I was browsing Reddit a while back, as one does, and came across a post about a project making the front page of Kickstarter (a site where users can fund people with ideas that need funding).
This project was called “SEE YOU NEXT YEAR: The “Halloween-est” Story of All Time 🎃” with a description:
“A wimpy little Kid 👦 meets the big bad Wolfman 🐺 on Halloween. They’re in for the night—and friendship—of a lifetime.”
Curious, I had to reach out to the one-man band behind this.
Known online as ⁊ᶜ (pronounced “et cetera”), Jon Korte is an illustrator from Wichita with an unusual relationship to Halloween. He is the author of the web graphic novel ‘See You Next Year’, which went viral around both Halloween 2023 and Halloween 2024 and has recently been the focus of a successful Kickstarter campaign.
I recently sat down with him, where I learned about the various forms of grief which fueled his story’s creation, and how it blew up online; why Halloween probably lives in New Hampshire, and other facts about the state; the harsh truths of the traditional publishing world; the terrors, payoff, and lessons learned from the campaign; how a mini documentary about a Minnesotan guitarist haunted him for over a decade and informed the name of his company; and how a deceptively simple Halloween story has brought healing and perspective into peoples’ lives.
Sit down and grab one last pumpkin spice latte for the year (if you can still find them!), because we’re about to have Halloween on Christmas.
– Hi Jon, thank you so much for taking the time to interview with us.
Yeah absolutely, thank you so much for having me and for your time as well.
– So, could you just tell us a little bit about your history as an illustrator, and like what got you into art in the first place?
Sure. I followed my sister into it as a kid with pencils and paper. She started drawing before I started. I followed her into a lot of things, because like, if your cool older sibling is doing it, you have to do it as well, right? But what sold us on art long-term was 9/11. We were both just kids, and we were trying to process that situation. We wanted a happy ending. I remember that we agreed on 9/12 that we were going to be “serious” artists from then on, and we wrote down some random names that would eventually belong to made-up superheroes we were going to draw, and they would be able to fight evil and save everyone so no one had to die.
– Wow. That’s a bit heavier than I was expecting.
Yeah. But I mean hey, it must’ve worked, because we’re now both professional artists, still at it after 20 years! But yeah, my sister is ultimately the first reason I got into art, and into storytelling in general. Big kudos, big sis.
– On the note of art and storytelling, let’s talk about your story, See You Next Year. Could you give us a high-level overview?
Sure. See You Next Year is an all-ages Halloween graphic novel about a wimpy, little, Halloween-unsmart Kid who meets the big, bad, Halloween-savvy Wolfman one Halloween night. When the Wolfman realizes the Kid has never celebrated Halloween before, he’s in disbelief, and he feels compelled to show the poor Kid what it’s all about. The Wolfman whisks the Kid away to the Halloween World for a night of fun and education, and all goes well until things take a sudden and sobering turn, when old wounds come back to haunt them both. What they’re about to find is that they’ve needed this new and unexpected friendship for a very long time.
– Where did the idea for the story come from?
It’s a bit weird and complicated, but most of SYNY came about from disparate forms of grief. For one: I’ve always loved Halloween, but as I’ve gotten older, the magic of it all has faded on me. I’ve created a number of Halloween-related projects over the years as like a weird and desperate form of compensation to bring back that lost magic, I guess. For another, there was the death of my best friend in 2013. I never really found the right way to say goodbye and to immortalize his memory for myself, like nothing ever felt satisfying or “big” enough. And finally… and I won’t go into it too deeply here, just because it’s a bit sensitive, but there was some serious emotional trauma I didn’t realize I was harboring, that had been haunting me for a very long time and had compromised me mentally and morally. And yet, before SYNY, time had started to smooth those things out. I just kinda gave up on trying to bring back Halloween magic for myself, because nothing I made felt like it truly worked, and I didn’t really have time for it anymore anyway. And my best friend’s death became real and factual to me. And I had met important figures, ones I didn’t know I needed, who were able to fill in the emotional potholes I couldn’t see for so much of my life, and who helped me to start balancing out. So in a sense, I “moved on” from it all, but I never got it all out of my system, or sufficiently made anything good out of those different hells, or of any of the lessons learned. Stuff happened, but I had no tangible, formal summary.
And then in October 2020, I stumbled on this adorable little book in the store called Goodnight Goon. This little parody book of all things sparked something within me at that time. Like, even if I never made another big Halloween project for myself again, I realized I wanted to have some precious story full of rhymes for myself that I could come back to, every single year, to converse with my inner Halloween-obsessed kid. I wanted my own Goodnight Goon, some ultimate Halloween story that felt like a classic made a long time ago. But I had no idea all those other threads of grief would creep in and get involved as well, so it definitely didn’t turn out quite like I thought it would. I kinda gracelessly dropped the brick of adulthood on it, like an infomercial guy who only gets five steps to the couch before spilling his giant bowl of cheese puffs. I’d probably make for a terrible children’s book author.
