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By Bruce Lidl The digital comics landscape has settled down significantly in recent months. Since Amazon’s acquisition of ComiXology in April 2014, it has become essentially the de facto standard for digital comics and now distributes just about every publisher around. Unless a real industry-wide Netflix-type subscription model ever takes off, it is hard to see […]

By Bruce Lidl

Following immediately on the conclusion of the second Image Comics Humble Bundle, Archie Comics has joined the Humble Bundle comics movement with its first release. Humble Bundles are curated collections of digital comics available under a “pay what you want” revenue model. Customers can choose their payment amount for the basic pack, or spend extra money for additional content. Customers can also choose what percentage of their payment goes to the publisher, to the Humble Bundle company and to a charity picked for the bundle, in this case either the Hero Initiative or the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Also, all Humble Bundle comic collections are sold in variety of formats, with absolutely no DRM restrictions embedded in them.

Past digital comics Humble Bundles have proven very popular and generated considerable revenue for publishers and charities. The first Image Humble Bundle in April 2014 received almost $400,000 in payments, while the just completed Image bundle got over $450,000, and appears to have been the highest grossing comics bundle so far.

Today’s Archie bundle contains Afterlife With Archie Magazine #1, The Fox: Freak Magnet, Sonic/Mega Man: Worlds Collide Vol. 1, and The Best of Archie Book One. Customers that pay more than the going average price also get The Death of Archie, Archie Meets KISS, The Best of Archie Book Two, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #1, and Sonic/Mega Man: Worlds Collide Vol. 2., while those who pay $15 or more will receive all of the above plus Afterlife With Archie Vol. 1: Escape From Riverdale, Archie Comics Spectacular: Party Time, Archie: The Married Life Vol. 1, and Sonic/Mega Man: Worlds Collide Vol. 3. Other incentive titles will likely get added over the course of the bundle’s two week run.

At this point, the sole remaining publisher holdouts from Humble Bundle appear to be Marvel and DC. While initially designed for independent video gaming publishers, even rather large gaming companies have used Humble Bundle since its inception in 2010, including EA and THQ. Interestingly, Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment participated in a gaming Humble Bundle in November 2013 that included comics themed games Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, distributed through the Steam gaming platform. Whether that might indicate a broader Warner Brothers/DC openness to the Humble Bundle philosophy remains to be seen.

By Bruce Lidl

As has become a tradition at Image Comic’s semi-annual event, the announcements of upcoming titles came fast and furious today at ImageExpo. After a suitably rousing “state of the company” presentation by Image publisher Eric Stephenson, the stage at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center saw a procession of comic luminaries hyping new titles they promise will appear in 2015. On the evidence, Image will likely continue to rise in sales and market share, although the central roles of The Walking Dead and Saga in propelling those gaudy numbers remained an unspoken undercurrent to the show.

Stephenson trumpeted Image’s 2014 performance, which included “double digit year over year growth from 2013” (33% improvement in revenue, 25% in units), a 10.41% market share in the comics direct market and 16.48% market share for graphic novels in the book market. One area of somewhat smaller growth was digital, which Stephenson mentioned in passing and with a graphic that lacked scale or numbers. Despite its vagueness, the digital sales chart seemed to indicate roughly 10-15% growth from 2013. Surprisingly, however, the graph showed a slight dip in digital sales from 2012 to 2013, that was not commented on in the keynote, but Image’s Ron Richards told me outside the talk that it was merely a reflection of “The Walking Dead on TV” phenomenon, and not the natural growth of the category. To keep the digital sales momentum going into 2015, the second Image Humble Bundle was released prior to the opening of the ImageExpo, with a ton of Image backlist titles available digitally in the “pay what you want model.” In fact, Humble Bundle co-sponsored the ImageExpo this year, and has very high hopes for the bundle, particularly after it generated almost $90,000 in the first eight hours of the offer.

The new book announcements included original Image founder Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn books #250 and #251, with Spawn Resurrection #1 sandwiched in between. Declaring himself a “proud papa” of what Image had grown into over the last 23 years, MacFarlane refused to cede all the creative acclaim to his younger Image colleagues. He teased Savior, a a new title depicting the arrival of a Christ-like figure in today’s world. Recognizing a reputation for erratic release schedules, MacFarlane flashed an slide with eight issues worth of pages already completed.

