Kill All Monsters!, Chapter 3 is out!

I've been neglecting some personal announcements in favor of getting Christmas Carol posts up every day, but I shouldn't do that. Some of this stuff really ought not to wait until January.

Like how Kill All Monsters!, Chapter 3 is now on Artist Alley Comics and available for owning at only 99 cents!

For the past two issues, the Kill Team has been worried about the development of a giant, killer robot that works completely outside of any human control. This issue, he shows up. And so do some mutant pig-people.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

FallCon! Now with 100% more Diane May!

When I was in college, my roommate came home one night and told me about an art student he'd met that day. "You'll like her," he said. "She likes the X-Men." This was before even the '90s cartoon, much less the movies, so the X-Men had a much smaller fandom than they do today. I wanted to meet her.

Twenty-something years later and I'm married to her. Our son, David made his debut as a creator at SpringCon this year and now it's time for Diane to get behind the table too. She'll be at FallCon this weekend with some artwork, but also...face painting! Specifically, nerd face painting. She's been practicing her Pokémons and superhero logos and she's offering some larger designs too, like a half-Spidey mask and half-Hulk face.

David is planning to have something again for this show, but I don't know what it is yet. I'll be there of course with color editions of the Artist Alley Comics Sampler among other things. I gave away black-and-white versions at SpringCon, but these are much nicer, including the paper stock. I'll charge something for them, but it won't be much. Quantities are limited and they have stories by some excellent creators (as well as a preview of Kill All Monsters! #5), so stop by the table early. Once they're gone, they're gone.

If you're in the Twin Cities, I hope to see you there!

Kill All Monsters! #2 is now available for your purchasing pleasure

The second issue of Kill All Monsters! is now for sale at Artist Alley Comics. It's only 99 cents and contains a couple of pages of never-before-published story in addition to what was in the webcomic version. I hope you'll consider checking it out. In this issue, the Kill Team is stranded in Paris and leaves the safety of their robots to explore the city, but learn that all monsters aren't necessarily the giant kind.

The first issue is also still available for the low, low price of FREE.

Kill All Monsters #2 almost done. Here's the cover!

Garr! We be puttin' th' finishin' touches on th' extry material fer Kill All Monsters #2 an' th' issue ortin' ta hit Artist Alley Comics 'fore long. I'll be lettin' ye know when thet happens.

In th' meanwhile, feast yer one good eye on th' new co'er Jason created fer 't! This be one o' th' best things 'bout serializin' th' story this here way.

(Why am I talking like this?)

Part Time Fanboys and digital comics

Artist Alley Comics was sort of mentioned in the most recent episode of the Part Time Fanboy podcast. The idea behind the series is that hosts Kristian and Paul are more or less lapsed comics fans. They still enjoy the medium, but aren't part of the regular crowd that heads to the comic shop every Wednesday for new comics. The topic for Episode 20 was what comic shops could do to get readers like them back into the store every week.

Digital comics came up as part of that conversation, because they're more convenient than traveling to a physical location every week, but neither host much likes the idea of paying print prices for a comiXology comic that you don't even really get to keep. I use comiXology quite a bit and understand the advantages of that model, but PTF's Kristian points out the disadvantages pretty clearly. Though he doesn't mention Artist Alley Comics by name in the podcast, he refers to it (and links to it in the show's notes) as what he's looking for in digital comics: affordable (99 cents!) installments that you can keep forever and ever.

It sounds like they may talk more about AAC on the next show, so stay tuned for that.

Kill All Monsters! review at Augie De Blieck Jr's Pipeline

Artist Alley Comics got a nice write-up by Augie De Blieck Jr. on his Pipeline column at Comic Book Resources. Before I go any further in talking about it, I should mention that Augie and I are technically colleagues because we both write for CBR, but - though I admire his writing - he and I don't actually know each other. CBR is a big place.

He points out some potential improvements to AAC's business model (like notifications when new issues hit), and he's right in guessing that those are things AAC is working on. He also reviewed three of the comics: Kyrra: Alien Jungle Girl, Danny Clyde, and Kill All Monsters.

He calls KAM "strikingly drawn" and notes that the first issue is mostly "Kaiju versus Robots! Fight!" and that "the oversized fights are what sell the book." He's totally right of course, as is his prediction that it's "probably a little deeper than that." We wanted to start the series with a bang, but as future issues come out, I hope we prove that we're telling an actual story with characters and themes and everything.

Thanks so much to Augie for the nice review. If you haven't checked out Kill All Monsters! yet, the first issue is totally free, so please go give it a look.

