The Tale of Simple Zack: Terminal Decline
I thought we might take some time out from dabbing on Warcampaign and Jewish conspiracy theories to discuss a recent Ya Boi Zack video and the implications and thoughts expressed in it. The video provides a look into the mind of Richard C Meyer as he comes to grips with the performance of his latest crowdfunded comic campaign ROCK N ROLL NINJAS. First I will summarize the 20 minute video for the thread below before looking deeper into the opinions expressed by Zack.
SUB-OPTIMAL - Make Comics Until Crowdfunding Dies...Or You Do
The video begins in your typical Ya Boi fashion as he expresses how he prefers his medicine whether pills or powders, supplement routines, baby aspirin, Joe Rogan podcasts and what he puts into his body before getting into the topic of todays video at close to the 3 minute mark which is that "he did a thing, launched Rock N Roll Ninja, thinks it has huge potential but it's doing okay." From the sound of Richards voice as he states the word "okay" you can clearly tell that he is less than pleased with it's current performance, which as of writing has received $15,700 from 352 backers on it's third day of funding.
Zack "instead of sulking, decided to do some research" and check some of his spreadsheets to try and figure out why this is. Zack then displays a spreadsheet showing that for the year of 2020 he had "a fantastic year", exceeding his totals for 2018 and 2019 to the tune of $846,442.
Despite this Zack now feels like "we've hit the peak and now we're on the downslope" whether he is referring to crowdfunding or himself will be extrapolated on in the following sentence as he explains he told some people that "I think that crowdfunding is winding down." He then further goes on to say that everything winds down and compares crowdfunding to the heat death of the universe and we witness poor Zack doom posting as he attempts to come to grips with the black pill performance of Rock N Roll Ninjas by having a moment of self awareness that "we are selling expensive comics that arrive months later, you know its not sustainable indefinitely." Zack then goes into another spreadsheet tracking other crowdfunding campaigns which he originally crafted to track the success of Brian Pullido.
He admits that Brian is on an upward trajectory but struggles to quantify how Brian has never exceeded 3000 backers, before comparing it to Scott Snyder's NOCTERRA 1 which hit over 4000 backers which Zack describes as "being the no.1 writer in DC comics, that's really small" before segueing into Sean Gordon Murphy's The Plot Holes who he describes as "the third best writer" and compares the 3200 backers Sean raised while "not trying to flex but.." to his own 4,326 on Jawbreakers: Grand Bizarre which Zack correctly points out was the lowest selling installment of the Jawbreakers series.
At the 5 minute 20 second mark Zack turns his focus to BRZRKR by Boom Studios and Keanu Reeves and offers his inept assessment of it's performance. Zack states that "billions of people have heard of Keanu Reeves and like him and he had an extremely successful crowdfunder but it's fourteen thousand and that is 0.000001% of people who like Keanu Reeves." The casual dismissal of BRZRKR being the second highest performing crowdfunded comic monetarily (arguably the first if we ignore Todd McFarlanes relaunch of Spawn #1 with an action figure) and the fourth most backed in comic crowdfunding history comes across as an out of touch boomer attempting to understand why the billions of people sitting in third world countries that have heard of Keanu Reeves, didn't show up to buy his $50 graphic novel.
Zack fails to take into account that Keanu Reeves was not promoting the comic in any way, shape or form on any social media platforms like Twitter, Youtube or cough Kiwi Farms and promotion was 100% reliant on BOOM Studios itself. Zack then takes a trip down memory lane and is forced to admit that the days of Jawbreakers earning 10,000 backers like on his original campaign are over. Zack cites the success of Jawbreakers: Lost Souls as being that "he basically had no competition at all" before adding the additional 2000 backers of the Lost Souls Remastered campaign to the original 10,000 backers of Lost Souls and comparing the total 12,000 backers to the 14,000 obtained by Keanu Reeves and BRZRKR. The "no competition at all" fallacy falls flat on it's face when remembering the Comicsgate 2018 gold rush era which saw Cyberfrog, Red Rooster, LoneStar, Bigfoot Bill, Graveyard Shift, Ravage, Black and White, Brand, Trump Space Force and countless other smaller campaigns launch within a few months of Lost Souls. The obvious answer to Zack's own statement isn't addressed, in that several high profile Youtuber's like The Quartering and others covered Mark Waids interference with the Antarctic Press deal giving the campaign an unprecedented amount of coverage within anti-cancel culture communities.
