Unmasking THE PRIVATE EYE
With very special guest: Panel Syndicate's Marcos Martín!
Delighted to be done with this week, how about you?
Brian here, awake bright and early this Friday morning to finish writing today’s missive before the weather-rescheduled Guardians playoff game starts. Costas is talking like the Yankees have already won this thing, but I have faith in Cleveland!
Tragic, foolhardy faith.
But you didn’t subscribe to this thing to read me blabber about sportsball! You subscribed to win cool shit like this:
We’ll be giving away a signed copy of that beautiful hardcover from our friends at Image Comics to one of you generous paid subscribers in The Tower (and sharing some exclusive behind-the-scenes Private Eye goodness) after our paywall, but first, we’ve got some free stuff for the rest of you.
During our recent BKV/Q&A, some of the most requested questions were about Panel Syndicate, but I didn’t feel right answering without input from the fearless and forward-thinking inventor/overseer of that “pay-what-you-want” comics site, Marcos Martín, who I lured out of hiding to share the below responses.
Valued Exploding Giraffe reader Henning wrote a few P.S.-related questions, starting with:
I have always wondered what things are like behind the scenes at Panel Syndicate. Do you invite the other creators in, or do they reach out to you guys to ask if their comic can be featured there?
Marcos: We’ve only reached out to one artist and that was Albert Monteys back at the time when we had just started out and people didn’t know (even we didn’t know!) that we might open to putting out books from other creators. After Albert began his UNIVERSE! series we started getting inquiries from other creators and grew out from there. However, we’re a VERY small operation, so the amount of books we can put out is quite limited and conditioned by our personal circumstances at any given moment.
Do you argue with the other creators over deadlines and such sometimes?
Marcos: We never argue with other creators about anything… unless you count my constant yelling at myself for being late. But no, one of Panel Syndicate’s biggest perks is the possibility for creators to work at their own pace without any limits or constraints of any kind. After all, they’re the ones who take all the risks, putting all their work and effort into the projects with no real certainty of what the outcome’s going to be.
Does “pay what you want” still work out now that you have been doing this for a long time?
Marcos: The “pay what you want model” works in direct relation to the amount of exposure each book is able to get. The percentage always stays more or less the same, around 40% of payments against 60% or so of free downloads. So the bigger the audience we’re able to reach the more money a project is going to get. This means certain books are financially profitable for the creators while others are not.
Is there anyone you would love to have at Panel Syndicate but would never ask directly?
Marcos: Sure, there are people we’d love to have at Panel Syndicate but that’s just because we hate them and we want them to suffer just like we have, so we’re not going to say names.
Typical surly self-deprecation from the hardest working human in comics!
Brian again, tagging back in to admit that I never thought Panel Syndicate would last three months, so I’m stunned and amazed that Marcos has not only kept it going for almost TEN YEARS (a near-eternal lifespan for a new comic publisher), his creation has also hosted over a dozen new titles from some of the most interesting creators on the planet, all of whom have been able to keep 100% of any funds readers like you have kindly sent their way.
Marcos takes zero payments from any books he didn’t draw himself, and allows everyone to own and control ALL rights to their work, including the right to leave and be published elsewhere anytime if anyone so chooses.
I know Panel Syndicate has also influenced a lot of other great sites, including the fine folks here at Substack, who’ve told me that Marcos’ creation was one of the inspirations for their own fantastic comics program.
Still, I don’t think the pay-what-you-want model is necessarily the best option for all writers or artists (or even most projects, including long-form graphic novels like Spectators), but for shorter miniseries from relatively “established” creators like Marcos and me, who have the resources and/or recklessness to work on a new project for a long time without any kind of upfront compensation, betting on ourselves has been absolutely life-changing.
Not a day has gone by in the last almost decade that someone in the world hasn’t generously purchased a download of The Private Eye or Barrier, even though those two series remain completely free to read for anyone who might not have extra scratch to spare at the moment.
Despite the fact that he’s the most consistently miserable old bastard I’ve ever met (or maybe because of it), I absolutely love Marcos, remain in awe of his creation, and can’t wait to collaborate with him again at Panel Syndicate… IF he’s still willing to work with a hack like me after being spoiled by the joys of working with a superstar like Ed Brubaker.
A little birdie told me that Ed and Marcos may have just completed the sixth chapter of their mystery masterpiece Friday, so it should be ready to come out in time for Halloween.
Get caught up right now for any price you think is fair right here!
Until then, if you’ve already read all of Marcos’ work and are looking for something new to try, I highly recommend Blackhand & Ironhead from the magnificent David López.
The epic finale of this 12-issue unconventional superhero series just dropped, and David absolutely stuck the landing.
Once you reach the end of that tale, I hope you’ll spend a few more days at Panel Syndicate just getting lost in one of the most surprising lineups of titles anywhere in comics. And if there’s a book you particularly love, maybe send the creators a buck or two? As always, up to you.
But for you moneybags who are monthly/annual/founding subscribers here at Exploding Giraffe, I wanted to share some never-before-seen coolness from the book that kicked it all off at Panel Syndicate: The Private Eye, a dystopian (or utopian, depending how you feel about the internet) detective story that remains hugely important to me.
For everyone else, Go Guards, have a great weekend, and Niko Henrichon and Fonografiks and I will see you back here on Monday for more free pages of Spectators…