CORRIDOR Magazine Issue #1

New Reward Tier! Jonathan La Mantia Original Art!
about 4 years ago – Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 07:40:57 AM

On social media last week we described Jonathan La Mantia as one of the most talented horror illustrators we’ve ever seen and said, “He should be celebrated up there with H.R. Giger and Dave McKean.” Jonathan was at the top of our list when considering who to invite to contribute to the first issue. If we get enough funding to keep CORRIDOR going, we hope he’ll continue being a contributor for some time to come. We’ve already talked about the possibilities!

So we’re thrilled to announce that Jonathan La Mantia is now offering an original art tier to our campaign! As part of this limited opportunity, you’ll get one 5.5” x 8.5” original by Jonathan (artist’s choice), as well as two 8.5” x 11” prints! Below are samples of recent originals Jonathan’s created at that scale. 

The prints you’ll receive are aptly titled “Becoming” and “Trick Or Treat.”

Don’t forget that we’ve still got a contributor bundle tier available for Jonathan La Mantia as well, which includes his signed sketch book A Bit Much, as well as a signed print of Dave Wachter’s cover for CORRIDOR, along with the magazine itself!

If CORRIDOR is successful enough to publish more than one issue, we won’t just promote our own horror stories. We’ll also curate the interesting projects that come across our radar. With that in mind, here’s two horror items that may interest you!

“Children of the Pines” is a short, surrealist horror film by Joshua Morgan that is currently raising funds to create this story about family and witchcraft. Morgan cites influences such as The Twilight Zone, Ari Aster, Charlie Kaufman and Jordan Peele.

Vlada: A Dracula Tale is a gender-bent graphic novel retelling Bram Stoker’s classic story with the nostalgic aesthetic of old Hammer films, Gene Colan’s Tomb of Dracula and grindhouse exploitation horror. It’s presented by Chris Denmead, who also hosts Radio of Horror, where he’s interviewed storytellers like Joe Hill, Tim Seeley and Amy Seimetz.

New Reward Tier! Rafer Roberts Original Art Page!
about 4 years ago – Mon, Nov 09, 2020 at 08:48:45 PM

Happy Happy Halloween everyone!

We won’t keep you long as we know you have children to scare, costumes to wear and candy to consume. But we want to let you know about another new original art tier we’re releasing today!

Rafer Roberts has decided that his contribution to CORRIDOR’s first issue is going to be the conclusion to his long-running independent comic series PLASTIC FARM! Not only that, but he’s also providing a reward tier, where you can choose from 5 of the original pages he’ll write and draw for this campaign!

Written and (mostly) drawn by Rafer, Plastic Farm follows the life of a man named Chester and his slow descent into complete insanity and chronicles how that madness reshapes the world around him. Chester has had a rough childhood, has a magic cowboy that rides a dinosaur living inside of his head, and is now, late in life, sitting in a nameless airport bar during a blizzard telling his life story to a group of people who really couldn’t care less.

Rafer Roberts is the writer and co-creator of Modern Fantasy, published by Dark Horse Comics, and Grumble, published by Eric Powell’s Albatross Funnybooks. Rafer was the writer on A&A: The Adventures of Archer and Armstrong and Harbinger: Renegade for Valiant Comics. His artwork appeared in the Eisner Award winning anthology Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream from Locust Moon Press. Rafer's self-published work includes the recently completed Nightmare the Rat and the Tumblr famous Thanos and Darkseid: Carpool Buddies of Doom which he co-created with Justin Jordan.

We’ve still  got Rafer’s contributor bundle tier too, where you can get BOTH of his NIGHTMARE THE RAT newspaper comics, a signed print of the cover to CORRIDOR and your copy of the first issue of the magazine.

And finally, don’t forget that you can download your CORRIDOR Halloween reward today with the short story “Rescue & Alter” by Christian Sager, with art by Brandon Daniels, Dave Jordan and Marie Enger!

It’s almost time kids. The clock is ticking. Be in front of your TV sets for the horrorthon and remember the big giveaway at nine. Don’t miss it and don’t forget to wear your masks! The clock is ticking. It’s almost time.

Happy Halloween! FREE Story Reward.
about 4 years ago – Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 12:40:56 PM

This morning we hit the 50% mark for our funding goal! A big part of that was selling out of Dave Wachter’s original art commissions in less than an hour. Thanks again to Dave and everyone who quickly backed that tier!

One of the reasons we launched the campaign when we did was so it would overlap with Halloween. It’s a special holiday for a lot of us weirdos and misfits. Despite the pandemic, the US election and other crises this year, we still get Halloween. No one can take that from us.

It may be a little different this year, but we can still dress up, carve pumpkins, watch horror movies, eat lots of sugar and play tricks on our neighbors. If anything, we’ve got even more reason to celebrate the dead and brace ourselves for the winter. As Jack Terricloth of the World/Inferno Friendship Society said, “There’s no saints involved in Halloween. Just the dead and the dance party afterwards.”

So to celebrate our special day, we at CORRIDOR have decided to give you a little reward for getting the campaign this far. We’re making the short story “Rescue & Alter” by Christian Sager available for FREE download. Originally slated to appear in our first issue, this story features art by Brandon Daniels, Dave Jordan and Marie Enger. It’s about monsters, domestication, homelessness and adopted pets. Enjoy!