– But do you think SYNY turned out how it needed to in the end, even if it didn’t end up the way you thought it would? Has it helped you process those forms of grief in a more definitive way, and are you satisfied with it as a whole?
I really do think SYNY ended up being the story I needed to make for myself, and that getting the heavier matters out of my system through it has helped me stamp a bunch of stuff and call it “processed”. And even though SYNY didn’t turn out exactly like I envisioned… like, it’s not quite as lighthearted as I was expecting it to be… I’m at peace with that. It doesn’t even have quite the art style I thought it would, but I would definitely say I’m satisfied with it. It’s easily the biggest thing I’ve started and completed so far. I’ve loved reading it every year since I’ve been able to. It sparks nostalgia and a childlike sense of wonder in me, each time I read it, which is what I had hoped for from the start.
– What was the creative process like?
At first, very sudden and very poorly planned. I was working on a completely different main project at the time SYNY started, but for months I wasn’t inspired to work on said main project. SYNY’s story and ideas had been percolating in the background since I’d found Goodnight Goon, and one evening in September 2021 I kinda just said “screw it” and began making what became the first hastily scrawled pages. My plan was to eventually come back around and clean them up later, to give everything a proper and traditionally-illustrated style. My plan was not to let it supersede my main project, though.
But it did. Once I started, SYNY just kept falling out of me. The placeholder art style eventually became the de facto style, and I started finding new ways to play with it and express emotions and feelings in more direct and raw ways than I could through any traditional art style I had in mind. I don’t remember exactly when I realized SYNY had bulldozed my main project, but I just remember the joy of seeing the first 4 pages turn into the first 9, and then 13, 21, 50, 100… it was like a faucet I couldn’t turn off, and didn’t even want to turn off. It all came out so fast that for a while it didn’t fully register in my mind that I might actually be committed to making it for real. I was having way too much fun with it, but I really had to rack my brains to find or invent goofy new Halloween activities. I got to throw in a bunch of cheeky references to horror media, games, meme culture, some fairly obscure stuff, and cheeky New Hampshire references or trivia that sometimes even sailed over the locals’ heads. It was a very fun time.
– New Hampshire seems like an unusual and unique setting. What made you decide to set SYNY there?
I actually get asked that a lot, and it’s an understandable question. But it’s a long and weird answer, so I just want to make sure you’re open to hearing about my silly manifesto.
– Sure, go for it.
Okay. So, it stemmed from a curiosity I had in 2013, when I discovered that an old friend’s brother had moved there, and I was finally one day just like, “what is even happening in this upside-down Vermont?” I kept forgetting the state existed. And so I started looking into what the deal with New Hampshire was. And the more I looked, the more I became weirdly obsessed.
It seemed way cooler than it should’ve. It’s a place of extremes. They’ve got the tallest mountains in New England (with an actual art movement named after them), the most ski resorts in New England, the world’s biggest arcade, the “world’s worst weather” on the summit of Mt. Washington, the first account of alien abductions in the US, the oldest bike rally in the country, some of the lowest taxes overall, some of the highest gun ownership per capita, the highest public safety, no seatbelt laws over 18… like, the hell is this place?
I finally went there in October 2022. It was both way different and way better than I imagined. It’s of course downright gorgeous, but the people surprised me immensely: they’re very proud of their state. They’re smart as tacks. They’re ridiculously friendly, and I mean ridiculously friendly. I thought we were friendly, I was not prepared for them. I thought I was talkative, I got my ear talked off several times up there. People would spring the wildest stories on me within like the first 5 minutes of meeting them, as if we’d known each other our entire lives. But the state also holds some core memories for me: I started solo hiking up there, in Nashua, Lincoln, Laconia, and Bartlett. I saw Lucius, The War on Drugs, and The National in Gilford on a joint tour and got to hug friggin’ Matt Berninger. I went to Haunted Overload, in Lee, where I’d dreamed of going for years. I had a lot of firsts up there. The whole state can just seem completely foreign to me when looking in from the outside, and yet it feels like my second home when I’m there, like a giant Wichita with mountains and crazier drivers.
