In the dog-eat-dog world of professional comic-bookery, it’s always gratifying to see creators play nice. And in the case of Skullkickers’ Jim Zubkavich and The Sixth Gun’s Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt, it’s more than just a common courtesy — they’re helping drum up each others’ sales by placing ads in each other’s books.
“Cross-company promotion like this is rare in the comic biz, but both creative teams are enjoying each other’s series and felt that the audiences were quite compatible, so we set up an ad swap to see if we could cross-pollinate interest between readers,” Zubkavich wrote on his blog. “Creator owned comics are all in the same boat and we’re looking for every edge we can get in this market.”
For those who haven’t been reading, both series have recently released trade paperbacks. The Sixth Gun follows a scoundrel and an innocent girl as they wrestle with some demonic pistols in the Old West, while Skullkickers chronicles two nameless bounty hunters as they fight zombies, witches and other fantasy ghouls.
As far as the cross-promotion goes, the most recent issue of the Sixth Gun just came out this Wednesday, while Skullkickers returns in late May for its second arc.
