A Roundup of the Sullivan’s Sluggers Controversy
Back in May of 2012, a Kickstarter was launched to publish a comic book Sullivan’s Sluggers, which told the story of a run-down baseball team playing for their lives against demonic opponents. This wasn’t any ordinary Kickstarter, however, as Sullivan’s Sluggers was written by Mark Andrew Smith (Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors, The Amazing Joy Buzzards) and illustrated by James Stokoe (Orc Stain, Godzilla: Half Century War). With an excitingly bizarre story premise and an amazing creative team behind, Sullivan’s Sluggers exceeded its Kickstarter goal of $6,000 by $91,626. What’s even more remarkable is that the book was later optioned as a big Hollywood film. All this sounded like a wonderful fairy tale story come to life thanks to the magic of Kickstarter, but as the days passed, the ugly truth behind Sullivan’s Sluggers became clear.
Where’s Our Book?
As David Brothers noted in his overview of the Sullivan’s Sluggers Kickstarter, the printed books promised for backers who pledged $30 or more were delayed from last September to January of this year. Backers who pledged $10 for a PDF of Sullivan’s Sluggers received theirs on time, but discovered earlier that their reward wasn’t as exclusive as originally promised. Comixology sold individual issues of Sullivan’s Sluggers four months before Kickstarter members received theirs; a legal, but distrusting move by Smith. At the time where local and international backers were still waiting for their physical copy of Sullivan’s Sluggers, hardcovers of the book appeared in retail and online stores. Smith justified the tactic as a way of paying for international shipping fees and even held a second Kickstarter to cover the cost at $1. The second Kickstarter was criticized and suspended today.
The Writer and Artist Speak Out
Now people are fuming over Stokoe not receiving any royalties from the book’s extra sales, which was never stated in the Kickstarter, but was generally assumed. Stokoe spoke about the royalties issue and others surrounding the Sullivan’s Sluggers Kickstarter on his website:
First off, I want to make abundantly clear that I’m in no way involved with the direction of either of the Kickstarters, or any other other outlet where that book is sold. The Writer and myself had breifly talked about working together on the KS, but due to some disagreements, I decided to remove myself from it completely.
There’s been talk on my behalf about fair compensation from the KS earnings, but I have to say that it personally doesn’t bother me. I have been paid what I was contracted for, and I’ve been very content to keep my nose out of anything involving the book post-Kickstarter. In other words, there’s really no reason to be offended on my behalf. I’m doing fine. I understand that some backers may feel mislead in that they were supporting me financially by backing the book, and for that I apologize. There was very little I could do once the ball started rolling in that regard, shy of shitting on the whole parade.
He then announced his name would be removed from future products of Sullivan’s Sluggers, as it was no longer a book he could endorse with pride. Stokoe wished Smith the best without uttering his name and displayed confidence that backers will receive their books soon. Overall, Stokoe’s take on the situation was calm and respectful towards his former employer. Smith’s take, however, was less professional:
I hired James Stokoe for Sullivan’s years ago starting in 2009, and then he’d go missing for months and months at a time, one year turning in about 8 pages total. 8 pages in one year!
I was foolish enough to bet the house on Sullivan’s Sluggers with Stokoe and things didn’t go at all to plan with the schedule. That said, I’ve been trying to make the tastiest lemonade from three years of James Stokoe lemons.
My life fell apart and took all kinds of turns because of Stokoe’s pace with the book. It was fuel for the fire of me getting divorced in Korea because of money and trying to turn comics into a career and having prospects other than being an English teacher forever in South Korea. So I’ve suffered enough.
After talking about the three years of “hell” he endured by working with Stokoe on Sullivan’s Sluggers, Smith turned his attention towards his critics:
In the past few months have just been nonstop bullying, targeted harassment from his camp, comics alliance doing hit articles (And I’m the only one they’ve done for their Kickstarted reviews to date, 3 of them), and people anonymously on 4Chan posting the worst things that aren’t true and reposting and re spreading misinformation.
Given Smith’s equally rude remarks towards Paul Maybury over credit and royalties dispute from Aqua Leung (which he later apologized for), his comment on Stakoe is unsurprising.
There’s a Lesson in All This
While it’s debatable if Smith mislead backers of Sullivan’s Sluggers intentionally or not, the clear loser in this scenario are the ones who thought they funded an exclusive comic book they would receive on time. As Brothers said on the 4th Letter, incidents like this make Kickstarter look unreliable and break the trust anyone might have in the system. Future Kickstarters should heed the harsh lessons learned from Sullivan’s Sluggers and state their intentions clearly to their backers. Backers should also take extra precautions before supporting a Kickstarter and read everything in the fine print. Hopefully this ugly experience won’t sour funding for any potential worthwhile projects, because Kickstarter is still marvelous system that not only brings unlikely creations to life by amateurs or professional, but shows there’s an audience for it as well.
