Tag: Arkhaven

Stretch Goal 2

Now that the campaign has blown past its first stretch goal, it’s time to announce Stretch Goal #2. And that is a six-page introduction which will include all of the original HYPERGAMOUSE cartoons. This will increase the length of the regular editions to 124 pages and the coffee table book to 234 pages. Stretch Goal #2 is set at $60,000; the campaign is currently at 65 percent of that.

Below is an image of Mari as she was first conceived by the original artist on the left, and Mari as she was subsequently illustrated by Lacey Fairchild on the right. This introduction will make Volume 1 a comprehensive historical collection, and one well worth backing in order to add to one’s library. Imagine if an original first edition of PEANUTS had ever been produced in this manner and what that would be worth today.

Fandom Pulse recently published a nice article on the history of Arkhaven and the Hypergamouse campaign:

While Eric July and Ethan Van Sciver often dominate the conversation of the ant-woke sphere in comics, Arkhaven Comics has been building infrastructure and systems to produce thousands of pages of quality content in a host of different genres. Their Webtoon competitor website has reached over 15 million views, and their latest Kickstarter campaign, Hypergamouse, is a huge success after its first day live.

Arkhaven started in 2017 as a response to the woke nightmare that Marvel and DC Comics had become. Writer and publisher Vox Day created a crowdfund that shook the comic industry, with Alt-Hero raising more than $250,000 in its initial offering, which spawned a whole line of comics. Creators like Ya Boi Zack and Ethan Van Sciver saw the incredible amount a company could make on crowdfunding and ventured into their own books the year after Vox Day launched the first ComicsGate project, capitalizing on the momentum here.

But Vox Day didn’t stop there. He teamed up with many creators, including industry veteran Chuck Dixon, who’s been creating an incredible amount of work through Arkhaven’s site, including fan favorites such as My Sister Suprema and Something Big.

Another hit on the Arkhaven website has been Lacey Fairchild’s Hypergamouse. A comedy strip focused on the socio-sexual hierarchy, Fairchild combines the anthropomorphic slice-of-life humor of old newspaper comics with modern theming, making Hypergamouse something special for readers.

In the interest of precision, I would point out that calling Alt-Hero the first ComicsGate project is correct in the original sense of the term that referred to a consciously anti-mainstream independent comic. Obviously, it predated both the term and the trademark, and the only Arkhaven project that was even tangentially related to ComicsGateTM was the original publication of Gun Ghoul, which was very briefly produced under a ComicsGate imprint. Old school gamers will immediately recognize the significance of the colors.

I think it’s also worth noting that Arktoons will hit 16 million views in October. And speaking of Arktoons, looks who’s back and rolling with a new chapter on Arktoons again.

DISCUSS ON SG

Tonight, We Launch

Tune in to Arkhaven Nights tonight. We’ll be live-launching a certain campaign that will likely be of interest to readers of Arktoons and Sigma Game.

Also, if you’re a SocialGalactic member who has had trouble accessing the site, please note that we’re now at socialgalactic.com, not social.infogalactic.com. Your User ID and password remain the same, but trying to log in to the old site is not going to work.

UPDATE: The Hypergamouse campaign is now live and is already halfway to the initial goal! Be sure to check out all the ADDON options.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Coming Campaign

If you’re intending to back either the HYPERGAMOUSE book or the SIGMA GAME book, please sign up to follow the campaign here.

It should be interesting to discover whether there is more interest in the comic or in the concept. Rhetoric vs dialectic would tend to suggest the former, but then, this is an esoteric community. And before the question is asked, yes, HYPERGAMOUSE will be back on Arktoons with a new episode tomorrow.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Tale of Two Crowdfunds

There are two Arkhaven-related crowdfunding campaigns that kicked off just yesterday. The first is the second volume of Ascendant: Star-Spangled Squadron from our friends at Autarch. We’re relaunching the entire series on Arktoons in two weeks, so this is a good way to support our partners in the comics industry.

The second campaign is, of course, THE HIDDEN EMPEROR by Jon Del Arroz. Arkhaven will be publishing the retail edition of this graphic novel, and it will be featured on Arktoons as well, as part of the OVERMIND series that will be launching there soon. Mike Murphy, Razorfist, the illustrator, and I were all on Arkhaven Nights with Jon last night to launch the crowdfund, which by the end of the stream had already passed its initial objective.

Ayla Rin, Agent Of The Terran Imperium, returns to face a new sinister plot against the Imperium! Something is amiss with the Emperor of Mankind. Ayla Rin discovers he’s been replaced by a clone who’s intentionally sabotaging the Imperium on behalf of the evil Scorpio Alliance! But worse, the Scorpio Alliance knows she knows. And that means blackmail. Ayla is forced to find a secret superweapon that could unleash devastation on the Imperium. Fans of Valerian, The Incal, and Saga epic science fiction comics will love THE HIDDEN EMPEROR! 

