London’s brother and sister duo, a. Jaye and Alison Williams, are creating comic books to fight for the good of the independent small press world against big time publishers.
“Everybody knows Marvel and DC — Spiderman, Batman, the Punisher and all them — that’s where most of the comic book buyers money is going,” a. Jaye said. “Trying to get people interested in alternative small press subject matter/genre is a challenge, but we know there’s an audience out there.”
The Williams siblings started their SillWill Studios comic book company in 1999 with the release of their first book in the Sorcerer’s Children trilogy. The third installment in the science fiction series, The Sorcerer’s Children: a Spell for Tears, published this past August.
The newest story, written and illustrated by Alison, took her about 2.5 days to draw out each page, and with 124-pages in the latest release, needless to say, it took a lot of time.
“It’s one of those things that drives you nuts when you’re doing it but when it’s done you know it’s worth it,” Alison said.
The latest book is being sold at comic book shops across the city and on Amazon.com. Tim Morris, owner of the Comic Book Guy Collector on Dundas Street, said SillWill’s trilogy is a nice local flavour to his shelves.
“There isn’t a lot of other fantasy stuff on the market right now, so it’s pretty unique for the most part,” Morris said. “We try to support them as much as possible. They’ve done pretty well for an independent.”
He added, the comic book industry isn’t what it used to be and can be a tough business to muscle your way into.
“Justice League printed over 200,000 copies and there hasn’t been a 200,000 copy book in like 15 years. That used to be a mid-range number back in the late ‘70s, which was the kind of heyday of comics,” he said. “Graphic novels though have gone way up since I first bought the store in 2001.”
SillWill has been trying to get their small press name out to masses through their website, sillwill.com, and the Williams siblings say the introduction of social media has levelled the playing fields more even for small press publishers when it comes to competing against the big names.
“It’s something that’s happened over this last 10 years which really has started to pick things up,” Alison said.
Nothing beats face-to-face contact with the public though, they said, which is why the duo introduced their newest Sorcerer’s Children story at FanExpo, the largest comic book convention in Canada, held in August at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre.
SillWill might not see The Sorcerer’s Children on the big screen anytime soon or print off 200,000 copies of one issue, but the joy of doing something they have dreamed about since they were kids brings its own sense of fulfillment.
“It’s always going to be an uphill battle. It’s the numbers game, the financial game, it’s the time game,” a. Jaye said. “That’s the challenge of it because that’s the nature of the beast but we love this though.”
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