All that aside, I did set SYNY there for at least some semi-justifiable reasons as well. No diss, but it feels like everyone defaults to Massachusetts for Halloween, Vermont for all the werewolves and wendigos and stuff, and then Maine’s got the entirety of Stephen King and whatever he’s doing right now. But what has little old New Hampshire gotten for classic spooky media, Jumanji? Maybe Doctor Sleep? The state fruit is the pumpkin, for crying out loud! It’s home to the geographic center of New England! The record for most lit jack-o-lanterns in the world was set there in 2013! It’s got practically everything the surrounding states do, even a stretch of the coastline! And pretty much everyone up there loves and celebrates Halloween in some capacity, even the old ladies. I’m absolutely determined to convince the rest of the impressionable world that Halloween lives there, and so SYNY is an extension of this silly manifesto, which I admit represents New Hampshire in a bit of a fantastical light. Kinda like how Dorothy lives here.
– Uh, wow, okay. I don’t think a lot of people would ever expect to hear that about New Hampshire.
Right? And that’s probably more than anyone would want to know about one state, but I just love it to bits and hope others might too.
– You made SYNY for yourself, but you’ve obviously also shared it online: tell us a little bit of how it went viral on Reddit, and what made you decide to share it with others.
It’s been a cumulative process. I initially posted it to WebToon and Tapas in late 2021 as I was making the pages, just to like keep myself accountable and to enjoy seeing the updates roll out and help me feel like I was going somewhere with it. And even though I’ve shared my art online in various places and forums over the years, I remember being unusually nervous and vulnerable in sharing SYNY, like it was my first “serious” project that I was going to show to the larger world, and I was going to be judged seriously on it. Once I got past that break-in phase, I started turning to Reddit to share bits and pieces of the story on subs that I thought might gain something of value from it—r/werewolves, r/halloween, r/newhampshire, etc. It wasn’t until mid 2022 when I was finally drawing the more emotionally charged parts of the story that people began to take an invested interest in where the story was going, and so I also started sharing some of those weightier segments of the story on additional subs like r/SympatheticMonsters and r/Comics. By Halloween 2022, SYNY was finished, and the story had amassed a small but dedicated number of fans across Reddit and WebToon.
2023 was when things exploded. Since I had a first pass of SYNY in what I then considered a “done” state, I realized I could air the entire story on the r/comics subreddit from September 20th to November 1st. The story would end on Halloween, but on November 1st, I wanted to release a special thanks / epilogue section I’d been working on since December 2022 to recognize and thank the readers over the years. I also decided to make an official r/seeyounextyear subreddit before it aired, just so I could have a centralized little place to put SYNY stuff and to have it be the “official” place to air the story in full for 2023, alongside the r/comics run. I didn’t really think the official sub would go anywhere, but as I aired SYNY every day on r/comics, and as I linked to the official sub in the posts’ comments, the member count shot up from like 15 to over 800-something by the end of the run. This year, it re-aired on the same days across 5 different subreddits: now we’re at almost 1700 members.
– That’s some pretty explosive growth.
Dude, it’s been insane to watch. It’s not even the kind of story designed for year-round appeal. I’ll sometimes share one-off comics when inspiration strikes, but the fact that so many people decided it was worth joining a sub for what at a high level is just a Halloween story, like, that still blows my mind.
– What made you choose Kickstarter, or crowdfunding in general, over traditional publishing?
I actually wanted to go with traditional publishing in the first place. Or at least I thought I did. Since like 2022, I’ve been asked by a lot of readers where they could get the book in print, and I think a lot of those requests were from parents of young children. They wanted to have it to physically share with their kids, while they still could, so that was a fire under me. But I just didn’t have any other answer besides “it’s planned”: as much as I also wanted it as a book for myself, I hadn’t made any meaningful progress in that direction. So earlier this year, I started looking into the world of traditional book publishing, with the goal of getting SYNY published as soon and as simply as possible. I thought it wouldn’t be too long an affair, but now I wish I’d looked into it so much sooner, because I was in for a hell of a wake up call.
– How so?
SYNY was just far less fit for publishing and printing than I’d realized. I spent much of early to mid 2024 scrambling to get it to even just some semblance of a ready state.
– What about it wasn’t in a ready state? The story was finished, wasn’t it?
Well, it was finished in the sense that it technically could have been brought over to print, page-for-page, but there were numerous things that still got in the way of that.
Typically, to get your work published traditionally, you go through a literary agent. If they like your work, they will negotiate with potential publishers, and if all goes well, they land a deal, you sign some contract or another, your book gets published and printed, and storefronts will sell it for you. I’m obviously glossing over a lot here, but that overall just seemed like the “happy path” to me at first. Unfortunately, I soon learned that most agents have a very high rejection rate, and are typically looking for works which are similar enough to works already published in very compartmentalized age ranges and genres. I think there’s a lot of conformity required to reduce the risk of bringing new works to mass production, so it seems you almost have to keep your restrictions in mind while creating new works, and I just wasn’t even thinking about that at all with SYNY. But those facts, coupled with some brutally honest (if really great) feedback I got on the r/PubTips subreddit, made me realize not only how unfit SYNY was for the world of traditional publishing, but also how unready its art was for even being printed, which was the bigger burn.
