| Daniel O’Rear reporter |

Many young people enjoy comic books, but Samuel Bruch has a special interest in the genre: He wrote one.
“I always enjoyed the B-list characters,” Bruch, senior in justice studies, said. “Ted Lord, the Blue Beetle. There are only so many times you can write Superman.”
His love for the lower rings of villainy instead of top list Injustice Gang influenced Bruch’s creative choices. His comic book Magilicutty was born from such lower characters.
“Someone must be on guard duty,” Bruch said. “Notice how the henchmen wear the more ridiculous outfits. Why would someone dress up like that?”
Bruch took this question and mixed it with his personal history of working minimum-wage jobs to get through college to create Magilicutty. The title character, Frank Magilicutty, begins the series working for Dr. War, a supervillain. The book follows Frank as he balances his home life with a hazardous work life.
Bruch’s comic book started as an assignment for a screenwriting class.
Originally, Bruch says, he envisioned the story as a film. He later decided to switch it to a comic book format because financing a book is much easier and because of his own lifelong love for the art. There was just one small problem.
“I couldn’t draw,” Bruch said.
With drawing such an important, if not the most important, aspect of a comic book, Bruch says he wrote the storyline and turned to craigslist.com, the popular online classified ads website, to find an artist. Magilicutty’s artist, who is based in Boston, works through correspondence with Bruch to create the books.
Bruch’s second problem, with the school assignment left far behind, was raising funds to finance the first real tangible issue. He again turned to the Internet, this time to kickstarter.com, an online fundraiser company. Bruch’s success led him to launch a second campaign on kickstarter to finance a second issue.
Despite its original goal, Bruch has another use for kickstarter nowadays.
“Kickstarter is more of a marketing tool than a means to raise money,” he said.
Each donor gets a gift. Low-level donations include Magilicutty issue No. 1 to catch a new reader up on the story or Magilicutty-themed memorabilia.
High-level donations move up to Bruch’s band playing a show for the donor for free.
The current campaign has raised $805 of a $1,000 goal.
Despite writing from the perspective of villains combatting masked vigilantes, Bruch does not see a lot of applications from his major to his writing.
Right now Bruch is living life day to day waiting to see if the comic can take off