Saturday, March 02, 2013

Digital Comics Publisher Breaks Away From the Print Model by Heading Back to Print




When publisher MonkeyBrain Comics launched nine months ago, it bucked quite a few trends in the world of comic books with a line of exclusively digitally published comics that not only allowed creators to keep the rights to their content, but offered titles for half the cost — or less — of most mainstream digital comics. Now the publisher continues to break new ground, announcing exclusively to Wired that its line of digital titles will also be published in print format beginning this summer.

But since the print rights — indeed, all rights outside of digital publication — reside with the creators of each comic, Monkeybrain won’t be licensing out its entire line to one single publisher. The first MonkeyBrain print edition, a collection of the superhero titles Edison Rex by MonkeyBrain co-founder Chris Roberson and artist Dennis Culver, will be released by IDW Publishing in June. A month later, Image Comics/Shadowline will release the second print collection, Joshua Williamson and Mike Henderson’s Masks and Mobsters, and the following month, IDW will put out the third collection, Adam P. Knave, DJ Kirkbride and Nick Brokenshire’s Amelia Cole and The Unknown World.

According to co-founder Allison Baker, this sort of choose-your-own-print-publisher option makes sense, because they see MonkeyBrain as just “one piece of the publishing model. What we do is create a spotlight and a platform and a conduit for people to publish their work through us, then they can take that work and sell it again to a print publisher [or] any subsidiary as well. The investment capital doesn’t sit with any one entity, the risk doesn’t sit with one entity. The risk is less for every single person involved.”

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