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By Bruce Lidl

Lost somewhat in the initial burst of news from last week’s ImageExpo was the announcement of a new Image Humble Bundle offering, beginning that morning and lasting until January 21. The “Humble Image Comics Bundle 2: Image Firsts” is a massive collection of digital comics that can be purchased for whatever price the consumer chooses. Included in the basic bundle are the beginning issues of a number of recent series, including Alex + Ada, Deadly Class, C.O.W.L., Elephantmen 2260 Book One, Minimum Wage, God Hates Astronauts, Genius, and Satellite Sam. Paying at least $15 also gets you the slightly higher profile titles The Manhattan Projects, The Wicked + The Divine, The Fuse, Velvet, Sex Criminals, Wytches, The Walking Dead Vol. 22: A New Beginning (#127-132), The Fade Out #1, Nailbiter, Stray Bullets, Southern Bastards, and Shutter. And finally, a stretch price of $18 brings The Walking Dead Compendium One (#1-48), East of West: The World, and Saga Book One (#1-18). For anybody at all interested in Image brand comics, the price truly cannot be beat, especially as the retail price of the comics would be over $300 according to Humble Bundle. Also, purchasers are strongly encouraged to mark a portion of their price paid towards charity, in this case the comics creator focused Hero Initiative. As of this evening, the Image bundle has generated almost $318,000, with over five days left to go.

The current offering is the third Humble Bundle to include Image titles. The first time Humble Bundle included any digital comics was the Image bundle in April 2014 that generated almost $400,000 revenue in two weeks, with titles including Saga, Walking Dead, Fatale, Invincible and Chew. Image imprint Skybound also did a special Comic-Con Humble Bundle in July 2014 as well, which was almost entirely Kirkman based titles such as The Walking Dead, Invincible, Thief of Thieves, and Super Dinosaur. That bundle alone generated $232,000.

Other comic publishers that have released Humble Bundles since April include Dark Horse, Oni, Dynamite, BOOM!, IDW, Top Shelf and Valiant. According to Kelley Allen, Director of Books for Humble Bundle, comics publishers are eager to work with them, and she has a number of ebook and comics bundles planned in 2015 alongside Humble Bundle’s traditional gaming focused offerings. The average revenue number for the comics based bundles so far has been $288,000 for the 14 day period. According to Allen, non-gaming bundles allow Humble to “break out from their core gaming audience” but from the comics perspective, they can also create “enormous crossover” by getting great comics in front of the very large Humble Bundle community. With a very clearly defined, and devoted, young male demographic, Humble Bundle chooses comics with both a logical appeal, like Transformers, Star Wars and The Walking Dead, but Allen also curates high quality titles that may stretch demographic borders. She “pushed very hard” to include titles like Sex Criminals in the latest Image bundle, trusting the Humble Bundle audience to appreciate an outstanding title, even without prior awareness.

While the Humble Bundles may help expand the reach of digital comics, they are also helping to encourage comics publishers to feel comfortable with forgoing DRM protections for their products. Humble Bundles, regardless of content, gaming or ebooks, do not use Digital Rights Management anti-copying technologies, both for philosophical reasons and from a practical standpoint. As Allen pointed out, why use DRM when the consumer could theoretically decide to purchase the content for one cent in any case? Even Dark Horse, which has been very reluctant to forgo DRM generally, was convinced to try not using it for their big Star Wars themed Humble Bundle in October and was rewarded with sales over $375,000 for the two week offering.

Fundamentally, the Humble Bundle “pay what you want” approach reflects exactly the insights independent game developers have learned over the years in regards to digital sales. Since their products are almost universally available to be pirated, often in formats that are actually *more* user friendly than the official versions, game creators have learned to embrace the concept of giving customers compelling reasons to purchase, in the recognition that they do not have to anymore. Distribution options like Steam and Humble Bundle provide explicit value beyond what a pirated version can give, whether through ease of use, personal connection to the creators, community recognition, charitable giving, etc. The Humble Bundle experiment really leverages the unique potential of digital distribution, as the pay what you want model could not really scale in a system that necessitated fulfillment and postage charges. With this almost “donation” type model there is no extra expense for the seller after the first sale, everything after that is essentially “profit.” And the possibility that the new readers exposed to the material may become fans, and go on to make further purchases, even print purchases in local comic books stores, only heightens the value of the Humble Bundle offering. We are likely to see a number of interesting comics based bundles in 2015 and we will learn if this kind of non-traditional sales can become a significant portion of publishers’ revenue, in much the same way digital has already established itself recently.

