Tag: Arkhaven

AH:Q is go, go, go

Bounding Into Comics exclusively reports on Arkhaven’s very successful circumnavigation of IndieGoGo’s retroactive cancellation of the successful Alt-Hero:Q campaign:

After IndieGoGo Shuts Down Alt-Hero: Q – Arkhaven Comics Raises Huge Money in Just Two Days!

IndieGoGo recently shut down Vox Day and Arkhaven Comic’s ongoing Alt-Hero: Q crowdfunder without any explanation. The campaign trended #1 on the crowdfunding site when it launched. However, Vox Day ran a stealth campaign where he tells us he raised over $130,000 in two days from over 1100 backers. In fact, he told us he raised over $100,000 in just the first 24 hours.

Day referenced this stealth campaign in a blog post, writing, “As I mentioned previously, we expect to get version 2.0 of the AH:Q campaign up in about two weeks. As always, we’re focused on doing it right rather than doing it fast, so rest assured that work has been proceeding on the first issue regardless of when we relaunch the campaign and how we do it. As The Legend has already declared, those involved will do it for nothing if necessary.”

This stealth campaign was only the first part in Vox’s strategy to successfully launch Alt-Hero: Q. Due to IndieGoGo shutting down the crowdfunding campaign, Vox and his team has begun working on their own independent crowdfunding. In fact, Vox tells us the stealth campaign “was a test run of our independent crowdfunding ability, which we plan on opening to the public later this month.”

For those of you who have been emailing me and wanting to back the AH:Q campaign, we will open it up again as soon as we have the full site operative, complete with the crowdfunding element. We plan to run the AH:Q campaign for 28 more days in order to allow everyone to support AH:Q and to participate in our campaign against the SJWs trying to shut us down.

Thanks to all of the AH:Q backers whose decisiveness and discipline made this possible. Your performance was astounding, even to the AH:Q team. What we are building will not be stopped; this is only the beginning of the Dark Legion’s long march through the comics industry. This is only the first of several announcements that will increasingly dismay and demoralize our self-appointed enemies.

Every time they knock us down, we will come back harder, and stronger, and faster. And we will show them no mercy whatsoever.

Where we go one, we go all.

CBZ vs Kindle Unlimited

Question for Arkhaven fans: We are giving serious thought to taking the comics out of Kindle Unlimited in order to offer higher-resolution digital editions in CBZ format. The files would be about 20 megs apiece and would cost the same $2.99 as the Kindle editions. Despite the files going to the backers free, we still sell literally hundreds of copies of each Kindle edition, not including the KU downloads.

But due to the way Amazon pays virtually nothing for a KU edition, one CBZ sale would be the equivalent to 22 KU sales. Also, since it appears that Amazon has begun playing algorithm games with our books in order to reduce the visibility of our Kindle editions, there is no material benefit to our being on KU anymore.

The resolution would be 3150 x 2100 vs 1280 x 800. Please share your opinions.

Swan Knight Saga poll

An email has gone out to all the Arkhaven backers that concerns the Will Caligan campaign. If you are one of the Swan Knight Saga backers, please read the email and respond to the poll, as we have to make some decisions about how we are going to meet our obligations to you despite a few curve balls that have been thrown our way.

We believe we have several good options that will work out well for everyone involved, but we do not wish to proceed without informed input from the backers. If you have any questions about the various options, you can ask them here, but please do not mention any names. If you have any concerns related to this that you do not feel are appropriate in a public forum, please feel free to email me directly about them.

The print editions arrive

Fresh from the new forums, Vulcha reports the arrival of the first print editions of QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted #1:

Looky looky what I got today. I was very surprised at the quality. The covers are super sturdy and the interior is superb. Much better than I anticipated. Not sure why I expected otherwise. I’ll be keeping a few and distributing the rest. 

He might want to hang on to a few of those issues marked $2.99 because they will serve much the same purpose as the gold logos. Due to the vagaries of Ingram’s discount structure, we have had to change the retail price to $3.00, which is why future issues, and future editions of the first issue, will not feature a price marked on the cover.