– Why wasn’t it ready for print? Was there something wrong with the art?
There actually was! Someone pointed out… and I can’t thank them enough for their honesty… that the art of the earlier pages at that time was not in a ready state. Their primary issue was that the pages had a very limited value range, which in layman’s terms is like how dark the darkest color is versus how bright the brightest color is. The more I mulled over their words, the more I came to see that they were absolutely right. And then I began to see issues in even the later pages. The colors felt a little dull, even. This person gave me a much-needed angle of self-criticality I might not have come upon otherwise.
But that unfortunate news was then compounded when I finally tried arranging the finished pages into an Affinity Publisher document, to get a sense of how it would read as a book. And it was awful. The reading flow was janky. Rhymes that felt like they should’ve landed on the right page, ended on the left. I had to make a plan to modify art into spreads, condensed pages, new pages altogether, etc. just to get the reading flow in an acceptable state. I mean, considering I wanted SYNY to be a book from the beginning, this was a hilariously embarrassing oversight.
Anyway, all that taken together… the unconventional story, the unfinished art… from a traditional publisher’s perspective, it would’ve made SYNY a no-go at the time I started, and probably still too risky to sign on by the time I got done.
– So, you went with crowdfunding as a last option.
Yeah, and it genuinely did feel like it was the last option. I’d never tried it before, and I probably never would have, if I hadn’t felt like it really was the last line of defense, just because of how much more involved crowdfunding is. You have to figure out pretty much everything from the ground up. But I also had another mental thread in mind: the number of niche subreddits on which SYNY could potentially air for the very first time was going to thin to near zero after a 2024 run, so it felt like this was the absolute last year we’d be able to capture a zeitgeist that could secure the story’s future in print. And so the stakes seemed too high to not quickly cut my losses on traditional publishing. If we couldn’t get the story onto shelves and into peoples’ hands through the front door, it seemed like the surer bet was to invest in as much dynamite as we could to try blasting a hole in the wall.
– And how did that go? You shared a number of posts on the r/wichita subreddit where you promoted the campaign. Can you give the community a glimpse into the larger journey?
For sure. I should preface it all by saying that fear 100% drove the campaign. I was terrified. There were once again a ton of new things to learn, after feeling like I had already wasted my time learning about traditional publishing stuff. Pretty much as soon as I realized we had to go the crowdfunding route, I prayed to God for the success of the campaign every single day: I’m still praying for the smooth conclusion and fulfillment of the rewards. But like, I had no idea if we would be able to raise the necessary funds, based on the size of the subreddit at that time before the 2024 season, versus how much it was potentially going to cost to get the books printed, packaged, and shipped. There were so many intertwined logistics I had to mentally stumble my way through until I could see any kind of bigger picture. And somewhere along the way I eventually realized, like, “okay, I’ve now invested too much time, energy, and money into the campaign to be fine with this failing”, because I was already operating at a loss at that point. And if your campaign doesn’t fully fund on Kickstarter, you don’t get any money. So I set the funding goal dangerously low. It felt like I had to push an arrow the rest of the way through my body, because it was going to hurt less than pulling it out.
– Tell us what allowed you to accomplish work through that kind of fear.
The thing that really helped me get a clue was a post I stumbled upon when I was just starting out on my research into Kickstarter. In that post, the author describes how their campaign was hand-selected for a ‘Project We Love’ badge by the folks at Kickstarter. I also read that only about 10% of all campaigns get it, but if your campaign does get it, it’s an immense boon to its potential for success. And like, I didn’t think too long or hard about that, I just decided we 100% needed to get one of those badges. That article was an absolutely fantastic starting point.
I reached out to people for direction as early as possible, and the two people at Kickstarter who I connected with on LinkedIn were Oriana Leckert (Head of Publishing) and Sam Kusek (Senior Outreach Lead of Comics). Oriana put me in touch with Sam, whom I was in regular contact with throughout the campaign’s life cycle. He gave me an invaluable starting point and some homework to do so that I could familiarize myself with what I was about to get into, and to see what it was that backers, and the folks at Kickstarter, were looking for in a campaign.
Over time, after doing some basic research on how to build and promote campaigns, I had something of a campaign that I hoped was at least demonstrable. During this time also, I had just done my first solo TV interview with KAKE News after reaching out on the r/wichita subreddit on who I could contact about promoting the campaign locally (and thank you to Monika for scheduling the KAKE interview, and to everyone on Reddit who offered advice / leads!) to show Sam and the readers that I was serious about the campaign. That was the next post I made on the Wichita subreddit.
