Tag: Arkhaven

A Tale of Two Comics

Alt★Hero: Q Volume 1

When federal agent Roland Dane is sent to Peru to escort a U.S. Cabinet member, he has no reason to believe his assignment is connected in any way to his Treasury team’s recent bust of a ring of amateur counterfeiters. But when the Secretary of State and his entourage is unexpectedly attacked and the subsequent news reports of the attack bear no resemblance to the events he witnessed, Dane is forced to confront the shocking discovery that absolutely nothing in his world is quite what it appears to be, including the U.S. government for which he works.

Created by Vox Day and written by the Legend Chuck Dixon, Alt★Hero: Q is an incendiary action comic series that explores the mysterious phenomenon of QAnon and makes James Bond look like a tea party.

The Gold Logo editions will be shipping out to the backers soon. But Arkhaven supporters who didn’t back the project can now preorder the hardcover and paperback editions from the Arkhaven store for shipping next month in company with MIDNIGHT’S WAR, the retail editions of which are also now available.

Midnight’s War Volume 1

In the year 8466 of the Cainite calendar, in the aftermath of a catastrophic global economic crisis, the vampire tribes came out of the shadows for the first time in more than 2,600 years and revealed themselves to an unsuspecting humanity. With near-complete control of the media, the national governments, the global financial system, and most of the major international institutions, humanity was helpless to resist the vampiric bid for power. A dark world order was established. The Great Concord of Gomorrah was created to secure the rights and duties of Man and Vampire alike. The global monetary system was replaced with a new currency backed by human blood, and a global tax was introduced to ensure humanity’s new rulers that their endless thirst would never again go unslaked.

But not all humans submitted to the Great Concord, and more significantly, not all human blood proved to be palatable to Mankind’s cruel overlords. For some of the ancient legends turned out to be true…

Same deal, so if you want to order both, you can do so and they will ship together from the Castalia warehouse early next month, as the hardcover and paperback editions are now available for preorder.

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The Death Spiral of the Big Two

And the concomitant rise of Arkhaven Comics. The 2023 numbers are in and they look absolutely disastrous for both DC Comics and Marvel Comics alike, as Fandom Pulse reports:

A new report shows DC Comics is in massive trouble, with a 25% annual sales drop as the comic industry continues its death spiral.

Sales figures have been confirmed to be in a state of decline, again in a ComicsBeat expose on the industry. Brian Hibbs released an annual report from Bookscan, highlighting sales in the industry to regular bookstores. While we still don’t have the accurate numbers for comic shops, this gives a bellwether as to where the industry is going. In this expose, Hibbs writes that Marvel and DC Comics represent less than 10% of comic book sales, a shockingly low number for what many call the Big 2.

However, it gets worse for DC Comics, as he writes, “DC had a pretty bad year, with their lowest sales since 2004 – down 25% from 2022 in the bookstore market – even with their highest ever number of titles in the total list. In 2023 they had only 14 titles in the Top 750; in 2013, ten years ago, they had 130. That is a huge and troubling drop – but maybe laying off nearly your entire sales and marketing team is not a great strategy for growth? If someone had been been making a concerted effort to dismantle DC Comics, they couldn’t have been more surgical – luckily, DC still has talented execs like Marie Javins, Jim Lee, Annie de Pies and the rest of the staff who have thwarted those plans. And from what we’re hearing, 2024 will see some more moves to reverse this concerning trend.”

Amazingly, ComicsBeat writers can still spin this as “and that’s a good thing” as many mainstream articles try to mitigate the destruction of entertainment industries like comics at the hands of the woke. These are the same executives who initially led DC Comics into this mess. A new relaunch of a universe—as he’s alluding to with the Absolute DC line—might give a short-term boost but isn’t going to fix the comic industry problems.

DC Comics is on a death spiral, and unless they make wholesale changes to prioritize story and less identity politics virtue signaling at the hands of creators like Tom King or Tom Taylor, we can expect this sales decline will continue.