Zack returns to his spreadsheet and continues to analyze the growing trends of several other comic crowdfunders including Jon Malin and his Graveyard Shift series.
Clint Stoker and his respective series Downcast and FATL.
Before pausing on what he describes as a female, SJW indie creator whos data seems almost like Zack's himself, in that she releases more books with varies degrees of success for each campaign. Zack seems to understand on some surface level that of all the data provided by various people in his spreadsheet, they are most similar.
Zack's next example is Tim Lim who provides the most interesting data in both mine and Zack's spreadsheets as he utilizes two crowdfunding platforms and has experienced a remarkable growth in sales since his leaving of Comicsgate, which no other former Comicsgate alumni has been able to replicate.
While looking at Lim's data, Zack contradicts his initial argument again that crowdfunding is winding down, by noticing the obvious explosion of growth that Lim has received on his flagship series Kamen America, but doubles down by stating that Jon Malin, Sweetcast and Tim Lim are "doing something different" although neglects to mention what that something is.
The second half of the twenty minute video has Zack segue off into comedians, fandoms and communities before getting into his various publishing plans from mainstay series like Jawbreakers to "artsy" comics that might become add ons. The artsy book appears to be Pandemic which Zack rather moronically states "people hate the idea of it, but then they get it and they love it" completely ignoring the several reviewers of the book who describe it as dog shit, the latter of which producing a five part video series titled "Pandemic: An Apoplectic Rage." Zack further states that according to his fans Do As Your Told: The Ballad of NO is his most popular comic, in terms of feedback and uses this as a justification for the viewer to take a chance on similar black and white comic Rock N Roll Ninja. Zack then goes on to do his best to hype up the audience for his latest comic stating that "it should have done fifty thousand it's first night" however can't explain why it did not, other than saying "two years ago it would have."
The video then continues with Zack rambling off into crowdfunding, the mainstream, SJWs, the direct market and several other topics we've heard ad nauseum before ending the video after twenty one minutes.
While I will give Zack credit for learning how to use a spreadsheet, the data he provided clearly disproves his own thesis that crowdfunding as a whole is in a decline and I will further hammer this home by providing my own data. I present below a table of the top 50 performing comic crowdfunding campaigns of all time by monetary value. Some of the data may be out of date, namely Cyberfrog: Rekt Planet earning an additional 100K but the positions of each campaign remain unchanged.
From the data above we can discern the following:
*The dates of the top 50 range from 2012 to 2020.
*Of the top 50 campaigns, Comicsgate have 14 entries from Ethan VanSciver, Richard C Meyer, Jon Malin, Cecil, Raging Golden Eagle, Dan Fraga, Mitch Breitweiser and Doug TenNapel.
*Of the most funded Spawn #1 (1), BRZRKER (2), Cyberfrog Rekt Planet (4), How to Think When you Draw (5), Earthworm Jim (6), Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (, How to Think When you Draw 2 (11) and multiple others were all funded in 2018-2021, in fact 37/50 of this top 50 list were funded in 2018-2021.