– So, what was the outcome of all that work? And of the campaign at large?
I scheduled a 30 minute call with Sam, to see what he thought and to find out if he had any concerns with what I had made for the campaign up to that point. Because even after following the resources, I was still paranoid that I might have screwed up somewhere, and I couldn’t afford that. But thank God, Sam was very impressed by where the campaign was already at. He had fairly minimal feedback. And soon after our meeting ended, I got an email from him letting me know we got the ‘Project We Love’ badge. My hope for the campaign absolutely skyrocketed. I then shared that as a post for visibility and hometown hype.
The campaign ended up doing so much better than I thought. We had an extremely strong start and a steady climb as the story aired on the 5 subreddits. We passed 100% on the 24th day, and needless to say, I cried knowing the last 7-8 months of trying to get SYNY in print weren’t going to be in vain. By the end of the run, the campaign ended up at 165% of the goal, jumping from like 114% just 5 days prior, and even now, after-campaign pledges are trickling in. But most mind boggling of all was the fact that we made Kickstarter‘s frontpage for October 30th: that’s also something the staff handpicks from thousands of projects across all categories. And I wasn’t even shooting for it, like, that was not any part of the campaign goals. I had to refresh the browser multiple times to make sure I wasn’t seeing a weird HTML error. Once reality hit, I officially freaked out, and then shared it as a post.
– Ah, that was the post I saw when I reached out to you! Front page is a pretty big deal!
Haha, okay yeah! And thank you dude, it was crazy! The funny thing is though, it didn’t really bring in a whole lot of new backers. But then it wasn’t the kind of thing with wide appeal, like technology, so… eh. Your mileage may vary.
But, I had seriously underestimated the fervor surrounding the campaign. My thinking was… I mean, realistically speaking, just because your story has a bunch of readers online, that doesn’t automatically guarantee they also want it as a book, right? And I knew a number of people who did want it as a book, but it was only like 30-35 who had explicitly told me, so I went into the campaign with muted expectations. But as it turned out, a ton of people also wanted it as a book. Only around 5% to 6% of all backers wanted digital-only versions of the story, which is really rare for any comic published through Kickstarter. 24% of all orders came internationally, and from 19 different countries. 11 backers bought the retailer bundle containing 4 books, mostly in the US, but even from places like the UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, and Thailand, and some even ordered extra books on top of the 4. It was absolutely nuts… like, not just to know how many people wanted books, but how many people wanted several of them, from so many different places. 43 people bought the 2-book bundle. And I can’t even remember all the countries those orders came from, but I know there were orders from places like Bahrain and Iceland. The figures we got seemed downright miraculous. I did not know what to expect going in, and I’m still blown away a month after the fact. The SYNY community absolutely crushed it.
– Man, that’s so awesome. Huge congrats on the campaign! I bet you’re relieved it’s ended.
Thank you so much, dude! And, a million percent yes. I can now focus on getting work done to bring it to print next year. It’s been a huge blessing to at least be able to let my shoulders down, knowing the book is actually going to happen, and that we can finally get it into the hands of the readers who’ve been asking for it. And I’m not terrified anymore, even though I’m glad I was in hindsight, because it forced me to learn things I could actually use down the road, and to actually have some knowledge of crowdfunding to share with others.
– And what advice would you share with others looking to start their own campaign?
Oh man, there’s so much. I don’t really have anything organized right now to answer that, but just to like splat some stuff on the fly, I’d say to just reach out to people. Go do some networking, y’all, LinkedIn is great. If you don’t find the people you need at first, you will eventually be directed to those who can best help you and your campaign succeed. Ask for advice, and show that you have taken it, and have acted on it, if you think it applies. Show you’re serious about your campaign as soon and as often as possible. Don’t worry about sounding dumb: Sam fielded so many “dumb” questions from me. Voice your concerns: Sam gave me the reassurance I needed for the times when I conveyed, in as professional and positive a manner as possible, that I was having a mini panic attack about some trivial aspect of the campaign. Know your audience. Determine who wants what it is you have to offer. Make sure they see it, and that it’s at an attractive price, because people typically won’t go and find something you don’t put in front of them. Shoot for a strong start to your campaign, because you will absolutely need it. Be transparent with your backers, and with yourself. And maybe lastly, find ways to knock people’s socks off, if you can do so with integrity. If you don’t think you can fulfill the promises of a funded campaign, don’t even think about doing the campaign: they are a ton of work to make and to promote, and you are risking your time, energy, and reputation in taking them on. And the bigger they are, the more stressful in general they’ll be.
