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rynlingI'm back to work on my presentation for the Comics Studies conference this coming May. This section is about the comic artist and game developer Abby Howard (of Slay the Princess fame). Each of these paragraphs could easily be expanded into three paragraphs, and obviously I have a ton of footnotes and references. None of that goes in the presentation draft, which needs to fit into a clean 25 minutes. Still, it's weird to put someone's entire career into such a small space.
Abby Howard, the co-founder of the indie game studio Black Tabby Games, began her career as a self-published comic artist. Howard majored in Biology at McGill University and began drawing a nonfiction educational comic strip called Junior Scientist Power Hour during the summer of 2012. In 2013, she was accepted as a contestant on Strip Search, a reality television style online game show created by the popular gaming webcomic Penny Arcade with funding from a Kickstarter campaign launched in July 2012.
Due to the growing popularity of the Penny Arcade web forums and associated gaming convention, the Penny Arcade Expo (now officially known as PAX), Howard’s participation in Strip Search gave her the audience to leave university and pursue comics as a career. Howard began drawing a Tim Burton inspired dark fantasy webcomic called The Last Halloween in October 2013. As Howard serialized The Last Halloween online, each new page garnered dozens of comments. Later that year, Howard was able to publish The Last Halloween as a graphic novel after a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $125,000 from more than three thousand backers, which was an immensely successful campaign at the time.
Howard moved to Seattle and began tabling at various comics conventions around the United States. Attendance at most indie comics conventions was relatively small during the 2010s, especially compared to larger corporate-sponsored media conventions such as the San Diego Comic-Con, which attracts more than a hundred thousand guests over a three-day weekend. Unlike older and more professionally established industry artists and animators, however, the younger artists who tabled at indie comics conventions were active on social media, where they cultivated and maintained large followings.
The size and enthusiasm of these online fanbases allowed independent creators who met at conventions to organize micropresses and publish anthologies through crowdfunding campaigns. One of the more successful indie publishing collectives was Iron Circus Comics, which published Howard’s solo comic anthology The Crossroads at Midnight with funding from a Kickstarter campaign launched in April 2021.
Like many of the anthologies published by Iron Circus Comics, The Crossroads at Midnight features literary writing, highly stylized artwork, and challenging themes designed to appeal to a niche audience. The book’s Kickstarter campaign raised only about half the money of the campaign for The Last Halloween, which – like Penny Arcade – was built on a foundation of observational humor bolstered by internet memes. It’s somewhat of a truism in indie comics publishing that original horror stories are a hard sell; and, given its intensely disturbing imagery and subject matter, it’s a small miracle that The Crossroads at Midnight not only found its way into print but also received favorable reviews on numerous comics websites.
While making professional connections at in-person conventions, Howard continued to connect with indie horror fans on Tumblr, who have created a thriving subculture centered around shared fanwork for indie horror games and podcasts. At the time Howard began releasing episodes of her visual novel Scarlet Hollow on Itch.io in 2019, the episodic horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives (2016-2021) achieved widespread circulation within Tumblr communities even outside of the indie horror fandom.
Capitalizing on the popularity of the podcast’s iconic writer/narrator Jonathan Sims, Howard cast Sims as a voice actor in Slay the Princess, a visual novel released on Itch.io and Steam in October 2023 to widespread acclaim. Slay the Princess debuted at the PAX East gaming convention, cementing Black Tabby Games’s status as a professional development studio, but Howard remains true to her roots by continuing to share news, updates, and design documents with the highly engaged community of indie horror fans on Tumblr, who helped boost the game through grassroots channels.
Abby Howard, the co-founder of the indie game studio Black Tabby Games, began her career as a self-published comic artist. Howard majored in Biology at McGill University and began drawing a nonfiction educational comic strip called Junior Scientist Power Hour during the summer of 2012. In 2013, she was accepted as a contestant on Strip Search, a reality television style online game show created by the popular gaming webcomic Penny Arcade with funding from a Kickstarter campaign launched in July 2012.
Due to the growing popularity of the Penny Arcade web forums and associated gaming convention, the Penny Arcade Expo (now officially known as PAX), Howard’s participation in Strip Search gave her the audience to leave university and pursue comics as a career. Howard began drawing a Tim Burton inspired dark fantasy webcomic called The Last Halloween in October 2013. As Howard serialized The Last Halloween online, each new page garnered dozens of comments. Later that year, Howard was able to publish The Last Halloween as a graphic novel after a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $125,000 from more than three thousand backers, which was an immensely successful campaign at the time.
Howard moved to Seattle and began tabling at various comics conventions around the United States. Attendance at most indie comics conventions was relatively small during the 2010s, especially compared to larger corporate-sponsored media conventions such as the San Diego Comic-Con, which attracts more than a hundred thousand guests over a three-day weekend. Unlike older and more professionally established industry artists and animators, however, the younger artists who tabled at indie comics conventions were active on social media, where they cultivated and maintained large followings.
The size and enthusiasm of these online fanbases allowed independent creators who met at conventions to organize micropresses and publish anthologies through crowdfunding campaigns. One of the more successful indie publishing collectives was Iron Circus Comics, which published Howard’s solo comic anthology The Crossroads at Midnight with funding from a Kickstarter campaign launched in April 2021.
Like many of the anthologies published by Iron Circus Comics, The Crossroads at Midnight features literary writing, highly stylized artwork, and challenging themes designed to appeal to a niche audience. The book’s Kickstarter campaign raised only about half the money of the campaign for The Last Halloween, which – like Penny Arcade – was built on a foundation of observational humor bolstered by internet memes. It’s somewhat of a truism in indie comics publishing that original horror stories are a hard sell; and, given its intensely disturbing imagery and subject matter, it’s a small miracle that The Crossroads at Midnight not only found its way into print but also received favorable reviews on numerous comics websites.
While making professional connections at in-person conventions, Howard continued to connect with indie horror fans on Tumblr, who have created a thriving subculture centered around shared fanwork for indie horror games and podcasts. At the time Howard began releasing episodes of her visual novel Scarlet Hollow on Itch.io in 2019, the episodic horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives (2016-2021) achieved widespread circulation within Tumblr communities even outside of the indie horror fandom.
Capitalizing on the popularity of the podcast’s iconic writer/narrator Jonathan Sims, Howard cast Sims as a voice actor in Slay the Princess, a visual novel released on Itch.io and Steam in October 2023 to widespread acclaim. Slay the Princess debuted at the PAX East gaming convention, cementing Black Tabby Games’s status as a professional development studio, but Howard remains true to her roots by continuing to share news, updates, and design documents with the highly engaged community of indie horror fans on Tumblr, who helped boost the game through grassroots channels.