James Robinson made a cameo appearance to announce his title Heaven and to reassure that Airboy is still on the way. Brandon Graham and Emma Rios told the audience about a couple of their collaborations, including 8house and Island, the later a large format “heavy metal” anthology that will include a number of rotating contributors. Emma Rios also brought out Kelly Sue DeConnick to update their plans for Pretty Deadly’s second arc which takes the title’s setting from the American West to the battlefields of World War I, and is expected to arrive in September.

Unlike last year’s event, ImageExpo 2015 highlighted a number of female creators, with Emi Lenox following Rios and DeConnick on stage to announce her autobiographical project, Tadaima, about her visit to her mother’s Japan. Lenox also talked about her collaboration with Jeff Lemire, Plutona, a Stand By Me influenced book about children discovering the corpse of a super-hero, . Other female creators announcing new books at ImageExpo included Marjorie Liu with Monstress and Alex De Campi with No Mercy, the latter scheduled for April.

Jeff Lemire returned to discuss his new book with Scott Snyder, AD: After Death which takes a deep, conceptual look at what the world would be like when “death is cured” and people can live forever. Brian Buccellato intrigued with his Kickstarter-originated Son of the Devil, an exploration of deadly cults and their legacies, and Eric Canete and Jonathan Tsuei discussed Run Love Kill, a project that started over a decade ago, but will now arrive with “robots, dinosaurs and ass-kicking.” The dynamic British duo of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie will be continuing their successful Wicked+Divine series into a third arc with a number of guest artists, and they promised Phonogram 3 for August 2015. Gillen will also be writing The Ludocrats, with art by David LaFuente for Image this year. Chip Zdarsky “crashed” the proceedings in an unannounced surprise appearance to hype his Howard the Duck title (for Marvel), but really to announce Katara, a sci-fi comedy title done with Kagan McLeod, and just to generally lighten up the festivities in his inimitable Zdarsky-style.

Another surprise appearance proved impossible for Darwyn Cooke to arrange, but he announced via audio message his first wholly creator owned title, Revengeance, a crime thriller with Mickey Spillane influences set in the 1980s. Following the Cooke audio portion, Skottie Young spoke of his new title, I Hate Fairyland, about a girl trapped in a fantasy wonderland for thirty years. The tone of the title is probably best expressed by its original working title, Fuck Fairyland.

While last year’s ImageExpo felt somewhat like the Robert Kirkman show, the explosive success of Saga in 2014 made Brian K. Vaughn’s appearance a natural highlight of this year’s event. In addition to that book, Vaughn will be producing two more books in 2015 for Image, the first entitled We Stand on Guard, a limited series positing a US invasion of Canada with giant robots, drawn by Steve Skroce, and Paper Girls, an on-going series with young newspaper deliverers as the protagonists, drawn by Cliff Chiang, and referred to by Vaughn as “his most personal and weird writing.”

By Bruce Lidl

The Sacramento Wizard World convention was an opportunity for comic fans in Northern California to gather and celebrate their passions with other fans and celebrities. It was also a chance for Jimmie Robinson, a veteran Bay Area comic book creator (and frequent commentator at The Beat) to meet his readers and spread the word about his on-going all-ages Image series, Five Weapons. I was curious to get a creator’s insight about this new convention, but we ended up chatting about a variety of topics, so I decided to make a separate article in its own right. As a long-time participant and observer in the comics industry, Jimmie has a great perspective on what is really happening right now, and he was very generous of his time to speak with me on the show floor.

Robinson was quite positive about the Wizard show, the staff, and the vibe around the convention center. Everybody was seemingly happy with the turnout and the enthusiasm of the attendees, especially the local downtown merchants. I was curious to hear how his convention schedule played into his work-time and income, and whether he was seeing the kinds of returns on paid sketches, commissions and appearance fees that some artist superstars like George Perez have experienced. According to Robinson, conventions, even well attended ones like Sacramento Wizard, are not “real money makers” for him, as he still has to pay his expenses, including travel and lodging. The worst thing about conventions for Robinson is not the expense, though, it is the time taken away from his work of actually making comics, something he much prefers to do if possible. In general, he limits himself these days to shows he and his team (wife Gail and dog Eli) can drive to, including the Reno Wizard show and possibly San Diego. For him, conventions remain all about “spreading the word” about his books, particularly Five Weapons, his current title from Image/Shadowline, an all-ages tale of the one pacifist student enrolled at a school for assassins (broken up into 5 weapon-themed houses, kind of a killers’ Hogwarts). He emphasized just how “tough” a sell an all-ages title can be. Currently at issue #7, in the second five issue story arc of the title, he has a commitment from Image to publish a third story arc, taking him through issue #15. Depending on how these story arc sell, he hopes to publish at least through #20, which would complete the initial narrative he conceived for the title.

