Tag: comics

Day spoke to Bounding Into Comics about the upcoming series describing it as “Arkhaven’s first individual superhero series.”

The series will be written by Chuck Dixon and illustrated by Cliff Cosmic. It will focus on Shade, who appeared in the first volume of Alt-Hero.

As described by Day, “Shade is a member of of the Global Justice Initiative and can be considered something akin to a European Batman, if Batman was not an incestuous Chinese catamite who is afraid of flying mammals and would rather slaughter all his friends than execute justice.”

He added, “Shade is an Austrian aristocrat of the ancien regime, who recoils in disgust at the lack of taste and culture in modern society and believes wholeheartedly in the concept of European Union.”

Read the rest of the article at Bounding Into Comics.

Independent comics creators and their supporters are less than entirely mournful over the implosion of the establishment comics industry in response to the #pencilsdown announcement at Marvel, Valiant, and other publishers.

A group calling its fans Nazis, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes, pedophiles, neck beards, virgins, incels, terrorists, racists, and more now think the fans should have

*checks notes*

Been more “kind to pros”

This is why I don’t care that you had to put your #pencilsdown

Given the way that we were treated by BleedingCool and the rest of the mainstream comics media, I can’t say that I am any more sympathetic. Meanwhile, at Arkhaven, Chuck Dixon’s Avalon has just seen issues 5 and 6 released, and the illustrations through issue 10 are already done. Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted #5 will be out next week and we just need a cover in order to get Alt-Hero:Q #3 done.

And the colors for A Throne of Bones #1 are almost ready for lettering.

Given the chaos in the comics industry, Team Arkhaven has been brainstorming about the best way to build up the comics offensive in the culture war and we’ve returned to the oft-suggested idea of the monthly Arkhaven subscription.

While I have been very negative about this from the start, the combination of a) the success of The Replatforming, both in terms of support and our ability to meet the production demands, and, b) the ongoing collapse of the establishment comics industry, has caused me to rethink my previous position.

Which leads us to the question: what should that monthly subscription look like? At the most basic level, we know there will be a $1 subscription for some form of monthly digital comic. But what else? Note that the basic subscription would be entirely NEW comics, although there might be tiers that allow people to get caught up on Alt-Hero or whatever.

Share your thoughts, please.

UPDATE: Here are my first thoughts in response to the suggestions.

1. The comics need to be standard length. 20-page stories instead of the 24-pages we’ve been doing.
2. The $1 subscription will get you the digital comic of the month. This could be anything except material produced specifically for the AH or AHQ campaigns. The Caligan campaign material would be included because it has far fewer backers. Could be Big Bear, Shade, A Throne of Bones, Chicago Typewriter, etc. Essentially, it’s a robust monthly sampler.
3. A $3 subscription will get you the digital comic of the month + whatever series to which you want to receive whenever a new one comes out. This could be anything from AH to QM:AMD. Add $2 for each additional series subscription.

Captain Europa is NOT amused by Marvel moving in on his turf:

In a move to make Captain America more appealing to a modern audience, Marvel announced Monday the iconic comic and film character will be rebooted as Captain Globalism.

“The very idea of America is offensive and outdated,” said a Marvel rep. “There are billions of people who weren’t able to relate to Captain America because of his triggering name and crude stars-and-stripes-colored uniform and shield. They’ll feel much more at home with Cap now that his goal is to break down all borders and unite everybody under a New World Order.”

What about global income equality? What about the Global Justice Initiative?

• #30 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction
• #67 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy

Bounding Into Comics covers the release of Alt-Hero: Q #2: Not Dead Enough, which is now available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

Arkhaven Comics publisher Vox Day announced Chuck Dixon and Helix Haze’s Alt-Hero: Q #2 is now on sale.

Alt-Hero Q “explores the incredible QAnon phenomenon that is sweeping the planet.” The story takes place in the world of Alt-Hero and stars federal agent Roland Dane.

Dixon described the series to us last September:

“What we’re presenting is an action/thriller hero that I’m really excited to be creating. We’ll be inserting him into stories of global cabals and dark conspiracies that threaten not only world peace but the basic human rights of the individual. Our guy, Roland Dane, is an experienced law enforcement professional who has to drop out of the system to act as an operative for the mysterious organization he knows only as Q. Roland is a little rough around the edges and his methods are often direct but he’s one man trying to make a difference for all of us.”

The series was originally crowdfunded on IndieGoGo and trended #1 on the crowdfunding website when it first launched.

