far. It’s available through my site, of course. I’m also selling it through eBay. Their minimum amount for a charity auction is $5. I’ve asked bidders to consider using a Buy It Now option for $10, therefore matching my donation. I’ve been very impressed by people’s generosity so far. I’ve thought about doing a PETA benefit comic many times, hopefully I’ll get around to that sometime. I’ve done a couple of other charity benefits in the past—I did an mini-comic to benefit the local SPCA in the early ’90’s, and the proceeds from the Chemistry Soundtrack CD went to victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Unfortunately, the CD made hardly any money at all, but the sales of A.C. #0 have been much more encouraging.

It is a very tough market for small press/independent comics, as I was saying earlier. Dave Sim’s The Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing is extremely useful if you can get your hands on a copy. A lot of the information in it is outdated, but there’s a ridiculous amount of useful tips in it. You can always try for a grant from the Xeric Foundation—that was extremely helpful to me in getting things started. A good strategy might be to work with one of the bigger comic book companies, then self-publish after you’ve made a name for yourself.

It was my pleasure. I’d just like to ask people to support small press comics; there’s a lot of creators out there who really need your support. There’s good stuff out there that’s not available in your local comic shop. You can check out great comics conventions like SPACE, MOCCA, SPX, or APE; you can find indy comics online at places like Indyplanet.com or Wowio.com, and you can find interesting work surfing through ComicSpace.