Platinum … has narrowed its focus this year to be strictly on its core film and television business. I personally formed a holding company that acquired 100% of WOWIO from Platinum on July 1 of this year.

Wowio had been acquired by Platinum about a year ago, so that didn’t last long. (And the combination was generally unsuccessful.) Practically, I’m not sure how much of a change this actually is, since Altounian is still President and Chief Operating Officer of Platinum, and he was the one defending the company when people pointed out that they still owed creators money from June 2008. That debt has still not, to my knowledge, been paid. The interview didn’t ask Altounian about financial matters.

Altounian is now plugging the “richer experience” of including audio and video as additional content in their ebook PDFs. He concludes by promising a brighter future:

[W]e are exploring additional media elements such as audiobook and other formats for our readers to broaden their collection of material. We are exploring new revenue-generating opportunities for our publishing partners. We are looking at new corporate sponsorships, and we recently launched a new non-profit initiative that will expand our readership greatly. Look for new announcements to come out over the next couple of months.

Given the number of times the company has said “trust us, good things are coming”, it appears that even though, on paper, the leadership may be different, it’s the same old Wowio.

To recap: A year ago, Wowio was something of an online success story, making thousands of dollars for participating publishers. Six months ago, Wowio was acquired by Platinum, a dodgy company with a shady track record. The changes they implemented, including eliminating most of the free PDFs, were unpopular. Then the payments stopped.

Now, if I’m reading Sean’s post correctly, Platinum hasn’t ever caught up with the Wowio obligations and has no definite date on which they’ll be able to. The company president, Brian Altounian, said (over Twitter, of all things) that they had to get more investment money since there wasn’t enough revenue coming in, and investors didn’t want to pay “old debt”. Given Platinum’s track record, I wonder how likely it is that anyone wants to pump more money into the company, especially given the current economic environment.

Most fascinating about Sean’s post is that Altounian shows up in the comments to spar with him. Understandably, the official doesn’t like people pointing out what bad shape his company’s in or how low the readership has dropped, but the explanation boils down to “you don’t understand how big business works; we’re trying our best”. Sean responds:

… it’s a superiorly bad business decision to either A) buy a company which owes any amount of debt with no plan for repayment, or B) buy a company with no knowledge of the debt it already has. I’m not familiar with the due diligence that may have been done on your part, certainly, but the only other option I’m seeing is amoral … I simply do not understand how a business run so poorly can continue to operate.

In a followup at Digital Strips, Brigid Alverson reviews the Wowio site as a new reader.

5% of nothing is still nothing. “We’ll make up for our delay by giving you more when we finally do pay you,” sounds like a con man’s trick to keep the fish on the hook.

Update: Wowio publisher T Campbell goes into detail and recommends people get out now.

Regarding the Webcomics book review, I guess I’ll have to start reading PvP — at least this week.

Regarding the awesomeness that is Middleman: Creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach is interviewed by my old roommate Alan Sepinwall. I am very sad that the show isn’t doing well, and even sadder that we were going to see how the “Middleman developed his old-fashioned, upright persona” but now we likely won’t. I would buy this show if it went straight to DVD. I love it.

Last, the final word on Kramer’s Ergot #7, the $125 anthology: Supporter Tom Spurgeon talks with editor Sammy Harkham about its contents, contributors, and the rationale behind the price point. Among the factors: due to its size, each copy has to be bound by hand. Custom shipping boxes had to be made. And the editor wanted to do an on-site press check, so he had to fly to Singapore.

However, if they’re bumping some titles and others are choosing to leave (via) because of decreased downloads and feeling “uncomfortable” about the new ownership, how many are they going to be left with?

Warning, snark approaching: which value do you think will go to zero first, titles offered or readers?

• Wowio Overview — “introduces the highlights and features that’ll help you make the most of your Wowio experience”
• The Adventures of Tymm: Alien Circus #1 — a 50-page Platinum kids’ comic, ending “to be continued”
• The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County — the 1865 Mark Twain book, with illustrations

The overview section is two pages of “we’re great.” I found it interesting that the options discussed are “read online for free” or “purchase and download”. They’re trying to eliminate the previous model of “download for free”, it appears.

If you want to see for yourself, that link doesn’t appear to be restricted or protected. Unfortunately, their mass mailing didn’t include an “unsubscribe” link, which I thought was standard in such emails.

Webcomics 2.0
Buy this book

The title comes from blending the subject, webcomics, with current hype term Web 2.0 (used for interactive websites like YouTube). I don’t think it’s the best idea, in part because I’m not sure most webcomics can be accurately described that way, but more because it gives the impression that this book is either a sequel or a revised edition.

Since it’s being blurbed as by “insiders”, let’s look at the author credits for Steve Horton and Sam Romero. I knew of the former because he wrote the manga-styled Image miniseries Strongarm, but he’s also credited as “co-creator of the long-running webcomic Grounded Angel” and for running “a comics publishing company, Smashout Comics, which publishes digital comics through the Wowio e-book service.” Unfortunately, neither of those are ongoing at this time. Grounded Angel is described as “romance action manga” and seems to have concluded, while the Smashout titles I checked are no longer part of Wowio after the recent changes (an understandable choice).

