MW Update

MIDNIGHT’S WAR campaign update.

Days Left: 26

% of Goal: 89.5

Backers: 154

It’s taken a little longer than previous campaigns, but we’re almost there. A new stretch goal will be announced tomorrow if the initial target is hit tonight. Bounding Into Comics has a nice article up reporting on the launch of the campaign. If you’re a backer, be sure to leave a comment there!

The series is currently free to read on Arkhaven Comics’ digital platform Arkhaven and currently has over 56 episodes published to date. According to the site’s metrics it’s one of the more popular titles on the site and has over 250,000 views.

The new Kickstarter will collect the first six issues of the series that are currently available to read on Arkhaven.com. However, it also offers collected editions of issues 7-12 as well. These issues continue the story of Dante Fitzalan, Arika su-Fitzalan, Julian Varney, Denisa Denue Remords, and Andre Montbard and “follows the bitter vendetta being fought between two of the rival vampire factions, a vendetta that was, unbeknownst to both factions, caused by a hostile third party.”

Not only that it also offers a collection of a new Chuck Dixon spinoff series, Midnight’s War: Night Streets, which is described as a “police procedural set within the Midnight World that features characters introduced in Midnight’s War as well as entirely new characters.”

On a related note, it is looking increasingly likely that we will be able to do the leather omnibus edition in color. We will run some test bindings in the new year in order to be sure.

UPDATE: Greenlight! We are currently at 102.6% of goal on Day 3. Thanks to all 171 of the backers! The first stretch goal will be announced tomorrow.

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Black Friday Book Sale

Aetherczar announces the Based Black Friday Book Sale

Bypass the cultural gatekeeping, support non-woke authors, and get yourself some great books from both established and emerging talent for only $0.99 – many titles free! Sale starts today, Wednesday November 23, and runs through Tuesday November 29.

The new additions from the previous sale include science fiction grandmasters, Dragon Award winners and nominees, established mainstream authors, and emerging indie talent. Authors include Patrick Abbott, James Alderdice, J.M. Anjewierden, Graham Bradley, Henry Brown, Misha Burnett, Paul Clayton, Mel Dunay, Marina Fontaine, Karl K. Gallagher, N. Gray, Steve Griffiths, William Hastings, Chris Haught, Daniel Humphreys, Becky R. Jones, M.R. Kayser, Chris Kennedy, Moe Lane, B.P. McCoppin, Jon Mollison, Chance Paladin, S. Kirk Pierzchala, Alex Rath, Denton Salle, Cedar Sanderson, David Skinner, R.H. Snow, Glen Sprigg, Henry Vogel, David J. West, Thomas Wilson, John C. Wright, and Page Zaplendam.

And in related news, the MIDNIGHT’S WAR campaign has begun. You can now obtain print editions of Arkhaven’s excellent introduction to the Midnight World. Remember that the Kickstarter system is different than Indiegogo, so instead of multiple backings, back one reward and then use the add-ons to select additional items. For example, back for the first paperback (issues 1-6), then add on the second paperback (7-12) and the third one (Night Streets 1-6). While you aren’t permitted to do multiple backings, you can add add-ons to your backing later.

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The De-Comicization of DC

It looks like Ethan van Sciver was correct all along, as DC Comics officially removes “Comics” from its branding.

DC’s website is now known as simply DC.com instead of the original DCcomics.com, quietly and officially dropping the “comics” designation from their branding.

“DC.com is a celebration of everything across the DC Multiverse and we couldn’t be more excited for today’s launch,” DC GM/SVP Anne DePies stated in the release. “We are doubling down on DC’s digital ecosystem and there has never been a better time to be a DC fan and with this one-stop shop, we’re bringing everything together in one place to easily access and celebrate your fandom.”

In terms of all media and not just comics, the brand is undergoing a restructure and, more than that, its studio operations are under threat of a great reset.

Translation: DC’s owners only need the existing IP and they don’t believe the traditional comics publishing operation is going to produce any new IP of value. So farming out the IP to other publishers and collecting royalties makes more sense than continuing to self-produce new comics content, since the comics publishing revenue is trivial and creates more trouble than it’s worth.

Meanwhile, Arkhaven Comics is about to release a major new Arktoons update that is going to significantly increase its daily traffic. The best Arktoons content already compares favorably with the best that Webtoons and Tapas have to offer, and neither of them have anything to compete with what we believe is going to be a seriously game-changing development.

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Making Millions with Comics

AC takes a little offense at the massive success of Eric July’s comic kickstarter.

GET BASED, MAKE BANK! ANTI-WOKE COMIC RAKES IN $1.7M IN PRE-ORDERS – I’m not linking to this shit, just because it pisses me off. But this was an article on Stephen Crowder’s website. Basically some random asshole had the totally new idea to make a book of non-woke comics, which he is charging $90 for, and he has supposedly sold $1.7 million of them. And Crowder is promoting it. First, notice, no mention of Arkhaven comics or Vox Day, who have only been doing this better and bigger, even for free, for years now, and who no doubt would dwarf this guy. Second, no way this guy shows up unannounced and has more reach than Vox has accumulated, after decades amassing fans in all sorts of genres. But he sells $1.7 million of $90 books almost overnight? Do you think you could do that? Would Crowder mention you, if you did? What you are seeing is how the machine tries to bleed Arkhaven, by having one of their actors show up, with a product the machine created, get free pimping on some machine mouthpiece, with sales that sound a bit odd, and try to squeeze the real things out of the market. Learn to see the difference between the real things, and those things they jam in your face.