The sales declines at Marvel and DC going to continue because the very same individuals who have taken what was already a converged situation and gave it turbo cancer are still in control at both companies. This situation is, as Fandom Pulse correctly noted, a death spiral, because as with all fully converged companies, the Big Two have completely lost the ability to serve their traditional market, which is to say they can no longer entertain young men with illustrated picture books.

IDW is almost certainly going to auger in as well. It lost $5 million last year thanks to a 26 percent collapse in revenues. Meanwhile, independents such as Arkhaven, Razorfist, Ethan van Sciver, and Eric July have repeatedly proven their ability to raise more than $250k to develop a single title, and have reliably provided better storylines, characters, and art than the mainstream publishers. The demand is there, it simply isn’t being met by the traditional publishers.

Yesterday, Razorfist released the trailer for GHOST OF THE BADLANDS, his new Western comic that is now being published by Arkhaven Comics. The Monochrome Hardcover and the Monochrome Paperback editions are now available on the Arkhaven store in oversized European bandes dessines-style formats, and the two color editions will be available there from May 17th. Later in the year, there will be a deluxe leather edition as well.

In other Arkhaven-related news, both ALT-HERO: Q volume 1 and MIDNIGHT’S WAR volume 1 are now complete and published in the system. We’re making some final touches before sending out the Gold Logo editions to the backers, and the retail versions will be available on the Arkhaven store before the end of the month. AH:Q backers should note that due to the format’s lack of popularity, we will NOT be producing six separate small Gold Logo issues; the 37 Gold Logo Edition backers will instead receive their choice of a standard Gold Logo paperback omnibus or the variant cover Gold Logo paperback omnibus.

Both AH:Q and MW will be released as large-format 10.88 x 8″ omnibuses, as we find this format to be preferable to the 10 x 7″ format previously utilized for the Alt-Hero and Chuck Dixon’s Avalon omnibuses.

The standard Gold Logo omnibus cover.

The process may be taking much longer than any of us may like, but slow and steady is how Arkhaven will gradually, inevitably, and inexorably outlast and outcompete our much larger predecessors in the comics industry. Project Asteroid has landed, but its ramifications and reverberations are only beginning to be felt.

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Arktoons 15 Million

In the midst of the chaos surrounding the publishing industry, Castalia and Arkhaven soldier on. And while Arktoons hasn’t been publishing as many episodes as we’d like – mostly for technical reasons rather than lack of creator interest – and Arkhaven hasn’t been publishing much on the print side, that’s not an indication of either infrastructural weakness or a lack of commitment to the cause.

So, first of all, congratulations to the Arkhaven devs, creators, backers, and subscribers, as Arktoons hit 15 million views today. That’s a significant accomplishment and one that merits pointing out.

Second, our lead dev at Arktoons is going to be stepping back for a while for personal reasons, but we have a very capable replacement stepping forward to shoulder the load until his predecessor is able to return. The primary focus is going to shift, however, from the user to the creator, since that is the primary bottleneck at the present.

And third, due to our focus on building our own platforms, rest assured that the panic in the independent publishing industry will have zero effect on our activities, since we have built our own distribution platform and are in no way dependent whatsoever upon the now-defunct SPD Press Distribution or any of its competitors.

An email sent by Ingram Publisher Services to former clients of the shuttered SPD Press Distribution is causing more panic in the independent publishing community. The email directs publishers to fill out a form by April 17, providing Ingram with instructions about where to send their titles—at the presses’ own cost. But what has publishers most anxious is Ingram’s plan to “recycle” any inventory remaining at the Ingram warehouse after 60 days.

Given the current state of confusion and uncertainty about future distribution arrangements, some publishers worry that two months isn’t nearly enough time to complete the process of finding a new home for their titles. Others on social media pointed out that some of the 300,000 books that were at the SPD warehouse likely belong to publishers that are no longer operating, and, without anyone around to claim them, will simply be destroyed.

We’re very fortunate to have so many star performers in the greater community who are willing to contribute their time and their expertise, from programming to shipping, which is why we are not only going to survive, but thrive, as the current chaos continues to expand throughout the economies of the West.

