Posted By Leo Johnson on November 11, 2013

When Orson Welles did his infamous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, coincidence collided in the small town of Concrete, Washington, to make the residents believe that the Martian invasion was truly happening. In a night that involved hysteria and confusion, Concrete was seized by paranoia that would eventually leave the townspeople embarrassed.

Writer Mitch Cook and artist Keith Grachow tell this story in Concrete Martians and show the power of radio and mass media during the late 1930s. Though the event was never fully documented, Cook and Grachow take personal anecdotes and newspaper stories from Concrete, Washington, and tell what happens after the lights and phones go out in Concrete on October 30th, 1938.

Mitch and Keith took some time to answer some questions about their current Indiegogo campaign, along with the previous, unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign, the book, and the book they plan on producing.

Leo Johnson: Tell us a bit about yourself if you would.

Keith Grachow: I’ve been an artist all my life having been influenced by my father’s advertising business and love of art. I even remember drawing a cover for his entertainment magazine he put out in the 80′s. That was my first professional gig.

I went to school for graphic design and did a bunch of free lance work. During that 10 year period I had a couple of really cool gigs, working on the concept design for a sci-fi based dance club called Johnny Rockets and doing package design for a company called Play Along Toys. They were known for doing all of the toys for the boy band craze and bubble gum pop of the late 90s and early 2000s, like Britney Spears, N’Sync and Christina Aguilera. My favourite project from that job was the package design I did for Bruce Lee’s, Enter the Dragon. Not sure how we acquired the rights to that one, amongst all of the bubble gum, but it was a dream project for me to be on.

About 10 years ago, I decided that I wanted to focus my career on illustration and especially graphic novels, so I went back to school and started relearning the fine arts. I also began collaborating with other artists on comic book anthologies and short stories and had a few of them printed. After school, I was lucky enough to get a job working as a digital ink and paint artist on the Disney movies, Princess and the Frogand Winnie the Pooh, which helped me further my education, and get me comfortable drawing stories geared to children. I’ve self published a kid’s comic book called BIT-B and recently collaborated with my mother  on a children’s book called On a Planet Named Up-In-The-Sky.

While I love drawing children-themed stories, I like diversity,  so I’ve also been collaborating with some writers on more adult oriented books. I’ve released a graphic novel and a few web comics as well as short stories over the years.  I’ve been collaborating with the writer, Mitch Cook, for almost a decade on different sequential stories. Concrete Martians is one he brought to me a few years ago, and when I read the script, I knew that this would be an incredible story to draw.

Mitch Cook: I have been working in the television business for a long time and I see and hear a lot of real stories every day.  I have always been one of those guys who have stories running around in their brain and they have to come out in creative ways.  So, I dabble in various narrative forms and it seems I am well suited to the comic book.  I have written several scripts but one has really “gotten legs” as they say.  The War of the Worlds Broadcast and it’s effects has always been a fun historical moment for me and when I learned about a local town that didn’t handle the broadcast very well, I just had to learn more about it.  Out popped “Concrete Martians.”

I met Keith almost a decade ago in Japan where we were both teaching English and we discovered that we have a creative shorthand and similar vision.  So we teamed up to produce “Concrete Martians.”

LJ: You previously went to Kickstarter, and now Indiegogo, with your comic
Concrete Martians. What’s the story about?

KG: It’s about a town called Concrete, Washington and how they reacted to a radio drama they thought was real. On October 30th 1938, Orson Welles narrated the radio drama, The War of the Worlds. It was a first, in that radio was a new art form, kind of like the internet is today, and was very popular. Until recently, radio broadcasts were limited to short distances, so this was kind of a first to have a story broadcast throughout the nation from coast to coast, being heard by everyone at the same time. While everyone was listening to this story of Martians invading the world, many didn’t know if it was real or not. Only until they went to commercial break did many listeners let out a collective sigh of relief and applaud the realness of the story. However there were a few pockets of people in the United States that actually believed the Martians were coming. In the town of Concrete, Washington, as they were listening to the radio drama, a severe storm was blowing through the town and as Mr. Welles was taking the story to commercial break, the power went out in Concrete. True story, they really thought Martians were coming! What Mitch has done is written a story based on what happened during the power outage from anecdotal evidence and his own crazy imagination.

LJ: What made you two want to tell this story about the War of the World
radio broadcast and bring it to comic?

KG: For me I wanted to bring this story to the masses because it’s an entertaining story that would be lots of fun to draw. It also has a poignant message about how media can manipulate society into believing certain things for the good or for ill. It’s even more true today, with how instantaneous information can be sent to us via the internet and how quickly news is spread whether factual or not.