As for Romero, he “is the creator of the popular webcomic Edge the Devilhunter, featured at Graphic Smash.” I plugged “Edge the Devilhunter” into Google, and the actual, updating site shows up as the fourth link. The first is an earlier mirror site that stopped updating in October 2007; the next two are reference sites. So I can understand why he needs to list the host site in the description. When you do visit the strip (NSFW), the first thing I saw (as of this writing) was a topless female with breasts as big as her head. The comic is apparently a manga-styled adventure; after that image, I didn’t stick around to find out the details. The Comixpedia description says

The webcomic itself is noteworthy not only for its extreme violence and sexual content, but its controversial left-wing political content and liberal use of racial epithets.

Back to the book. The presentation is very professional and easy to read, with large subject headings making it easy to find a particular section. There are 13 chapters plus a glossary for a total of 225 pages of content. However, the authors don’t start covering webcomic creation until the eighth chapter, 90 pages into the book. After a short introduction, there are chapters each on humor, adventure, and manga and additional chapters on other examples and “gathering the [creative] team”. I find the genre division odd — manga is more often considered an art style or influence instead of a genre, so I’m not sure why they split it that way, unless it’s a reflection of how both authors are known for work in that style.

More of a problem is the amount of space dedicated to introducing various samples. I would assume that anyone buying a book on making webcomics would already know at least some of the well-known examples mentioned in the humor chapter, including Penny Arcade, PvP, Sluggy Freelance, and The Devil’s Panties. (Also, I have no idea why Perry Bible Fellowshipis left out of the humor chapter in favor of being labeled “other/off the wall”.) The adventure chapter, on the other hand, refuses to name any examples at all, only referring to “some” strips. Throughout these chapters, things I thought should be explained (technical terms like “spot color”, for instance) weren’t, and things I didn’t need explained (like the definition of an autobiographical webcomic) were.

The humor chapter consists of interviews with webcomic creators, but they’re not of much instructional use. What lessons they do provide would work better later in the book, in the creation or money-making chapters, where the experience can match up with the advice. One goes into last year’s “does Wikipedia hate webcomics?” controversy without providing necessary background context. Other strips are referenced without providing URLs. To finish off the chapter, there’s some sample art, shown in various stages (pencils/inks/color). I don’t know what it’s doing here, since it seems to have wandered in from later in the book. Much better would have been to have shown a sample strip from the interviewees, I think.

The adventure chapter walks through character design for one strip debuting in this book. (So is it even a webcomic?) It’s a waste of space that tells me nothing about adventure webcomics overall. The impression I’m left with is that the creators watched a lot of 80s TV and have no original motivations for their characters; plus, Romero’s characters all look too young for their roles. The manga chapter similarly consists of nothing but characters from Romero’s Edge the Devilhunter; a strip selection is later reprinted, but it’s fuzzy, as though out of focus.

At times, especially at chapter introductions and conclusions, the tone is patronizing, as though the reader is an uneducated idiot who needs lots of “You can do it!” encouragement. Elsewhere, there is very good advice included, but it’s not emphasized. One tip, for example, is that you may want to try something different from the very popular subject of video game humor — but it’s given as a throw-away at the end of the introduction to that chapter. After wasting a paragraph saying that an adventure strip can have any format, they again toss away the important advice that frequent updates build an audience.

The second section of the book consists of a chapter each on writing, art, “Getting Published”, promotion, making money, and “The Future of Comics”. These are each very brief but good (although the writing chapter could be put into a book on screenwriting with few changes). The art chapter plugs Manga Studio over Photoshop, which I thought was the industry standard; perhaps that’s explained by Horton having written another book on using that particular piece of software. The publication chapter covers some of the best-known hosts and collectives. This is where the interviews are a plus, showing different ways of achieving success. The promotion chapter explains press releases and Project Wonderful ads (which I finally understand), among other techniques, and the chapter on making money was a real eye-opener, both in the scope covered and in how things have already changed since this book’s publication.

Overall, for a book about comics, there could have been a lot more illustrations (and I found the screenshots in the promotion section a bit amateurish; they’re near-impossible to read, and they should have cleaned up the bookmarks and status toolbars in the images). I wish the book had started with chapter eight and included a lot more tips and tricks learned through experience and fewer low-content generic statements. The publication, promotion, and money-making chapters are the most useful, unique reads. They could be the foundation for a much better guidebook. (A complimentary copy for this review was provided by the publisher.)

Sean Kleefeld discovered that some of the books he had planned to download for free will now cost money. They can still be read for free, but only if you’re online, thus removing a lot of the convenience. Moving the price from “free” to “$3.99″ per issue is quite an adjustment. $3.99 is not a deal compared to standard comic pricing, especially considering you don’t get a printed copy. Add in that Plowio is trying to charge for books that are available for free elsewhere, and it looks a lot like gouging.

Willow at Seeking Avalon found that some of the books she was reading are no longer available for download at all, at any price. She goes on to complain (justifiably) about unreadable screens and poor quality. She’s also found a lot of material has disappeared from her pre-Platinum Wowio library. Put together all this poor customer service, and it’s driving her to investigate competitors. That’s got to be the opposite of what Platinum wanted, but that’s what you get when you make the contracts less favorable to contributors. A number of publishers have left the site as a result, or because they don’t want to be involved with a company with such a bad reputation.