That discount issue is, in part, what has caused the delay of orders made through Amazon, although I have been informed that it’s also connected to a much bigger Amazon problem that has nothing to do with us or Ingram. So, at least until they get that straightened out, I would recommend ordering Arkhaven comics through the Castalia Books Direct store.

They certainly look good, though! As for the sturdiness of the covers, they are not the flimsy coated gloss paper used for normal comics, but are the same rigid construction of a normal trade paperback. If you’ve received your print editions already, please feel free to share your thoughts on the manufacturing and print quality here. I’m still waiting for mine.

Forget moderation, stand up and fight!

I’m not going to pretend that this new SJW-swarming is unexpected… or that it isn’t mildly amusing, especially in light of how soon after our initial exchange it happened. But that doesn’t make it right, or anything that we will ignore. The thing is, you can either learn from someone else’s example or through your own experience. Ethan van Sciver, the talented DC artist whom you may recall lecturing me about the importance of being nice and civil and respectful to SJWs, is presently learning the lessons of Social Justice the hard way. Moderation won’t save you. Civility won’t save you. Nothing will save you except standing up to them and fighting them openly, because they are all offense, no defense.

Because they don’t need your permission to attack you, and if they can’t find an excuse to do so, they will manufacture one.

Asher Elbein @asher_elbein
I’ve been watching the Ethan Van Sciver harassment of @darrylayo over the weekend, and hearing stuff about him for a lot longer. I’d like to write about it for The Atlantic, so I’m putting out a call: if you’ve been harassed by him or his trolls, DMs and email are open.

Brendan H. Wright@BrendanWasright
Comics is worse for having Ethan Van Sciver in it. The fact that one of the major publishers’ major artists faces no consequences for sustained racist attacks on a fellow artist says about all one needs to know about DC. He has no place among decent people.

Tim Doyle@NakatomiTim
Ethan Van Sciver is tweeting artistic collaboration with deeply transphobic, woman hating, Milo-loving, darling of the Alt-Right-Jordan Peterson…In case you needed more evidence EVS is a disgusting trash fire of a human.

Kieran Shiach@KingImpulse
If you’ve been harassed by Ethan Van Sciver, Richard C. Meyer or their army of trolls and would like to talk about it, you can get in touch with either myself or @asher_elbein, in confidence, to tell your story.

davidbathsheba‏@hermanos
Ethan Van Sciver is what happens when an industry prizes professionalism over checking bad actors on sight.

darrylayo@darrylayo
All Ethan Van Sciver does is fuck with people, pick on people, attack people, direct others to attack people and occasionally draw I dunno, green lantern or some shit

Matt Santori@FotoCub
Yes. @DCComics needs to decide if putting Ethan Van Sciver on books is worth losing sales and promotion from sites that will refuse to review/advertise ANYTHING his name is on, as mine informed them directly.

Mark O. Stack@MarkOStack
I haven’t said anything because I didn’t know what I could add to the situation, but I really just added towards a culture of silence that lets bad people get away with things. Ethan Van Sciver is a bigot and a bully leading harassment campaigns. @DCComics should cut ties.

Layman@themightylayman
Is it my feed, or my imagination, or is the comics community growing weary of Ethan Van Sciver’s asshole antics and his fuckhead cadre of alt-right bullies?

This is a textbook swarming complete with the open appeals to the presumably amenable authorities at SJW-converged DC Comics. We’ll see if they’re successful or not; it doesn’t look like they are making much headway with either the media or the masses, but then, the obvious goal here is merely provide cover for their fellow SJWs at DC to pull the trigger. There is only one way to answer these people, and that is to fight back at every opportunity, show neither hesitation nor remorse, and defeat them resoundingly. Which is exactly what we have done and what we will continue to do. Speaking of SJW-swarms, thanks VERY much to all the 802 backers and counting, as we have just hit the fifth and final goal for Will Caligan’s Comic!

UPDATE: The campaign has ended. All goals achieved. A clean green sweep. Now THAT is what winning looks like! The first stage, anyway. The next win will be when the first Arkhaven comic illustrated by Will Caligan hits the market. And it will be glorious. Thanks very much to all 822 of you who made this happen!

One… two… and now THREE!

