Digital comics platforms are not new. What is increasingly clear, however, is how few were designed with independent creators at the centre. Visibility is often dictated by opaque algorithms, revenue models are difficult to interrogate, and creators working outside dominant publishing regions struggle to be seen at all.
For many indie creators, particularly those working across Europe and other non-US markets, the comics ecosystem remains fragmented by language, geography, and distribution. Readers settle into familiar platforms, while exceptional work elsewhere goes unseen simply because it exists outside those silos. Scatterhead Comics enters this landscape as a response shaped by lived experience rather than market theory. The platform grew out of its founder’s time as a young creator navigating those same barriers.
The original Scatterhead began life as a small webcomic series shared across various platforms. While that project never gained traction, it sparked a longer question about how comics are discovered and promoted. “Back then my biggest frustration was visibility,” founder Hilina Da Costa Gomez explains. “Especially when you’re young, don’t know much about marketing, and don’t really have a lot of money.”
Scatterhead is an attempt to build the platform she wished had existed, one that lowers the barrier to discovery and makes indie comics easier to find, regardless of where they’re made.
Building Before Selling
One of Scatterhead’s defining characteristics is its pace. Rather than launching publicly and iterating under pressure, the platform is being developed through a prototype-first approach, accessible only through closed testing with creators and, soon, readers.
That decision was pragmatic as much as philosophical. “I’m not a corporation or a big publisher,” Hilina says. “When I first started Scatterhead I was just a recent graduate with an idea, so I couldn’t afford to just make something and hope people use it.”
Early outreach focused on confirming creator interest before committing resources. As the project grew, that feedback loop became foundational. Creators are involved not as end users, but as collaborators, shaping upload workflows, tagging systems, and usability through direct feedback.
Initial testing prioritised stability. Uploads needed to work, crashes needed to be identified, and friction points needed to be fixed. From there, feedback broadened into experience design, what feels intuitive, what doesn’t, and what features creators actually need.
Reader testing is planned for the same reason. Rather than assuming how people want to read comics digitally, Scatterhead is observing and adjusting before public launch. Monetisation, notably, is coming later. The logic is simple. A platform that doesn’t work for creators and readers will not become sustainable by adding payment systems on top.
Creator-First by Design
Scatterhead’s creator-first philosophy is most visible in its structural commitments. The platform plans to operate on a 70/30 revenue split, with seventy percent distributed back to creators based on readership. “Ultimately, the platform exists because of the creators’ works,” Hilina says. “So it makes sense that the majority of revenue goes to creators.”
Because revenue is shared from a collective pool, the platform only succeeds if creators do. Promotion, discovery, and growth become mutually reinforcing rather than extractive.
Equally important is what Scatterhead does not ask for. Publishing is non-exclusive, and creators retain full ownership of their work and intellectual property. The platform hosts content under clearly defined terms, first for development and later for commercial distribution, but does not claim control over stories or characters.
“I don’t think it makes sense to expect ownership over work we didn’t make,” Hilina says. “It’s their time, their effort.”
Transparency underpins this relationship. Through a creator portal, contributors will have access to engagement analytics, allowing them to understand how their work is being read. In an industry where performance data is often vague or withheld, that visibility helps build trust.
Curation Without Gatekeeping
Scatterhead describes itself as a curated platform, a term that can provoke concern among indie creators wary of taste-making or exclusion. In practice, the platform draws a clear distinction between curation and control.
New submissions are reviewed for readability and harmful content, not for stylistic or genre conformity. If lettering is unclear or panels are difficult to follow, creators are contacted and invited to resubmit. What is not accepted is content that is hateful, harmful, gratuitous, or AI-generated.
The boundaries are defined, but within them creators are given wide freedom. Erotic scenes and violence are permitted when part of a broader narrative, provided age restrictions are clearly labelled. Rejections are explained rather than automated. “It’s important that creators know their work is being taken seriously,” Hilina notes.
Curation also serves discovery. By foregrounding work from underserved regions and smaller publishers, Scatterhead aims to counter the fragmentation that defines the indie comics space. Even at the prototype stage, creators from across Europe and beyond are already present, reinforcing the platform’s potential as a global discovery hub.
Human-Made Stories in a Post-AI Moment
Scatterhead’s refusal to host AI-generated comics is one of its clearest ethical positions. For Hilina, this is less about technology than about labour. “The beauty of art is taking an idea in your mind and using your creativity, skills, and dedication to bring something tangible into the world,” she says. Scatterhead aims to reward that process, not content designed to bypass it.
As generative tools proliferate, artistic labour risks further devaluation under a logic of convenience and cost-cutting. Indie creators already struggle with visibility and income. Competing with AI-generated content would only undermine their commercial value.
If creators are earning money on the platform, Hilina argues, that work should reflect time and effort actually invested. Scatterhead’s stance is an attempt to protect not just aesthetics, but the cultural and economic foundations of creative work.
What Comes Next
Scatterhead’s immediate goal is to move from a functional prototype to a robust beta capable of supporting seamless reading, intuitive uploads, accurate analytics, and monetisation infrastructure. The journey to this point has been gradual and collaborative. Over five years, the project has relied on contributions from friends, family, mentors, developers, and early creators who believed in the idea before it was tangible. With a working prototype now in place, the next phase is about stability and scale.
To fund that transition, Scatterhead is planning a Kickstarter campaign aimed at accelerating development toward an App Store and Play Store-ready release. Success, in the near term, is defined less by rapid growth than by reliability. A platform people can actually use day to day.
In the long run, Hilina hopes Scatterhead becomes synonymous with indie comics discovery. “I want readers to think of Scatterhead as a platform that makes finding indie comics easier,” she says, “and creators to think of it as a platform that values and fairly supports their work.”
If that happens, Scatterhead will not have succeeded by scaling fastest or launching loudest, but by building deliberately and by remembering what it felt like to be an indie creator looking for a place to belong.
Editor’s Note — A full Q&A interview with Scatterhead’s founder, covering the platform’s origins, ethics, and future plans in more detail, can be found here.
