Ask Me Anything — Personnel Files

Q.: Are you going to do personnel reports on the new characters in this universe? Carbon Copy, Giant Tess, Dr. Zapp, the Giggler. I screenshot 110 personnel reports from all the books, and I think I still missed some.

A.: Wow! That's a LOT of screenshots!

The Personnel Files have an interesting backstory. Back in 2005, when I launched Evil Inc (as a spin-off from Greystone Inn), it was a comic strip that appeared on the Web AND in newspapers. The Philadelphia Daily News had been carrying it since April 16, 2001, and I had successfully self-syndicated it to other papers as well. 

At its height, Evil Inc was appearing in front of 1.5 million newspaper readers a week and some 20,000 Web readers a day.

However, after about four years doing Greystone, I observed that my Web readers weren't coming to the site on Saturdays. So, if I put something into the storyline on a Saturday, most of my online readers would miss it. Yet, I needed a Saturday strip to satisfy my newspaper obligations.

That's how the Lightning Lady phone gag started. I drew several images of LL holding a phone, and just dropped in different gags to create a quick-and-easy Saturday strip. Although I often had as much as a five-week buffer, the phone gags were often written on the Friday night before they appeared on the website.

And, after I started to burn out on the idea, I came up with the concept of a Personnel File comic to replace the phone gags on Saturdays.

I figured I could offer a little world-building by sharing details about the heroes and villains — and sneak a little humor in, as well. Then I could alternate between phone gags and Personnel Files.

By 2015, most of the newspapers that had carried my comic had either gone out of business or dropped features like mine as the result of budget cuts. Evil Inc was running only in the Daily News, and that wasn't bringing in enough money to justify the time that went into prepping the files for newspaper printing process. 

Deciding to give up — once and for all — on seeing my strips widely distributed in newspapers (a lifelong goal of mine) was a major turning point in the move to relaunch Evil Inc in 2016. (The crash of ad revenue due to ad blockers, of course, was the other.)

On January 1, 2015, I effectively ended the Evil Inc comic strip and relaunched the comic as a graphic novel. With two updates a week instead of six, I no longer needed filler material for Saturdays, and the Personnel Files effectively came to an end.

Will I relaunch them?

That's very doubtful.

In a post-ad-driven webcomics business, I have to focus on crowdfunding. That means Kickstarter and Patreon (and maybe Kickstarter's new "Drip" platform). The Personnel Files have no significant value-add to the books, and they're unlikely to drive Patreon pledges. Therefore, devoting time on Personnel Files means I'm stealing time from things that actually benefit my business.

But, never say ‘never’

However, there is one possibility. I've been toying with the idea of developing an Evil Inc RPG. As a matter of fact, DriveThruComics convinced me to re-purpose the Personnel Files as a Sourcebook for RPGers, and I produced two volumes. (And, of course, I have the content for several more.)

The idea behind the sourcebooks was to make them "system agnostic." In other words, I was advised to avoid using D&D statistics, or those used in Magic: The Gathering, Fate, etc. Instead, I was told to provide general information that gamers could use to create stats like hit points and power levels on their own.

They sold pretty well, but not fantastic. In fact, all it took was one negative review to bring the algorithm down and curtail future sales. When I saw the sales drop, I simply stopped working on the sourcebooks and moved on to something else.

But the idea of developing an Evil Inc RPG and releasing it through a Kickstarter campaign has come up once or twice this year, and it's... not impossible. After all, there are hundreds of characters in the Evil Inc universe. I could offer a self-standing RPG world based solely on that alone. The main problem is this: I don't play many RPGs (aside from an occasional D&D session with my sons), and I really don't possess the skillset required to produce this sort of thing. And, of course, there's the time-management issue. After all, even if I contracted with someone to create the mechanics of the game, it would require a metric ton of illustration and stats generating.

It's not impossible, but it's definitely a lower priority than things like posting regularly to Patreon and improving my Kickstarter-publishing schedule.