It’s not often that I direct people to particular sales, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that ComiXology’s Amelia Cole sale finishes tonight, meaning you only have a few more hours to sample what was easily one of my favorite new series of last year for a ridiculously low price. For just $6 – the price of two regular DC books! – you can get the entire run of the first series, which just might be the best bargain you’re going to get in comics anytime soon. This ends the plug; you can thank me later.

I’m unsure quite what to make of the news that Dark Horse has added Dynamite’s line to its proprietary digital comics service. On Dynamite’s side, the deal makes a lot of sense, sure – It’s another outlet for their books, akin to ComiXology, iVerse, Nook and so on – but there’s something about Dark Horse becoming a retailer in the digital space that feels… important, perhaps? Especially considering that – when asked if DH would add other outside publishers, Mike Richardson said “We shall see about additional companies. Obviously we have always tried to attract comics professionals to our company.”

Dark Horse has always had an interesting history when it comes to other publishers; as a company, it started as an outgrowth of Richardson’s Things From Another World store, and today it offers merchandise licensed from other publishers on a regular basis, so clearly collaboration is in its DNA. I wonder if Dark Horse Digital, if it continues to add other publishers, will end up becoming Things From Another World Digital, or something else altogether…?

(Also, anytime they can offer a Digital App for the Kindle, I’d be all about that, too. Just sayin’.)

Apparently Apple has banned Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ creator-owned (and one of the best on the shelves these days) Saga, due to gay sex scenes. Over at Fiona Staples’ blog, Vaughan expressed his dismay for the situation and offers alternatives for getting your comic.

Annoying press release thing: APPLE vs. SAGA #12

As has hopefully been clear from the first page of our first issue, SAGA is a series for the proverbial “mature reader.” Unfortunately, because of two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex, Apple is banning tomorrow’s SAGA #12 from being sold through any iOS apps. This is a drag, especially because our book has featured what I would consider much more graphic imagery in the past, but there you go. Fiona and I could always edit the images in question, but everything we put into the book is there to advance our story, not (just) to shock or titillate, so we’re not changing shit.

Apologies to everyone who reads our series on iPads or iPhones, but here are your alternatives for Wednesday:

1) Head over to you friendly neighborhood comics shop and pick up a physical copy of our issue that you can have and hold forever.

2) While you’re at it, don’t forget to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which helps protect retailers who are brave enough to carry work that some in their communities might consider offensive. You can find signed copies of Saga at the CBLDF site right now.

3) Download the issue directly through sites like https://comics.imagecomics.com or on your non-Apple smartphone or tablet.

4) If all else fails, you might be able to find SAGA #12 in Apple’s iBookstore, which apparently sometimes allows more adult material to be sold than through its apps. Crazy, right?

Anyway, special thanks to Eric Stephenson and everyone at Image for supporting our decision, and for always being so supportive of creators. Sorry again to readers for the inconvenience, but I hope everyone will be able to find an issue that Fiona and I are particularly proud of. And after you do, please check out PanelSyndicate.com, the new digital comics site I own with artist Marcos Martin, which remains 100% uncensored by corporate overlords.

Your pal,
Brian

The main problem here is that having already read Saga #12, I can tell you the scenes that are so controversial are so minuscule in comparison to last issue’s full-on sex scene featuring our heroes Alana and Marko (with Alana using Marko’s horns for extra support and leverage. Creative, huh?). So why on earth is Apple banning this issue displaying two scenes (by my count) of gay sex, especially when they aren’t even part of the narrative and are just in passing?

I can’t always make it to a comic shop during the week, so I personally use Android products and love the way my comics look on them. I don’t know of any past events that have led comixology or the Google Play Store or anything like that censoring material. In his statement, options 1 and 2 are pretty solid, but while you’re shopping through Apple sometime, please be sure to point out the massive violence and “straight” sex that gets a pass.

Props to Vaughan and Staples for holding their ground and making Saga it is what it is.