Kill All Monsters! and digital formats

Four Colors and the Truth wrote a nice Digital Comics 101 article called "The World of Digital Comics" that breaks down the various ways that digital comics creators make money. Kill All Monsters! is mentioned in the first group, the “Why Buy The Cow, When You Can Get The Milk For Free” model. That's been the standard model for most webcomics for a while now with the idea being that you give away the comic and then charge for the print collection and merchandise. It's a good model, but as FCatT points out, it's not the only one.

In fact, since we've joined Artist Alley Comics, KAM is really no longer under that model. Like drug dealers, we've offered the first issue for free on AAC, but subsequent issues will be a buck each, putting us into FCatT's second category, the “I Am Buying Milk. You Can Keep The Cow” model. With more and more people reading comics on mobile devices as well as computers, there's less resistance to paying a small charge per issue. Not that's there no resistance, but that's one of the risks.

FCatT does an excellent job of laying out the pros and cons of each model - including the third, “You Can’t Actually Buy This Cow, But Its Milk Is Gamma-Irradiated And Will Give You Superpowers” model - and it's an article worth reading.

KAM was also mentioned is in a brief post about AAC on Bleeding Cool. The really interesting part of the post to me is the discussion in the comments about AAC's model of offering DRM-free PDFs instead of going through comiXology. Though it's not a polite discussion, two of Bleeding Cool's commenters do an accurate job of outlining the advantages and disadvantages of buying direct from the creators and buying through comiXology. I understand both points of view, so I'll simply say that while I'd love for lots and lots of people to buy our DRM-free PDFs, I don't want people to purchase things in a format that's not for them. If this isn't your thing, Jason and I are already working out details to get together the first volume of a print collection.

My point in bringing all this up is that people are still working very hard to figure this out. Maybe the solution is to offer comics in ALL formats: free webcomics, DRM-free PDFs, comiXology, and fancy enhanced versions that move. There are probably disadvantages to that idea as well. It's a fascinating time to be a comics reader and/or a creator and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all shakes out.

In the meantime, if you'd like a free PDF of the first issue of Kill All Monsters!, you can download it at Artist Alley Comics.

FallCon's coming!

I'll be at FallCon this year with copies of the color Artist Alley Preview Book, so I'm looking forward to sharing that. David will be back with his last few copies of Hulkasaurus and I'm hoping he'll create something new for the show. He did really well with Hulkasaurus at SpringCon.

Also, Diane will be making her debut appearance at an MCBA show. I'm not sure what all she has planned to show and sell, but I do know she's been practicing Pokemon characters and wants to do some face painting.

Mark your calendars! We're back in the Education building for this show, so there'll be a lot of room for a ton of new creators. Cannot wait.

Kill All Monsters reviews at The Lottery Party

Comics blogger Richard Caldwell wrote a couple of super nice reviews of Kill All Monsters this week at his site, The Lottery Party. The first was part of a review of the entire Artist Alley Comics Sampler, in which Caldwell called KAM, "Kirby by way of manga commonalities, with a fun cast of characters to boot."

He dove deeper into Kill All Monsters later with a review dedicated just to our comic. About the writing, he says, "May nails an action-packed slugfesting of megaliths well, while inserting enough character points to really put all of this in perspective with some human level." In reference to Jason, "the artwork well portrays the intensity of both action and drama, and is as fine a statement as any that Copland is one of the most under-utilized talents working today." Caldwell also acknowledges the talent and hard work that Ed Brisson puts into the lettering, which was really cool to read.

Thanks so much, Richard!

Kill All Monsters!: Extended Cut

Outside of Robot 6 stuff, my most productive writing time this week has been working on some extra material for Kill All Monsters. We're adding a couple of pages and some bits of dialog that'll explain the world (and why the Kill Team is in Paris) a little more quickly than we did in the original webcomic pages. You'll start seeing the new stuff in Issue #2, coming to Artist Alley Comics as quickly as we can get it produced and inserted into what we already have.

So, Mike, how was Comic-Con?

It was really awesome! We (Diane, David, and I) went with some friends of ours and stayed the whole week at a beach house near Mission Bay, about 20 minutes northeast of the convention center, so it was a few days of relaxing on the beach in southern California followed by a few days of insane convention chaos. Jolting, but totally fun.

Saturday

We flew in on Saturday and explored the area around our place, which was full of excellent restaurants and of course, the beach.



It was David's first time seeing the Pacific Ocean and my first time actually getting wet in it. I forget if Diane had been there before or not, but I don't think so. We took our first dip that night after getting some excellent Greek food at Arslan's Gyros. It's a great restaurant with a lot of atmosphere and an extremely friendly and helpful staff.

