http://brokenfrontier.com/columns/p/detail/company-for-dinner

For the last year I have been working day and night on a new publishing endeavor called Outlaw Entertainment. Founded by Tony Hobdy and Rick A. Villa, the company’s focus is producing high concept graphic novels, priced at an affordable rate for both the casual and die hard reader. With a price point of $7.99 and an average page rate of 112, the books offer more bang for the buck and will hopefully entertain the hell out of people.

Our first title (the dark supernatural thriller Praetorian) launches next Wednesday, and it got me to thinking about what went into the company, from start to finish, and all points in-between, so I figured I’d take you on a brief journey to tell you how I got involved and how we got to where we are today.

My first run-in with Hobdy and Villa occurred in late 2007 when the two hired me to write Praetorian. Based on an original concept that Villa had been developing, the gig was strictly a for-hire project that I had taken on, and at no point did I know it would lead to being part of a new publishing company. At the time, I was still serving as Assistant Publisher with Viper Comics, and taking on side gigs was something I did to supplement my income. To me, Praetorian was a cool project that I’d spend a few months on, and then after my duties were complete, the book would leave my daily consciousness until it was released later on down the road… Which at the time, still had no publisher attached.

After working on Praetorian, Hobdy and Villa talked with me about signing a multi-book contract, where I would develop a number of books. As it turned out, I was also being approached by another publisher to sign an exclusive writing contract, so things seemed to be coming up rosy, which if you’ve ever worked in the independent comic book industry, very seldom does for creators/writers. And then I got a phone call…



It was early July and I was at my future in-laws, getting ready to eat burgers and hot dogs off of the grill for a Sunday of sun and fun. My phone rang (or, more accurately, vibrated) and it turned out to be Hobdy and Villa. They were going to be releasing Praetorian and any future books they produced under their own label… An ambitious and well-thought-out endeavor called Outlaw Entertainment. They wanted me to come on as their Editor in Chief, and they wanted to offer me a home to produce my own material as well. Stability in indie comics? It sounded too good to be true.

A few weeks later I was in San Diego for Comic Con and I was handed my business cards. We were off and running.

Next came a series of laborious months. Eight hour days became twelve hour days and twelve hour days became sixteen hour days on more than a few occasions. In many ways, I’ve compared the birth of Outlaw with having a baby, even though I personally have never been pregnant or reared a child of my own. (Deposit all “rearing” jokes here.)

Those early days involved lots and lots of heavy planning and coordinating. If we were going to do it, we were going to do it right. Let’s face it, it wasn’t going to benefit anybody if we jumped into the pool with our eyes closed, so instead we timed our leap, waiting for the water to warm and easing into it one proverbial toe at a time.

Once the planning was in place, the true work began, which for me included long stretches of writing… Sometimes lunging into spastic creative sprints of four or five scripts in the span of a week. For me, it was the most productive I had ever been, but because we were working so far in advance, I knew most of it wouldn’t see the light of day for at least a year, and because we were still months away from going public with the company, I was unable to talk about what I was working on.

A dozen books and I couldn’t discuss a single one of them, never mind the company itself. That took some serious Shaolin monk focus on my part.

And it only got more difficult to bite my tongue once the pages started to trickle in. We had hired an incredible group of artists to bring the scripts to life, and the work they were doing was far exceeding any of our expectations… Lending even more credibility to what Outlaw would one day become. With each completed page and each book marching one step closer to seeing the light of day, the idea of our newborn publishing company being a serious player was becoming more and more of a reality.

Months passed and the work continued, ultimately culminating in the announcement of the company and a series of advance reviews by various members of the comic book media that have helped to substantiate that we are headed in the right direction on the right track. Now that we’re only a week away to our first book hitting the stands, I look back on the workload… The seemingly endless hours, the lessons learned the hard way, and the times where I had eaten the company for breakfast, lunch, and dinner… And it all seems worth it.

Of course… Now it’s just up to you, the reader, to find worth in it as well.

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Named Best Indie Writer of 2008 by the Project Fanboy Awards, Jason M. Burns made the leap into the comic book industry in 2004 after being approached to write a short story for Dead@17: Rough Cut, Volume 1. Since that time he has written and created a number of projects, including the critically acclaimed releases A Dummy’s Guide to Danger, The Expendable One and Curse of the Were-Woman. While he has been working regularly in comics, Burns has been concentrating on a career in Hollywood as well, developing a number of projects for film and television.

Burns was born and raised in Massachusetts where he began his career as a journalist and public relations professional. He is currently Editor-in-Chief for the newly formed Outlaw Entertainment.

www.outlaw-entertainment.com

www.jasonmburns.com