Brian Cronin looks at the deal ComiXology offers creators with its ComiXology Submit program:

The intellectual property ownership sections of the agreement in particular are strongly in favor of the comic creator. There does not seem to be anything to worry about there. It is also good to know that the agreement is not exclusive, so you can continue to sell your work elsewhere online. However, it is worth noting that the term of the agreement is for five years, which is a rather long time to be tied to comiXology, especially if you find yourself feeling that you could get a better deal elsewhere. Which is why it is all the more important that you consider the two questions above. It is important to point out that the agreement only applies once you have actually submitted your final content to comiXology, so you have until that point to back out if you do not wish to lock yourself in to the deal for five years.

There’s some interesting stuff in there about pricing, especially what ComiXology can do in regards to promotional pricing, but overall this appears to be a pretty legit contract for creators interested in going into the digital space…

Axel Alonso expands on Marvel’s weekly Infinite Comics plan, which launches later this year with Wolverine: Japan’s Most Wanted:

Marvel is developing a new language for comics storytelling. We’re exploring and defining the parameters of how people create and read comics, and we’re putting a lot of sweat, love and production work into each installment. Every time we do one of these, our writers and artists continue to up their game, flex new muscles and push the limits of the Infinite Comics experience. This will be evident right out the gate with “Wolverine: Japan’s Most Wanted.”

What’s different about this weekly Infinite Comic series is that it’s our first attempt at doing a long-form, episodic story in this format. Over 52 weeks, we will tell four stories, broken into 13 weekly chapters. Each of these stories will feature a flagship character, written — or co-written — by the writer of the monthly series so that it’s as relevant to current continuity as anything you find at the comic book store.

The real question, of course, is how much these Infinite Comics serials are going to be priced. MonkeyBrain and DC alike have found real success at the digital first, 99 cent model, so will Marvel follow suit? “A lot of work goes into each Infinite Comic and they’ll be priced fairly,” Alonso said, which… doesn’t mean a lot coming from the company that doesn’t drop the price of its day-and-date digital comics a month after their release, to be blunt. But hope springs eternal…

If you’ve “bought” anything from JManga, this is some bad news for you:

It is our regret to inform you that JManga.com will be concluding its retail and viewing services. All existing accounts and private information will be deleted without further notification… As of May 30th 2013 at 11:59pm (US Pacific Time) users will no longer be able to view digital manga content on JManga.com. At this time all purchased and free digital manga content will be erased from all JManga Member’s accounts.

Yes, that’s right: All purchased manga content will be erased.

Here’s the thing, though; this is how ComiXology works, too. If that company went out of business tomorrow – God forbid – then that would be happening with all of your purchases there, and on the various apps for the various publishers that they power. There’s nothing special about the JManga model of purchasing/really-paying-to-lease, aside from the fact that it’s the first to collapse. A lot, if not most, of digital comic purchasing works in a similar way.

Think about what happened when ComiXology was side-swiped by the traffic following Marvel’s #1 promotion this past weekend; it’s not just that you couldn’t buy new material, many people couldn’t access the material that they’d already paid for. Between that and this news about JManga, it’ll be interesting to see if ComiXology starts considering offering the right to download/back-up purchases anytime soon.

In light of the overwhelming demand for Marvel’s #1 freebie program – and ComiXology’s apparent inability to remain active during said demand – David Uzumeri considers the problems inherent with the ComiXology model as is:

