Marc Silvestri: Free “Cyber Force” Comics Through Kickstarter?

So who here has checked out Kickstarter? The website is a way to get sponsorship/patronage for artistic endeavors. A bunch of comic books and comic related projects have received sponsorship from the website, most prominently Dave Sim was able to fund-raise over $60,000 for an audio/visual adaptation of Cerebus: High Society. Image Comics co-founder Marc Silvestri is taking fan-sourcing one step further with the relaunch of Cyber Force.

Cyber Force featured a team of cyborg mutant heroes, first published back in 1992 as one of the original Image Comics titles. Over the last twenty years, the characters have appeared on and off. But for the next relaunch of the series, Silvestri is turning to Kickstarter.

In the past, fans have been able to support projects they wanted through Kickstarter. It goes something like this:

1. Creator makes appeal to audience, asking for them to sponsor the project. As incentive, they give sponsors a copy of the work or some other token of appreciation.
2. Once they get the desired funding, they use said funds to pay for/support themselves while producing the project.
3. Project gets sold, creator makes money and sponsors feel they did their part.

According to the Los Angeles Times’ Hero Complex, Silvestri plans on doing something different with the Kickstarter model. He plans on using it to fund the project, then distribute it for free, both digitally and physically.

So because of that mind-set our unique plan to reintroduce Top Cow’s original launch series “Cyber Force” using Kickstarter fits right in. Kickstarter itself is a genius idea and a win-win for everybody, really. And we want to use its crowd-sourced funding in typical Top Cow fashion, meaning differently. While most everybody uses Kickstarter to fund a project in order to build it and then sell it, we at Top Cow are going to use the funds to build “Cyber Force” and give it away — for free! Plus we’re not talking just one issue but five full issues of the comic. And it won’t be free just digitally, but also as a full-color printed comic that will be available at any participating comic shop. So for people that want to read “Cyber Force” digitally — yes, including torrent sites — it’s free. And for anyone wanting to hold a traditional comic in their hands to read it — it’s still free. We figure this is a great way to reward loyal comic fans plus get new people to get onboard reading comics and see what they’ve been missing. Plus it allows fans to actually get involved in the comic making process and be part of something truly groundbreaking that will help all of us that love the genre.

 

So Silvestri and company are doing this for free. Well, sort of. The cost of making the comic, including financial compensation for the creative staff, production costs and printing distribution, is all coming from crowdsourcing. I wonder if any of the other major publishers are going to give this a try. This might be the only way we can get another Longshot mini-series. What do you think?