It’s possible that AC is correct and that this is an attempt to suck all the air out of the independent comic space. I certainly wouldn’t put it past the Ticket Masters; they seem to be prone to funding their pet ticket takers in any and every possible area, however unlikely, for fear of the organic growth of an institution without any use for them.

That being said, it’s true there are a LOT of cucks, cons, and mainstream Republicans who are irritated by the social justice demolition of the entire entertainment industry and would LOVE to vote for a Black man for President. We see this every election cycle and we see it in the insta-success of ideological chameleons like Candace Owens, who made the difficult transition from full-blown SJW thought policewoman to professional conservative Black woman without breaking a sweat or generating a single word of criticism in the media. So, the massive success of a conservative Black man writing a Gary Stu comic where the villain is Racism doesn’t exactly surprise me. Better him than the SJWs at Marvel and DC. Much better.

Either way, I don’t share AC’s outrage. I have never feared competition; to the contrary, I find it extremely motivating. And there is plenty of room for multiple independent unconverged comics publishers; there is a LOT of enemy ground that needs to be retaken for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

Ever since the unexpected success of the original ALT-HERO crowdfund, people on the nominal right have been trying to move into that space in order to outshine Arkhaven. Eric July and the Blaze-Daily Wire Axis aren’t the only contestants; an intriguing new alliance between EVS, Larry Correia, and Baen Books should prove amusing in at least one way or another. None of this is any concern to me, because Arkthaven’s strategy relies solely upon being consistently better than everyone else, as the next major Arktoons release should suffice to demonstrate.

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MIDNIGHT’S WAR #6: A Center of Catastrophic Entropy

Suspending the Arkhaven Blog

No, it’s not being deplatformed or anything like that. The problem is a technical one, as too much traffic over too much time at the arkhavencomics-dot-com site has overwhelmed the WordPress database and the site has bogged down to the point that it is interfering with the necessary operations of the Library store it hosts. So, until the new Castalia Library site goes live, we’re suspending the Arkhaven blog and its comments. We anticipate the new site will be operational in 6-8 weeks.

This will not have any effect on Arktoons, as it utilizes a custom system that is hosted on a different server.

With regards to Castalia Library, Book 13 is The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling and Book 14 is Politics by Aristotle. Also, some good news on the bindery construction, as the machine list is complete, the specificied machines have been acquired, and the entire setup is being operationally tested over the next 2-4 weeks prior to being transported and installed. Best of all, it’s been done within the original budget.

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THE AWAKENER is out

We had a watching party to celebrate the English-language release of the movie based on the SuperPrumo/Arkhaven comic THE AWAKENER tonight. It was, in the words of one attendee, better than expected. Granted, one doesn’t have the same expectations for a Brazilian movie dubbed in English, but if the stunts and CGI were low-budget and the character development was occasionally a little clumsy, the story, the music, and the style were all really good.

It will warm the heart of anyone who ever wished that the January 6th media narrative had been based on something real. And it ends with a line worthy of the great John C. Wright himself. The last time I felt so amped at the end of a movie was after watching the one and only The Matrix movie.

Arkhaven will be releasing a pair of commemorative comics very soon, featuring custom cover art from one of our best illustrators, but in the meantime, you won’t want to miss the movie, which is available from Amazon.

A really good job by Luciano and his crew!

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Arktoons 4 Million

Arkhaven Comics launched its Arktoons site for free digital comics in April 2021. Since its debut with 16 comic series, Arktoons has continued to expand and now features more than 60 different series which run episodes on a weekly or twice-weekly basis. The site currently features 1202 episodes, and as Arkhaven’s most prolific creator, The Legend Chuck Dixon, has observed, the Arktoons site traffic has increased steadily in the seven months since its launch.

“Everyone can see all the numbers right there on the site. And everyone can see that the time between each million views is becoming shorter and shorter.”

ALT★HERO Episode 36: You Have to Go Back

THE STRANDED Episode 2: Attacking Europa

SOMETHING BIG Episode 25: Down to Gorktown

SAVAGE MEMES Episode 62: Veritas

ADOBE KROGER: DAME COMMANDER Episode 3

CLASSIC BIBLE TALES Episode 29: The Return to Nazareth

It took just seven weeks for Arktoons to go from three million to four million views. Will it take even less time for the third-ranked Toons site to reach five million? Stay tooned…

To join the cultural offensive by supporting Arktoons and its growing range of comics, subscribe here.

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Three Million Views

On April 28, 2021, Arkhaven Comics announced Arktoons, an independent comics site. Arktoons launched with four episodes of the initial 17 series scheduled for the first week. Less than six months later, 881 episodes of 50 series have been published, with between four and seven new episodes appearing every day, and the site has recorded its three-millionth view.

GREAT STORIES BELONG TO THE WORLD!

Arktoons still has a long way to go to become the #1 comics site. It presently has 79 percent of the DC Infinite Universe traffic, 10.5 percent of the Tapas traffic and 1.1 percent of the Webtoons readership. But that is infinitely more than it had six months ago, and it already has 78.5 percent MORE traffic than Marvel HQ. And new series are coming regularly from various independent creators, in addition to upcoming Arkhaven series such as: WITCHSTALKER, RED HORNET, MIDNIGHT’S WAR: NIGHT STREETS, and HOW TO SUCCEED LIKE A DARK LORD.

Thanks very much to the dev team, the production team, the writers, the illustrators, the colorists, and the letterers, whose hard and persistent work has been the solid foundation upon which Arktoons has been built. Special thanks to our partners including Superprumo, Rislandia, and all the other independent creators. And much appreciation for the Arktoons subscribers, Arkhaven backers, and Patreon patrons whose support has made the entire project not only possible, but viable.

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