[I]f Comixology books were downloadable in any form other than as proprietary data on their proprietary applications (iOS/Android), people could keep their local copies and not be locked out of reading books they’ve paid for. Whatever lost sales are prevented from this digital rights management can’t be worth the loss in customer confidence that accompanies what is, essentially, a contract breach between content provider and consumer… By effectively shutting down the Comixology platform for twenty-four hours, they’ve halted the revenue streams for every other digital comics publisher through this service, including DC Comics (www.readdcentertainment.com is painfully slow to the point of being almost unusable at the moment, although it’s not as bad as Comixology’s main site). While much of the Big Two’s back catalog is available on a number of platforms (iVerse, Kindle, Kobo, etc.), and DC’s new-release books are available on iBooks and Kindle, Marvel’s new-release catalog is only available through the Comixology platform. Additionally, it’s by far the preferred (and easiest-to-use) comics reading interface available for phones and tablets, and being the industry leader, it’s logical to put all one’s digital comics purchases under their umbrella. While I’m sure DC can weather the lack of revenue, I have to question how this affects an all-digital publisher like Monkeybrain, where this service outage could potentially put a hatchet to their entire revenue stream for its duration.

Just checking: Y’all did see that MonkeyBrain released a free comic by Brandon Jerwa, Eric S. Trautmann and Giovanni P. Timpano during ECCC this weekend, right…?

Meet FROST. His name is spoken in whispers from deep within the American intelligence community–a cypher, a walking secret, and the ultimate weapon against global terror. In the far-flung fields of battle against America’s enemies–a world where those who would protect us from harm must often trade in violence, deception and betrayal–there are those who strike a deadly balance between order and chaos. In this struggle, information and secrecy are as lethal as the gun, and where the ultimate practitioners of the military arts engage the enemy in the shadows…

And all for the cost of zero dollars and zero cents. Unless you hate the very idea of digital comics – and even then, MonkeyBrain has something for you soon enough – then what do you have to lose?

iFanboy’s Jim Mroczkowski considers the wonders and dangers of the digital comics store:

If you browse just some of what’s available out there now, poring through the infinite back issue bin of the Internet, it will only be a matter of minutes before you find yourself at the bottom of the world’s most expensive rabbit hole. That run of JLA by Chris Claremont and John Byrne is out there. Defenders issues from 1975 are out there. You could read the original run of New Mutants this afternoon and wash it down with Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, the Ultimate book that time forgot. I opened up comiXology and started poking around for examples half an hour ago, and now I owe them $11,000.

Speaking as someone who’s gone from “Oh, I remember those Green Lanterns by Len Wein and Dave Gibbons from when I was a kid!” to “Why did I just buy all of them, oh God” in seconds, I know exactly where Jim is coming from. There are certain series I very purposefully don’t even look up on ComiXology, purely because I know it would bankrupt me.

According to Crain’s New York Business, ComiXology is a start-up worth watching for investors:

If most tech startups are plumbing existing markets, comiXology has practically created a new one with its digital marketplace for comic books. Every major retailer and publisher sells comics through this Chelsea startup. In 2011, downloads from the site—100 million of them—accounted for 75% of all digital comics downloads that year, according to pop-culture site ICv2.com.

ComiXology turned profitable in 2011 on sales of $19 million, and while it hasn’t disclosed 2012 revenue, the company estimated that they would triple. Angel-backed, comiXology has yet to seek venture money, although it might in order to get more resources to grow, said co-founder and CEO David Steinberger.

Is this the first time that we’ve seen the $19 million/100 million downloads in 2011 figures? Considering the price point for digital releases, that’s a lot of free downloads in 2011… I wonder how that shifted last year, as DC and Marvel properly moved into day-and-date and the audience grew?

(EDIT: It’s been pointed out to me that the 100 million downloads number is all-time downloads, not 2011 alone. Sorry for my confusion.)

Over at ICv2, American Shonen Jump editor Andy Nakatani explains the thinking behind the title’s upcoming day-and-date digital release with the Japanese print edition:

Going back, when you think about it, when we were doing the print magazine here we were something like two years behind the Japanese edition, and I think the fans, the readers they always wanted something more current.  Plus the whole impetus behind starting (the digital) Shonen Jump Alpha last year was to catch the readers up and get as close as we could and we have managed to get within a few weeks of Japan.  So for this year the next logical step was to go simultaneous with publication in Japan… I would say that the main objectives are increasing circulation and increasing our subscriber base for it as well as creating a buzz for the whole product line.  As far as forestalling scanlation by going “simultaneous” we are trying to provide an alternative for those people who do want it right away.  The fastest that we can release the material is when it officially releases in Japan.  We can’t go before that.  That’s the best that we can do.

