Newsarama: JEREMY WHITLEY on PRINCELESS’ Future & Its Future with Libraries

In this interview with Zack Smith for Newsarama, I get to talk about the latest Princeless Kickstarter – aimed at getting some hardcovers for volume three.

Jeremy Whitley sees his long-running story in Princeless ending in the next few years, but the future is bright with “a whole world of new possibilities.”

The penultimate arc of the main Princeless story begins August 28 with Princeless Book 9: Save Yourself, but at the same time Whitley and publisher Action Lab Entertainment are raising funds via Kickstarter for a hardcover edition of Book 3 aimed specifically at libraries – which the writer said is the franchise’s most-prized market.

Long story short? Paperback books don’t last long in libraries.

Nrama: So why hardcover then?

Whitley: That’s a great question as, as I mentioned, we already have the book out in softcover. The thing is, being an all-ages comic with a message of reaching a diverse young audience, there is no market that’s more important to us than libraries. In libraries we have a chance to be a kid’s first comic or to reach kids that might not have the money or comic shop to go get the book in stores.

And when you talk to librarians, their number one complaint about trade paperbacks is that a number of them don’t last more than a few check outs. Kids are rough on books. Dropboxes are rough on books. Trade paperbacks aren’t built to sustain the kind of abuse they do in a library. So, if we’re going to reach this audience and help librarians do the same, hardback is the format we need to be using to reach them.

Smith, Zack. “JEREMY WHITLEY on PRINCELESS’ Future & Its Future with Libraries” Newsarama. 2 July 2019.

You can read rest of the interview at Newsarama.

You can also help support our efforts by backing our Kickstarter and picking up some copies of Princeless and Raven: the Pirate Princess comics for your own shelves!

Talking Comics: Special Guest Host WHITLEYYYY!!!

I’ve double checked to make sure that I added the appropriate number of Y’s to the end of Whitley. I think I have.

Though I’ve been on a few podcasts, it isn’t often that I get a chance to host one! Special thanks to The Comic Book Podcast from Talking Comics for giving me the chance to play host for “Issue 394”. In this issue, Bob, Steve, Joey and I get to talk about Future Foundation, Princeless, and more.

Did you enjoy this podcast? If so, you can get more of Steve Seigh, Bob Reyer, Joey Braccino, Jessica Garris-Schaeffer, and Sarah Miles weekly on The Comic Book Podcast. Find them on Twitter @TalkingComics!

SyFyWire: WHY JEREMY WHITLEY CREATES CHARACTERS AS ROLE MODELS FOR HIS DAUGHTER

In this interview with SyFy, I talk about my favorite comics and why I create them.

Where did the concept for Princeless come from?

At the point that we started working on it we were about to have my daughter, and although I’d gotten back into comics, unfortunately, there wasn’t much out there for me to read with her. The New 52 had just launched and it was a very aggressively straight white male time in comics.
And for me, especially having a daughter who’s a young woman of color, I wanted something that she could herself reflected in, where it had the kind of messages and stuff that I want her to get. So I started writing [Princeless] with the intention of meeting her and other girls where they were at with princess stuff. I’m not trying to force girls to not like princesses, but I can make a princess who actually saves herself and does the kind of things that I want my daughter to be able to see role models doing. That’s kind of where it started, re-writing the fairy tale trope. It just kept getting bigger and bigger.

Horne, Karama. “INDIE COMICS SPOTLIGHT: WHY JEREMY WHITLEY CREATES CHARACTERS AS ROLE MODELS FOR HIS DAUGHTER” SYFYWire. 8 April 2019.

WMQ&A: See the Shining Light

Stoked to sit in on episode 35 of WMQ&A from the good folks at WMQ Comics. We get to talk about Rainbow Brite, The Unstoppable Wasp, and, of course, Princeless.

Need more of this podcast in your life? You can follow @wmqcomics on Twitter and Facebook, and you can follow Dan on Twitter @danielpgrote.

Secret Love, Princeless, and Ponies on Nerds of Color

I sat down with Keith Chow of Nerds of Color to talk all about Misty and Danny Forever, Princeless, Pirate Princess, and My Little Pony.  Our conversation ranges pretty widely, from the projects I’m working on right now to current issues that are being discussed throughout the comics industry.

Keith Chow and I met when I got scheduled to be part of the Nerds of Color: Hard NOC Life panel at Awesome Con in 2015.  Keith and I had never met but we instantly hit it off.  At the same show he picked up a copy of the “Princeless: The Pirate Princess” and some of my issues of “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” for his daughter.

A few months later we bumped into each other at San Diego Comic Con at a fantastic get together put together by Nerds of Color and Black Girl Nerds.  We got to chat a little in the midst of the insanity, but then we bumped into each other again at the airport on the way out.  We sat down to grab some dinner and talked for so long that I almost missed my flight.  I’ve been waiting to have an excuse to get on the Nerds of Color podcast and talk about all the things we had only just had a chance to touch on at the airport.  The oncoming release of “Secret Wars: Secret Love” and issue #2 of the “Raven: The Pirate Princess” ongoing series gave us a good opportunity to sit down and talk all about those books and everything else going on with me and with comics as a whole.  Enjoy!

Since our conversation Secret Love came out, has now sold out through Diamond Comic Distribution, and is now scheduled for a second printing which Marvel Comics has scheduled for September 30th.

Check out more from Nerds of Color

Grab Pirate Princess from Comixology

Pick up Secret Love from Comixology