General Washington and The Liberty Tree - Comic Book Kickstarter | Interview with - Go Fund This

Imagine walking into your boss's office and giving notice because your writing has become your primary revenue stream or your podcast is successful enough that you can quit your day job or maybe having your marketing on autopilot so you can spend your time on the art career you love rather than on marketing. Are you a creative person who's great at what you do, but marketing makes you freeze? You're not alone. I help passionate, purpose driven creatives overcome fear, find their brand voice and build a marketing strategy that works for them. Oh yeah, I also make it easy and painless. It's never too late to grow the business you've been dreaming about. Book an introductory call with me, Rob Southgate@southgatesmallbusiness.com today. And let's take the pain out of marketing together. Welcome to GoFundMe. I'm your host, Rob Southgate. Today I have with me John. Am I saying Lazar? Right, Lazar, Yes. You can go to Kickstarter, look up General Washington and Liberty Tree and you will find John's Kickstarter that's going on. It's supposed to launch on October 21st and it's got a goal of $1500. And this is a fantastic book. I've read it. I was sent a preview copy and I cannot stress how much I think you're going to really love this thing. It deserves to get the funding and I'll put it all in the show notes. So it's really easy for you to share it with people and for you to do it yourself. But let's get into it. John, why don't you tell people about yourself? Absolutely. Hi, my name is John Lazar. I live in Chicago. I have been a theater artist. Last few years I've been doing a political blog, political humor blog called Shower Caps Blog and pitching Kickstarters. This is our fifth book through Resistance Comics, which is the little imprint we've been using. Our first attempt at something longer than a one shot. So this is issue one of four, so hopefully we'll be doing more of these Kickstarters in the future. Well, you've had some successful Kickstarters, so this should be a pretty risk free endeavor because you've done it. You've proven yourself, right? In theory, yeah, yeah, yeah. So far I've been, I've been very blessed. We've got a nice, we've got a nice, we've got a nice loyal audience. The blog audience is like angry liberal women of retirement age. I'm probably selling them the only comic books they'll Ever read in their life. Okay. But hey, if you got them on that, you got them on that, right? Absolutely. So tell us about General Washington and the Liberty Tree. What's the premise? Yeah, give us the details. So basically the idea was that, you know, if anybody tried to be Captain America in the real world right now, half the country would end up despising them almost immediately. Right, right. So, yeah, it's just about General Washington is a Captain America like character. We had a Steve Rogers like figure for 50, 60, 70 years and he died. And it's been a long time, 10 years since there's been a General Washington and there's finally a new guy. And unfortunately for him and everyone else, he's kind of not good at the job, as most of us, you know, wouldn't be. So it's just about the, you know, the guy trying to navigate that pressure of bearing that mantle. Yeah. Now this is issue one. Is this a finite series or is this. You're hoping to have an ongoing series with this? Well, we've got an opening four issue miniseries and if we find an audience, maybe a publisher somewhere down the line, we do have some ideas about where to go with it. From there, it's up to, up to the potential audience, I suppose. Like all things. Yeah, like all things. I just think it's cool that you have a finite four issue, get into this universe, see if you like it and you've got a complete story. I think that's always a great way to go. I'm a big graphic novel. When you've got the four collected, you know what I mean? Because I like that completion of the story. But that idea that it could go on, I love that. I got, you know, when I was, when I was looking for collaborators, that was some wonderful advice I had from one of the potential editors I talked to. Because of course I've got, you know, pages and pages of this enormous epic. I wanted to help, but he, he recommended like, do your Star Wars A New Hope first. And like immediately like it was so much bigger. It was bit off so much more than I could chew. But once we were able to like, no, let's just tell this first story, suddenly it was manageable. And here we are. Here we are. Yeah. So let's talk about the Kickstarter. The goal is fifteen hundred dollars. And how long is it going to run for? A month. So you got a 30 day window and it starts on October 21st. So right now you can go to Kickstarter. You can follow the link in the notes or go to Kickstarter and type in General Washington and Liberty Tree and you can get notified of the launch. It is important for you to do that. For people that don't know how the Kickstarter thing works, it really helps the creator when we have a lot of people saying notify of launch. That's how you end up. That's one of the ways you end up in the Kickstarters we love on Kickstarter, which does expand the audience someday. So you definitely want to do that. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, it could be. So what about tiers? What are, what are some of your favorite tiers that you have on this? Well, we are selling some of our previous books. We've got Marguerite versus the occupation, a little World War II era one shot that we did a couple of years ago. And then we have Odd Yarns, which was the last book we did. Kind of a tribute to the old Silver Age Strange Tales book. Love that. Oh yeah. It's basically the premise is what if Nick Fury and Stephen Strange switched jobs. Oh, I love it. A what if story. I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, it's great. Like Arc by Lane Lloyd. We've got a, we've got our alternate cover version here by Jason Muir, who General Washington, Liberty. He's fantastic. If you've seen by the Horns at all. It's just the prettiest book on the stands. We're very, very, very lucky to be working with him. Yeah. The artwork is fantastic in this book, by the way. So Jason, in the tears that you're gonna have laid out here, what do you think is a great entry point for people and what is your favorite tier? Obviously my favorite tier is the one where you buy all of the books. Everything. Absolutely everything. Yeah, you know, the, the previous one shots are all standalone stories. They're perfectly self contained. And this, as you mentioned yourself earlier, this is the first issue of a brand new universe and we'd love