– As you mentioned, it’s been over a month since the campaign ended: where are things at right now?
I’d say things are going well so far. I put out the first every-two-to-three-weeks update on Kickstarter, to give the kind of transparency I’d personally hope for as a backer, and another is coming within the next few days, but more frequent mini-updates are available on r/synysuggestions, including a frequently updated roadmap. I recently placed orders for custom patches and stickers and signed off on the proofs, so production has begun on both. Those will be the first of the physical rewards made, and I’m super looking forward to sharing the completed versions of them as a mini milestone with backers.
– Taking a step back: how has life “post SYNY” been? How has its success changed your life and / or your worldview?
Well, I still feel like I’m just some guy, so that’s good. But I do recognize that my day-to-day has changed. I’ve been busier outside of my day job than I’ve ever been before, and I’ve missed a lot of opportunities to socialize with friends. It’s been very stressful, at times. SYNY’s been a full-time job of its own, many times over the past 3 years, especially in the months leading up to October. I learned to get uncomfortable and to play hype man for the story and to get the word out there about it. And I’ve definitely missed out on a good amount of sleep in making it, making the campaign, sending emails, responding to messages, etc. But I often forget all of that when I see the results. SYNY is definitely my baby. Others have adopted it as well, and made it part of their own Halloween traditions. Many have reread it about as many times as I have. Parents have shared it with their kids, before the books have even been made, which has brought me a ton of joy. It feels like it might go on to become another Goodnight Goon, which is exciting to see. And hey, the story has also perhaps convinced a portion of the world that bagels qualify as Halloween food and that Halloween lives in New Hampshire, which it absolutely does.
But again, I don’t tend to think about how my life has changed, too much. If anything, I really wish I could completely factor myself out and let SYNY stand on its own, because that’s how I envisioned enjoying it 4 years ago, as this classic-feeling story which already existed, like Goodnight Goon. And as pathetic as it may sound, I do spend a ton of time just thinking about it. I think about how crazy it is that it even exists. Not in terms of like the effort it’s taken, but how it’s worked out as well as it has, despite the fact it didn’t turn out how I thought it would. It often doesn’t feel like I’m the one who wrote it, or should be taking credit for it.
– Why is it that you don’t feel like you wrote it?
Well, when I step back, it feels uncanny to me how it ties together and makes something simple from a bunch of totally unrelated threads running through my life. Just ask, “what does emotional trauma, a random fascination with New Hampshire, an interest in werewolves, the death of your best friend, and the weird pain of out-growing Halloween all have in common?” Like, how the hell should I know, right? The only reason I would ask that question at all is because SYNY exists at all, but if I started out asking that question first, SYNY doesn’t seem like the kind of answer I would’ve ever ended up with. It’s like God took the THX sound and time stretched it to play for over 20 years of my life. Given the cacophony of the sources, I think it should’ve been a chaotic mess, but somehow the end result makes sense. In a way, it’s awoken me to see absolute providence in everything, even at times when absolutely everything sucks.
And it’s been astonishing to see how many people have studied the hell out of it, or hung onto little subtleties in it, or spilled themselves out for it. Many people have shared some very personal stories of their own. Some have lost a child. Some suffered an emotionally unfulfilled childhood, or outright abuse. Some have lost their dad. And then some have faced the same things I had, which has been its own kind of wake up call, like speaking with someone in a language you didn’t know you knew, and which you didn’t know anyone else knew. It doesn’t feel like I was ever meant to hear the things I’ve been told, but I’ve watched SYNY blow people wide open, several times, without me doing anything more than just sharing it. And I feel like that’s God at work. It’s been a blessing to know that it’s helped people feel less alone in the sufferings they’ve undergone, and a privilege to hear their stories.
– That seems very intimate. The fanbase seems like it could be more of a family.
Yeah, honestly. Like, it really doesn’t feel right to me to say the story has a fandom, because for the last 2 years, it really has felt more like one huge family, or maybe even just a big therapy session. Again, I’m just some guy, and I just wanted to have the story and then to share it. But SYNY’s impact has definitely given me a greater sense of purpose in life. The same story that felt like my finish line, I’ve watched become other peoples’ starting lines. I feel like maybe God led me to make SYNY to help me sort some of my own shit out, but now I can try to get it out there into the world so it can find whoever else it may help next. And so, I wonder if it might be some part of what I’m supposed to do with my life. To just like, propagate SYNY and get it out there, or to propagate useful stories in general. I don’t really know. But until I do, I might as well run with it.
