Real to Real

Jeff Treppel

26 Mar 2026 — 4 min read

Friendly reminder: follow the Kickstarter page for WAYPOINT!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/waypointcomic/waypoint-1-4

This past weekend I went to Vinyl Con. Unfortunately, not the fun kind of vinyl – this was the kind that has music on it. People who know me in person know that I’m a bit of a record fiend. I probably take it to an unhealthy extreme, but man, it’s satisfying to collect physical media. The thrill of digging through bins for good deals on obscure titles, the sense of community you find with fellow collectors, the tactile sensation of holding a physical object in your hands. Even if the sound isn’t technically as rich as it can be on CDs, there’s something really satisfying about listening to music that comes from a needle running through grooves in a dead dinosaur disc. In today’s digital-focused world, where you don’t actually own anything – just the license, if that – it’s nice to have something solid. Something that doesn’t feel ephemeral. That’s why I’m going through the unexpectedly complicated process of putting out my comic as a physical object.

Somebody recently asked me why I don’t just toss the book out onto the Internet. After all, I suspect that comic books are mostly read on tablets or other devices these days. And there will be a digital version – including a preview ashcan containing the first half of the first issue – but there’s something about that that doesn’t quite feel real. I’ve been staring at the PDFs of these issues for a while now. They look great! It’s not the same as holding a stack of thinly-sliced trees in my hands.

I am, however, discovering that there are a lot of really annoying decisions you need to make when you’re self-publishing. I never knew that I needed to have strong opinions about paper thickness until I started on this venture. I need to estimate how many copies of the book I want to have for the print run, how much each tier of the Kickstarter should cost, what my campaign goal should be. I’ve backed lots of crowd funded projects in my time, and I always assumed that there were formulas or experts you could consult for that information, but it turns out a lot of it just comes from shooting into the darkness. Even with the pros at Prana Direct Market Solutions helping me run the campaign, I still have to make the final call on. Part of that is because the buck stops with me, part of that is because I genuinely know what I want this book to look like.

Sometimes I just don’t know it until after I see it.

I’m not complaining. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. It’ll all be worth it when I have the finished trade and the issues in my hands and in the hands of the backers. It’s not just about the ego boost of it all (although it isn’t not about that, either). Digital files are, by nature, ephemeral. They get lost easily within the depths of your hard drive. I probably have dozens of books from Humble Bundle packages I don’t even remember buying. A physical book takes up space in the real world. It brings attention to itself just by existing. And it isn’t reliant on the whims of a tech company.

Besides everything else, that’s the worst part of living under the thumb of Big Tech. We’ve already lost so much artwork and writing because of websites shutting down. Think of how many games and Internet cartoons are gone because Adobe killed Shockwave Flash. Recently, they tried to end regular Flash and were only stopped because of the outcry. HBO Max and Netflix have removed original series from their platforms with no alternatives available – they never released those series on physical media. If you want to watch them, you need to either sail the seven seas or just be sad. Right now, there are millions of creators worldwide making videos for TikTok and YouTube. What happens if/when those platforms go down? The software is proprietary, so there’s no real archiving. We will lose an entire generation of creative efforts.

Somebody who read my first newsletter asked if they could see the threatening video that Varg Vikernes made about me. YouTube took down his channel (rightfully so), so it’s gone forever. Not a tragedy in the big scheme of things, obviously, but how many other videos have joined it in the void?

Paper is obviously a degradable medium. It’s still proven to be more durable than anything made with ones and zeros. Printing WAYPOINT will put a little bit of a mark on the world. It may not be much of a mark. Like I said, I was at Vinyl Con, an entire room filled with records stuffed in boxes – a pretty humbling reminder of the ultimate fate of mass-produced art. But at least my book will belong to the people who buy it.

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