#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
You’re not going to want to miss this one. The movie is based on the first of The Legend’s Levon Cade novels, which we will be publishing collected in leather as part of the upcoming Black Warrant campaign, which will be launched in April. I want to get the standard Hypergamouse books delivered before the Chuck Dixon campaign begins.
Fandom Pulse interviewed The Legend Chuck Dixon about his forthcoming film, A Working Man, which launches on March 28th. It’s based on the first book in the Levon Cade series, Levon’s Trade.
Chuck Dixon is a prolific comic book creator having created the infamous Batman villain Bane and crafting the popular Knightfall storyline for DC Comics. He’s also had lengthy runs on the Punisher, Robin, Batgirl, and helped create the Birds of Prey. He even did a comic book adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit as well as adaptations of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time. But he’s also done yeoman’s work with novels crafting an entire time-traveling science fiction series in Bad Times as well as his vigilante thriller series Levon Cade, which is being adapted into a film starring Jason Statham and titled A Working Man.
Dixon spoke with Fandom Pulse about the upcoming film, his relationship with Sylvester Stallone’s Balboa Productions, which is producing A Working Man, and his views on wokeness following the second election of President Donald Trump and how he sees it affecting Hollywood.
Fandom Pulse (FP): You published Levon’s Trade over a decade ago, was there any particular reason why Balboa Productions wanted to adapt this first novel of your series?
Chuck Dixon: I sent both my Levon Cade books and my Bad Times series to Sly and he liked both and discussed with me plans to make either films or a series of both of them. There was, for a moment, a suggestion from him that I recast Bad Time with the Expendables for a feature film. Time traveling Expendables!
Anyhow, Sly decided Levon was the way to go as it wouldn’t require a large budget. It’s not hard to see why the books appealed to Sly. Levon’s the kind of hero he’s played so many times and the books are pure action with an emphasis on fast pace and rapid character development.
FP: Do you know why they decided to retitle it A Working Man instead of Levon’s Trade?
Dixon: No idea. The marketing department tested some titles and this one was chosen from the results, I imagine. A shame since the Levon books have the sequel titles built into them.
As Darkstream viewers know, The Legend and I have been signed to write the script for a supernatural action thriller for an Asian film production company. The script is mostly complete, but rest assured that we’ve made sure to retain the rights to do it as a comic or a novel if the movie doesn’t get made in a reasonable time frame.
As Fandom Pulse reports, it’s not just Marvel, DC Comics, and Diamond that are in an obvious death spiral. Webtoons, their obvious digital successor, has been in decline ever since going public in 2022:
The company lost approximately $153 million in Q4 2024, which is up from $33 million in Q4 2023, posting a full year loss of $214 million up from $135 million in 2023. The company blames a lot of the assets on one-time IPO-related costs and aggressive marketing to get more creators on the platform.
Users note in recent years, Webtoon seems to have gotten more desperate to try to monetize their site, which has created a worse user experience. There are ads above every Webtoon stack which promote “treasure hunts,” where users get coins to spend on the site by signing up for brand email lists and watching more ads.
While they had a “Fastpass” situation where users could read ahead on monetized webtoons to pay creators in advance of the rest of the public, now users don’t have to have coins but can watch ads to get it, and some now have discounted coin prices where readers watch 30 seconds of ads to increase ad revenue. On top of this, they’ve introduced tipping to the website, encouraging creators to get their readers to do so by having an incentive-based leaderboard to do so.
None of this has brought the site to profitability, though Reddit users have noticed the changes to the site not being positive and have posited that Webtoon is on its way down.
Meanwhile, competitor Arkhaven Comics has reached over 16 million views on its website, running without ads and quietly being built entirely on user support. With Webtoon’s functionality getting more difficult to use, the environment seems ripe for a competitor to take over as the leader in web comics
Arkhaven has been very quiet in the last year. That’s not a coincidence. When the environment is not ripe for advancement, it’s always best to harbor one’s resources and await the right moment to aggressively move forward. The time is not yet right, but there are some signs that before long, it will be.