Quite a remarkable piece of data and contradictory accomplishment from "crowdfunding being in decline" as expressed by Zack in his video, especially since certain Youtube and mainstream pundits have been pushing crowdfunding as a growing percentage of the comic industries growth as a whole. The nature of 37 of the top 50 crowdfunding comics not existing pre-2018 clearly shows that Zack is wrong in his assessment of the decline of crowdfunding as a medium, especially now with Scott Snyder, Sean Gordon Murphy and even Dynamite, Antarctic Press and BOOM Studios adopting the model themselves. Even citing contradictory evidence in his own assessment in Tim Lim, Clint Stoker, Brian Pullido and Jon Malin, our boi Zack struggles to prove his case to his viewers in the aforementioned video and we might be forced to ask ourselves why?
The answer of course is obvious, crowdfunded comics aren't in a decline but rather Zack himself is. I've previously discussed Zack's decline in a post back in September here when discussing his crowdfunding metrics, in some cases shedding nearly 40% of his backers on each subsequent Jawbreakers campaign. While Zack projects his own decline to the entire crowdfunding medium, he does attribute his own decline to "competition" which could certainly play a part in it. I will give short concise reasons why I believe he is in decline below.
User Engagement - Zack ceased livestreaming to his audience which as @FROG has shown, is the best way to market your book to your audience providing entertainment and engagement whilst shilling your product at certain intervals. Ethan also engages with his audience on Twitter and here on Kiwi Farms, on which neither Zack currently has a presence.
Sloppy Campaign Pages - Several of Zack's previous campaigns have become so bare bones that it seems obvious he is half assing them. Neglecting to post artwork from pages, neglecting to inform the backer of page counts, the lack of stretch goals to incentivize a growing campaign or upgrades. It is of my opinion that Zack has started taking his audience for granted and it shows in the presentation of his campaign pages.
Terrible Books - While not every Meyer book can be described as a stinker, they are extremely hit and miss with his own audience. Large swathes of people loathed the writing in Godking, Iron Sights and Iron Sights 2 while Pandemic has been universally panned by Comicsgate reviewers who seem a mixture of embarrassed for him and angry for releasing it in the first place.
Unfulfilled Campaigns - At the time of writing this post, The Expendables, Jawbreakers: Grand Bizarre, Impossible Stars and 499 remain unfulfilled and Zack proceeds to launch a fifth campaign.
The Lawsuit - The most recent factor playing apart of Zack's now accelerated decline could be from his perceived cuckery in the lawsuit against Mark Waid which produced a decent amount of outrage from those who decided to support him.
The Same old Schtick - Now in his fourth year of being a Youtuber, Zack has failed to adapt with the times and perfect his craft. Offering the same old tired diatribes and can't complete with the in depth videos of Comic Tropes, the guests on Ethan's livestreams, or even the entertainment of an absolute train wreck Liam Gray stream. Zack has allowed himself to become yesterday's news and he is not only in competition with others for comic sales, but also eye balls on his videos.
TLDRZack's latest copium video projecting his own demise onto the entire crowdfunding medium offers a rare display of a moment of weakness from our boi. Will he continue to keep his head in the sand over his own shortcomings, or will he learn and adapt to the changing environment around him?
More or less mirrors what I've said and the most rage inducing part is it's all self inflicted. Supposedly this is his dream. But he clearly resents doing the parts of comics he chides pros for not doing. Selling your comics with what works, listening to customers, and when they speak making changes.
The thing that hurt him the most was the clear contempt of some of his actions. The lawsuit, quitting livestreams and social media. As if its beneath him.
I don't think that's enough. He needs to improve his channel. He needs a serious attitude adjustment. Most of all, Richard Meyer has to decide whether this is what he wants to be doing. Because their are people who are succeeding that have already firmly answered that question with yes.
Arrogance and antipathy sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Absolutely! I've hammered on this, that books like Cyberfrog and EWJ are rarified air. They look great (Not twenty-five dollars great) but are top notch. Lesser talent charging the same as these rare air books is a reach at best.
That sounds like one of the points WC's tried to make, only you made it intelligently. CG is very much a pyramid.
I don't know. Who are the rising stars in CG? Clint Stoker?