– So, with that goal of propagation in mind, do you ever see yourself being open to a publisher coming to you and wanting to buy the rights and take over publishing? It seems like the success of the campaign would take away the potential risk from the world of risk-averse traditional publishing. And, you’d be able to “factor yourself out” a bit better.
That is a very, very good question. I’m kind of divided. But right now I’d say my feeling is “no”. For a while I’d fantasized about SYNY being published through Scholastic, or any of the “Big Five” publishers, but only as a petty validation and vanity badge. But I’m just a little disillusioned with the traditional publishing world, and how it seems to me like a jaded and rude space that happened to give useful feedback, so the idea of going traditional now leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. And then… and I might be wrong, but I really don’t think SYNY could’ve ever gotten a foot through that door without first proving there was demand for it through crowdfunding, and I’m not sure it could get through even now. But even if it could, the community has blown a hole through the wall, and now I personally just don’t feel like using their damned door.
But the problem with that is it’s just stupid ego speaking, and ego shouldn’t derail a sound plan. But I think there are still other, more practical issues with traditional publishing. But what’s left is… honestly, it’s not the easiest to answer, I need to think about it more carefully. Like, on one hand, if I sold it to a big publisher, I think there’s a good chance they could more quickly lower production costs by negotiating deals with printers using the kind of “corporate leverage” they have, I guess, and then they could potentially sell SYNY for even lower than I ever could. That could get it into even more hands, which is definitely what I want. But on the other hand, I feel like we could still find a way to lower prices by negotiating similar deals, if need be. And I also just think selling it to some big publisher would taint the integrity of the story. To me, it could feel like a Judas kiss to the community members who showed up and showed out to fund the campaign, so ultimately it’s not just my feelings to consider. But also, I really don’t want SYNY to fatten anyone’s wallet, even my own. Like, obviously we needed the campaign funds to pay for third-party labor which will get the physical rewards into production, but it’s for the fact that it’s helped me and so many others with some aspect of our lives that I don’t want any take-home profit from it. And that mentality is not gonna fly in the traditional publishing space.
And another reason I’m hesitant to sell to a big publisher is because I fully intend to keep SYNY free forever, online. I don’t want to risk the story being paywalled. I feel like any money SYNY earns needs to go back into its continued propagation as a book. And again, I don’t think there’ll ever be a business, short of one I make, that would share that vision or love SYNY like I do.
– Interesting… I guess that raises another question, then. Given SYNY’s success and your adverse stance on traditional publishing, do you have any plans to start your own business to carry out this vision, and any future projects?
To be honest, I haven’t yet fully sussed it out. But generally speaking, I’ve made some steps towards going somewhere from SYNY. I’ve had the idea of making a company in the back of my mind for at least a decade, which until this summer I was calling The Cartoonists Guild, even if it was just going to be me alone plus some made-up employees or whatever. It was never a very serious pursuit, and I’ve had so many art-related ideas floating in mind over the years, like stories and characters and ventures and stuff, but ever since SYNY happened, my mental framework in deciding whether some long-term art project is worth committing to or not, at this point I can simply boil down to, “will the final product edify?” and “will the story’s ending be worth it?” And so when I look back on all the stories and stuff I wanted to do before, it all just seems like a complete waste of time now. So, for any projects going forward… I’m fine with short-term projects, but also, I’m going to die one day, and now I just want to feel like anything that I commit several years to making, actually is worth committing to, y’know? But ultimately, I never had any big incentivizer until recently to think much about a company.
It was actually the KAKE interview that yanked the idea for a company back into my mind. From the time Monika and I began discussing and coordinating that interview, I only had two full days to prepare everything, and one of the things I didn’t yet have, but knew I wanted to do during the interview, was to point people to an emailing list where they could sign up and get notified of when the Kickstarter pre-launch page went live. And it also felt like I needed a more professional front for the interview, and the campaign. So I thought, “what the hell, let’s go get a website”, and I got a Wix site set up, figured out how to set up a subscription form, and changed the name of the company a little. I now at least own TheCartoonistsPlace.com, where things can potentially happen in the future. The site still needs a lot of work. I’ll eventually host SYNY in full on it at some point down the road, and a digital storefront as well.
– Out of curiosity, what made you decide to change the name from ‘Guild’ to ‘Place’? Was the domain not available? Either way, they both seem like they allude to some collective.
That’s something I can say a stupid lot about, so unless you want the long version…
– Hey, again, go for it!
Alrighty… like, this might be more weirdly obscure and needlessly deep than my reasons for choosing to set SYNY in New Hampshire. But it wasn’t because the domain wasn’t available, and any allusion to a collective was me being cheeky in the former case and incidental in the latter. I made the name change as a nod to a hero of mine, Billy McLaughlin. Or more particularly, as a nod to a song he made that I discovered a long time ago and built some mental mythos for.
