The Guild of Bards
To succeed in life you need to surround yourself with good people who support you. It’s true in every walk of life but is clearly easier said than done in comics. That’s true for creators and for publishers. Chris and I have benefitted from the help of plenty of great people, and we’ve also struggled through some growing pains because we lacked trusted peers to answer our questions.
Past attempts at organizing labor in the comics world have fallen flat, but the need remains. While a publisher is not an appropriate entity to create such a body, we do feel we can and should do something to address this need. That is what led us down the path of forming the Guild of Bards (working name, what do you think?).
Labor v. Management usually becomes adversarial but it really doesn’t need to be that way. I am a union member myself, so my perspective on this may be slightly different than your typical publisher. The basic premise behind The Guild is for us to establish the infrastructure and supportive space for creators to come together to support each other. This is going to be a creator-driven body, we’re just the moderators setting ground rules, providing the arena, and enforcing the agreed upon behavior.
Too much info is treated as Top Secret. That’s on both the creator end and on the publisher end. A little more opening up would benefit everyone. But to be open means we need to start from a standpoint of trust and mutual respect. Ideas and info are kept close to the chest for a reason. Typically people are willing to help others they’ve built a relationship with. That takes time though and does play a role in the gatekeeping of this industry. So how do we get past that? We think that by serving as a moderator we can help crack that nut.
We are building a literal band of bards, this is a big piece of that pie. By establishing a vetted group of creators who all agree to the same rules of behavior it will give more peace of mind for creators to be more open with their ideas and the lessons they’ve learned over the years. We think of this as kind of a comics take on literary circles. There will be spaces for writers to help each other but there’s also the art side where there’s so much room to play and have fun while helping everyone grow their skillset. We can’t stress this enough, if this is to succeed it will be creator driven.
The devil’s in the details though, so let’s dive into them.
BoB will facilitate groups via our Zoom to allow larger groups, provide moderator controls, and vetting of access through an approved list of invitees. We want the gatekeeping at a minimum so there will be a basic, straightforward list of terms of conduct for Guild members to agree to. If I’m summing up the rules they are:
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- Don’t be a Jerk.
- No stealing ideas.
- Be able to give & take constructive, valid criticisms.
- Seriously, don’t be a Jerk.
All creators under active agreements for BoB publication get access as a perk of working with us. We want to give as much support to our partners as possible and foster an environment of collaboration, teamwork, and friendship among everyone under the Band of Bards banner. Again, we’re building a literal band of bards. When you sign on with us you’re joining the band. No, that doesn’t mean these meetings are required. It means you’re gaining a lot more than just a run of the mill publisher. You’re gaining a support network.
Need some help figuring out a plot point you’re stuck on? Trying to draw something outside of your wheelhouse and need advice? Unsure if you’re being compensated fairly or being taken for a ride (by a publisher or co-creator)? Overwhelmed by the publicly available resources and just need to be pointed in the right direction? These are the kind of questions we want The Guild to help with.
So we’ll start as a monthly group chat. Keep it simple and work out some kinks. Then we’ll look to build towards specific art sessions where a creator can guest host, show how they create and just talk about their process, lessons learned, and tricks they’ve picked up. Maybe even hold some “tools of the trade” type chats so people can get reviews on some of those expensive items before buying? Eventually we’ll work up to weekly sessions once more moderators are available to help.
We know there are people out there who are passionate about being mentors and boosting other creators. What we want to do with The Guild is provide some formal organization and mass that rocket boost for wider effect. Over the course of time we’ll be able to create a resource library & Guild Page on the BoB website that requires login info to control access. This gives future members the benefit of earlier sessions and current members the ability to go back for research.
Some of youse have already reached out to us via Twitter or in DMs expressing your own struggles and frustrations over these exact things. We’re taking that feedback in and incorporating it into our vision for The Guild.
Look, we comic nerds tend to self isolate and that behavior is projected across the industry. We keep to our sandbox and tend to not look to play in other ones. That self limiting nature confines us. The more we break that behavior, the more we can model how to be open to idea sharing and cross pollination the faster we’ll all grow. That means bringing in people from outside of comics to sometimes guest host and share their experiences. Comics are life, but that life needs to do a little leg stretching. So we’ve been reaching out to people from different aspects of the wider literary and publishing world to join in occasionally. Let’s push our boundaries!
And sometimes all we really want is to sit over coffee with our friends and talk comics or draw together. That’ll be a part of The Guild. We need to build the program out. We need to get more moderators (wink, wink). These less formal meet ups can be facilitated on our Twitch channel. We (I) need to get that rolling and get some practice at hosting streams, but once that happens it’ll be another tool to use for The Guild. Little bit less useful for openly sharing story ideas, but fantastic for just virtually hanging out and being comics buddies. The Twitch streams will be all about building a community of good people. Meanwhile we can utilize a tool like Discord to help keep the conversations going without the need for us or another moderator to actively be around. While The Guild is a formal organizational structure it does not need to be hyper-centralized or always rigid & formal in practice. At the end of the day this is about fostering community and helping all of us grow as comics pros.
If this is something you’re craving, well then holler if you know what’s up *insert favorite fish GIF*
#ComicsDoingGood