Platinum has upped the number of their books available at Wowio, but since they’re charging the same price for online as they do for the print books, I think it’s pretty obvious they Don’t Get It when it comes to online. (Regardless of how many comments Wowio employee Gerry makes in response to critical posts.)

Then they were acquired by generally shady Platinum. Even if you don’t mind the ethics, Platinum lost over $5 million last year, mainly because their business plan appears to be “acquire comic properties, don’t publish them, hope someone gives us lots of money to make them into movies”. This is not a mature business plan.

A financial analyst speaking generally about publishers said movie and video game deals are typically seen as one-time windfalls, not a bankable business strategy. And the auditor’s going-concern warning took into account Platinum’s future business plans. Much of Platinum’s financial challenges owes to the company’s spending, which one former employee called “outrageous.”

D.J. Coffman, cartoonist and internet gadabout, was one of Platinum’s biggest supporters, because he won one of their contests (which involved them, at the end, taking his property, neglecting to pay him what they promised, and threatening him legally when he told people what was going on). Now, even he refuses the new Platinum-rewritten Wowio contact. As he points out, there are way too many unanswered questions and clauses that basically say “trust us” when the company has demonstrated it’s completely untrustworthy.

But then, company CEO Scott Rosenberg has a very long history of shady comic dealings.

Which leads me to a digression: I was talking with friends one night who hadn’t heard certain stories about unethical behavior from certain comic publishers because it happened last decade. It was fun digging up the old dirt, sure, but I also realized that some people, if they can just stick around long enough, will get a fresh start because comics doesn’t have much of a memory for these kinds of things. Which is a shame, because it’s what allows crooks to keep preying on people. Combine that with the “oh, that won’t happen to ME” egotism many have, and you have a recipe for predators to keep culling the herd.

So, anyway, it appears that the Golden Age of Wowio is over, and while it may return, it won’t be the useful tool it once us, because a gang of crooks put themselves in the middle of it.

Update: Sean Kleefeld is more optimistic than I am, although he does provide advice for users to download whatever they’re interested in quickly once the site reopens. He also has an interesting rumor, that providers will be required to line up their own advertisers. Like him, I’m not sure that’s plausible; if that’s the case, then what, exactly, is Platio providing that justifies them taking half the proceeds?

Now, the site is down, with a message that they will be back in mid-July and operating globally. Brigid rounds up what news is known. Some of the numbers are quite impressive, with one small publisher claiming they’d made over $90,000 a year from the service. I hope it’s not gone for good; it was a creative approach to serving the needs of both reader and creator.

I previously interviewed Bill Williams of Lone Star Press about his company’s experiences with WOWIO.

Duel #1

by Seth Wolfshorndl, Three Trees Studios, $2.95 in print or free online

Two kids have a sketch battle, coming up with new characters to defeat each other’s creations. Originally a 24-hour comic, this simple story is well-suited to online display, which makes the creator’s decision to put it on WOWIO a smart one. (Once you register at that site, you can download free PDF comics with ads included.) It’s imaginative and faithful to its characters, and I enjoyed reading it (in large part because of its innocence), but I don’t see any need to own it. Loved the ending, and it really gave me the feeling of hanging out for an afternoon with two eight-year-olds who love their monsters.

Rook City #1

by Seth Wolfshorndl, Three Trees Studios, $2.95 in print or free online

Same author, same release setup, but this one’s a bit more ambitious, the story of a college student who’s the only normal one in a city of weirdos. In various short stories, we see an ancient vigilante in a nursing home; a gang of vampire wannabes called the Vlad Squad; a stolen museum piece; and fake superheroes. If you’re at all interested in any of these concepts, you’ve likely seen better done before. There’s more time spent on setups than perhaps the gags require, and the stories just peter out, as though the author didn’t know how or when to end on something punchy.

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword

by Barry Deutsch, www.hereville.com, $15 in print or $5 for an e-copy or free online (but at a rate of only one page a week, to complete in December)

There are many webcomic creators who are publishing their works a page at a time, with thoughts of eventual collection, but Deutsch is doing it the other way around: he’s already done the story, all 57 pages of it, and now he’s doling it out online. If you don’t want to wait, you have two options for getting the entire story now, a somewhat expensive print version (but with a print run of only 100, you don’t get any economies of scale) or an electronic version. I think his prices are too high for the generally accepted ranges of such things, but if he can get it, more power to him.

Deutsch describes his series as a quirky fantasy adventure comic for fans of Bone or Courtney Crumrin — I’d add Amy Unbounded to that list as well. I reviewed the CBZ version, and I found the lettering full of personality but hard to read on a small screen. (I use a laptop, which keeps me from reading lots of online comics, especially the page-based ones.) There’s lots of dialogue, unfortunately for me, since that’s where the humor and meaningful characterization comes in.

Mirka, our heroine, is a willful young girl resenting having to learn feminine stuff like knitting. She’d rather be slaying dragons. In the meantime, her argument-loving stepmother (a hoot!) is a burden to her and her younger brother humors her wishes until she gets a chance to actually act on them.