DISCUSS ON SG

The Last Comics Publisher

It’s probably apparent to a fair number of you why Arkhaven matters, and why a non-comics leather book snob like myself nevertheless troubles to do what I can to keep independent comics infrastructure alive. The decline and ongoing collapse of DC and Marvel and IDW has been well-chronicled, after all. But what you may not know is that the same forces, indeed, in one case, the exact same corporate vehicle, is now targeting the two alternatives to the mainstream comics industry for destruction.

First, Japanese manga:

Blackstone launched a 275.8 billion yen ($1.74 billion) bid to take Japanese digital comic distributor Infocom, including a tender offer for a per-share price of 6,060 yen, Infocom said on Tuesday. The tender offer will amount to 141.4 billion yen, Infocom said. The company’s current parent Teijin said it will sell all of its 58% stake in Infocom for 134.4 billion yen in a share buyback after the buyout is completed. Infocom operates digital comic site Mecha Comic, which is among Japan’s largest, according to its website.

Second, Webtoons:

Webtoon Entertainment, which describes itself as the world’s largest web comic platform, has set its market value at $2.67bn (£2.11bn) ahead of its US listing. Its shares are due to start trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange on 27 June at $21 each, the top end of their marketed range. The Los Angeles-based company is owned by South Korean technology giant Naver, which has been boosted by the growing online popularity of Korean and Japanese comics. Webtoon says it has 170 million monthly active users in more than 150 countries around the world. The company is aiming to sell 15 million shares and raise $315m in the initial public offering (IPO).

The world’s largest fund manager BlackRock has expressed interest in buying up to $50m of shares.

BlackRock is Disney’s second-largest shareholder, controls several seats on its executive board, and owns about 78 million shares in the company, or the equivalent of $9.5 billion.

It’s really fascinating to see the massive amount of money suddenly being pumped into converging these culture war vehicles, especially in light of the obvious superiority of the best that Arktoons has to offer vs the best that Webtoons has on display. Below is a comparison between the #1 most popular Webtoon which is apparently about lesbian furries vs the recently updated Silenziosa:

So, in the coming months, you can expect to see a number of changes and improvements at Arkhaven, including subscriptions to specific comics, comments, and other features. The best way to support this right now is simply to subscribe for free to the Arkhaven Substack, where we’ve recently launched a daily serialization of Alt★Hero that begins with The Gods of Peaceful Sleep.

Now, of course, it’s easy to say “I’m not a comics guy, what do I care?” But do you really think the clowns running BlackRock and Blackstone care about comics, much less manga? It’s not about money either. They will never make their money back by driving these things into the ground. It’s about complete control of the cultural space, control that our community will never cede them.

We’ve also modified our approach to text serializations on Arktoons based on what we’ve learned from the substacks. Instead of running an episode once a week, we’re going to run them straight through, every day, with the exception of Quantum Mortis: A Mind Programmed, which will run on weekends. Since Chuck Dixon’s Snakehand ends today with Episode 56, Sidewinders will continue with the second novel in the series, La Gringa.

We’re looking for more volunteers to help chop up comics into Arktoons-presentable episodes, so if you’re willing and able, please get in touch. And authors who want to serialize their published novels are welcome to join the party too.

UPDATE: JDA’s more informed take on Fandom Pulse isn’t any more optimistic:

Manga fans have largely mocked American comic fans for years, calling American comics “dead” and laughing at the fans as Marvel and DC Comics circled the drain and slowly killed their content. Even superhero manga like My Hero Academia blew away the competition from Marvel and DC in American markets, which should have given the companies a signal something was drastically wrong…

Blackstone has already announced its plans to focus on female-centric content by focusing on genres with that target audience in mind. This means manga fans are likely to see a rampant feminization of their content out of the gate.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Streets of Midnight

SILENZIOSA is not the only Arkhaven comic that is running new episodes this week. Both MIDNIGHT’S WAR: NIGHT STREETS and HYPERGAMOUSE are back in action.

One thing that has changed is that we’re going to make use of more black-and-white due to the fact that we’ve observed color comics double the production costs while seldom increasing the sales at all. And the leather editions will have black-and-white interiors anyhow, so while we definitely prefer the look of color, and while we will continue using color for those comics with the support for it such as ALT-HERO, our new MIDNIGHT’S WAR and BLACK WARRANT comics will be monochrome until further notice.

And while neither Arkhaven nor Arktoons have yet proven to be quite as successful as we anticipated, the infrastructure we’ve built is very sound and you’re going to see a lot more new products being released, both in print and on Arktoons, from GHOST OF THE BADLANDS and SOMETHING BIG to OVERMIND. The fact that we’re not only stable, but growing, when DC, Marvel, and IDW are all teetering on the brink of complete collapse is one positive, another one is the way that even the flagship mainstream comics-related shows are observably taking note of what Arkhaven is doing.

Firecracker, “the leader of the Alt-Supe” movement on THE BOYS, looks pretty familiar, doesn’t she? And that’s her formal costume with the Seven; when she’s first introduced on the show has somehow become an overt apologia for elite Hellmouth pedophilia, she’s wearing cutoff jeans just like a certain Alabama cheerleader who also has a Southern acccent.

If you want to know what’s new to Arktoons every day, be sure to subscribe to the Arkhaven Comics substack.

DISCUSS ON SG