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Leaving the Cloud

A large tech organization explains why they left the Cloud, and how much they have benefited from doing so:

Just over a year ago, we announced our intention to leave the cloud. We then shared our complete $3.2 million cloud budget for 2022, and the fact that we were going to build our own tooling rather than pay for overpriced enterprise service contracts. The mission was set!

A month later, we placed an order for $600,000 worth of Dell servers to carry our exit, and did the math to conservatively estimate $7 million in savings over the next five years. We also detailed the larger values, beyond just cost, that was driving our cloud exit. Things like independence and loyalty to the original ethos of the internet.

Still in February, we announced the new tool I had bootstrapped in a few weeks to take us out of the cloud – without giving up on all the innovation in containers and operating principles from the cloud. This was the introduction of Kamal.

Shortly thereafter, all the hardware we needed for our cloud exit arrived on pallets in our two geographically-dispersed data centers. All 4,000 vCPUs, 7,680GB of RAM, and 384TB of NVMe storage of it!

And then, in June, it was done. We had left the cloud.

To say this journey was controversial is putting it mildly. Millions of people read the updates on LinkedIn, X, and by following this very mailing list. I got thousands of comments asking for clarification, providing feedback, and expressing incredulity over our nerve to zig when others were still busy catching up to the zag.

But the proof was in the pudding. Not only did we complete our cloud exit quickly, customers scarcely noticed anything, and soon the savings started to mount. Already in September, we’d secured a million dollars in savings on the cloud bill. And as the reserved instances (where you prepay for a whole year in advance to get better pricing) started to expire, the bill just kept collapsing:

I’ve never trusted the Cloud. And I’m very pleased to be able to say that as of last week, we no longer have a single project that is on the Cloud. While it may be useful in the initial stages of a project that isn’t capable of sustaining itself, the sooner one can move off the Cloud and onto one’s own servers, the better off one is likely to be.

And that doesn’t even begin to get into the peril of relying upon a corporation filled with SJWs who enjoy nothing more than playing thought police and denying corporate services to anyone they don’t like or of whom they don’t approve.

On a not-unrelated note, the Arktoons devs have successfully defeated a DDOS attack on the site. It’s good to be able to handle these things on our own, and not be dependent upon the security of the Cloud services company. If you were having problems accessing the site last night, it should be fine today.

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Outage Update

The Arkhaven store went down for eight hours yesterday thanks to an entire server room crashing hard at the external service we were still using for the site. Ironically, that is the final piece which is not on one of our own servers – despite the error messages, you may have noticed that Infogalactic is considerably snappier these days – but the store will be both a) faster and b) mirrored before the end of the month.

Fortunately, the site is robust enough that while no new orders could be entered during that time, no subscription orders were lost. So, if you had a subscription that was scheduled for renewal during that time, it was successfully renewed as soon as the outage ended. All is well.

Thanks to the devs for staying on top of this and quickly ascertaining, within 70 minutes of the outage occurring, what had happened and who was responsible. And to the Library team as well, who noticed and reported the problem within five minutes of the servers going down.

Speaking of technical matters, we anticipate having some very good news for you on that front soon.

UPDATE: Speaking of outages, Arktoons will be down for maintenance for a period of time this afternoon/morning.

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ComicsGate is Comics Now

The Dark Herald observes that the independents have completely routed the dinosaurs of the comics industry:

Comics Gate is over and the Big Two lost bigly.

What was CG has turned into is a revived and hyper-successful indie comics scene. The reason the old indie comics scene petered out was because back in the 1990s there was a one-two punch of comic book shops failing en masse, combined with the Big Two being big enough back then to get out in front of the movement.

Well, the big two don’t seem to be much bigger than the indie houses these days and genuinely talented creatives got screwed by lawyers assigned by the mega-corporations that still own the Big Two. Here’s a surprise, it turns out that “creator-owned” doesn’t actually mean “creator-controlled.” Sure the creator “owns” the character but the Big Two can do whatever the hell it feels like with them.

You made a comic book about a roaring, roistering barbarian warrior who kills orcs all day and bangs the bar wenches all night? Tough luck shithead! Conanson is now a genderqueer, trans living in New York City and constantly being amazed by how kick-ass his ex-girlfriend is because we say so.

