Stuart McMillen

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1 campaign Member since June 2021

Stuart's activity

Stuart McMillen Posted an update on The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund

Story update Mar 27, 2023

Announcement: Stuart McMillen signs publishing contract for Television book

Today I am proudly announcing that I have signed a contract with Scribe Publications for my debut graphic novel The Town Without Television .

Here is a video that I just published to my public YouTube channel explaining the news:

( Click here to watch the above video )

...but below is a video that I shot specifically for my crowdfunding supporters, to go into a little extra detail about this publishing contract:

( Click here to watch the above video )

This second video is a little less polished, a little less formal than the main video, but tells you a little more about what I've been working on recently.

(Note that I shot these videos in October 2022, hoping to publish in Nov/Dec 2022. However, we had to delay the publication of the announcement video until March 2023. So keep this in mind whenever I say "this year" and "next year" in the video!)

This announcement a long time coming!

As mentioned in my video, I've been quietly working away on this book contract since January 2022, but am only now at the point of announcing the news! Sorry for the period of relative quietness in recent months. I have now had initial meetings with my editor at Scribe, and we are hatching a plan for adapting the existing comics content into a book-ready format. As well as thinking about how to extend the material so that it feels like it fully belongs in the book format.

Press release: full details about the acquisition announcement

Below is the press release that Scribe published this morning, announcing this signing.

Scribe is delighted to announce the acquisition of The Town Without Television by Stuart McMillen. Known for his nonfiction web comics about social issues involving science, economics, and psychology — such as the viral hit ‘Rat Park’ , describing the famous 1970s study of drug addiction — for his first book-length work, Stuart is taking a deep dive into another classic sociology study.

By 1973, television had swept the world, outpacing researchers’ efforts to measure its impact. So when Canadian psychologist Tannis MacBeth discovered a town deep in the Rocky Mountain Trench that had no access to television, she saw an astonishing opportunity and took it. Through a compelling and accessible graphic narrative, The Town Without Television will tell the full story of the never-to-be-repeated ‘before’ and ‘after’ study of the ways that TV changed an ordinary community, sharing findings that continue to be relevant today.

Senior editor David Golding says, ‘Like many people, I’ve read Stuart’s work online — including the first two chapters of The Town Without Television . His research is impeccable, his storytelling is deft, and I’m excited to be working with him on bringing this story to the page. Scribe has a proud history of publishing popular works on psychology and social science, and this is the perfect book for us to expand that history into the medium of comics.’

Stuart says, ‘I am thrilled to have signed this publishing contract with Scribe. This will be my first full-length book, and I am looking forward to bringing my comics to a new audience. I’m keen to share the story of Tannis MacBeth’s landmark experiment with readers, as well as reflecting on what her research means in the 21st century.’

Scribe will publish The Town Without Television in 2025.

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The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund Reached a milestone

Milestone May 26, 2022

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Stuart McMillen Posted an update on The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund

Story update Nov 15, 2021

Hi everyone, just a quick update about a promotion that I am running at the moment.

Before I launched this Fundrazr campaign, my main way of funding my comics was a crowdfunding campaign hosted on Patreon.

This week, anyone who joins my Patreon campaign pledging US$15 per month or greater will receive 8 of my new greeting cards. 4 with the design 'rainbow-crested cockatoo', and 4 with the design 'girls collecting frogs'. The latter design is from my Town Without Television, Part 2 comic.

Just thought you'd like to know about this in case you liked my artwork, and would like to use those for Christmas cards / Greeting cards in the future.

Pledge via https://www.patreon.com/stumcm or send me an email if you have any questions. I'll post the greeting cards the day after I receive your pledge.

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Stuart McMillen Posted an update on The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund

Story update Sep 2, 2021

A small piece of good news: this fundraising campaign has now passed the $5,000 mark (see screenshot below). Thanks for being part of the support base that helped get me to this point!

I've had a lift of interest in this campaign since publishing Part 2 of The Town Without Television two days ago (here is the link to that comic). Since it is a lengthy piece, I get the sense that people are still, one-by-one, finding the time to actually read and absorb my comic! I've had a steady trickle of reactions to the piece as the days have gone by.