MC: Working in the media industry, I know a LOT of broadcasters and each of them has a special place in their hearts for The War of the Worlds.  I wrote this with them in mind and have found that many others have taken to it and some have even JUST learned about it.  It happened 75 years ago so it isn’t exactly on everyone’s mind.  Our comic has churned it all back up and it seems appropriate to remind people that media manipulation is not new.

LJ: What has made crowdfunding such an attractive method to get Concrete
Martians published?

KG: It’s more about practicality for me. I’m a full time illustrator, and make my money doing personalized illustrations for people. I love doing sequential work but it’s not as profitable and it’s  also very labour intensive. We’ve actually worked on this book before, but because of the amount of time it takes and my busy schedule, I haven’t been able to get to it on a regular basis. My art style has developed over time, so huge gaps of not working on this project has made the early pages look very different from the way I draw today. We love this story and want to get the best quality product out there for everyone to enjoy. So we figured if we could get the funds together to pay me over a long period of time, I’d be able to work on this project consistently and since neither I nor Mitch are independently wealthy, we’d try a crowd funding platform to get a whole group of people to be part of this process, help us fund this as a collective and get this book out there.

MC: It is an opportunity to build buzz leading up to actual printing and debuting at Emerald City Comicon.  Good buzz sells books.

LJ: Ultimately, Concrete Martians didn’t receive funding when it first ran
on Kickstarter. Was there anything you learned from that campaign that
you’re incorporating into the IndieGoGo?

KG: With the first crowd funding on Kickstarter, we kind of went into it a bit blindly. I had thought about it for a long time, talked to lots of people about it and followed and donated to various campaigns. But at the end of the day, I didn’t know what would happen until we actually tried it. We did really well that first week. I think 30% was funded. But after that it pretty much died off. The thing with KS is that if you don’t raise your goal, you don’t get any of your funds. So even though we raised over $2000 dollars, we couldn’t keep any of it. I think it died off because we weren’t as clear as we could be about our goals and we didn’t have enough reach to get people’s eyes on it. But the biggest thing I took out of it was that people seemed to want a finished product. It’s hard to donate money to something if you don’t think someone is going to finish it.  I get that thinking but it’s kind of a Catch 22. How do you get started on something if you don’t have funds to do it, yet the only way to get funds is to have a finished product? It was frustrating.

Mitch and I went to our separate hidey holes to lick our wounds. After about a week we reconvened and decided that we wanted to continue Concrete Martians, because we believed so much in this project. I came to the conclusion that if we could just get pages begun, had a good head start, then maybe we’d get more support. I also figured that it was worth trying Indiegogo this time, because you get to keep a majority of the donations. We were lucky in that we found a donor from the KS campaign that would be willing to contribute money to help us get started and once that was solidified it was only a foregone conclusion that this book, at least part of it, would get finished.

LJ: You’re now seeking $2500 on IndieGoGo to get the book published. What
made IndieGoGo the right platform for this second attempt?

KG: I kind of answered some of this in the last question, with Indiegogo allowing you to keep a majority of the funds you raised. But I want to kind of expand on why we’re asking for $2500 and what we plan to do with that and what we plan to do if we get more than that. We decided to break the book up into two parts. The first 24 or so pages makes for a natural climax to the first part of the story. We’re already a good way there with the generous contribution made pre- campaign. With the rest of the money we’re asking for, it will help us finish that first part. Even if we don’t get all of the funding, I’ll be able to probably work extra hours to finish it up in a timely fashion. From there we will create it as a digital pdf and get it sent to all of those who contributed. The bottom line is any help we get will help us get that first part finished.

If we get to about $3500 we can actually get that first part printed. When people donate $50 they get a signed print of the cover, but if we get to the $3500 stretch level, then that print get’s substituted for a book. We will be at Emerald City Comic Con next March, so we’ll be able to take the book and take those proceeds we make  from the sales of the book to finish this 52 page graphic novel. We have other ideas if we can get it printed, but we’ll deal with that issue when we cross that bridge.

Creating 52 pages for a graphic novel and getting it printed is very expensive. If we get word out to the masses, because of people like you, Leo, then we can maybe get enough funds to finish this all of the way. That’s our hope anyway.

LJ: Finally, where can people view your work and keep up with you online?

KG: My website is kgrachow.com. People can also hang with me on Facebook (Keith Grachow) and Twitter (@kgrachow). If they want to learn more about our campaign they can go to this link-  http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/concrete-martians or to the website- http://www.concretemartians.net

MC: Mine is http://www.cookcreativegroup.com/mitchrcook/. You can find more of my writing here.

 

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Categories: Comics
Tags: comics, Concrete Martians, crowdfunding, indiegogo, interviews, Keith Grachow, Kickstarter, Mitch Cook, War of the Worlds