Donal DeLay: Iron Age Marketing Podcast 021

In today’s episode of Iron Age Marketing, I talk to comic artist, Donal DeLay, and get into his apprehensions with marketing his work.

Previous Episode – Next Episode

View On YouTube – View On Rumble – View On Odysee

Let’s Meet Iron Age Creator Donal DeLay

Donal DeLay is a comic and concept artist that has worked on books like Death Of Love, Vestige and Cash Grab. He has also released two volumes of his own Lobo-esque book Brutas The Badass.

Becoming A Cartoonist And Brutas The Badass

Cartoonist Donal DeLay spins the tale for me of how he became a cartoonist. His tale is one of posting fan art online and eventually catching the eye of Justin Jordan. The encounter culminates in DeLay working with Jordan on Death of Love for Image comics. The comic tells the story of a man who suddenly sees Cupid after taking a drug at a club. That’s some good ol’ fashioned fun there.

Asking DeLay about drawing for hire versus drawing for his own work, he says he doesn’t really have a preference but likes paying his bills. This leads to a discussion of some of the work he’s done. No Cover is a post-apocalyptic story about a man searching for his missing Dale Keown comic book cover. Dracula is an adaptation of the classic tale written by Clint Stoker. There is also DeLay’s own creation Brutas the Badass, a comic about a bounty hunter who awakens one day with no memory and travels the galaxy with a robot sidekick in a space-adapted 1950s Bellaire.

Decentralization Of Comics And The Crowdfunding Process

Next Donal and I talk about cancel cultures effect on the comic book space and whether or not it mirrors what has happened in other creative spaces. Both of us see radical decentralization like the music industry endured twenty years ago as a good thing for creatives. The lack of quality mainstream options due to politics and cultural trends tends to promote independent efforts.

Moving along from the CC issue DeLay explains a bit about the economics and process of crowdfunding a book to me. DeLay prefers to have a finished project when he moves into the crowdfunding stage to try to reduce the time to delivery for the consumer. I’ve never considered this but I’d be lying if my inner consumer didn’t like being catered to at the expense of risk on the creators side.

Benefits Not Features And When To Sell Vs Brand

While talking about the crowdfunding process Donal triggers my inner marketer when discussing his spiel for his crowdfunding campaign. Donal mentions how much the book means to him as a creator and while I love this as part of an overall branding campaign, I shudder at its use as a sales point. It’s a great point if this were a gofundme but we’re trying to sell entertainment.

I don’t usually give big monologues but this particular episode brought them out of me. The first of which is me talking about how I taught my daughter about the difference between features and benefits and their importance to sales. Especially in the online world where most of our advertising is interrupting, we need to be sure to make our product hits the core desires of our audience.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Your List

In our last little bit of conversation, we cross into the email list question and how Donal is communicating with his. To my dismay, he hits me with the classic “I don’t want to bother my audience by contacting them too much.” This is a far too common response. In what is probably my second full monologue on the show I take apart the idea that a list can be contacted too much. Dispelling this fear allows creators to keep themselves everpresent in their audience’s minds.

Hopefully, today’s episode with Donal DeLay serves as both inspiration and education in your own journey to bring your creation to the world.

Donal DeLay Resources & Extra Media

Shilling In The Iron Age

Need help connecting with or growing your audience for your book, comic, TTRPG, or other creative endeavor? Check out Nicky P @ ironagemarketing.com