You can do what Bill Winningham did and put his comic into the public domain. Maybe, but DC is fighting that one tooth and nail. Bottomline, you make a deal with the devil, the devil will be in the details.

When the history of the last gasp of the traditional comics industry is written, one of the most significant elements noted by historians will be the ALT★HERO crowdfunding campaign on Freestartr. Although the platform is defunct, the comic is going strong – I just received the final inks for Issue #10 from the illustrator – and the unprecedented support it received from the readers here inspired Ethan van Sciver, Eric July, and most recently, Razorfist, to launch even more successful campaigns.

Since the comics media – with the exception of Bounding Into Comics – studiously ignores Arkhaven, most people still don’t realize that ALT★HERO was most successful new comics crowdfund ever at the time of its launch. It has since been surpassed, of course, but it was conclusive proof that creators not only had any need of Marvel or DC Comics to produce top-quality comics, but could actually be better off going independent than working for them.

ALT★HERO Issue 10

Now we’re seeing the mainstream artists struggling to find work, seeing their sales crumbling, and watching their creations be wilfully destroyed. Now we’re seeing new names and established figures alike going independent. And now the independents are starting to work together. While it’s too soon to name any names or titles, Arkhaven will be publishing some of the most successful recent crowdfunds, and some of those titles will also be appearing on Arktoons. All of the creators retain ownership and control of their creations, and in fact, some of these new creations are already being licensed by third parties.

Comic book legend Chuck Dixon, the creator of Bane, will see his recently released Chuck Dixon’s Conan novels get developed into a new RPG sourcebook. The new RPG sourcebook is being created by Autarch LLC and will use the company’s upcoming Adventurer Conqueror King System Imperial Imprint (ACKS II), the second edition of the company’s role-playing game.

The independent ecosystem may be small in comparison with the mainstream comics and RPG industries now, but note that it is already larger, and much more successful, than either of those industries were in their early days. And these are just the early days.

The ride never ends.

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The Legend Will Not Be Cancelled

The relevant publishers have spoken on Bounding Into Comics. Also, the cover for the new Chuck Dixon’s Conan paperback has been unveiled.

Rippaverse Comics founder Eric July and Arkhaven Comics publisher Vox Day recently shared their responses to the attempts to cancel legendary comic book writer Chuck Dixon…

July responded to this cancellation call on YouTube, “Here’s what’s going to happen and you’re going to have to get over it. Yes, we have people that the mainstream has deemed, I don’t know, abhorrent. Because maybe they have a view or two, namely it’s likely they support politicians or don’t support the politicians that they think they should.”

He added, “Here’s what’s going to happen and what you’re going to have to get over. As far as this company is concerned, Chuck Dixon is about to be part of a campaign that is going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars perhaps millions. And guess what? He gets a bonus in the event that it does. You’re gonna get his pockets lined up and there’s nothing that you can do about it.”

July continued, “They say some people want to go their employers. They want to get them to put off a certain platform. That doesn’t happen over here. And you can’t do s**t about it. And you want to know why? Because what are you going to do? ‘Well, we don’t want the Rippaverse to publish that.’ Who you going to go to? ‘Well, go to the publisher.’ I am the publisher! ‘Oh! Well, well, maybe we go to his distributors.’ Look at me. I am the distributor now. There’s nothing you can do. Nothing. And they’re going to have to get over it.”

He then reiterated, “There are people that have been very creative and because they said something you don’t like you’ve deemed that they shouldn’t be a part of like the f***ing comic book industry? Who are these people? They are losers. And this is why social justice activism is the f***ing tool and occupation of losers. Because it unfortunately has been able to amplify people that are not only unreasonable, but it gives them some sense of importance that they have never got in their entire lives ever.”

Day responded to the cancellation attempts on his website. Day wrote, “Let me get this straight. Because The Legend wrote a comic about an evil elite that engages in child sex trafficking, he is antisemitic.

“Now, isn’t that an open and public admission that a certain group of people are engaged in child sex trafficking and Satanic sacrifice? Especially given the fact that the comic doesn’t mention or imply anything about Satanic sacrifice,” he continued.

