Carla Speed McNeil has often called her imaginative graphic novel series Finder "aboriginal science fiction"—as you might suspect from that description, it's pretty hard to nail down.
"The 10-words-or-less concept is great for the reader, but lousy for me," she jokes. "The only bestseller that might remotely connect with my stuff doesn't have the hook of being comedy. Finder is sort of the other side of what Terry Pratchett does," she says, referring to Pratchett's fantasy novels. Written and drawn by McNeil, the Finder books are a series of interlinked stories with a shared, detailed background. Finder is about the way cultures mingle and clash, the intersection of technology and tribalism, and the force that the world of imagination has in the world of substance.
McNeil is one of the biggest success stories in small-press comics. Published by McNeil's own Lightspeed Press imprint, Finder has been running for more than five years now, with five graphic novel collections to date. It's been nominated for seven Eisners, the comics industry's top awards, over the past three years. McNeil has also just finished drawing a well-received story arc for Queen & Country, Greg Rucka's hit cult espionage series for Oni Press, which will soon be collected in a trade paperback. So why isn't she better known in the bookstore graphic novel market?
In part, it's because Lightspeed Press hasn't had major book-trade distribution since the collapse of LPC. So McNeil's been doing as much as she can for herself: selling her books via the comics market, through mail order and at conventions; and keeping them all in print and adding a new title every spring (the forthcoming book will probably collect the witty Mystery Date stories that intersect with Finder's world).
She's also had word-of-mouth success selling Finder books directly to libraries—particularly the fourth volume, Talisman, a beautifully odd little story about a girl's love for a book and how it opens up the world to her. "I still get letters from librarians telling them I've reduced them to tears with Talisman," she says.
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