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toptwothreefilms.com > People > Kristen Brennan
Kristen Brennan
June 20, 2005
Biography | Beyond TTTF | Behind The Scenes
In her early 20s, Kristen Brennan tried to break into comics as a writer (she's now 36.) Frustrated by the industry's de-emphasis on writing and the boy's-club politics, she started her own self-publishing imprint, Jitterbug Press. In 1993 they published two issues of a 64-page, black-and-white comics anthology, Coven of Angels. They sold out two printings of 5,000 copies each, which was about 10x the sales of her other indie self-publisher friends, but this was mostly because fan-favorite artist Joe Linsner painted the covers and Kristen provided a free give-away issue up front to every comics specialty retailer in the US as a free promotion before asking those retailers to take a chance on ordering (since comics specialty shops are saddled with a non-returnable policy, unlike all other bookstores.)
Unfortunately just as they were beginning to get traction, the industry imploded, going from almost 2 billion in sales in 1990 (following the Batman film) to $850 million in 1993 to $275 million in 2000, and still falling steadily. Right about the same time, Kristen's website, Jitterbug Fantasia was taking off: she did a digital online comic called Loving Henry with an artist named Marc Manalli. Digital Comix guru Scott McCloud touted the comic as a harbinger of the Next Big Thing in the New York Times and elsewhere, and that brought some attention to the site. Shortly thereafter she wrote a few free online videogames in Macromedia Shockwave, including Godzilla vs. Tamagotchi, which was picked up by international media (because the new Godzilla movie was coming out and reporters needed something to talk about), resulting in worldwide press and over 1.6 million downloads -- which generated healthy ad revenues, making her far more money than she could ever make self-publishing black and white comics. To date Jitterbug Fantasia has attracted over 5.3 million unique visitors, and continues to attract more than 50,000 unique visitors/month, so it seems unlikely she will go back to self-publishing print comics. These days she's focused on writing two books: a "heroic fantasy" with a female hero, code-named Calliope, and a nonfiction book about the mechanics of myth, code-named Origins. Both books use ideas she developed during her unsuccessful comix career. She hopes that a large percentage of her web-audience will take a chance on her print stuff.
Kristen still loves comics and hopes to write another graphic novel one day. Her first graphic novel (with art by Nathan MacDicken of The Tick fame and Justine Shaw of Nowhere Girl fame) is available free online.
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