It’s a charming story, with lots of good feeling and attention to tradition, made all the more unusual by its Orthodox Jewish background (in a fantasy world, yet — that’s something very rare), but I sure can’t see reading it only a page at a time. Too much of the energy and flow would be lost. Oh, and Deutsch promises to do more “Hereville” stories after this one concludes at the end of the year; he’ll publish them after he’s completed them.

I recommended issue 1 and issue 2, as well as the fourth issue, which came out for Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) last year. (I skipped the third issue only because of timing, not because of quality.)

Since then, there’s been two more issues, and #7 is due out for FCBD this year. I encourage you to check it out. You have a bunch of options for catching up with this terrific series: new in stores is a six-pack of all the issues so far, at an $8 discount over buying them individually. The first three issues are available online free at Wowio. There are also lots of samples at the book’s website.

Hey, did you know that there are also “liner notes” to each issue at the website? I didn’t. Plus, artist Thom Zahler has been interviewed at Comic Pants, where he reveals a lot of the series inspirations, which only makes me like it (and him!) more.

It’s since been announced that Vertigo will publish Demo in May of this year. That made sense, for several reason: Wood’s currently writing both DMZ and Northlanders for them; Demo is at core a superhero title, albeit an indy-twisted one; and DC’s one of the best for getting and keeping graphic novels in bookstores. (An area where rumors have been swirling around AIT, based on some creators reporting out-of-stock difficulties.)

Today, Brian Wood announced that he’s pulling another book from AIT: Public Domain, a book about the design and creation of Wood’s first major project, Channel Zero. However, this one is taking a different route. Wood mentions that it’s out of print, and he has placed it online for free download, accompanied by a donation button and a link to an Amazon store. (The free giveaway is a popular choice lately among forward-looking creators and publishers.)

Rumors about AIT were a side effect of this action, so I thought I’d take a look at their publishing history over the last three years. Here’s all of their publications that shipped through Diamond, in rough publication order and with short notes. Starred (*) are comic-format; others are graphic novels.

2005:
Proof of Concept (collection of pitches written by publisher Larry Young)
Couriers 3 (written by Brian Wood)
Scurvy Dogs: Rags to Riches (art by publisher’s production coordinator)
Filler (creators Rick Spears and Rob G. have since formed their own publisher)
True Story Swear to God 2 (creator Tom Beland moved to Image after public disputes with the publisher)
* Black Diamond: On Ramp (written by publisher)
Smoke & Guns
Electric Girl 3 (I miss this title; don’t know what the creator’s doing now)
Full Moon Fever
Sunset City (creator is self-publishing new work)
Colonia 2 (creator slow; book 3 announced for 2009)
Demo Collection (already discussed)

Also two prose books:
Demo Scriptbook (also reverted)
Surviving Grady

2006:
* Sky Ape: King of Girls (fourth and final series volume, not listed on AIT website)
Continuity (released for free in PDF form)
Shatter (reprint of early computer comic)
Rock Bottom
Seven Sons

2007:
First Moon (Xeric Award winner; AIT-distributed)
Giant Robot Warriors (Re-release with new slipcover)
Last Sane Cowboy & Other Stories (collects Isotope Award-winning minicomics)
Homeless Channel (debut graphic novel)
* Black Diamond 1-4 (written by publisher)
Monster Attack Network

From 11 to 4 to 3 graphic novels (not counting re-releases and books they only distributed)… it’s easy to see why people wonder how the publisher is doing. Especially since Larry Young made the company by seeming to be everywhere online, and now it’s hard to find him except at the company site. And certainly, having a child (born June 2007) will cause all kinds of changes.

Fundamentally, it’s none of a reader’s business if creators and publishers, once appearing to be fast friends, now find their business decisions going in different directions. But curiosity is a basic human drive, especially in today’s connected world.

Update: Made a couple of additional notes above, and received the following in response to a request for comment from Larry Young.

I don’t have anything new to add to what I wrote to Rich Johnston back in July of 2006. We’ve been publishing now for nine years, and the whole thing has always ebbed and flowed. That’s just the nature of the business.

So fans looking for an explanation from the previously outgoing publisher will have to look elsewhere.

The middlemen in the print arena are afraid of getting cut out and do their best to bury the indy digital creators. I have books and comics by Bill Willingham and others available for free at WOWIO and I cannot get a press release run on a major site.

I thought this presented intriguing ground for further discussion, so I was pleased when Bill agreed to answer my questions.

First off, can you please introduce yourself and your company to the readers? Who are you, what is WOWIO, and what connection do you have with it?

I am a comic book hobo, so I’m a fan and a creator and a publisher and an ex-retailer. Back in the stone ages, I was Keith Wilson’s inking assistant, then I moved to self-publishing. I started Lone Star Press in 1997 and put out 40+ comics, some with critical acclaim. I published comics with work by Bill Willingham, Jeff Parker, Mike Leeke, Paul Ryan, and more.

Because the books never penetrated the market, I burned out and drifted away and wrote a few spec screenplays and short stories. But I love the possibilities of the medium, so I drifted back to comics to try using the new distribution tools. Now I write and draw a webcomic called SideChicks which runs on the www.graphicsmash.com website. It updates a couple of times a week and has been running with only one week off in eighteen months.