The best way for you to help me at this point would be to share the link to the comic to people in your social networks, so that more people get to read my work, and get inspired to help me fund Part 3 with a donation of their own.

I'll return with an update on this project in the coming weeks.

Stuart

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The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund Reached a milestone

Milestone Aug 31, 2021

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Stuart McMillen Posted an update on The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund

Story update Aug 30, 2021

Some good news: I have just published The Town Without Television, Part 2!

Here is the blurb and link to the comic on my website:

The Town Without Television, Part 2: Unitel
How are children and adults impacted by watching television? This comic outlines the effects of television on individuals, as found by the Notel experiment from Canada in the 1970s.
https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/town-without-television-2-unitel/ [144 pages]

Given that this is a comic that I was working on before the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, I am glad to have finally published this one.

Go ahead and read the comic, and share with any people and networks who you think you might appreciate it!

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Stuart McMillen Posted an update on The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund

Story update Aug 25, 2021

Hi everyone,

Just sharing the good news that I will be publishing Part 2 of The Town Without Television next week.

Right now I am doing all of the last-minute things that need to be done ahead of launching one of my publications. But I wanted to give you a sneak peek at some of the artwork from next week's comic:

This is a four-page section from Tannis MacBeth's study that investigated whether children's gender-role attitudes changed, following the introduction of TV:

As you can see with the orange lines on the graph, two years of watching 20+ hours of television per week made the children hold views that were more stereotyped than their pre-TV views.

This is just one little four-page segment of the full 144-page comic. You will be able to read the whole Part 2 chapter next week.

As ever, thanks so much for helping to fund this project! I'll message you when the comic is published next week.

Cheers,

Stuart McMillen
Canberra, Australia

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Stuart McMillen Posted an update on The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund

Story update Jul 21, 2021

I have now mailed a batch of my postcards to my FundRazr supporters who provided their address and joined the 'postcard' reward tier. Australian supporters have probably got their cards in the mail already. Non-Australians will probably get their cards next week.

See the five postcards' artwork in the short video attached with this post.

I'll keep sending new batches of these cards to the new supporters who back this campaign in the coming weeks!

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Stuart McMillen Posted an update on The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund

Story update Jul 20, 2021

A video from my living room. A look at my work-in-progress on Town Without Television, Part 3.

I had gotten to the point where I had too many ideas to keep track of, and needed to physically move around sentences on a table, using sticky notes!

Thanks for supporting my work already! We have almost passed the $5,000 mark with the donations that have been pledged so far.

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The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund Reached a milestone

Milestone Jul 3, 2021

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Stuart McMillen Commented on The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund

Jul 2, 2021

Many thanks to the early donors from the first week of this campaign. Those who got in early were primarily Tannis' family members and close friends. During the first week, we received $3,205 of pledges.

Today, I began promoting this campaign more widely, to my audience of readers: those who have read and enjoyed my comics such as Part 1 of The Town Without Television.

My whiz-bang email system is in the process of sending a message to all of my subscribers, which should hopefully hit their inboxes at 2pm Friday, relative to that person's time zone.

In the coming weeks, I am hoping to finish Part 2 of the comic, publishing it as a way of reviving Tannis and this campaign.

My grand target is lofty, but I am hoping to reach a total of $25,000. This is the amount sufficient to fund my remaining 6 months of work on The Town Without Television.

Thank you so much for your early pledges that have set the foundation for me achieving this goal. Ta,

Stuart McMillen
Canberra, Australia

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The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund Reached a milestone

Milestone Jun 24, 2021

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The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund Reached a milestone

Milestone Jun 24, 2021

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Stuart's campaigns

The Town Without Television: the Tannis MacBeth Memorial Fund

This fund is established to honour the life of Tannis MacBeth in a wonderful, unique way. Proceeds from this fund will be used to help comics artist Stuart McMillen to finish The Town Without Television, a comic about Tannis' Notel experiments.

$7,995 raised of $25k goal
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