By Bruce Lidl

As has become a tradition at Image Comic’s semi-annual event, the announcements of upcoming titles came fast and furious today at ImageExpo. After a suitably rousing “state of the company” presentation by Image publisher Eric Stephenson, the stage at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center saw a procession of comic luminaries hyping new titles they promise will appear in 2015. On the evidence, Image will likely continue to rise in sales and market share, although the central roles of The Walking Dead and Saga in propelling those gaudy numbers remained an unspoken undercurrent to the show.

Stephenson trumpeted Image’s 2014 performance, which included “double digit year over year growth from 2013” (33% improvement in revenue, 25% in units), a 10.41% market share in the comics direct market and 16.48% market share for graphic novels in the book market. One area of somewhat smaller growth was digital, which Stephenson mentioned in passing and with a graphic that lacked scale or numbers. Despite its vagueness, the digital sales chart seemed to indicate roughly 10-15% growth from 2013. Surprisingly, however, the graph showed a slight dip in digital sales from 2012 to 2013, that was not commented on in the keynote, but Image’s Ron Richards told me outside the talk that it was merely a reflection of “The Walking Dead on TV” phenomenon, and not the natural growth of the category. To keep the digital sales momentum going into 2015, the second Image Humble Bundle was released prior to the opening of the ImageExpo, with a ton of Image backlist titles available digitally in the “pay what you want model.” In fact, Humble Bundle co-sponsored the ImageExpo this year, and has very high hopes for the bundle, particularly after it generated almost $90,000 in the first eight hours of the offer.

The new book announcements included original Image founder Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn books #250 and #251, with Spawn Resurrection #1 sandwiched in between. Declaring himself a “proud papa” of what Image had grown into over the last 23 years, MacFarlane refused to cede all the creative acclaim to his younger Image colleagues. He teased Savior, a a new title depicting the arrival of a Christ-like figure in today’s world. Recognizing a reputation for erratic release schedules, MacFarlane flashed an slide with eight issues worth of pages already completed.

James Robinson made a cameo appearance to announce his title Heaven and to reassure that Airboy is still on the way. Brandon Graham and Emma Rios told the audience about a couple of their collaborations, including 8house and Island, the later a large format “heavy metal” anthology that will include a number of rotating contributors. Emma Rios also brought out Kelly Sue DeConnick to update their plans for Pretty Deadly’s second arc which takes the title’s setting from the American West to the battlefields of World War I, and is expected to arrive in September.

Unlike last year’s event, ImageExpo 2015 highlighted a number of female creators, with Emi Lenox following Rios and DeConnick on stage to announce her autobiographical project, Tadaima, about her visit to her mother’s Japan. Lenox also talked about her collaboration with Jeff Lemire, Plutona, a Stand By Me influenced book about children discovering the corpse of a super-hero, . Other female creators announcing new books at ImageExpo included Marjorie Liu with Monstress and Alex De Campi with No Mercy, the latter scheduled for April.

Jeff Lemire returned to discuss his new book with Scott Snyder, AD: After Death which takes a deep, conceptual look at what the world would be like when “death is cured” and people can live forever. Brian Buccellato intrigued with his Kickstarter-originated Son of the Devil, an exploration of deadly cults and their legacies, and Eric Canete and Jonathan Tsuei discussed Run Love Kill, a project that started over a decade ago, but will now arrive with “robots, dinosaurs and ass-kicking.” The dynamic British duo of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie will be continuing their successful Wicked+Divine series into a third arc with a number of guest artists, and they promised Phonogram 3 for August 2015. Gillen will also be writing The Ludocrats, with art by David LaFuente for Image this year. Chip Zdarsky “crashed” the proceedings in an unannounced surprise appearance to hype his Howard the Duck title (for Marvel), but really to announce Katara, a sci-fi comedy title done with Kagan McLeod, and just to generally lighten up the festivities in his inimitable Zdarsky-style.

Another surprise appearance proved impossible for Darwyn Cooke to arrange, but he announced via audio message his first wholly creator owned title, Revengeance, a crime thriller with Mickey Spillane influences set in the 1980s. Following the Cooke audio portion, Skottie Young spoke of his new title, I Hate Fairyland, about a girl trapped in a fantasy wonderland for thirty years. The tone of the title is probably best expressed by its original working title, Fuck Fairyland.