I am one of the many publishers who has material on WOWIO which has free downloadable .pdf comics and books. WOWIO offers legal downloadable copyrighted ebooks from publishers for free to readers. The books and comics have an ad at the front and at the end of the book. Publishers get paid every time somebody downloads a book. In my case, I get to work with material I love and write checks to the freelancers that created the work. In the eight weeks I have had books on the site, we have had almost 5,000 legal downloads.

How long has WOWIO been around?

I dunno. According to their website, they opened the doors in August 2006. I found them in April 2007 and blew them off thinking that the deal was too good to be true. That decision cost me thousands of bucks (like many of my decisions). Like many of the people on the internet, they do not post numbers anywhere about the readership or traffic or anything.

Which are your top downloaded titles? How many people have downloaded comics from you?

The numbers are a bit confusing due to the rolling rollout of the material. Some books have been up since mid-November 2007 and some went up last week. About eight weeks in, Bill Willingham’s Pantheon script book is moving the most. A couple of the short story compilations by Matthew Sturges and Mark Finn move well. And the first issues of comic book series like Pantheon, Strange Heroes, and Heroic Tales move well. And then most people come back to read the rest of the series.

I don’t know how many different people are reading the comics and books because the numbers track in terms of total downloads for a period of time because that is where the financials come from. I can tell you that readers of my novel about a retired costumed hero break down as follows…

Sex– Female- 18.1%, Male- 81.9%
Age– Under 18- .9%, 18-24- 21.7%, 25-34- 18.6%, 35-44- 32.6%, 45-54- 17.6%, 55-64- 5.4%,
65 and Older- 3.2%
Race– African American (black)- .9%, Asian- 3.2%, Caucasian (white)- 57.0%, East Indian- .5%, Hispanic/Latino- 1.4%, Middle Eastern- 0%, Native American- 2.3%, Pacific Islander- .9%, Inter-racial- 1.4%, Did not answer- 32.6%

[Note: Many other stats removed for readability, including education, income, and various purchase preferences.]

Now, looking at those numbers, you have to start discounting some of it. No one was there swearing an affidavit as people were filling out the reader info. And I will let the readers draw their own conclusions. I am delighted by the amount of people that just left some stuff blank.
While that is the fact sheet for a genre novel, a quick check reveals that the numbers hold pretty well for comics too.

Are all of your downloads version of previously printed comics? Or do you have original content as well?

To date, WOWIO has been the home for digital versions of print comics for me, but there are more projects in the works. I’ll be bundling the SideChicks webcomics into the comic book format and putting those together for .pdf files. I hope to get back to writing and get a couple more original prose things up onto the site before the end of the year. I don’t look at the internet as one or the other, but there are more projects in the works that are ‘internet first’. I have been reaching out to other creators, so Mark McKenna’s Banana-Tail book is up and earning for him.

One of the things that I am pretty proud of has to do with the Mantlo: Life in Comics book. I reached out to David Yurkovich and I will be posting that benefit book up on WOWIO as soon as we can get the technical end of the book handled. The revenue generated from all downloads of that book will go to the long-term medical expenses of Bill Mantlo. And I am waiving my regular fees associated with formatting a book and managing the backend, so all of the dough will go to his brother Michael Mantlo.

How recent are your downloads? How often do you add new titles?

I started with the books that I originally published, which were a novel and a short story collection written by me and the script book by Willingham. All three of these are available through Amazon.com. After seeing them earn for a few weeks, I talked with Willingham and we posted his Beowulf novellas and I started working my way through the Lone Star catalog.

I have also been working with his old pals from the Clockwork Storybook, so there are a couple of books by Matthew Sturges and one by Mark Finn on WOWIO. To date, most of the Lone Star material is online at WOWIO with more on the way. The first thing to go up was Willingham’s mini-series Pantheon. Next was the couple of issues of Ex Parte, the series about a lawyer that represents costumed folk. Then the anthology Heroic Tales and now I am working my way through the Strange Heroes series that Willingham wrote.

I add material as fast as I can because time lost equals dollars lost. Because I do not have a load of books in the pipeline, I do not have to worry about the ire of the retailers. But every publisher has to make that decision for themselves. Given that we are moving analog material to digital format, the current pace is a couple of comics a week on the production side. I hope to get back to writing in the early spring.

Have publishers found that this cuts into back issue sales, or is it closer to “found money” for them? How much money have you made?

I don’t know about anybody else’s numbers, but our mail orders have dwindled to almost nothing over the years. WOWIO-generated revenue is roughly a hundred times mail order-generated revenue and frankly, the WOWIO numbers are fire-and-forget numbers. LSP makes a .pdf file, writes a solicitation, sends it to the WOWIO server in the sky, and that is it. No boxes to pack and none of the drudgery of the warehouse.

I think that digital money is found money for publishers. Fans and buyers look at your material and consider buying it and they make a decision. Cost is a factor. Removing cost from that equation, I think people tend to try more material. On iTunes, if you click on a song, you hear a few seconds of it for free so you can try it before you buy it, and I think there is an element of that at work on WOWIO. Your cost is storage space on a drive somewhere.

