THE HAREM REVIEW THAT GAVE ME MORE FAITH IN THAT PROJECT

I love reviews. Positive or negative, you always learn something from it. And, as many of you know, HAREM has been a personal pet project for more than two years. A journey I have the pleasure of sharing with Leila Leiz, Julien Hugonnard-Bert and Leonardo Paciarotti. So when I got tagged by Jamie Broadnax from BlackGirlsNerds I felt proud. Very proud.

Right now, all Jamie read is a Preview. The now famous ashcan presenting the first 11 pages of the first issue. Leila and I released this ashcan to present the project to the audience and to the publishers.
As you’ll see in her review, she loved it.

It’s funny because I always knew HAREM would be a tough seller.
To this day, the book has no publisher.
Most of them never replied or turned it down.

But as Leila often says : “Harem is our baby. It’ll take time, but we’ll publish it”.
She’s right. Lots of publishers turned it down because they didn’t know how to market it or didn’t want an all-female story with a relatively unknown creative team.

We could have been disappointed or tempted to give up.

We will  not. First because we care about this book. We want this story to be shared with the world. And also because the audience’s reaction to the ashcan has been amazing at every show we went to.

The BlackGirlNerds review is just a translation of that.
Last week-end, I was at the Paris Comic Con. Two weeks ago at the New York Comic Con and earlier in Baltimore. Everytime, among all the comics and art print exposed on my table, Harem stood out from the rest.

Leila’s art attracts readers. Then they become curious. And I start pitching. Then they buy.
In Baltimore, I met a wonderful fan named Eva who bought it and then came back a day after saying : “I hate you, now I want to read the rest of the story and I have to wait”. Then we laughed together.

Harem is a comic book for REAL people. The ones who dream. The ones who want to be entertained. The ones who love beautiful art and something more than a superhero fight. The ones who buy books.

Right now, HAREM is waiting for Leila and myself to have enough money to start production again.
The first issue is done. I wrote the first four episodes. And we hope to get back to it as soon as we can.

I can’t wait to share the new characters. The “all kind of women” characters that we promised we’d spotlight. From Ariel, the transgender to Mina the dwarf-lady, and also Josephine, the plus size one or the hermaphrodite character who’ll show up in issue #3 (and that I can’t talk about because it’d spoil the story).

Thank you Jamie for renewing my faith in this project. HAREM will return soon. Very soon.

F.