Dealing with Bad Reviews

I did something that, as a writer, you’re never supposed to do. I read the reviews for my book From Parts Unknown.And I have to say -- some of those reviews were right. So let’s get into it.My name’s Adriano. I’m a writer here at Pesto Comics, and the publisher, and we get all kinds of books out there into the world.One of the series that is ending very soon in the direct market is From Parts Unknown. The first four issues are available widely.I’m not counting the Kickstarter run here, because I will say that the Kickstarter crowd is a totally different crowd. Everyone is there because they want to be there. If they have anything negative to say, they certainly keep it to themselves.When we get to the direct market, we are going wide. We are getting every type of person, and not everyone who took the risk knows what they’re getting into right away. So you do get a little bit more of a distilled opinion, where on Kickstarter people are going to be generally supportive.They’re there to support indie comics, warts and all. And I do appreciate those people. You people have made it so that I can get as far as I have, and I always, always appreciate the feedback I get. It does mean a lot.But I will say the direct market can be vicious.All that said, most of the reviews of From Parts Unknown have been wonderful. Everyone has really enjoyed the series.But there’s always that naysayer in there. You can get dozens of people saying how much they enjoy the book and one person who says they don’t -- and that’s the person that gets all of your energy.So I’m not here to fight the reviews. That’s not what we’re doing today.But I do want to talk about something that I think led to those less than generous reviews, and it’s because of something I did intentionally.Writing for the Trade vs the IssueSo today I want to talk about writing for the trade or writing for the issue. That’s really the difference here.With From Parts Unknown, this was the first series I had tackled, and I had been coming off of writing one-shots.One-shots were basically my big, big ideas distilled into as little as 24 pages, up to 32 pages. But that was all the space I had to really get in, make my point, and get out.As a film school student who did a lot of short films, it felt very much in my wheelhouse to do.However, I still wanted a little bit more space to tell a story. So when I started writing From Parts Unknown, I didn’t think of it as an issue-per-issue exercise.This was always written for the trade. So the storytelling is decompressed. The storytelling takes a lot longer to get to the point, for lack of a better term.I did make sure that each issue did end on some kind of cliffhanger, that it was somewhat episodic, that there was a reason for you to come each week.But really, all of the meat of the story takes place in issues #4 and #5. And if you were reading issue #3, it may have felt like, “Okay, let’s get going.” I totally get that.That was slightly intentional.That said, if I were to start over, I may have changed the pacing a little bit to make it a little quicker. It’s something to keep in mind for the sequel series that we’ll be coming out with in 2027. I’ll make sure to really ratchet it up and keep the pace and the momentum going a lot faster than we did with the first series.But again, the idea was this was a short story told over five issues instead of one, and that may not have been what everybody was signing up for. So I totally get that.And again, those reviews were actually kind of constructive. Nobody was actively malicious about this.Everybody was just like, “Not my style of storytelling. I’ve had enough of Bendis-style storytelling. I don’t need more of it in my life.”And that’s fine. Not everything is for everyone, and I appreciate that input.I don’t resent the feedback. Like I said, it’s something I’ll be taking forward with me.However, I am capable of writing for the issue.Writing for the Issue - NKWAnyone who has read NKW, or Naked Kaiju Woman, knows that I’m capable of doing that.That series is very much written to be in a sequelized manner, is how I like to call it. Each issue stands on its own, but you certainly get more out of it if you’ve read issues #1 and #2 when you jump into issue #3, for instance.It was really written with that in mind -- that you can still get a full story not knowing the characters, not knowing the setting. You just jump in, enjoy the story, move on.So those are two totally different sides of the spectrum.And then there’s SNIP, that I think falls right in between. It’s not decompressed. It’s definitely written for the issue, and the story is told from beginning to end.But there