If sampling free comics online did not work at some level, the publishers would stop wasting time on it. I think the opposite is the case. And I think that the internet highlights the distribution problem of the content. The current distribution model does not serve all of the publishers. There are new business models forming that do not include the direct market because the structure of the DM does not allow for exponential growth. And the retailers are raising a fuss about it. I think that there should be a ‘fair warning’ to people buying non-returnable material, but in practical application that ‘fair warning’ will just be an excuse for a retailer to pass on a book. If anything, some will do it just to send a message.

If I can find my way back to the original question, in the near future (meaning sometime later this year), all of the digital versions of the LSP books will have been seen by more people and will be more profitable than the print versions.

You mentioned that you’d had problems getting press releases placed on online comic news sites. Can you elaborate on that? To what do you attribute this problem?

Maybe I write crappy press releases. Maybe tiny publishers swarm the newssites with a blizzard of digits screaming about free comics. You would think that free comics by an Eisner-winning writer would at least be interesting enough to warrant space alongside of the manufactured hubbub surrounding second prints and zombie variants.

I get the feeling that there is a Luddite streak out there in the distribution arm that wants to stop any digital distibution. Cracking into the public space with paid ads is cost-prohibitive. Our average click-thru on our ads driving people to the free WOWIO books have about a 1 in 1,000 success rate as a goal.

Look at the vitriol surrounding the successful marketing campaign by Boom! Studios. Their rollout was a little clumsy, but the instinct was spot on. And they have a success because they got people the chance to try a book before plunking down dollars on it.

What are your plans for future expansion?

Future expansion will be along a couple of tracks, which can be shorthanded to inhouse and outreach. Back in 2000, I experimented with the showrunner approach to making comics with the Ex Parte series, and we have several comics in the can that never came out. Some need a cover and some need a little color and whatnot. I’ll be spending a little time geting those books into the system and I’ve already reached out to a cover guy that I love working with. So, I’ll be clearing out the inventory there.

I’ve been reaching out to other publishers and I’ve reached out to some of my favorite folks. Jeff Parker did some work for me back in the day including the hilarious Ape Company story in Heroic Tales #10. I talked to him about the Interman book and if he ever gets a free moment again we might talk again. I contacted Mark McKenna and have his kids book Banana-Tail up and earning on WOWIO. And I’m looking to work with creators and publishers who want to make a few dollars out of their backlist.

Do you want to know how well WOWIO works? Lone Star Press has brought in $25 in the time it took to answer these questions. You make money while you’re doing something else.

—-

Thanks very much to Bill Williams for participating — I think I need to check out that Ex Parte comic!

Press release after the break, with reminiscences from Guice and Colleen Doran about Mantlo.

With the cooperation of Bill’s brother Mike Mantlo, co-creator Guice, and series artists Geof Isherwood and Colleen Doran, all royalties from Swords of the Swashbucklers will be redirected to Mike to assist with Bill’s quality of life.

In 1992, Bill Mantlo was struck by a car and suffered extensive brain injuries. Today, he requires 24-hour care and is not expected to fully recover. Though Medicaid covers his basic needs, the project will help with new clothes and other life improvements.

“I have to thank to Roger Stern for the idea,” says Steve Horton, Smashout Comics publisher. “He suggested I contact Bill’s estate about Swords of the Swashbucklers, as I had wanted to see it back in print. And now, here we are! I couldn’t be happier that we’re able to assist Bill and his family this way.”

As a special bonus, with participation of artist Polly Law, the first issue of the regular series includes the hard SF short story Rising of the Moon, originally published in EPIC Illustrated #5. Also, Guice has provided promotional artwork and original art scans, which appear as back covers of the books.

“In the early 1980s, I had the tremendous blessing of finding myself working with writer Bill Mantlo on my first regular assignment in comics (The Micronauts),” says Guice. “In addition to taking a nervous young artist under his wing, and helping guide me through some very intimidating first few months of experience in the industry, Bill and I soon discovered a strong collaborative spirit between us — constantly on the phone — bouncing ideas back and forth for potential new characters and projects to come. It became something of an ongoing joke between us, as we invariably would drift off topic into discussing — yet another — new project idea, whenever we spoke.”

“As our run on Micronauts was coming to a close, Bill and I had several project ideas we felt strongly enough about to consider submitting to EPIC, the then new creator-owned line of books at Marvel. We weren’t entirely sure yet what we wanted to work on next, only that we were determined to continue working together. I had recently acquired studio space for myself in a rented loft and had dubbed the place, Swashbuckler Studio. Bill called shortly after the studio phone was hooked up, and I answered, ‘Swashbuckler Studio — Butch speaking.’”

“Without pause, Bill said in his usual enthusiastic way — ‘That would make a great name for a comic series someday!’ — and we laughed. A day or two later, however, Bill called once more and excitedly began describing his broadstroke initial ideas for a space-faring pirate series he wanted us to pitch to EPIC — SWORDS OF THE SWASHBUCKLERS. And that’s how it all began.”

“Wow, I don’t know what to say,” says Doran. “It is some of my early comics work, and definitely not good work from me, but what a privilege to get to have a chance to work with Bill Mantlo! Bill Mantlo was not only a wonderfully prolific and imaginative writer, he was an outstanding human being.”