Thanks to the nearly 700 backers of Will Caligan’s Comic, Book #3 is go. This means SIX MORE issues of illustrations by Will. As mentioned previously, Arkhaven Comics will ensure that all six issues – and the graphic novel – are professionally colored regardless of whether Stretch Goal 5 is hit or not.

Thanks also to the various professionals who are contributing their skills to the campaign. Their collective contributions in kind are of a similar scale to that being provided by the financial backers. To quote one of them: “$?$*! We’re doing EIGHTEEN issues? Well, all right then.”

So, which books do you want to see? Voting is tomorrow, so this is the place to discuss them. Chuck Dixon has said that the entire GREEN KNIGHT’S SQUIRE trilogy can be done in 12 issues. Can THE STARS COME BACK or ROCKY MOUNTAIN RETRIBUTION be done in 6? What about SWORD & FLOWER? Discuss amongst yourselves.

And no, whoever bought Valiant was not us.

Bleeding Cool has received a tip-off from a West Coast media source that Valiant Entertainment, publishers of comics such as X-O Manowar, Quantum & Woody, Bloodshot, Faith, Harbinger and Shadowman, has been sold in its entirety.

UPDATE: In answer to several questions, the campaign ends at ends at 12:41am EST tonight, i.e. shortly after midnight.

LAST DAY to back Will Caligan’s Comic

Today is the last day of the one-week campaign for Will Caligan’s Comic, which currently stands at $48k and 675 backers. Since we’re within striking distance of the Book #3 stretch goal, we’ve decided to add new rewards of Paperback #3, Hardcover #3, and The Works #3 for those who are interested.

You will notice that there is no “this reward will not be provided if we don’t hit the stretch goal”. That is because Arkhaven Comics has decided that whether we hit the next two stretch goals or not, we will produce Book #3, whatever the backers decide it will be, and we will produce it in full color. In addition to the ace colorists at Arklight Studios who are contributing their considerable talents at a steep discount for the covers, we have also hired an excellent professional colorist who will color Will’s interior illustrations for Books 1, 2, and 3. An example of his work is below. Imagine what this guy could do with The Feast of the Elfs or the space battles in Back from the Dead!

If you haven’t backed the campaign yet, note that an Iron Star backing will now get you 18 digital comics for only $25. It would be nice for PR purposes to hit 750 backers before this is over, so please spread the word this morning.

Mailvox: they don’t forget

A military wife would like the backers of the Will Caligan’s Comic campaign to know that your efforts have been noticed and are deeply appreciated by the military community:

My husband recently retired from 20 years mixed service Airborne and National Guard. His uncle is a Desert Storm vet.  My dad was in Vietnam.  Our collective family military histories go to the Revolution.

What you are doing for Caligan means the world to us.  You are not just offering brother Christians and vets support.  You are offering spouses and families support and encouragement.

I’ve been sharing the campaign on Facebook with my vet and spouse friends.  I’m not sure who has contributed, if anyone.  But we don’t forget these things.

The campaign has reached 573 609 backers and $40k $42.3k. It will end on Tuesday (Alt-Hero backers will remember that 1 day left means the NEXT day is the final day.) Please continue to spread the word.

In case you need any reminder of what we’re up against in the long term, this should prove to be a useful reminder. Nice hat, right? Note that the editor of that particular series is the new Marvel editor-in-chief. Which suggests that as bad as it has been, the convergence at Marvel is only going to get worse now that they are shutting down some of their most converged comics due to poor sales.

A sensible individual might conclude that means that the executives there have learned that convergence doesn’t sell. But those who understand that SJWs always double down will know it means that they’re simply going to transfer the convergence to the better-selling series.

A cover, revised

We decided to redo the QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted #1 cover for the print edition since we wanted something a little more eye-catching for the stores. The Amazon Kindle edition has already been updated. The colorist who did this will also be coloring QMAMD #2 and the subsequent issues. And I’m very pleased to be able to announce that we will soon be publishing a economics comic book written by none other than Steve Keen himself. The two of us intend to collaborate on another one… I expect you may be able to guess the specific subject.

Anyhow, we will always seek to continue improving our game. This is just the first iterative step. And since we’re on the subject of comics, don’t forget that there are just three days left in the Will Caligan’s Comic campaign. We’re less than $19k away from a third full-color graphic novel!