I’ve been remiss in not talking about Love and Capes more often, since it’s my favorite superhero book. Although it’s not really a superhero book, not in traditional style — instead, it’s a romantic comedy that happens to feature a superhero, and its pacing shows a strong comic strip influence, with frequent punchlines. It’s cute and funny and touching and well worth reading.

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.

Brian Wood was one of AIT/Planet Lar‘s early popular creators, publishing seven graphic novels through them plus a couple of supporting books. It thus caused some discussion in late September 2007 when he announced that he and artist Becky Cloonan were taking back the rights to their Demo collection (especially since AIT only published the collected edition in December 2005, less than two years earlier).

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.

In my thread on Free Comic Book Day rejecting webcomics, Bill Williams of Lone Star Press expressed a lack of surprise, saying

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Swords of the Swashbucklers, a graphic novel plus 12-comic series by Bill Mantlo and Jackson Guice, is now available online for free. Earnings from the commercial sponsors will go to benefit Mantlo’s care.

Press release after the break, with reminiscences from Guice and Colleen Doran about Mantlo. Read the rest of this entry »

Announcements of sell-outs are popular press release subjects. Many of them walk a thin line, trying to convey the message “our publications are so much in demand that they’re being under-ordered” without turning people off. They want retailers to order to more to satisfy this unmet demand without convincing readers to jump off. After all, when you’re dealing with serialized entertainment, crowing that “the latest issue is unavailable” often tells customers to stop buying the series altogether.

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?

Devil’s Due Publishing has launched Pullbox Online (no longer available), a store selling online versions of comics (choice of CBR or PDF) for 99 cents an issue. (Clearly, they’re inspired by iTunes.)

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 (link no longer available):

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.)

This fantasy epic tells the story of Artesia — a witch, priestess, concubine, and warrior captain — in lovely watercolor painted art. The heavy paper in the collections shows off the images to advantage, supporting this detailed tale of war among various kingdoms.

Artesia
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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
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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
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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.