In the meantime, we’re making sure that when everyone else is going down in flames, Arkhaven will be the one left standing. The recently-approved proof of the HYPERGAMOUSE VOL. 1 hardcover for the backers will make it clear how, while the market leaders are spiraling downward, we’re raising our game.
A few things. First, I’ve got two related posts up at White Bull that may be of interest to those who are either a) trying to break into a new industry or b) interested in the history of the game industry. I used my own experience of going from a complete outsider to an industry oldtimer as a practical example; the first post is here and contains a link to the second one at the end.
Second, if you’d like to see what the very large and very pretty Hypergamouse hardcover looks like, there are some pictures up at Sigma Game. The pictures and a video will go up on Arkhaven later. And speaking of Arkhaven, the Dark Herald has a detailed discussion of one of my favorite books by Tanith Lee, Delusion’s Master, that is well worth reading by anyone who enjoys the dark side of fantasy.
Third, we’ve opened up the SOULSIGMA campaign again for the nine backers whose backings didn’t go through due to some vagaries of the way the FMC system interacts with the payment processor; apparently I selected a suboptimal setting when setting it up. So if you’re one of those nine backers, or if you weren’t but you’d like to jump in there ex post facto, you can back the album here.
And finally, a reader had a question about Umberto Eco’s work and how it relates to conspiracy theory:
I have reread Foucault’s Pendulum and I have read The Name of the Rose and The Prague Cemetery. You said in your 2013 top ten list of books that “Perhaps my subscription to the conspiracy theory of history is one reason I rate Foucault’s Pendulum so highly, but I stand firmly by my high regard for Eco.” I have tried to get a more subtle read on Eco’s work rereading “FP” but It seems to me he is very much interested on demystifying these tropes, for example by constructing a plot in which the conspiracionist take the mad theories from three leftist editors very seriously and end up killing the main architect of the madness because the only way to salvage his hurt pride (the novel is very funny in the constant humillition of Belbo, specially the scenes in which Lorenza is involved) is to not reveal the secret: that there is no secret, it is all false.
In the “PC” something similar happens, where all the conspiracies of the late 19 century are pinned under a despicable guy who has no values but the love of money and will invent anything, including a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. So Eco gives us a fictional account of the birth of a text, “The protocols of the elders of Sion”, that in the official history is considered to be a libel. Now I am sure these things don’t escape you, because you are much more smarter than me, but I still don’t see how his work vindicates your phrase I quoted. Is it just that you enjoy these themes treated in such a beautiful and sophisticated way, even though the author does not believe in them? Or is it the classic the message trascends the writter, and the story is more true than he seems to believe?
The reader seems to have a fundamental problem understanding the concept of a novel and its relation to the writer. Contra his assumptions, he has no idea what Eco actually thought about any of these things, which would be true of most halfway-decent authors, but is particularly true of an author who just happens to be a world expert on semiotics, signs, and symbols.
The idea that Eco is demystifying anything is absurd on its face. He loved myths, fables, and conspiracies. To look at his various explanations for them as attempts to reduce them to harmlessness in the service of the mainstream Narrative in which nothing happens for a reason and nobody accomplishes anything is to fundamentally miss the point. Eco was more akin to someone who loves puzzles and enjoys putting them together, which is why anyone else who loves puzzles will enjoy reading his book; moreover, let’s not forget the concept of blown cover as cover.
Being a world-famous public intellectual, Eco would have known better than anyone that there are secrets that cannot be safely revealed to everyone. Ergo, what better way to reveal them than by doing so in an innocuous manner that purports to make it clear that the secrets, such as they are, don’t even exist, especially given the inarguable evidence that they do, in fact exist. And this is precisely the sort of interpretation that one could not possibly rule out, given Eco’s very puckish sense of humor.
First thing: the new Castalia Library book for March-April 2025 has been announced.
Second thing: DRACULA is being bound. SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON and ASOS 1 and ASOS 2 are being printed. We’ll keep you posted on when they’ve a) been approved and b) are ready to ship.