The immediacy does defeat one of the traditional reasons behind scanslations… I wonder if it will mean a drop in the number of scanslation readers for the material?

Interesting… Ron Perazza, who has previously worked with DC Comics on their digital plans (He headed up Zuda for them, way back when) and has most recently been seen with ComiXology as their Vice President and General Manager of Publisher and Creator Services and then launching his own Comic Book Think Tank to play with digital comics, has apparently signed up with Marvel in some mysterious new capacity:

The capacity in which Perazza will currently be serving the company is unknown, but it seems likely he’s working on something in the digital comics realm, considering his vast experience with the medium… When CBR contacted Marvel for specifics on Perazza’s employment, the publisher simply replied, “No Comment.”

We haven’t seen any new Infinite Comics since Avengers Vs. X-Men, despite the high-profile launch less than a year ago. Maybe Perazza has been lured over to continue the work he’s been doing with his Think Tank and make that more of an ongoing concern for the publisher?

After discussing future plans for Invincible at CBR, Robert Kirkman turns his attentions to the size of the digital comics audience:

I don’t really know the hard numbers off the top of my head, but I know when [The Walking Dead] started at comiXology, we were doing 5% and as we’ve continued to work with comiXology and branched out into other digital platforms, we’ve seen digital sales go from 5% of print sales to we’re getting close to 25 to 30% of print sales. The digital market is jumping and rising and growing exponentially while the print market continues to grow. I can say that I’ve seen that on all of my other books too, books like “Invincible.” The digital market continues to double over time, while the print market is completely unaffected. While I will say that there’s a lot of retailers out there and people who are hardcore fans of print comics that see digital as a threat, I can say that I’ve seen no end of evidence that that’s not the case at all, that we’re seeing a growing digital audience coinciding with a growing print audience and the two seem to be feeding off of each other in a way that seems to bring more sales to both, which is a really exciting and uplifting thing to see for the industry as a whole.

Are we possibly (finally?) at the point where we can all agree that – unlike almost every other medium – the digital comics audience seems to be additive to the analog market, and not a replacement? And, if so, does that mean that publishers can start experimenting with digital pricing without upsetting the delicate balance that is the Direct Market?

Congratulations, ComiXology, for having the third highest grossing iPad app of the year according to Apple.

Comics by ComiXology ranked just under DragonVale and Slotmania HD in terms of iPad apps that have brought in the most money throughout the year; alongside Pages and Quickoffice Pro, it’s one of only three non-games apps to make the list, somewhat surprisingly. No surprise, then, that the company describes itself as “one of the leading drivers of the iPad economy.” May 2013 be just as productive for them.

Having addressed the cost breakdown of print comics last week, Skullkickers‘ Jim Zub now turns his attentions to digital comics:

A lot of people have talked about the need for cheaper digital comic prices to drive impulse buying in casual/new readers. Right now most of the digital comics available are selling at a similar price to their print counterparts. Outside of sales and special promotions, a $2.99 print comic is selling for $2.99 digitally. People assume that digital content should be much cheaper because it has no physical component, but there are development and infrastructure costs that go into creating and maintaining a digital platform. It’s hard to say whether they’re equivalent, but right now the pricing is relatively equal.

Overall, he estimates, creative teams get somewhere between 17 and 23% of the digital pie – which is far better than their percentage of print profit, but as he points out, “the creative team gets more of the pie with a digital sale, but it’s a smaller sized pie right now.”

