Dark Horse Comics will significantly increase the number of print collections of Web comics it publishes, the Portland-based publisher announced at Wonder-Con in San Francisco earlier this month. Upcoming Web comics collections include David Malki's Wondermark, Chris Onstad's Achewood, and Keith Knight's The K Chronicles, joining The Perry Bible Fellowship, Penny Arcade and Megatokyo.
The first Wondermark collection, Beards of our Forefathers arrives in April. The strip takes classic 19th century engravings and adds modern, satirical captions. Knight's The Complete K Chronicles, which deals with social and political commentary, is due in July. Finally, The Great Outdoor Fight, collecting Onstad's surreal humor strip, comes out in September.
For Dark Horse, it was the success of last fall's Perry Bible Fellowship collection, The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories, that really proved there was a market for print editions of Web comics. While both Megatokyo and Penny Arcade had been published before Perry Bible Fellowship, the success of both could be partly explained by their connections to the manga and gaming communities respectively. The Trial of Colonel Sweeto has no such connection, but nontheless sold approximately 35,000 copies so far, according to sales figures released by the publisher.
“PBF doesn't have an easy handle we can hang its success on—outside of [cartoonist Nicholas Gurewitch's] comedic genius,” said Dark Horse editor Dave Land. “When we were trying to figure out how many copies of PBF we could sell, I suggested that Penny Arcade would be a good [comparison] title to look at. That was originally dismissed as too optimistic, but now we know better. So prior to PBF, it would have been difficult to get a title like Wondermark or Achewood approved.”
One of the initial reasons people were unsure how well print editions of Web comics would sell is that the material is most often available for free online. So why are people choosing to buy this material now that it's been printed? For Land, the answer is easy.
“People like to own stuff. Sure it's available for free online, but you can't pull it off your monitor and put it on your bookshelf. You can't take it and give it to someone as a gift. And unless your bathroom is wired, you're going to have a hard time reading it on the toilet. I think readers like having something a bit more physical to interact with.”
The series with multiple volumes published so far, like Megatokyo and Penny Arcade, have had a healthy sales record. (Megatokyo is now published by DC Comics and is one of its bestselling graphic novel titles.) According to Michael J. Martens, Dark Horse’s vice president of business development, the three volumes of Megatokyo that Dark Horse published have sold 34,000 copies, 31,000 copies and 29,000 copies respectively, with backlist sales “continuing to be strong.”
Martens said that the four Penny Arcade collections Dark Horse has published since 2006 have also sold well on release and continue to do so as backlist. Martens noted that sales for Penny Arcade in the comics market in particular are “really strong.” A fifth collection is due out this summer.
One advantage these collections have is that before any of these strips hit the printed page, they already have a built-in audience thanks to the Internet.
“I'm convinced that Nick putting the Amazon link on the front page of the PBF site drove sales up,” Land said. “When he did the same thing for Amazon.uk, we saw orders increase there. I think that was responsible for one of the largest orders Diamond Distributors had ever filled with Amazon.uk. So, no surprise, the Web is great for getting the word out.”
With the sales Dark Horse has seen from its Web comic collections, Land said there is now definitely a market for print editions of Web comics. "At the moment it's somewhat of an untapped resource."