Third thing: We’ve finally completed the move from the second bindery space to the third one. This was absolutely necessary because the 50-ton foil stamper did not fit in the building. We are now testing our third and fourth glues, and we are optimistic that one of them will be the right one.
Fourth thing: We know we’ve built up a backlog, but we’re not quite as behind schedule as it seems because most of the interiors and the designs are done. We’ve delayed getting them made because we want to know what the full range of our bindery options are, as there were benefits and problems to each of them, even before the new tariffs became a potential issue. The point is, don’t worry, we will catch up fast once all of the necessary details are nailed down.
Fifth thing: The fancy-dancy HYPERGAMOUSE cover proof will arrive on Friday. Once it’s approved, the paperback, hardcover, variants, and book blocks will be printed.
Sixth thing: We’re close enough that we’ve started putting together the interior of THE ILIAD. It’s going to be an original layout with illustrations leading every chapter. It promises to be spectacular. More about it later this week on the Library substack.
A WORKING MAN, starring Jason Statham, will be coming out March 25th. It’s based on The Legend Chuck Dixon’s first Levon Cade novel, Levon’s Trade, was adapted for film by Sylvester Stallone himself, and based on the trailer, appears to be pretty faithful to the novel.
Dixon. Statham. Stallone.
That’s a lot of testosterone right there.
It’s got at least one killer line in it too.
“You a cop?”
It looks like a quality action flick of the sort that Schwarzenegger and company used to make, with the trademark Dixonian working man hero. Should be fun!
Games Workshop tries to claim ownership of a concept that existed long before the company itself:
Games Workshop, the company that owns Warhammer, is attempting to shut down Jon Del Arroz’s Space Marine comic claiming he is infringing on the company’s trademark. In a post to X, Del Arroz, the co-owner and founder of Fandom Pulse, shared an email sent to crowdfunding website FundMyComic demanding Del Arroz’s The Emerald Array comic be removed from its website.
Fund My Comic’s Founder and operator Luke Stone informed Del Arroz via email that he has no plans to remove the comic or graphic novel from the site. He told Del Arroz, “At this time, the campaign will remain active on our platform. Our preliminary evaluation indicates that while the campaign may contain derivative works, it does not appear to infringe on any trademarks owned by the requesting party.”
It’s an absurd attempt to expand an already-questionable trademark. In fact, the trademark is so questionable that I suspect if Games Workshop were to take anyone to court, even someone infringing upon the protected space of “video computer games, computer software for playing games” it would find itself at risk of losing a trademark it probably should never have been awarded in the first place, just as the Arthur Conan Doyle estate lost its Sherlock Holmes trademark following a misguided attempt to prevent an author from “violating” it.
There are eight hours left in the campaign, so you can still back it if you haven’t already. And while it’s not an Arkhaven crowdfund, Arkhaven Comics will be publishing the retail editions.
Fandom Pulse has an exclusive on Arkhaven Comics and Chuck Dixon getting the crew back together to turn Levon’s Trade, aka A Working Man starring Jason Statham, into a graphic novel.
Chuck Dixon wowed the world in early January when the trailer or A Working Man dropped, a new film based on his Levon Cade novels. Now, he’s partnering with Arkhaven Comics to adapt the first novel, Levon’s Trade into a graphic novel.
While Chuck Dixon is well known for his comic book work as a legendary creator of Bane in the Batman lore, and as one of if not the most prolific writers of all time, until Jasom Statham was announced as Levon Cade for the new film, A Working Man, many didn’t know that Dixon was also an accomplished novelist with several works, including a twelve-book series with Levon Cade.
The first book, Levon’s Trade boasts a 4.4 star average rating on Amazon with more than 700 reviews, a very popular installment for the author. A new review by Douglas Marolla calls the series “great” and highlights the character work Dixon put into not only Cade, but several of the supporting characters.
A Working Man has so much buzz already that comedians are incorporating the film into their routines, with poignant commentary on Jason Statham’s past roles combined with this one.
Arkhaven will announce a crowdfunding campaign for this and another much-anticipated Chuck Dixon project, but not until after the standard Hypergamouse books ship out to the backers.