Eli manning the booth

Robinson was “very appreciative of the huge support” he’s received from Jim Valentino and the Shadowline imprint at Image, particularly with a book that may not be the most marketable. And he “regretted” not being at the January ImageExpo, where the homogeneity of the creators on exhibit was negatively received online. Robinson had only complimentary things to say about his experiences with Image.

While Robinson appreciates the personal outreach opportunities conventions give comic creators, he is also “very enthusiastic” about the growth of digital comics, both from a sales perspective but also from a creative viewpoint. Digital sales of his older Bomb Queen title have been “very good” and he has seen bumps in sales of older issues when new ones come out and re-ignite interest. He is also an outspoken fan of comiXology’s Guided View reading enhancement, although he does struggle somewhat with making sure that his books look good when they are going to be converted to the new format. The process of conversion is quite “mysterious” to Robinson, and he does not have any insight at all into who actually does the work at comiXology, but he’s “very conscious” when he is drawing of what kind of panel layouts work best with the new technology.

His one major criticism of the current digital comics trend is the lack of transparency into the data generated by digital sales, as any data he does get from comiXology is basically limited to royalty statements and is usually “way old, usually from two quarters behind.” He is eager to see if he is able to get quicker and more detailed information from the shift at Image to selling directly and without DRM (Five Weapons #1 is available right now for free in either PDF, EPUB, CBR or CBZ formats). Robinson is “completely for” Image’s move to drop DRM and is generally really excited to see his work available in as many formats as possible. As someone who first heard Scott McCloud talking up online comics way back in the mid-90s, Robinson knows first hand how far the industry has come in expanding distribution avenues for new creators to attract readers. He echoed the message oft repeated today, that the challenge is no longer to “break into comics but to stay in comics!”

It was a pleasure chatting with Robinson and getting his expert viewpoint on a comics industry that  offers both unprecedented opportunities and daunting challenges for even well-established creators like himself. And check out Five Weapons and see how good all-age titles really are these days!

One of the real breakout comics of 2013 was Bandette, from the husband and wife team Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin. A digital comic that is creator-owned and sold by Monkeybrain for only 99¢, the tale of young Parisian cat-thief Bandette and her team of accessories has been a hit both creatively and commercially. Awarded the Eisner Award for best digital comic, while nominated in three other categories, Bandette is a great example of the digital first/print second phenomenon in comics, with the first five issues released in hardback form by Dark Horse last November. Coover and Tobin, both of whom have long and esteemed resumes in comics where very kind to submit to an interview from me, to catch up on how things have gone for them and the title since the big Eisner win at Comic-Con in San Diego.

Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin, with Allison Baker of Monkeybrain

BRUCE: I got to speak with you guys in San Diego the day before the Eisners. How did it feel to win for Bandette, and has the award changed how people perceive you and your work? Did it have a noticeable effect on Bandette sales?

PAUL: It felt strange to win an Eisner. There was a moment after the announcement when I just froze in confusion, and then I apparently teleported up onto the stage, and it really wasn’t until I was looking at Colleen that I understood we had won. Luckily, even while still on stage I was able to reflect how wonderful, and how rare, it is to be holding an Eisner in my hands, and watching my wife accept an Eisner as well.  And it’s definitely heightened awareness (and sales) of my other works, and of course Bandette itself. It’s just great that of the four nominations, we won the first one announced, because that allowed us to be truly happy for our friends when they won. Our friend Chris Samnee winning best artist over Colleen? No problem, because we already have an Eisner on the table!

COLLEEN: The euphoria really was heady. The only drawback, if it can be called a drawback, is that since winning the award, I’ve felt an added sense of responsibility about making Bandette even more awesome. It’s like, “Okay, you’ve given us this thing and we like it, here’s your reward. Now what else have you got?” I should say that this sort of inner dialog is all part of the necessary balance between swagger and self-doubt every creative professional must have in order to keep motivated.