While last year’s ImageExpo felt somewhat like the Robert Kirkman show, the explosive success of Saga in 2014 made Brian K. Vaughn’s appearance a natural highlight of this year’s event. In addition to that book, Vaughn will be producing two more books in 2015 for Image, the first entitled We Stand on Guard, a limited series positing a US invasion of Canada with giant robots, drawn by Steve Skroce, and Paper Girls, an on-going series with young newspaper deliverers as the protagonists, drawn by Cliff Chiang, and referred to by Vaughn as “his most personal and weird writing.”

By Bruce Lidl

The Sacramento Wizard World convention was an opportunity for comic fans in Northern California to gather and celebrate their passions with other fans and celebrities. It was also a chance for Jimmie Robinson, a veteran Bay Area comic book creator (and frequent commentator at The Beat) to meet his readers and spread the word about his on-going all-ages Image series, Five Weapons. I was curious to get a creator’s insight about this new convention, but we ended up chatting about a variety of topics, so I decided to make a separate article in its own right. As a long-time participant and observer in the comics industry, Jimmie has a great perspective on what is really happening right now, and he was very generous of his time to speak with me on the show floor.

Robinson was quite positive about the Wizard show, the staff, and the vibe around the convention center. Everybody was seemingly happy with the turnout and the enthusiasm of the attendees, especially the local downtown merchants. I was curious to hear how his convention schedule played into his work-time and income, and whether he was seeing the kinds of returns on paid sketches, commissions and appearance fees that some artist superstars like George Perez have experienced. According to Robinson, conventions, even well attended ones like Sacramento Wizard, are not “real money makers” for him, as he still has to pay his expenses, including travel and lodging. The worst thing about conventions for Robinson is not the expense, though, it is the time taken away from his work of actually making comics, something he much prefers to do if possible. In general, he limits himself these days to shows he and his team (wife Gail and dog Eli) can drive to, including the Reno Wizard show and possibly San Diego. For him, conventions remain all about “spreading the word” about his books, particularly Five Weapons, his current title from Image/Shadowline, an all-ages tale of the one pacifist student enrolled at a school for assassins (broken up into 5 weapon-themed houses, kind of a killers’ Hogwarts). He emphasized just how “tough” a sell an all-ages title can be. Currently at issue #7, in the second five issue story arc of the title, he has a commitment from Image to publish a third story arc, taking him through issue #15. Depending on how these story arc sell, he hopes to publish at least through #20, which would complete the initial narrative he conceived for the title.

Eli manning the booth

Robinson was “very appreciative of the huge support” he’s received from Jim Valentino and the Shadowline imprint at Image, particularly with a book that may not be the most marketable. And he “regretted” not being at the January ImageExpo, where the homogeneity of the creators on exhibit was negatively received online. Robinson had only complimentary things to say about his experiences with Image.

While Robinson appreciates the personal outreach opportunities conventions give comic creators, he is also “very enthusiastic” about the growth of digital comics, both from a sales perspective but also from a creative viewpoint. Digital sales of his older Bomb Queen title have been “very good” and he has seen bumps in sales of older issues when new ones come out and re-ignite interest. He is also an outspoken fan of comiXology’s Guided View reading enhancement, although he does struggle somewhat with making sure that his books look good when they are going to be converted to the new format. The process of conversion is quite “mysterious” to Robinson, and he does not have any insight at all into who actually does the work at comiXology, but he’s “very conscious” when he is drawing of what kind of panel layouts work best with the new technology.

His one major criticism of the current digital comics trend is the lack of transparency into the data generated by digital sales, as any data he does get from comiXology is basically limited to royalty statements and is usually “way old, usually from two quarters behind.” He is eager to see if he is able to get quicker and more detailed information from the shift at Image to selling directly and without DRM (Five Weapons #1 is available right now for free in either PDF, EPUB, CBR or CBZ formats). Robinson is “completely for” Image’s move to drop DRM and is generally really excited to see his work available in as many formats as possible. As someone who first heard Scott McCloud talking up online comics way back in the mid-90s, Robinson knows first hand how far the industry has come in expanding distribution avenues for new creators to attract readers. He echoed the message oft repeated today, that the challenge is no longer to “break into comics but to stay in comics!”

It was a pleasure chatting with Robinson and getting his expert viewpoint on a comics industry that  offers both unprecedented opportunities and daunting challenges for even well-established creators like himself. And check out Five Weapons and see how good all-age titles really are these days!