The Dark Herald has taken his talents to the Arkhaven substack, and he’s gotten off to a blistering start with a comparison of Neil Gaiman’s derivative work to the woman from whose work he derived it:
One is the real deal and the other is a cheap knockoff of the original.
There is a Swiss Rolex and there is a Bangkok Rolex. There is Classic Coke and there is Sam’s Cola. There is the Mona Lisa in the Louvre and the one on Cousin Jimbo’s velvet blanket.
There is Tannith Lee and there is Neil Gaiman.
This has become vastly apparent to me this weekend while reading Night’s Master. It’s a funny thing about writers, we all have that one writer that made us want to write for a living. While learning the craft we discover our strengths and limitations. Some of us will eventually discover that we have surpassed our masters. In bitter truth, most of us will discover that we can’t due to the limitations of our innate talents but those who face this unpleasant realization do not resent the writer who inspired us.
Mostly.
Gamma males, on the other hand, live in a world blanketed by their resentments and can never bring themselves to give credit where it’s due. It’s too painful a truth to acknowledge. How can I be the secret king when there is all too obviously a real king? John Scalzi has never given credit to Joe Haldeman for his influence on his early work, although it’s clearly there. Neil Gaiman’s disdain for Tanith Lee went all the way back to when he was doing literary reviews. By Lee’s account, (which I will take over Gaiman’s in a heartbeat), he was pleasant, fawning and even obsequious during his interview of her for the Guardian. When he published his interview, Lee discovered that Gaiman had described her as “formerly attractive.”
On top of which, reportedly and according to Lee’s belief, he directly plagiarized entire paragraphs from her. I haven’t seen the direct evidence of the truth of the plagiarism yet, but I suspect that between the Dark Herald and me, we should be able to find it if, in fact, it exists. While I’m very familiar with the various tales of the Flat Earth, including the Secret Books of Paradys, which I own and have read repeatedly, and also own her Secret Books of Venus series, I’d never read a single Neil Gaiman work until after we launched Arkhaven and I was encouraged to read Sandman.
Which, you may recall from the streams I was doing at the time, struck me immediately as mediocre and derivative, as well as more than a little off-putting.
Anyhow, it’s no surprise that the Dark Herald is off to an excellent start at the Arkhaven substack. He’ll be blogging there henceforth, so if you’re accustomed to reading him at the store site, I’d encourage you to sign up for a free subscription there.
In other Arkhaven news, we received the test print of JDA’s Overmind omnibus from the new printer this weekend. The quality of the color printing is excellent, indeed, one could quite credibly say superlative. We’re placing an order for the initial print run of 75 leatherbound copies, so there will be a few extras available for sale when they’re ready. The Hypergamouse printing will soon follow. And two additional bonuses; the leatherbound comics will be sewn, and somewhat to my surprise, color edge printed.
When Arkhaven Comics launched, we made a non-obvious decision to stay out of the comic stores and the traditional distribution system. This significantly slowed our growth and our exposure to potential customers, but it has proven, over time, to have been the right decision. The reason we can say that is because, as Fandom Pulse reports, the primary distributor of comics to the comics stores, Diamond Comic Distributors, filed for bankruptcy today:
Diamond Comic Distributors has been on the decline for years as the former monolith in comic book store distribution, but now a message from their CEO revealed the company is filing chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Dear Valued Customer, I’m writing to share one of the most challenging messages of my career. Earlier today, Diamond made the difficult but necessary decision to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This step is intended to stabilize our financial foundation and protect the most vital aspects of our business. This decision was not made lightly, and I understand that this news may be as difficult to hear as it is for me to share. The Diamond leadership team and I have worked tirelessly to avoid this outcome but the financial challenges we face have left us with no other viable option. Chapter 11 will provide us with the opportunity to restructure and address our financial obligations. This process will likely include the sale of key assets of Diamond Comic Distributors.
This means that there are a lot of publishers who are wondering if they are going to get paid for the comics they delivered to Diamond over the last six months. Fortunately, Arkhaven is not one of them.