to have you play around in it. Great, great. And what are the prices on the tiers? I don't have any of that information in front of me here, so. Oh man. I did it at like, I did it like 1232 nights ago. Okay, you know what? It's okay if you don't have it. That's okay. Because people are going to go in there and look at them and they know they can get, I'm sure, PDF physical copies. Is there anything like, like a big blowout one that you go, yeah, you get your. I don't know, is There a big blowout one, or is it just you get everything on the blowout tier? Yeah, there is. There is. There is a tier that's everything we do have because we're ready to go to print. We do have early bird tier, so you can get discounts on everything. Plus, we will put your name in the thank you page in the back of the book right on our exclusive first ever printing. So you can be immortalized forever in General Washington and the Liberty Tree number one. One week only. That. See? Fantastic. That's what I was looking for. Those types of interesting tiers. I know that a lot of people that come on here tell me that those are the ones that after being on this show, they see a little spike in. Usually that's where the. The interest seems to be is in getting their name in the pages or original picture of me in the pages. Last guy I just talked to said one woman wanted her cats immortalized. Okay. For a year to have cats in there. I. I've had somebody like pledge in the name of a pet that absolutely. That absolutely happens. Okay. I'm sure the pet really cared, but. But that person did. That's what really matters. What about stretch goals to 1500? Do you have anything set up, anything you want to reveal? We're thinking about doing. We did it with. We did it with Marguerite. As you can see, we did metallic ink on the COVID upgraded the paper a little bit. I mean, the book. The book looks really nice. So I'm not super literate on all things paper, but fortunately, some of my collaborators are so, you know, paper nerds. They. They get into it. I. People. People get into all kinds of things. Fonts, paper, I. More power to them. I barely understand the things I understand. But, yeah, like when we. If we. If we are lucky enough to hit our goal and hit some stretch goals, we'll just keep. We're not gonna make any merch. We're just gonna keep pouring the money into the book and make the book itself look even better. Again, with Marguerite, it worked out. It worked out really well. And it's a really. It's a really pretty product. So that's a great rewards tier 2. Fantastic. So this is kind of a garbage question, but since we are talking Liberty tree number one, how soon is number two on the horizon? Number two is in production right now. We've. We've got Jason's first pages. I kind of. I kind of fly by the seat of my pants with this stuff, so I can't really tell you. Like, it'll Be ready on such and such a date. But we're sure we're, we're, we're moving right along with it. And actually, actually the first page in particular, it's a wonderful, wonderful image. And so it's on its way. Great. When, when you have a Kickstarter for that one, you make sure. I know I might have you on. Or we might just do a blitz of everybody and let them know that the second Kickstarter is out there. Because I love a series like this. I'm telling you, the first book was fantastic. And it deserves to hit its goal. It deserves to blow its goal out of the water. And as an audience, hey, guys, I mean, you're already comics fans because. I know, because I've seen so many comics creators on here that have hit goals from this. This is a book that you want to fuel that first one because that money actually helps fuel the second one. Yeah. You know, so, you know, it's not cut to the bone where it's like, oh, God, we're out of money. It's. It's no, hit the goal. And now that's going to keep the process going. So let's hit that goal and let's try to get some stretch goals. Let's try to teach John a lesson about having stretch goals pre launch so that he'd be like, oh, God, I gotta. I gotta be prepared. Because they came so fast, I didn't know what to do. Wouldn't that be great? Yes. Yes. Where can people interact with you? Well, I'm at a coffee shop across the street most days. Okay, so let's find my address and get people. No, let's not do that. What about social media newsletter? What do you got? Showercapblog.com is the blog I am at. John Underscore Lazar L U Z A R On the website formerly known as Twitter and under my real name on Facebook. There is another John Luzar out there, but we're not related. Okay. I think he played college football. So if it says college football, you know, you got the wrong one, right? Sports picks, you go, that's not the guy. All right, well, I will put this stuff in the show notes so people can contact you and get in conversation. Once again, I say this on every. Go on this. This is important. Even if it's not the product for you. If this is. If you're like, yeah, I'm not really a comics guy, I don't care. Share it. Put it on your social media because you are obviously somebody who, who understands the value of a Kickstarter. Put it on your social media, tell your friends about it, because you don't know who's going to read that and be like, this is the thing. We just talked about who your audience is. You may not think they're going to be the audience that's going to buy this, but they are the audience that's buying it. So if you put it out there, it really helps somebody like John hit their goals. And to me, that's important because this is. I mean, obviously to you, John, it's important, but to me, it's important because I'm digging this and I want to see all four issues come out. And I have a feeling I'm going to want to see a series after that. Let's. Let's dream big. I'm going to want a Netflix series and then a movie. Four seasons and a movie. I'm gonna want full soundtracks. What else can we get out of this thing? I want it all. Yeah, action figures. I want it all. I want it all. But it all starts with this Kickstarter and you have the power to help him do that. So, John, thank you so much for being on. No pressure. Thank you so much for being on the. Best of luck to you. I think this is awesome. I want to see this succeed and sign up for the Notify me on launch. It helps him, and that way you'll know when it's happening and you can get right in there. Those early subscribers or early supporters matter in a big way. So let's. Let's blow the 1500 out on day one. That's what I want. I'm predicting that Geeks for dominance has predicted day one. We'll see what. Here's hoping. Here's hoping. Thank you so much, John. Thank you, Rob. My heart. My heart is working to be.