BRUCE. You guys are such a great example of the digital first-print second phenomenon with the release of the Bandette hardcover in November. How has that experience been? Are you happy with the reception of the hardcover, critically and commercially?

PAUL: Definitely happy. We chose Dark Horse because they’d done such a fantastic job on the Bucko hardcover by our friends Erika Moen and Jeff Parker, and they did an equally great job with Bandette. We wanted to make sure it looked like something that belonged on a shelf, or on display.

COLLEEN: Yeah, also, Dark Horse made it really clear that they wanted to be the print publisher for Bandette, and that they would work with us to make sure that it not only looked great, but came in at an affordable price point. I don’t know what the sales numbers are, but we hear from people every week who have picked up Bandette and love it!

BRUCE. While I’m sure there is no way to know with certainly, but what is your impression of the hardcover purchasers? Are they primarily the same audience as the digital purchasers, but now looking to own a tangible artifact? Or is it a whole new audience that was not interested in the comics as digital purchases?

PAUL: Both. We’ve had plenty of readers contact us and say that they loved the digital comic so much that they were thrilled to have a hardcover, and then there were others who wrote to say how happy they were to have the hardcover, because reading comics digitally either didn’t appeal to them or that they just didn’t have access. I think it was the right way to go for us; it’s not even a “best of both worlds” situation, because it’s “both worlds” straight up.

BRUCE: What have you guys learned from the hardcover experience so far? Is there anything you might do differently next time?

COLLEEN: Fortunately, Dark Horse has so much experience publishing good-looking books, all we had to do was sit back and make approvals. They were even able to accommodate a totally last-minute change I wanted to make to the frontispiece when I suddenly got the idea to put in a “This book belongs to…” bookplate.

PAUL: Really… we were quite happy. Sometimes the best thing to do is to relinquish a bit of control and let things happen. Of course, you can guide the process, and we certainly did that, because it still needs to feel like it’s “yours” at every step of the process.

BRUCE: Top Shelf just announced a program by which purchasers of select print titles can also get the digital version for a heavily discounted price. Is that something you might offer, or would it be too complicated with two different publishers, Monkeybrain and Dark Horse?

PAUL: Individual issues of Bandette are already only 99 cents, so I think that’s pretty cheap!

COLLEEN: And yeah, it would be difficult contractually, since Monkeybrain holds exclusive digital rights and Dark Horse has the print rights. I do think it’s a very good business model to include ebooks with the sale of print titles.

BRUCE: Are there plans for a paperback version? Do you have a longer term plan to release print versions for every 5 individual Bandettes? Are you contracted to return to Dark Horse for future print releases or can you make new partnerships on a book by book basis?

PAUL: We’ve talked about a paperback version, but it’s not something we think it heavily needed. We worked really hard to produce not only a great looking hardcover, but to keep the price VERY low, so it’s a 144 page hardcover for only $14.99, so a paperback isn’t a pressing need. There will be more hardcovers up-coming, but I’m not sure exactly how many issues will be in each one. Storylines will help determine that.

BRUCE: What kinds of things did you specifically do to keep costs down? Do you have advice for other creators looking to convert digital properties to print?

COLLEEN: That’s all secret Dark Horse economic jujitsu at work: Paper stock, book size, number of colors used to print certain pages– every little bit you can save without making it look like you’ve held something back adds up.

BRUCE: The hardcover is beautifully printed, and the colors especially pop out from the page. Has the experience of seeing Bandette in print changed anything in your approach to the digital production? Are you still wedded to the three panel page layout that you’ve done so far with Bandette?

PAUL: We love the three tier approach to comics, at least for this project, because it’s not only handy for digital, but also an homage to the comics we’re emulating to a certain degree… Tintin, for instance. And, it has such a clarity that I think it lends itself well to the stories.

COLLEEN: It ain’t broke, so I’m not looking to fix anything!

BRUCE: I really enjoyed Colleen’s work on Batman ’66. How did it feel to work with Jeff Parker as writer after having done so much work with Paul? Did you enjoy the experience of creating art for the Guided View style of digital comic, as you previously told me it would not work with Bandette? Did it change your mind on that?

PAUL: This question is not about me, and is therefore invalid.

