Saturday, October 21, 2006

New Phosphorescent Website

Phosphorescent Comics has done a redesign of their website and its a vast improvement and more interestingly there's an interesting thread about the future of the company

Personally, I never could get into the Watch, PC's attempt to build a universe has pretty much led to the same results as all the other companies in building a universe (Dark Horse, Valiant, Defiant, CrossGen, etc) ie pretty unsuccesful. Whilst its comendable that they went work for hire, the product and audience never hooked up.

I'm way more excited by creator owned stuff like Azerath (seriously buy the trade or issues its a really enjoyable read); series that are regularly released, have a wide market/audience appeal (but not superheroes because there's enough competition there already) but are finite enough to build a trade program (i think people are more prepared to buy when they know their will be five trades in a series, as opposed to open eneded).
And talking about trades, one shots like Witch King; though with high upfront production costs are easier to market and have wider retailer scope (comic shops and bookstores). I would totally forget about 4 part mini-series; they exist for too short a period to build an audience and even if you do then you have to backtrack and find the older issues which most likely have been sold out. Its a headache for buyers and publishers alike.

But a bimontly 200 page book would be awesome, but hard to make it work with getting newstand distribution and the content to put in it (see oztaku).

I'd probably suggest do a magazine; with articles and reviews not just on comics but with comics. Even a new mania/krash type book for kids.

1 comment:

Mark Selan said...

I can understand the Cathexes dilemma, as i understand it that work was commissioned around the time of the 3rd Watch series (the full colour art by Stewart); that series didn't do great through Diamond (it never appeared in diamonds top 300 which means it did less than about 1500 copies sold and whilst it could have done really well in reorders, so its all hamfuisted conjecture). So with Watch Casius Belli not doing well as expected, spending thousands on printing 3x 48 page full colour graphic novels probably would not be such a successful venture.

Its easy in hindsight from the boundary, but amping up the production values for the 3rd volume in attempt to build audience part way through a complex storyline was probably a miscalculation.

but yeah go azerath! go witch king! and other books of their ilk