Download it to your device, find a comfortable spot, gnaw on a candy apple and read away! The PDF also features hyperlinked watermarks for the campaign. So if you’re enjoying it and haven’t backed yet, click away and consider supporting our endeavor to publish stories like this on a regular basis.

DOWNLOAD "RESCUE & ALTER"

Thank you!

- Christian Sager, CORRIDOR Magazine

New Reward Tier! Commissions from cover artist Dave Wachter!
about 4 years ago – Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 12:06:19 PM

Since we broke $8,000 yesterday, we’re announcing a new reward tier featuring a commission slot from CORRIDOR cover artist Dave Wachter!

Dave is recognized for his incredible artwork on creator-owned comics like The Guns of Shadow Valley, Night of 1,000 Wolves, Breath of Bones and The Detachment, as well as licensed-work on Godzilla, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the recently announced Iron Fist: Heart of the Dragon. But he’s also sought out for his beautiful original art commissions, with lines of fans waiting to greet him first-thing in the morning at conventions.

For this tier Dave will specifically be doing horror, science-fiction and monster themed commissions for our backers. We now have three slots available as rewards. Below are four examples of previous commissions Dave has done along these themes.

Don’t forget that we still have a few of Dave Wachter’s contributor bundles available as well! You’ll receive a copy of CORRIDOR, a signed print of Dave’s cover and a signed copy of his hardcover graphic novel BREATH OF BONES: A TALE OF THE GOLEM with Steve Niles.

One last note, if you're looking for another horror story comics project on Kickstarter, check out EARLY HAUNTS, a graphic novel of forgotten ghost stories. These stories helped inspire tales such as ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Sleepy Hollow’, ‘Ring’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’.

- Christian Sager

On Creator's Rights, Rates & Ownership
about 4 years ago – Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 04:37:45 PM

This morning we woke up to discover that the CORRIDOR campaign broke $7,000 in pledges and as of this writing we’re inching toward $8K! That alone feels like a big accomplishment, because I (Christian) have never raised that much in the previous three campaigns I’ve run over the last 9 years. So I want to thank all of you who have backed CORRIDOR already. 

This past weekend I was talking to some friends about the campaign and one of them asked why our goal was higher than similar projects you might find on Kickstarter. So I’ll use this update as an opportunity to explain more about our mission and the rates we want to pay our contributors.

Even before the economic problems of 2020 our society severely undervalued the work of the people who create most of our entertainment. That’s why part of CORRIDOR’s mission statement is to “start a platform for a diverse group of creators, that supports the rights of artists and writers, understanding the value of fair compensation and content ownership.” That is why our campaign goal is higher than similar magazines you may have seen. Often they’re asking their creators to work for incredibly low rates, if not for free.

There’s an anecdote from the history of comics publishing about infamous horror publisher EC Comics. One of the reasons they were able to produce such high-quality horror stories in the 1950s was because they paid their contributors better page rates than most of their competition. As a result we saw classic horror comics by people like Al Feldstein, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Graham Ingels, Joe Orlando and many more. Despite EC’s untimely demise, these comics went on to influence an entire generation of horror storytellers.

Unfortunately, publishing rates for creators aren’t much better today, 70 years later. Writers and artists are still severely underpaid. Many comics creators I know are working from hand-to-mouth, even if they’re lucky enough to land gigs with big publishers like Marvel or DC. In a lot of those circumstances they're also giving up their ownership of the characters they create in exchange for a higher page rate.

Although I’m less familiar with rates in horror literature, the reports on Submission Grinder show it’s not much better. Only a handful of publications pay the 8 cents per word that the Science Fiction Writers Association deems a pro rate. Less than a dozen pay the 5 cents per word the Horror Writers Association requires. Recently I was shocked to discover that a horror author I admire — who has had multiple television adaptations of their work produced — is still working in a bookstore to pay their bills.

To give you hard numbers, let me share some examples from my personal creative and professional career. I have made almost zero profit on the comics and stories I’ve published in the last 12 years. The only thing that comes even close is my quarterly royalties from The Cabinet. For that I get around $18 every three months that I split with artist Kelly Williams. When I wrote for CNN from 2011 – 2012 my compensation came in the form of advance review copies from publishers and a free ticket to a convention I was assigned to cover. I wasn’t even paid appropriately when I professionally wrote and hosted podcasts and videos for a top network. Even at the lowest CPM (cost per thousand downloads) just one of the many shows I worked on should have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in ad sales for that company. But I was paid a salary well below the median for that industry.

Before we launched CORRIDOR, we did market research using sites like Lite Box and Creator Resource to get a sense for the median industry rates. Then we met with an advisory group of over a dozen writers and artists, asking them for feedback on our proposed rates and terms. To protect the interests of our comics contributors, I won’t share what we landed on for page rates. But I can tell you that we are promising to pay them 3 times the page rate of the most popular, comparable magazine on the market. And for short fiction we’ll pay the 5 cents per word Professional Rate of the HWA. If we can get there, we’d love to do a stretch goal to raise that to 8 cents per word for the SFWA.

If you believe in our mission to support artists and writers, please help us get there by sharing THIS LINK with your networks.

We’ve got new reward tiers coming later this week, so keep your eyes on further updates and our social media channels for when they go live!

Thank you,

Christian Sager