Day concluded, “Anyhow, this is just an attempt to get Chuck kicked off Eric July’s projects, which isn’t going to happen. What’s amusing about this is that if Dane is worked up about AH:Q, he’s going to stroke out on the spot if he ever reads The Legend’s Levon Cade novels…”

He then shared a gif indicating he had no intention of ending his working relationship with Dixon. To that point, Day shared with Bounding Into Comics the cover to Dixon’s upcoming novel, Caravan of the Damned.

Eric July And Vox Day Respond To Attempts To Cancel Chuck Dixon, 25 September 2023, Bounding Into Comics

Read the whole thing and check out the new cover there. It’s really, really good! We’re just about ready to go to print, we’re just wrapping up a few final interior illustrations and then we’ll make it available at Arkhaven and the usual bookstores.

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Should We Cancel Chuck Dixon

I am reliably informed that he is associated with some deeply unsavory characters. Also – you’ll never guess – antisemitic! These are very serious charges.

Dane, a YouTuber who runs the channel ActualFandom, recently appeared to defame Chuck Dixon as an anti-Semite as the Rippaverse is about to release Dixon’s upcoming Alphacore book.

On X, the YouTuber wrote, “If you’re someone who values the wellbeing of comics communities I implore you to read. Rippaverse Comics will soon publish a comic by a former industry pro, creator of Bane & Time Drake – Chuck Dixon. It gets disturbing from there.”

In the tweet, Dane takes issue with Chuck Dixon’s creation of the comic series Alt Hero Q for Vox Day’s Arkhaven Comics. In an image he shared as part of his tweet he writes, “He’s also worked with a publisher called Arkhaven, on a comic called ALT-HERO:Q. As in QANON. The first arc is titled ‘WHERE WE GO ONE’, which refers to the Q conspiracist mantra of ‘WHERE WE GO ONE, WE GO ALL’, often shortened on social media as ‘WWG1WGA’.

He then goes on to provide summaries of the first couple of issues of the book. From there he states, “For those unfamiliar with the IRL QAnon, it is a belief that a vast conspiracy of Hollywood elite and every politician who isn’t explicitly pro-Trump, is engaged in acts involving children ranging from an updated take on anti-Semitic ‘blood libel’ narratives, to pedophilia and Satanic sacrifice.”

Let me get this straight. Because The Legend wrote a comic about an evil elite that engages in child sex trafficking, he is antisemitic.

Now, isn’t that an open and public admission that a certain group of people are engaged in child sex trafficking and Satanic sacrifice? Especially given the fact that the comic doesn’t mention or imply anything about Satanic sacrifice.

Anyhow, this is just an attempt to get Chuck kicked off Eric July’s projects, which isn’t going to happen. What’s amusing about this is that if Dane is worked up about AH:Q, he’s going to stroke out on the spot if he ever reads The Legend’s Levon Cade novels…

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MY SISTER SUPREMA Now in Print

MY SISTER SUPREMA marks the very first Arktoons-only digital comic to appear in a print edition. But it will not be the last.

Randy is a bright young boy who devours comics and dreams of becoming a superhero. One day, he discovers a secret formula on the Internet that claims to be able to endow an individual with superpowers. After assembling all the ingredients and technology required, he experiments with the process, but the whole thing goes terribly wrong. Somehow, by accident, his big sister Cecelia ends up with the very superpowers he’d been seeking for himself. And she has no idea what to do with them.

So it falls to Randy to help her figure out what her powers are, select a costume, choose a superhero name, and teach her what it means to be a superhero. But while Randy and his sister are trying to figure things out and hide her new powers from their parents, the villain whose formula Randy inadvertently discovered is hunting for the thieves who stole his secret.

Written by The Legend Chuck Dixon and illustrated by Anthony Gonzales-Clark, MY SISTER SUPREMA is a unique and charming superhero origin story.

The 60-page print edition now available in the USA direct from Arkhaven. All other locations: available from Amazon and local bookstores.

MY SISTER SUPREMA appears regularly on Arktoons.

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