I discovered Billy in 2011 through another musician, Andy Mckee, an awesome guitarist from Topeka who went viral through YouTube in 2006. Andy mentioned Billy as one of his inspirations, and something convinced me that I wanted to look him up. I ended up finding a mini documentary about him, and I’m not kidding, its impact on teenage me was immense. Like, a core memory. Here was this happy guy, just writing and performing some lovely fingerstyle guitar music, whose whole life as a performer and artist was slowly destroyed by a debilitating neurological disorder which rendered his primary playing hand nigh on inarticulate. He goes silent for four years, and then comes back, having relearned his melodies on the other hand, all because he loved what he did so much that he was willing to power through with hope. I can legitimately still get choked up thinking about it, all these years later. But there was this song playing in the background of that documentary, and it was absolutely spellbinding. I had to find its name and the full performance, and when I did, the name Helms Place was permanently branded onto my psyche. Especially the slower midsection of the song, though the whole thing’s a damn masterpiece. But like, just seeing Billy in that video, smiling and emoting so naturally to the different parts of the song as if in some kind of wordless conversation with God, and to find the will in his hands to play the melodies he was unable to make for years… dude, it shook me. It was as heartwarming as it was heartbreaking.
Despite the fact that Billy named the song after a street looking out at the I-10 in Los Angeles, the documentary, the performance of the song, and all the circumstances surrounding it all took on a whole new life in my mind. It mythologized Helms Place as this hard-won heaven where souls beaten down by life go to rest, where innocence destroyed can be remade, and where you can find all you ever lost and all that time forgot. And for a long time, I’d wanted to make something that spoke about this special place, but up until the point of picking a company name, I’d never found a good way to. And then as I was listening to the song again in August this year while preparing for the KAKE interview, I realized SYNY had a common thread with Billy’s return to performing. Both came about from going through various hells, only to emerge and see the stars again. And because I felt SYNY had laid out a clear blueprint for the kind of meaningful and worthwhile art projects I wanted to try making for the rest of my life, it just felt right to have The Cartoonists Place be a manifestation of this Helms Place. I wanted a little heaven, for cartoons. And maybe it ties back to why I wanted to be an artist in the first place.
– Wow. That’s a really interesting chain of events to lead to a company name. But in general, it’s interesting how seemingly innocuous things from the past can stay with us years later, and how it feels like they come full-circle.
Exactly! And it makes you wonder about all the things in your life that happened in the past, which haven’t come full-circle yet. Or like, if you’d even know what those things are ahead of time. But yeah. Billy’s triumph over the grief of losing what he could never have again, to end up making something so “heavenward” and beautiful, it resonated with me for the longest time. It felt like his finish line became a kind of starting line for me. I’m glad I finally got to finish mine.
– So, besides fulfilling the campaign, what’s next?
I’m not 100% sure, really just because my energy is pretty squarely being spent on the campaign, but I can say that I confirmed a sequel last month, Say Yes This Time, which will happen eventually. I’m hoping to have the chance next October to be back in New Hampshire and have a SYNY booth at the New Hampshire Pumpkin Fest in Laconia, and hopefully meet up and goof off with some of the SYNY family in that area. But long term, I hope to use my remaining years to try making and illustrating useful stories that give hope to damaged souls, and to cause the mind, heart, and soul to look up.
– Is there anyone you want to thank or give a shout out to?
Oh man, that’s a big list. God and his angels and saints, my family, my friends, all the SYNY fam, everyone who contributed to the campaign, the folks at Kickstarter, the folks at KAKE News, yourself and Candace at WichitaLife, everyone in the special thanks section, and anyone I may have forgotten. I owe a lot of people more than I can repay for their belief in this little story. I’m ridiculously blessed and privileged to be able to do what I’m doing.
– Is there anything you want to tell Wichita?
I love you. I want amazing things to come from you. Never settle for mediocrity. This place is full of talent: do not let it sleep. Reach into the depths of your soul, spill it all out, and create something beautiful and unforgettable.
– How can we support you and your mission with SYNY?
Well, if you know anyone who might need it, please send them SYNY’s way. And if you know anyone who knows someone who knows Joe Brumm of Bluey, please send them my way. I know Halloween isn’t exactly huge in Australia, but I really hope Joe reads SYNY and enjoys it. He just seems to me like the kind of guy who understands what it’s like to lose something precious, to want to bring it back, and to make it last.
You can support See You Next Year by pledging to the Kickstarter campaign, and you can read the story on WebToon or on the official subreddit, r/seeyounextyear. You can also follow its journey to print more closely on r/synysuggestions.
