Martin Blanco Interview!

<br><img src="http://www.projectfanboy.com/images/reviews/henryandbutcher1.jpg" hspace="10" align="left">[B]PF: Thanks for joining us today Martin, Pit Bros. is a Latin American based company, right? What kind of difficulties have you had to overcome to cross the gap between South American comics and their North American counterparts?[/B]

Martin: Actually, Gonzalo Ventura, my partner and coPF: director, lives in Argentina, I live in Spain but it is basically the same.

Speaking in terms of creativity, none, we just tell the kind of stories we like to share with people and that’s it. I mean, we don’t see what people are consuming, we just focus our creativity in what we like.

Speaking in terms of distribution and marketing of our products, not living in USA makes things a little more difficult sometimes.
Internet has helped us a lot, but not having your book in a shelf and selling it online it is not the same, since we sell our comics through Indyplanet, a print on demand service.

The main barrier is the money, first because we are an indie company and second because it is not easy to be in direct market.
Living outside USA makes it all more difficult.

Let’s see... we could print our comics in the traditional way and then sell them through Diamond, but for example, there is a storage problem, because we can’t have our comics at home since we sell them, so we would have to pay for storage.
And adding costs to the printing cost, and knowing the 60% discount Diamond asks for selling the comics makes that way impossible.

Anyway, we work hard everyday to get people’s attention by sending bulletins in our pages on myspace and comicspace and being part in forums, putting add banners online and updating our main website as often as possible.

[B]PF: The market for Indy comic titles seems to be a pretty fierce one, what sets Pit Bros. apart from other Indy publishers out there?[/B]

Martin: Well, we tried to come back with our stories to the roots of comics but adding some new narrative elements.
We think comics, in the beginning, were western and pulp stories, and that is exactly the spirit we want to recover.
We like horror, we tell dark, weird and wild stories, and focus all of our atention in the creative process, trying to make comics that are a step beyond in quality as an indie company.

We focus our attention in making subPF: plots inside the main theme of the story and use flashbacks to go and come back every time we need, to make the story more fluent and get the attention of the reader all the time.

[B]PF: After reviewing a few of your titles, I've noticed that the language translation to English seems to be improving with your Henry & Butcher series. Did you bring in a translating editor to help with this?[/B]

Martin: Yes, Daniel Blanco, my father, works with us. He grew up in California, so it is a great help to us to improve the translation of our stories into English for the rest of the world, since we also publish our comics in Spanish in Argentina.

[B]PF: Besides your Legend of Joe Moon and Henry & Butcher titles, what else do you have in the works? [/B]

Well, we are working in a few ideas that are in the developement process right now, so we can’t say more about that, but we will start making webcomics too.
We want PBP to grow in the comic field by using all the formats possible, and that includes the internet.
Our goal is to have at least one title in every format we consider can fit with the way we like to tell stories, graphic novels, ongoing, miniseries and webcomics.

[B]PF: What inspired you to start Pit Bros. productions and how did it come about?[/B]

Martin: We always liked comics, and started collecting them lot of years ago.
So basically the idea of making comics was always in our minds, but we decided to start PBP and self publishing our own stories because we wanted to have all the control over our stuff.
We wanted to be a part of each step in the creative process of our stories.
It is more difficult than just sending the stuff to other publishers, specially in all concerning marketing and publicity, that often takes a lot of time, but we really like it.

We founded PBP on 2005 but the process started 2 years before that, and it was a hard process in which we studied how to make comics in a professional way, and were making some short stories as tests until we decided we were ready to make stories with a quality that could compete in the market with the rest of indy companies.

[B]PF: Did you always want to get into the comic book industry, or was there ever anything else you wanted to do with your life?[/B]

Martin: I have studied Fine Arts and been collecting comics since I was a kid, so I think that was a natural step in my career.
I always knew I wanted to be an artist, and really love comics, but I think comics are one step in my carrer as illustrator, they are one of the lots of things I want to do in this world, and actually, my day job is as illustrator, either making comics, covers, or any kind of artwork for Film and Music industry.
I like to make both.

[B]PF: What comic titles do you personally read?[/B]

Martin: It depends on the time or what I like to read at any specific moment.
I have always been a fan of Spiderman and Batman since I was a kid, but I stopped reading superheroe comics I think 10 years ago, I was tired of clones and those kinds of things.

I used to read Punisher from Max, and the stories from Steve Niles, Criminal Macabre, 30 days of Night, etc.
Right now, I like to read good stories, and I am reading some classics again like Sandman, Watchmen, and sometimes I pick up some indy titles here and there.

[B]PF: Is there anyone specifically that you'd like the opportunity to work with?[/B]

Martin: I love Steve Niles stuff, and of course, Frank Miller, but that is almost a dream, Millar stuff is very nice too.

[B]PF: What goes into making a comic book?[/B]

Martin: Well, in our case, first, it was understanding the process of making comics until we decided we could make a good stuff to compete in the market.

We started making short stories to test our skills and try to find the best way to work together making a long story.

Particularly, I went to San Diego Comic Con on 2005 and 2006 to use my portfolio as a test and learning from the reactions and opinions from the professionals there.
And I have read lots of books of storytelling and came back to my comic collection to study them.

And the rest is lot of time of working, networking and making research of the market, to find the best way to sell your product, in terms of marketing.

[B]PF: Have you had the chance to bring your titles to any comic book conventions?

If so, which one(s) may our readers have been able to see your work at?[/B]

Martin: Not really, as I told you, I have gone to Comic Con in San Diego on 2005 and 2006 but just to learn from that.
We will participate in some conventions in Argentina.

[B]PF: Who in the comic book industry would you love to meet and share your ideas and work with?[/B]

Speaking about artists, I would like to meet the Ben Templesmith and Ashley wood, who were both my references when I decided to make comics and who I was studying from.

[B]PF: Where can our readers pick up your work?[/B]

Martin: We sell our comics through Indyplanet, they can go to our website ([url]www.pitbrosproductions.com[/url]). They will find all the links to our stories in the Store section.

[B]PF: Thanks for speaking with us Martin.[/B]

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