Write Club! - New York Comic Con Mini-Cast: Day 1

New York Comic Con Mini-Cast: Day 1

10/12/10 • -1 min

Day 1:This is a short one folks! Kurt, Tim and later Phil, take a walk through the con and are struck with a volley of emotions. The British are killed, and Tim & Kurt ask "What's it all about?"Luckily they're saved by a girl named Gabby. Intro: "Four Colored Universe" MetasciencesOutro: "Write Club Theme" Scott St. Pierre

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New York Comic Con Mini-Cast: Day 2

Day 2: Tim is joined by Pete Lenz, who is having fun. Then Tim tries to find the screaming women, and when that doesn't pan out Pete, Tim and Phil head down to the basement to check out Anime Fest. Apples are eaten, smiles are shared, and perhaps the oddest interview I've ever done takes place.Seeing as how this is a major comic event, I thought I'd check out Marvel's Cup O' Joe panel. That kicks in at about 7 minutes, and therein you'll hear about some of Marvel Comics upcoming plans. This, of course, was a slide show, so you will not be able to see what they're talking about. Here are some bullet points:

Marvel to publish at least two CrossGen titles. From the images it looks like they'll be SIGIL and RUSE (penned by Mark Waid).

Brian Bendis and Michael Oeming will be putting out a creator owned, all-ages book named TAKIO.

Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev team up to reinvent MOON KNIGHT.
Marvel + ESPN? I don't know either.
A teaser of a web-series about Marvel editor Steve Wacker auditioning for the Broadway play based on SPIDER-MAN. I think it's called SPIDER-MAN: WTF am I doing on Broadway? (JOKES!)

Intro: "Kingdom Come" Jay-Z
Outro: "Write Club Theme" Scott St. Pierre

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Free Comic of the Week: Vision Machine by Greg Pak

A new feature I'll be having up here on the blog is to present the best of free comic books available online.

First up is Vision Machine by Greg Pak. You can read the comic on Comixology or download the PDF.

Greg Pak has an exclusive interview up on Comics Alliance where he mentions that not only are you able to download/read the comic for free online, but eventually there will be a free print version available as well.

Which is really interesting, having a book put together by money from the Ford Foundation and put out under Creative Commons license which means anyone can expand on the universe created within the pages or is able to remix or mashup the story however they see fit as long as the original source is credited. Truly free creative information. The article also has a lot of interesting points about digital comics and creator royalties.

Which leads me over to another article discussing ICv2's number crunching of digital sales which is ultimately summed up as:

"While the news for print was less than positive, with manga sales facing an estimated 20% drop in 2010, the news for digital comics was very good indeed, with Griepp projecting that digital comics sales would see a more than ten-fold increase this year over last."

And:

"But while manga and graphic novels decline, the real energy and growth has been in digital, which has expanded from a $500,000 market in 2009 to an estimated $6 to 8 million dollars in 2010, a more than ten-fold increase. Quite simply, digital comics are "the fastest-growing part of the comics business," said Griepp."

It's interesting seeing this comic going out into the public, with its theme of free creative information with a donation based payment setup and the Orwellian Big Brother aspect of controlled information. I'm eager to find out which direction both the story within the comic and the story of the growing digital distribution and the role that this free comic plays in that.

K