COLLEEN: I’ve worked more with Parker than with anyone other than Paul, back when we were doing stuff for X-Men: First Class, so it was a very familiar place to be. We work together in a totally different way from the way Paul and I work: Paul will present me with a complete script, and then he steps back and I draw it. With Parker, we’ll spend time hanging around in the studio, talking about old comics, and ideas for the story he’s going to write for me come out of that. When Jeff found out he was getting the Batman ’66 job, we spent hours reminiscing about watching the TV show when we were kids in the 70s. A lot of the stories he’s written springboard directly off those conversations.

As for the enhanced view, Jonathan Case, who was the first artist on Batman ’66, and is also in our studio, did a lot of the legwork on figuring out how to make it happen without driving himself crazy, and I picked up some tips from him. For starters, we both drew our stories digitally, so that the little changes that happen in each panel match up precisely. The kicker is that no matter what additional “action” we put in the story for the digital product, there has to be a final printable version that makes sense when they publish the story in the comic. It’s a real storytelling challenge, and it was a ton of fun!

BRUCE: In San Diego you told me that a Pixar version of Bandette would be a dream come true. Have had any more thoughts or approaches to put Bandette in other media? I believe there are Bandette T-shirts for sale, but merchandise could be a way to further monetize your digital property, I imagine?

PAUL: So far we’ve done very little on the merchandising front, mostly because we haven’t had time to set everything up, but we do have some thoughts about Bandette in other media. I guess, for right now, we’re just trying to really get our own feet on the ground and establish Bandette, before we start looking to expand.

COLLEEN: Yeah, I set up some tees and mugs and phone cases on Café Press and on Zazzle, which is about the bare minimum of effort you can make to provide mech. Merchandizing is a lot of work, and requires monetary investment, so we’re going to wait and see what opportunities come up from people who do that sort of thing for a living, rather than try to do it ourselves. I’m still very open to Pixar doing a Bandette film. Or really, any other studio.

BRUCE: I know Paul has the new Prometheus comic scheduled for release in June. I would assume Dark Horse is kind of feeling the heat in regards to licensed properties now that Star Wars is no longer theirs. How has the experience been so far? It must take quite a change of mental pace to go imaginatively from Bandette‘s whimsical Paris to the rather grim planet LV-223! And that is not a cross-over I would want to see! ;)

PAUL: It’s going to be later than June, because we want to match some things up, but… yeah, it’s been a blast. I’m working with three other local writers on the project, each with our own book. There’s me on the lead title, Prometheus, and then Chris Roberson on Aliens, and Josh Williamson on Predator, and Chris Sebela on Aliens vs. Predator. It’s great because we’re all local, and all friends, so we can get together a lot, talk about the project and eat cake. As far as the change of mental pace between projects, I’m really all over as a general rule. I just finished an Adventure Time series, a Plants vs. Zombies project, a whole bunch of writing for Angry Birds, and of course Bandette, and that’s all fairly light-hearted material. At the same time, I’m working on my Colder horror series, and Prometheus, and the Witcher comics for Dark Horse… all much darker. My upcoming novels are much the same: you’ll see some humor titles, and then some darker material. I actually find it easier to work in several areas. It keeps my brain bouncing, moving from one project to the next, so that I don’t grow stale and predictable.

BRUCE: Do you have a philosophy or even rule of thumb that you use to guide what projects you take on, specifically in the realm of balancing personal/independent projects with more commercial properties? Does the success of Bandette allow you more freedom in pursuing your projects?

COLLEEN: Last spring, right as I was finishing up Bandette #5, I had two short projects I had committed to previously come due. Once those were done, I was going to get right back to Bandette, but then the Batman ’66 gig came available. Any other project, I would have turned down, but the Batman TV show was just too big a part of my early life to pass on that opportunity.  As a result, there was rather a long wait for Bandette #6. Now, I’m focusing entirely on Bandette. No other projects are being considered.

BRUCE: And one more question, with Bandette #6 out, when can we expect #7? Are you guys hoping to maintain a consistent schedule of issues in 2014? And the Urchin stories have been so fun, with #9 now available from the Monkeybrain site. Any artist names of future Urchin stories you want to tease your readers with?

COLLEEN: Bandette #7 is about a week from being colored and finished now, at the end of February, and then it takes several weeks for Comixology to get it ready to go live.  As for our schedule, we will continue to put out issues as quickly as I can draw them!

Urchin artists of the future include but are not limited to: Sheli Hay, Ron Chan, Dylan Meconis, Ron Randall, Cat Farris, Emi Lenox, Steve Lieber, and Juan Ferreyra.

Bruce: Thanks very much!