“I met him while working on Swords of the Swashubucklers, and he was so good and kind to me. I was having a legal problem with a publisher who had claimed all rights to my work, and Bill Mantlo was in his early days as a lawyer. He was able to go over my contract, and was able to tell me that I was not only in the right, but he helped me find the contacts and get the representation I needed to wrest my book away from the publisher who was trying to get my copyrights and trademarks.”

“Bill owed me nothing. I was not a good artist, and was not an important person. I was a beginner working on my first job for Marvel Comics, and all Bill knew about me was that I was in trouble and needed a hand. He was incredibly generous with his time and attention, and I will never ever forget that out of all the hundreds of people in the business, he was one of a small handful that stood by me and helped me when I was a complete nobody. He wasn’t interested in sucking up, he wasn’t interested in making a lot of money, he just wanted to do the right thing.”

“My only regret is that I could not be a better artist for Bill. After all these years, I hope my small contribution to Bill’s work can help him out in some small way to make up for the invaluable kindness he did me. I guess…I knew what to say after all. Thank you, Bill Mantlo. I love you.”

That’s why I was so surprised to see this particular announcement, which goes (in my opinion) way too far in the wrong direction, saying “you can’t have it” in, by my count, four different ways (numbered below) in the first two paragraphs. They also didn’t include the now-customary (after retailer backlash) “copies may still be available at the retail level” line.

The first new issue of Heroic Publishing’s CHAMPIONS comic book series (issue #38), featuring the long-awaited return of Roy & Dann Thomas’s CAPTAIN THUNDER AND BLUE BOLT, has completely sold out [1]. No copies are available for reorder [2], and Heroic has announced that there will not be a second printing [3].

If you can’t find a copy of this first CT&BB story in almost fifteen years, you may have to wait a while [4]. The story, by writers Roy Thomas and Dennis Mallonee, and artist Benito Gallego, is scheduled to be reprinted in the third Captain Thunder and Blue Bolt trade paperback, but that collection will not appear until the “Merchants of Menace” storyline is wrapped up in a future issue of CHAMPIONS, most likely in late 2008.

In the meantime, you will be able to enjoy classic adventures of comics’ greatest father-and-son superhero team, beginning with CHAMPIONS #39, on sale in late August, and with the first CT&BB trade paperback, currently scheduled for a mid-December release date.

Champions… that would be the trademark that Marvel was going to use for its now-titled Order series. So one can see why they’d want to rush it back into print and crow about its perceived success.

But why not address current demand instead of telling people to wait a year to read the story? Especially since the publisher has made the issue available online for free?

They’re not the first to offer legal downloads — already in this market are Slave Labor (choice of CBR or PDF, 69 or 89 cents an issue, but it’s hard to find their web store even if you know what you’re looking for) and Wowio (PDF, ad-supported, free to user if you’re comfortable giving them your credit card information (why?)).

Pullbox Online is clearly not the cheapest. But they might be the best-positioned to survive so far, since they’ve come the closest to offering titles that the traditional comic book audience will be familiar with and want. Selection and ease of use are what’s going to make this particular comic market able to survive and compete against free copyright violations.

They can’t seem to decide who they’re targeting, though. I’m not inclined to applaud someone who opens their About Us statement with this sentence:

PullBoxOnline.com is the premier online site for affordable, high quality downloads of your favorite comic book product.

It’s overblown hype, and I want good reads, not “product”, thank you. The name is also an odd choice, taken from the most obsessive quality of the direct market, the need to know that your pre-ordered comics are waiting for you. (Ironic, since some of those retailers are already mad about this approach to undercutting their sales, offering the same stories at one-third the price.) They go on to say:

We believe that the proliferation of downloadable comics is healthy for the industry, and will allow collectors of physical comics to catch up on hard to find issues they missed, and enabling them to continue to collect the physical series rather than dropping it. It is an enjoyable way to try a comic book series before deciding on trade paperback purchases, and opens the doors to millions of potential comic book readers not familiar with the tightly knit comic book collector community.

I know they’ll take whomever they can get to start, but is this really an avenue for outreach to new readers? Or is it likely that a hardcore collector, once he buys a non-physical issue and interrupts his run, is going to keep buying print comics?

And wouldn’t that necessitate having current issues available? They promise that they won’t release online versions before the print ones, fair enough, but the current selection looks much more than a month old. Aside from some DDP titles, the store also features three IDW titles (but nothing licensed) and comics by Jim Mahfood. They promise new additions weekly (on Wednesdays, keeping with tradition), with Steve Rude’s Nexus mentioned as coming soon.

Most intriguing is this bit, from owner Josh Blaylock’s Newsarama interview:

We are not going to overload the site with tedious DRM features. After a lot of consideration and study, it was decided that it’s more important for Pullbox to be the easiest place to download a comic. We want to embrace the currently existing online community of downloaders, not exclude them. Most of these communities are looking for a cheap legal alternative and we’re providing it.

People are already sending them around via scans from print comics, so if they’re determined to do that they’re going to do it anyway. And to be frank, if Pullbox can sell 10,000 downloads of a title and reach a new audience, we don’t care if 100,000 people are reading that same product. That will just make us try to get the circulation up to 1,000,000 so we can be selling 100,000 downloads.