And the reviews are already up:

Former DC Comics artist Ethan Van Sciver crowd-funded his Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney comic book to the tune of millions of dollars, and while fans paid a hefty price tag for the comic, unfortunately, it fails to deliver.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney comes up short in terms of story, as it comes across as pretty boring, dull and confusing — and just when it starts to get good, it ends.

I say not surprisingly because this comic book reminds me of something put out in the early days of Image Comics when the Marvel Comics artists left and formed their own company in the 90s. While all of the Image founders were stellar artists, they weren’t exactly the best writers (i.e. Todd McFarlane on Spawn; Liefeld, really, on anything). I think the same applies here to Ethan Van Sciver.

Cyberfrog: Bloodhoney read as more of an extended prelude with Bendis-style exposition and little action; there is no conflict for the first 16 pages, which is basically an entire comic book these days. The comic read to me as if it was a cliff-noted version of an extended story that we were already supposed to know about.

In light of the changes in the ebook market and our retreat from the Kindle Unlimited space, we’ve been making some strategic changes at Arkhaven and Castalia House. Now that we’ve successfully entered the video space, we’re concentrating our efforts on our strongest fiction and non-fiction properties, primarily because we don’t have the bandwidth to devote to everything.

This is why we’ve returned the publishing rights to their books to a number of our authors, although we continue to support them and their self-publishing efforts, and why we have methodically reduced the number of books that we are publishing. Our sales remain strong, which tends to indicate that our revised approach is a viable one.

The reason I’m explaining this is that we have decided to make a change to the comics being delivered to the backers of the Caligan campaign. Instead of six black-and-white issues of The Stars Came Back, we are going to publish six full-color digital issues of Arts of Dark and Light, a Selenoth-based comic, as well as the related paperback and hardcover omnibuses. We have not yet decided if we’ll be using one of the novellas, such as The Wardog’s Coin or a selection from A Throne of Bones, as the source.

I’ve already spoken to Rolf about this, and as those who know him will not be surprised to hear, he was entirely understanding of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. We like Rolf and his work, and Castalia will continue to publish his print editions going forward.

Obviously, we will offer a refund to any backer who does not support this change of the third comic. Also, since the change from black-and-white to color will leave the overall project in the red, we will be offering presales of the paperback and the hardcover once we have completed the first digital issue and delivered it to the backers. Please note that any campaign backer who wishes a refund as a result of this announcement can simply email me with the backer number and the word REFUND in the subject.

And for those who don’t object to the change, feel free to discuss which of the various Selenoth stories you’d most like to see in graphic format here. If we decide upon a selection from A Throne of Bones, it will probably be the battle between Legio XVII and the goblin tribes.

The book that they said would never be produced has, in fact, been published! ALT-HERO Volume 1 is now available on Amazon in both hardcover and in paperback.

Written by Vox Day and featuring the art of Cliff Cosmic and Richard Bonk, the first of the Alt★Hero Collections collects the first six issues of Arkhaven’s flagship comic book series,  Alt★Hero, which includes #1 Crackdown, #2 Rebel’s Cell, #3 Reprisal, #4 The War in Paris, #5 London Calling, and #6 The Dark Hunt.

The 168-page full-color omnibus also contains additional pages of character illustrations, a few of which have not been seen before.

The backer editions are being sent out this week. Please note that as per the campaign, the hardcover edition will feature a special backer edition cover that is different than the retail hardcover. Both the hardcover ($23.99) and the paperback ($16.99) are also available at Castalia Direct.

Arkhaven anticipates releasing Alt★Hero Collections #2, which will collect Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #1 through #6, before the end of the year. Both backer editions will feature special backers-only covers.

Both converged entities stand condemned by Stan Lee’s daughter:

“When my father died, no one from Marvel or Disney reached out to me. From day one, they have commoditized my father’s work and never shown him or his legacy any respect or decency.”

JC concluded with some fiery words aimed at Disney and Marvel, “In the end, no one could have treated my father worse than Marvel and Disney’s executives.”

Of course they treat people badly. Even legends! They worship Satan and they are – at best – in league with pedos and child sex traffickers. What else would you expect?

What do you all think about Making Asgard Great Again? By which I mean launching a crowdfunding campaign to create a new comic series with a proper male and Nordic God of Thunder with red hair, an Asgardian people who are not diverse, and a storyline connection to this Earth, in order to compete directly with the converged and transgendered Disney/Marvel abomination?

If this is potentially of interest to you, let me know and I can look into finding the right artists for it. We were planning to do something similar with Star Wars, but perhaps it makes sense to salvage Thor first. Let me know which, if either, is of more interest to you. I know people are planning to support the new Junior Classics, so perhaps this is not the right time, but I thought I’d at least gauge the potential interest.