Artist Alley Comics post-Heroes tease

Jason and I didn't get to go to Heroes this past weekend, but reports from some of the guys who did are that it went very well. It's not my place to spill details yet, but there's already another creator - whom I'm a big fan of - who's interested in joining Artist Alley Comics. There are also some exciting things are in the works for an upcoming convention this autumn. I'll say more when I'm allowed to share, but in the meantime, please go check out some free comics if you haven't already!

Get your Kill All Monsters! Artist Alley Comics is LIVE! [UPDATED]

It's finally here! The Artist Alley Comics site is up and running and ready for sampling! You can get the color version of the sampler issue as well as the first issues of Richard Case's Annie Ammo, Craig Rousseau and Rich Woodall's Kyrra: Alien Jungle Girl, Kelly Yates' MonstHer, and of course Kill All Monsters! by me and Jason Copland. Other titles like Chris Kemple's Red Vengeance and Randy Green's Dollz will appear later. [UPDATE: I don't know what's wrong with me. Red Vengeance is up NOW.]

I forget if I've mentioned this before, but Jason and I are splitting Kill All Monsters! into issues with each chapter being a complete issue. We'll release an issue a month until the whole thing is done, which should be about a year from now. So, for those of you who've already read the webcomic version, some of this will be familiar for a while. A big difference will be that you'll get to own the comic as a PDF. but that's not the only difference. In some of the early issues, we'll be adding pages here and there to flesh out the story a bit more, so there'll be new material too. And of course, before you know it we'll be into all-new territory with never-before-seen story.

It's all very exciting and I hope you'll check it out as well as the other comics. There's some fantastic talent in this group that's absolutely humbling to be around, and the plan is to add more and more creators and awesome comics as we go. The first issues and the sampler are all free and future issues are going to be super affordable, so please go take a look.

Artist Alley Comics...In Color!

SpringCon went very well. I'll work on a real (but short) report, but one of the highlights was getting to tell a lot of people about Artist Alley Comics. I passed out all the preview ashcans I had except for one that I kept for myself.

Those were of course in black-and-white, but progress on the color preview for Heroes continues, starting with this awesome cover. It features Spencer's Lionbot from Kill All Monsters surrounded by other awesome, Artist Alley characters like Annie Ammo (the woman with the baby), Kyrra the Alien Jungle Girl (the purple, cat-like woman), Red Vengeance (the masked man with the gun), and so many more. If you haven't checked out the free PDF preview yet, I hope you will because there's some outstanding stuff in there.

Get your new Kill All Monsters at SpringCon!

FedEx cooperated and my copies of the Artist Alley preview ashcan - featuring six, all-new pages of Kill All Monsters! action - are sitting on my dining room table. I'll have them at SpringCon tomorrow and will be giving them away FOR FREE. So if you're in the area, stop by my table and I'll hand one over. Until I run out anyway.

Don't forget, in addition to KAM, the preview book also has new material by Craig Rousseau, Rich Woodall, Kelly Yates, Richard Case, Chris Kemple, and Randy Green. What's more, that new material has names like Kyrra: Alien Jungle Girl, MonstHer, Annie Ammo, Red Vengeance, and Dollz. This is going to be so cool, you guys.

Kill All Monsters returns: Artist Alley Comics

It's finally happening, you guys. Kill All Monsters is coming back and it'll start June 22 at Heroes Con. We'll unveil more details later, but the gist of it is that Jason and I were invited to join a creator-driven digital comics initiative called Artist Alley Comics. It was created by some folks you may have heard of: Rich Woodall (Johnny Raygun), Craig Rousseau (The Perhapanauts, Impulse, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane), and Kelly Yates (Doctor Who, Amber Atoms).

Rich and Craig's Artist Alley comic will be the previously teased Kyrra: Alien Jungle Girl; Kelly's is an awesome looking deal called MonstHer. Other creators participating in the launch are Richard Case (Hunter: The Age of Magic), Chris Kemple (Negative Burn), and Randy Green (Tomb Raider, New X-Men). Richard's comic will be called Annie Ammo, Chris' is Red Vengeance, and Randy's is Dollz. Kill All Monsters! is the sixth title in the initial launch and I'm extremely proud and pleased to be associated with this group. I'd give you brief descriptions of each series, but there's a preview PDF that gives a great peek at them, including six, never-before-seen pages from Kill All Monsters!

Next steps for the group are to launch a color preview at Heroes and I imagine we'll be releasing details about the full, digital launch at that time. In the meantime, here's one of KAM's six preview pages (there are actual monsters in the other five), so please check out the PDF and see everything that Arist Alley has to offer.