If you have an iPad and an interest in comics that extends beyond the Big Two, may I draw your attention to Symbolia, which launches today…?:

Symbolia is a bi-monthly digital magazine dedicated to incendiary storytelling from around the world. We’re merging longform journalism and sequential art to create an entirely new digital news experience. Subscriptions are $11.99 for 6 issues, and single issues will be available for $2.99 a pop. Our preview issue is free, and comes with any subscription.Symbolia’s preview issue features incredible stories from around the globe, including:

• Susie Cagle’s thoughtful exploration of California’s Salton Sea.
• A look at life in Iraqi Kurdistan by Sarah Glidden.
• Kat Fajardo and Audrey Quinn on evolution and a fish called “The White Man’s Office” in the Lower Congo River.
• The bold history of Zambian Psychadelic Rock, by Chris A. Smith and Damien Scogin.
• Andy Warner and Lauren Sommer tour the millions of microflora in our guts.

If you don’t have an iPad but want to read this kind of thing, don’t worry; they’re working on eBook editions for Amazon, Nook, and Google stores, as well as stand-alone Kindle and Android apps. This could be the start of something awesome, really.

One reason for the creation of Shonen Jump Alpha and the simultaneous release of strips in English with their Japanese originals is, according to Viz’s Alvin Lu, a desire to re-create the “New Comics Wednesday” experience of the American comic market for manga fans. Brigid Alverson explains:

For many years, readers of American comics have had the ritual of going to the comics shop on Wednesdays, the day new comics come out, not just to buy comics but also to meet up with other fans. That hasn’t existed in the manga world, because it is more of a book business than a serial business, but Shonen Jump Alpha brings that weekly component into the mix. “It’s so important to build a core customer, a regularity, even a sense of community,” Lu said. “As a company, our graphic novel business does great for us, but to really foster that manga community and to really grow that readership—we were struggling with that.”Shonen Jump Alpha has provided that platform. “That sense of community built up [very quickly] around this digital publication, and it became very apparent that Shonen Jump Alpha is much more than something you download onto your phone or something that you check in on on your website once a week,” Lu said. “It’s a living community that you interact with, and it goes beyond the digital delivery once a week.”

As I said yesterday, the potential for really changing the impact of international comics in the US through digital distribution like this is kind of fascinating…

Dan Goldman talks about the various incarnations of his Red Light Properties webcomic that have led to its new home at MonkeyBrain Comics:

There’s been waves of incredible excitement and incredible disappointment. Like I said, be nimble and keep changing when something isn’t working: I’ve worked with a sponsor (Tor.com), I’ve produced free daily webcomics (redlightproperties.com). Last year, I switched off of the webcomic free model and I opened up a storefront on my site to sell digital issues in CBR and PDF formats. That was not as successful, but that opened my thinking up to having the series available on the Kindle Fire and Nook and Kobo stores using Graphicly’s distribution system. Again, it all sounded like a great idea, a great experiment. Also not one that yielded fantastic results.

See, the hardest thing for me is that I love to write and I love to draw and I love to tell stories, but marketing yourself and promoting yourself and building a community around it is a whole other job, and it’s not a job I really enjoy doing. I don’t want to hawk what I’ve done when my brain’s already thinking about the new stuff. If I’m going to take away any lesson from the past two years, it would be that it’s okay to have help. Where I need that help is getting the word out there, engaging with the community of readers that would be interested in what I’m doing if they knew it existed.

RLP is something that feels like it’s been on the fringes of comic culture for a long time (It launched on Tor a few years back, to my recollection), which is a shame; Goldman’s a particular talent, and one deserving of a lot more attention than he’s gotten historically. I really hope that the move to MonkeyBrain – The first issues of RLP are released through them on ComiXology today – works out for everyone involved.

(And don’t forget; it’s still November, so all MonkeyBrain profits from purchases are still going to the Hero Initiative.)

This seems like a big day-and-date deal to me:

Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha, Viz Media’s weekly digital manga anthology, will begin releasing content the same day as it’s released by its Japanese counterpart on January 21, 2013, the company announced.  This is no mean feat, as it involves translation of episodic content that is, at times, produced very close to its Japanese release date. Beginning on that January date, new installments of Bleach, Cross Manage, Naruto, Nisekoi, One Piece, and Toriko will premiere on the same day as they premiere in Japan. Monthly installments of Blue Exorcist, Rurouni Kenshin: Restoration and Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal will debut the closest Monday after the Japanese release. Nisekoi, a Naoshi Komi romantic comedy, is a new series for Shonen Jump Alpha beginning this week.