That’s certainly user-friendly, but if I was an investor or content provider, that cavalier attitude would make me awfully nervous. Is that factor-of-ten valid, or based on anything concrete? Maybe it’s really a factor of 100, so that 100,000 readers means only 1,000 sales? I suspect nobody knows, and nobody can know until this effort, and others like it, have been running a while.

Blaylock goes on to say:

it’s not like anyone’s discontinuing to print the books, so there’s really nothing to lose with the downloads. It’s gravy!

Unless the sheer fact of offering the downloads causes retailers to cut orders. With no shelf space, you’ve got no ability for customers to browse (unless you start offering free online samples). And a number of commenters at that Newsarama thread seem to be ready to switch from print to screen, based just on price, meaning fewer physical copies sold. (Then the naysayers claiming 99 cents is too much for an online copy start appearing, so maybe responses there aren’t a good way to judge anything.)

Artesia
Buy this book

The first volume covers Artesia taking over the castle and throne of her former lover. Before her battles, she prays to her goddesses for bravery and clear sight and victory. Her spells let her see spirits after the battle, angelic women taking the ghosts of the dead men. There’s a complicated structure of goddesses, gods, factions, and kingdoms populating this series, but behind it all is Artesia’s quest to be herself. She is a woman making her way in a man’s world, where women are lovers, or even makers of potions to bewitch men, but not warriors.

Artesia, though, channels a righteous anger. Her mother was burned as a witch, and Artesia has to deal with that history and influence without defining herself solely by it. Her king and lover is jealous of her, both of the loyalty his army gives her as their talented leader, and of the way his concubines, her bedmates, love her more. It all boils down to male and female. Artesia’s group rebels when their king denies the goddess they worship in favor of their god, called the divine king. There are many boundaries broken throughout the story, whether those defining proper behavior, or conscribing Artesia’s place in society, or those between this world and the next.

Artesia Afield
Buy this book

The second story has Artesia facing a different society that isn’t as accepting of a female leader. She’s back in the land of her birth, joined with other kingdoms in battle against a common enemy. She has to determine whether she should name herself queen, risking the label of usurper, or let others name her instead.

The soothsaying of wise women is a convenient device to remind the reader of what has happened so far, and the third volume has such a scene early on. It nicely sets the mythic tone, of Artesia being fated for larger-than-life events. Artesia wins her battles by whatever means she can, fighting or bargaining. The latter is made easier by all she and her forces have in common with their enemies, in some ways more than they have in common with their allies.

To build alliances, she takes royals to her bed; her leadership is carried through everything she does. She can’t separate her heritage from her actions from her beliefs or her philosophy. She honors the gods by doing well all things: fighting, feasting, celebrating her body and those of others. There is much more to Artesia’s world than the physical and visible. There’s an active spirit world, influencing all activities. She sees more than most as she opens herself to their aid.

When the various regions and factions and unfamiliar names of tribes and leaders and gods and so on become a little confusing, there’s lots of supporting material available. Several pages at the back of each collection explain the divinities, tribes, myths, calendar, and kings. There are also three annuals published as comic issues in which there’s more background information, maps, short stories with the characters, and letter pages. The third annual is particularly ambitious, with 32 pages of timeline, laying out the significant events in the history of this world. It’s meant to be a prologue for gaming supplements coming out later.

Artesia Afire
Buy this book

The appeal of the series for me is reading about a powerful woman attempting to balance her loves, her purpose, her faith, and other conflicting parts of her life while dealing with the memory and legacy of her mother. She’s a leader in a man’s world, forced to chart her own way. The dreamlike art, especially the male faces, reminds me of the work of Colleen Doran (A Distant Soil).

This isn’t a series to read if you’re bothered by nudity; Artesia’s first costume consists of full armor over her torso and arms with only a chainmail loincloth and steel kneepads beneath the waist. (This was later modified to be more practical.) As well, some of the issues have full nudity and many sexual encounters (not to mention bloody battle scenes and orgies) but it’s all part of the story, and well-done.

As escapism, I enjoy watching a woman with a sword kill men who dare to call her a harlot. The themes are symbolic of the conflicts women face today. Some of the other female characters dislike Artesia for taking the way of men, “blood and steel and shit”, when she could have taken their more spiritual, magical way. She’s actually trying to balance both and find a way that works for her regardless of tradition.

There’s a great sequence in Artesia Afield where the female spirits talk about what they wanted from life: to be worshipped, to inspire awe and love and fear, to be rich, to be remembered, to make their teachers proud, “to be shameless, and cruel, and beautiful!” All in all, that’s not a bad epitaph.

The publisher’s website provides more information, as well as a preview. If you’re in the US, Artesia issues can be read for free at wowio.

Smylie contributed a 9/11 tribute pinup to Dork Tower #15 (reprinted in Heart of Dorkness). Another Dork Tower volume, The Dork Side of the Goon, opens with a one-page color strip in which the Artesia characters puzzle over a DT book they’ve found. The 1999 Sirius Gallery has two pinups by Smylie, while the 2000 one contains “Birds of a Feather”, a three-page story.