Spike Trotman, powerhouse pioneer of indie comics

The Chicago Tribune published a profile of C. Spike Trotman, one of indie comics' most insightful young publishers. Trotman's proving that the mainstream business is leaving everything on the table-and that underserved readers don't need to wait for it to catch up.

Iron Circus raised more than $1 million over its first 14 Kickstarter campaigns from a market that Trotman was told didn't exist: fans interested in comic books that weren't made by white heterosexual men and featuring superheroes.

"When I was getting into comics, there was absolutely no room for people like me - people of color who wanted to tell their own stories, or women who wanted to tell their own stories," said 39-year-old Trotman. "Comics had a very firm idea of what would sell or what qualified as niche. Anything a white, heterosexual man would make would be interpreted to having universal appeal, but anything I would make would automatically be classified as difficult to relate to or niche." ...

According to Kickstarter, her model has completely reshaped the comics small press and jump-started a renaissance of alternative comics anthologies.

Indie publishers in comics have met great success before, but Trotman's gone further, faster: she's built a sustainable indie publishing business that isn't dependent on a hit series for survival and isn't dependent on the comic trade's miserable direct market. And she did it, it seems to me, while everyone was giving her shit. Sadly for them, Trotman is cutting checks and tongues.

Iron Circus's current kickstarter prokect is The Art of Kaneoya Sachiko, a lavish-looking compendium of the manga artist's "monstrous and romantic" work.