C. Spike Trotman (born November 18, 1978), better known as Spike, is the creator of the webcomic Templar, Arizona, and the founder/publisher of Iron Circus Comics.
Life and Career[]
Trotman was born in Washington, D.C., on the date she notes was "the day that Jim Jones poisoned 900 members of his doomsday cult in Jonestown, Guyana."[1]
She had been developing Templar, Arizona since childhood and started the comic in summer of 2005. It eventually grew popular enough that she was able to work on it full time. The series went on hiatus in September 2014. In October 2015, the site crashed when a plug-in it used was exploited and hijacked for spam. Spike was able to stop the spam, but she has not been able to bring the site back online.[2] Trotman is also the creator of the webcomics Lucas and Odessa, Sparkneedle, and Blikada, as well as the somewhat less serious Playing With Dolls.
In 2009, she collaborated with artist Diana Nock on a comic with practical tips on frugal living called Poorcraft. It was for this project that Trotman launched her first Kickstarter campaign on October 16, 2009, about seven months after the crowdfunding platform launched. It was funded by 703 backers for $13,606, more than double her original goal of $6,000.[3]
Since then, Trotman has launched seventeen more Kickstarter campaigns with a 100% success rate and a total of over $1.25 million in funding. She was the first to leverage the crowdfunding business model into a full-time, internationally distributed publisher, Iron Circus Comics. Her projects have included anthologies such as Smut Peddler, The Sleep of Reason, New World, The Tim'rous Beastie, and FTL, Y'all!, as well as reprints and collections of other creators' works such as The Less Than Epic Adventure of T.J. and Amal by E.K. Weaver, Shadoweyes by Sophie Campbell, As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman(nb), The Complete Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto, and Crossplay by Niki Smith. Iron Circus Comics has also started publishing first-run titles such as Noora Heikkilä's Letters for Lucardo, the first of a four-part series, and an art book featuring the work of Kaneoya Sachiko. After her seventh successful campaign, in 2015 she wrote an eBook titled Let's Kickstart a Comic. She pioneered the crowdfunding model for anthologies, which has become the standard for most comics anthology campaigns.
She currently lives in Chicago with her husband.
Awards and Recognition[]
In the 2007 Glyph Comics Awards, Trotman won the Rising Star Award for Templar, Arizona.
External Sites[]
References[]
- ↑ "Templar, AZ » Info.", templaraz.com. Archived 5 Oct 2011.
- ↑ Tumblr post on Templar, Arizona site issues, 19 Oct 2015.
- ↑ "Poorcraft: A Comic Book Guide to Frugal Living!", Kickstarter. Launched 16 Oct 2009. Ended 21 Dec 2009.