Launched earlier this year by a group of veteran comics editors and digital entrepreneurs, the comics and pop culture news Web site ComicMix.com is about to start a new online publishing service. Beginning this week, ComicMix will publish a variety of serialized original comics online that will be supported by advertising. Fans can read the serialized comics for free and as each series ends, the works will be collected and released in trade paperback and hardcover editions.

ComicMix editor-in-chief Mike Gold, a comics packager, former group editor at DC Comics and a 30-year veteran of the comics industry, said ComicMix plans to use online technology to transform comics publishing by reducing publisher costs and retailer risk and cultivating new readers online. He said the site will use the Web to publish genres beyond superheroes, in an effort to attract readers to the site and ultimately to bricks-and-mortar comics shops and bookstores to buy print editions of works they've already sampled.

Gold noted that it's cheaper to produce new material online. “You need a lot of money upfront to produce a new print comics series,” said Gold, whose packaging company, ArrogantMGMS, has produced comics for IDW, Image Comics and others. “And it's hard for comic shops, which have to buy nonreturnable at wholesale, to take a chance on anything but stuff from Marvel and DC,” he said. “But broadband is changing everything. There are new readers online and the market is expanding.”

Gold said ComicMix creators are paid “competitive page rates,” and ComicMix's ad revenues “will be split with the talent.” Ads will appear on the periphery of ComicMix pages, which also feature an online application that allows the comics to be quickly displayed in different magnifications. Gold said fans can use the application to easily focus on a small detail in a single panel or zoom out to a one- or two-page display.

The online comics are created by a variety of well-known professionals. The initial series will include GrimJack: The Manx Cat, a detective story by Batman writer John Ostrander with art by Timothy Truman; EZ Street, an action and show business story by Mark Wheatley and Robert Tinnell; and the return of the popular series Munden's Bar, also written by Ostrander and illustrated by a variety of artists including underground comix legend Skip Williamson. The site will also offer access to classic comics content as well as to forthcoming new comics by such veteran creators as Marc Hempel, Mike Grell and Dick Giordano.

The ComicMix venture also involves Brian Alvey, a former v-p at AOL responsible for such Web blogs as Engadget, Autoblog and TVSquad; and Glenn Hauman, a digital publisher who launched Bibliobytes, an ad-supported online publishing venture, in the 1990s.

Gold emphasized that publishing a diverse mix of genre material is key. “Because of the Internet, there's a huge potential reading audience for new comics. We think we can get those people into comics shops and bookstores.” He said book distribution has not been finalized, and the book collections will be produced and published by ComicMix.