Humble Bundle - free Image comics & sale

[Jude]

Going on right now. But even if you don't buy the bundle of comic books (downloadable only), look near the bottom of the page where you can sign up to get a free downloadable comic book every day. (It appears that if you sign up and keep the download link, the new and previous free comic books for this promotion will be listed, so check back later to get the newly added ones.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

[draclvr]

Wow, I had no idea Humble Bundle also had comic books.

[Jude]

Sometimes. And they offer the free download of the day every so often, too.

[Phlebas]

Yes, often when it's comics they'll have a freebie each day. It took me a while to realise you only have to sign up once for each bundle to get the freebies - I was going back every day before that!

[Phlebas]

You can also get lots of free comics here:
https://www.comixology.com/free-comics

(it's a while since I made it to a comic shop on Free Comic Book Day, but most of those are there along with lots of samplers, free first issues etc. It's mostly a commerce site for subscribing to digital comics, but you can sign up for a free account and read all the free comics without being pestered!)

[LadyKestrel]

I'm really out of the loop when it comes to comics. I didn't recognize any of the titles on either page.

[Jude]

The are all produced by a company (Image) that mostly allows indie creators a chance to publish their work. As I understand it, the creators only get paid from a percentage of the profits (if any). There have been some very good comics released by them over the years... but although the business model challenged the big companies, but are not always profitable for the writers/artists.

[Phlebas]

Image was formed in the early 90s by a group of 'superstar' comic artists who had got successful working with the mainstream publishers but felt that they were being held back by having to work with the companies' choice of writers and editors rather than pursuing their own unique artistic vision. The first wave of releases from Image, predictably, had a lot of flashy artwork and were horribly written. It turns out that writing is harder than it looks to artists, and editors do actually add something to the creative process after all. But over time they gained some discipline and some better writers, and the promise of greater artistic freedom actually paid off.

This bundle is specifically Top Cow comics, a studio spun off from Image which kept something of the focus on flashy art and scantily clad, improbably endowed women - most of what's in the 'pay what you want' section of the bundle looks to follow that pattern. Some of what you get if you pay over the average is good though - I enjoyed Down, Rising Stars and Midnight Nation on paper, and what I've seen of Genius and Postal looks promising.

(What's really frustrating is that a bundle from a supposedly creator-focussed studio doesn't have credits for each of the series included - you have to squint at the cover images or look them up elsewhere if you want to know who was involved!)

[Jude]

True, but there have been some real gems over the years, many of them in 3 or 4 issue limited series that mainstream comic companies would not have bothered to publish. Top Cow is where I first noticed Stjepan Sejic's artwork, too.