This Community Voices column is written by Thomas Boeing, who owns Indie Northern Kentucky in Dayton with his wife, Ren. Each month, Boeing writes about a different artist featured at iNK. You can reach him at tom@indienky.com.
When you enter Indie Northern Kentucky, or iNK for short, and scan the wall of zines and comics, you’ll see something that doesn’t seem to fit in: a container full of business envelopes.
You’re looking at comics made by Northern Kentucky cartoonist, Will Hinnefeld.
Hinnefeld rediscovered comics after college but didn’t begin creating his own until his daughter (who is now 3) was born.
To make space to hear from more Northern Kentuckians, we launched a new feature called Community Voices. These will be regular columns that aren’t quite news stories but also aren’t exactly opinion – they’re somewhere in the middle. We want to be a vehicle for you to share your expertise and the stories behind them with Northern Kentucky.
If you think you have a voice the community would like to hear, please submit three to five writing samples to mgoth@linknky.com.
The samples should be somewhere between 500 and 750 words, and do not need to be previously published somewhere else, but it’s OK if they were. .
If we select you, we’d ask that you submit your Community Voices column with some regularity, whether that be weekly, biweekly or monthly. Your columns would also need to include your name as the author: We can’t accept pen names or pseudonyms.
Not everyone who applies will get to be a Community Voice. While we don’t expect you to know AP style, we do expect submissions to adhere to correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. We will edit slightly to make sure submissions fit our style. We also won’t accept submissions that are a promotion for you, or a product or service. (If you’re looking for a way to promote your company, product or service, email our VP of sales, Brad Crosby, at bcrosby@linknky.com.)
We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
What is a Community Voices column?
“I think there was a link there,” Hinnefeld said. “I wanted her to follow her dreams and I wanted to model that. I think it was a suppressed, background dream.”
His first self-published work was more of a long form comic. He was concerned about the length.
“There was a barrier for people reading it and it took so long to make,” he said.
Hinnefeld wanted to remove the barrier and make shorter stories that were more accessible to the general public. He calls them Envelope Comics or One Page Comics with Two Page Turns. Inside the business envelope is a tri-fold paper and the story unfolds as the paper does.
“I give myself a deadline,” Hinnefeld said. “I do one of these a month.”
He said he finds these constraints as well as the constraints of his chosen medium refreshing.
“You can just drag on and on and keep thinking about it but if you’ve got to get it out every month you’ve got to stop thinking about it and start doing it,” Hinnefeld said.
He has to limit the scope of the stories, the dimensions of the panels and he says they’re even cheap to print.
“I print at the Kenton County Public Library for 10 cents a page,” he said.
Will’s goal with the Envelope Comics is to have a big mailing list where each month his comics are sent all over the country.
“I want to have to buy stamps in bulk,” Hinnefeld said.
You can sign up to receive Will’s comics in the mail via his Patreon ($2 a month) or you can pick up his comics at iNK or at his day job – did we mention he’s an amazing baker at Allez Bakery?
Will’s comics are unique, innovative, skillfully drawn, and are accessible. But he has one goal with his comics: “I want to harness the power of narrative to create unity among the laboring class.”
If you have an idea for a Community Voices column, email Meghan Goth at mgoth@linknky.com.
Click here to read more Community Voices columns.