2000AD, of course, began digitally publishing on the same day as UK print release earlier this year, but it didn’t have to worry about translation issues at all; As digital publishing and distribution become increasingly commonplace in the everyday production of print material around the world, expect to see more of this kind of thing – Especially considering that it increases the size of potential audience for new work from a local market to an international one in one fell swoop.

If you’ve been tempted to try some of the Monkeybrain titles but haven’t taken the dive just yet, wait a couple of days. Chris Roberson explains why:

Over the decades, countless comic creators have given us excitement and inspiration, entertained and educated us. And we need to give back.

For most of the history of American comic books, the only income that creators received were the page rates for the work they did. Writers, artists, letterers, and colorists would be paid a flat rate for the pages they turned in, without any royalties for sales or equity for their creations. If a comic were to be reprinted, the creators would not receive any additional payment, nor would they be compensated if characters and concepts from their work were used elsewhere, whether in other comics, in other media, or in merchandising. And since the overwhelming majority of comic creators were freelance employees, there were no pensions or retirement funds for them to look forward to.

In more recent decades, comic book publishers have instituted new policies for comic creators. Some began to offer royalties and bonus incentives for creators, so that if their work sold well or was reprinted, they would participate in those profits. Some publishers instituted creator equity deals, so that if a creator’s concepts and characters were to generate profits in other media, the creator would reap some of the benefit. But few if any of these policies have been made retroactive, and as much as later generations of creators have benefited from the improved financial arrangements, generations of creators who came before them have not.

There are far too many stories of well-respected, talented writers and artists who created successful and beloved comics in previous decades, and who now are living in reduced means—unable to afford health care, unable to find paying work, some even homeless. At the same time, characters created and co-created by many of these same creators have gone on to appear in major motion pictures, on television, and in toy aisles.

The American comic book industry was built on selling morality tales to young readers, stories of men and women who fought for justice and stood up for what was right. And the writers, artists, and others who created those stories deserve better than they have received.

Thankfully, they have the Hero Initiative in their corner.

For more than a decade, the Hero Initiative has provided a safety net for comic book veterans who need assistance, whether in the form of financial support, emergency medical aid, or an avenue back to paying work. In that time, the Hero Initiative has granted more than $500,000 to over 50 comic book veterans. But as a not-for-profit corporation, the Hero Initiative relies on donations and contributions to continue its work.

Throughout the month of November, Monkeybrain Comics will be donating all of its income to the Hero Initiative. Our creators will still receive their cut of the profits, but the portion of each sale that we retain as publisher’s profits will be donated in its entirety to the Hero Initiative.

As we in the United States prepare to celebrate the American holiday of Thanksgiving, please consider giving thanks to the veteran creators who have given us so much over the years by donating to the Hero Initiative. And we encourage other publishers to join us in supporting the Hero Initiative through direct donations. Unless and until creator royalties and equity participation policies are made retroactive, charities like the Hero Initiative are the only support many veteran creators have available to them.

Sincerely,
Chris Roberson
Monkeybrain Comics

If you have been checking out the Monkeybrain books through ComiXology, you’ll know how good they are across the board. If you haven’t, I suggest that you wait until Thursday and try out Edison Rex, Amelia Cole and The Unknown World and Bandette first, although you can’t really go wrong with any of them. There’s even a couple of new titles being launched tomorrow: Brandon Seifert, and Michael Montenat’s Spirit of The Law and Zach Smith and Rich Ellis’ The Stars Below, previews of which are below. Seriously, this is a great think Chris, Alison and Monkeybrain are doing, and I hope they everyone tries out some new comics and helps the Hero Initiative as a result.