Broken Frontier

Like many comic publishers, BOOM! Studios is using the Internet to publicize its titles. However, in a bold move, BOOM! has partnered with Myspace Comics to distribute their new book North Wind as a free downloadable comic book archive file (.cbz), an open format without any form of digital rights management (DRM), technology that limits users on how they may use certain digital files. DRM is typically used to prevent piracy and other forms of unauthorized usages of media files. While Marvel and DC Comics protect their online entries with DRM measures, BOOM! is counting on the Myspace community to carry its comic. We caught up with Chip Mosher of BOOM! Studios to find out why they have decided to take this path.

BROKEN FRONTIER: One thing that jumped out at me is your choice to distribute the comic as a .cbz without a watermark or DRM. It seems many companies offer their product in a more restrictive manner. What led to this?

CHIP MOSHER: Our main focus with putting North Wind out there as a simultaneous release on MySpace/Comic Books is to dramatically increase awareness of this product in order to drive sales. Writer David DiGilio has a massive fan following from his TV show of last summer, Traveler, and we saw that part of this following had to do with his very successful blog  on TVGuide.com. We really wanted to connect with that fan base, a fan base that might not be aware of comic books and the direct market, and saw MySpace as the way to do it.

That said, MySpace/Comic Books have 145,000 "friends" that they market to directly with these types of promotion and they have found that not only do their "friends" like the ability view the comic books they promote as images embedded in their blogs but also as download-able .cbz files. Top Cow just did a Wanted preview doing the same thing. This isn't anything new. What is new here, and I think historic, is the legitimate simultaneous day-and-date release of North Wind throughout the span of its five issues.

As for the DRM... Steve Jobs, the CEO of my former employer Apple, does not think it works. It hasn't worked on DVDs. It doesn't work on CDs. And let me tell you, it certainly doesn't work with comics. Let's be frank - the only really historic thing we are doing here is being legitimate. We are just beating the bootleggers on their so-called "0 Day" releases.

Anyone with a rudimentary use of Google can find every comic that comes out every week within hours of that comic hitting the store shelves. Z-Cult and some other torrent based bootlegging sites might be down for the count since Marvel and DC went after them, but bootleggers just went off into another direction. It's still there. It's still as bad as ever.

What is great about the MySpace promotion is that we get to control the message. And we get to promote the retailers in the direct market. Millions of people sign up for MySpace everyday. If they see the super cool trailer  that was featured this weekend on MySpaceTV, read North Wind, and then decide to get the comic at their local comic shop, we win. If someone who hasn't read comics in awhile sees North Wind and decides to re-visit their local comic shop and buy comics, we win. We don't make any money off this promotion unless people are buying the comic book in the stores.

I am sure there will be people that won't buy North Wind, who would've, because it is available for free. But I think there will be more people that will buy it to make up for any losses. Making more people aware of comics and the direct market in general is a win-win for everyone. And if that makes them more aware of BOOM!...well, that is a good thing too!

BF: Also, it seems TV writers are coming into the comic industry in droves these days. How did David DiGilio get involved with BOOM! Studios and are there any other projects with Hollywood scribes in the near future?

CM: That's probably a better question for publisher Ross Richie, since the North Wind comic was in place before I got to BOOM!, but I believe DiGilio was working with Ross and Andy Cosby (BOOM!s co-founders) on a film project that hasn't materialized.

From that relationship DiGilio pitched North Wind to them as a comic. It was originally a film script that was near and dear to David's heart, though he took to the medium like a champ and really completely re-worked it to fit the five-issue, twenty-two page mold. All you have to do is read the first issue to see that it turned out great. David's an old school '80s Marvel guy. He's a nerd like us.

As for other Hollywood scribes... well, right now, we also have a project with screenwriter Chris Morgan and co-writer Kevin Walsh entitled Salem. You may be familiar with Chris' work on films like S.W.A.T., Cellular, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and most recently Wanted. Salem tells the tale of Elias Hooke, a renegade warrior-priest who is on an all-consuming quest to destroy a real demon that haunts the darkness and preys on humanity. Salem #0 will be hitting stores in February. It's a great book that I am really excited about.