Steve Broome, who is a writer/artist has released his own comic for the iPad. Steve has done work for DC and Image and also competed in Zuda Comics. Future Kings is his own comic, which has been released on the iPad for 0.59p. Thats for 24 pages.
When the worlds only superhero dies, normal citizens try to pick up where he left off. As they attempt to reproduce his powers, are they ready for the decisions science will give them power to make?
I’ll say it once, I’ll say it a thousand times – this is where the digital revolution comes into its own. Allowing talents like Steve to produce and distribute comics of this standard. I would never get a chance to see comics like this if I went to my local comics shop!
Future Kings is a a well written and drawn comic. For the first issue we get straight to the point, and a lot of things happen over the 24 pages, which may seem like a lot. I see great things coming from this series and I would love to see a trade of some of this amazing art!
Although there is a lot going on in this issue, the pacing works really well – we see the death of the hero and, by the reactions and thoughts of others, we discover what sort of a hero he was and how he affected peoples lives. Being a fan of Warren Ellis’s work, I see bits of No Hero and Supergod here – and that makes it even better for me.
Steves art is amazing in how smooth it is. I had a thought that it wouldn’t be the style I usually like, but the feel of the comic, combined with the writing, makes it a perfect fit.
This is why mobile comics are a boon to the industry – hero comics don’t have to be about people in tights flying around to save the day, but also about the effect they have on the people around them and what happens next.
I will be looking forward to the next issue and would highly recommend this one.
Comics Alliance have had a chat with Mark Waid and his plans for digital comics:
CA: What’s the most exciting thing that you see happening in digital comics right now?
MW: Just the fact that it’s the ultimate democratization of the form. The standard pat answer I’ve been giving at conventions for ten years to everybody who says they want to break into comics is no longer valid. The standard pat answer was, get yourself printed up somewhere, do a self-published minicomic, go to Kinko’s, whatever. Now it’s go lock down a website and do a webcomic, and if it’s good, the cream will rise to the top and we will find you. And you don’t have to feel limited by genre; you’re not pitching us as publishers the things we want to publish. You’re instead doing what you’re comfortable with; you’re doing your best work, and if it’s good, we’ll find you.
It’s not like having to take twenty minutes and go to Meltdown Comics and spend $3.99 and hope it’s good. There’s probably still a lot of great stuff out there that nobody’s found yet; there’s no guarantee that the cream will rise to the top of other because there are a million other factors of luck in there. But I can just go on the web and surf, and find links through Deviantart or other cartoonists, see what Scott McCloud is recommending or what the Twitter feeds are talking about, and then I can find all kinds of stuff… And if you want to stay in the digital realm, that’s fine too. Let’s find a way to monetize that…
The first rule of new media is nobody gets rich, but everybody gets paid, in a perfect world. Maybe you don’t get fabulously wealthy doing your webcomic, but as long as you can make a decent living… In all my forays into digital that are coming up, there’s no correlation to big fat paychecks that I can see. I’m looking at taking another hefty paycut next year in terms of expected money because it’s more profitable to write an issue ofSpider-Man than it is to do my own digital comic and hope that it eventually pays for itself. But if it just pays for itself, that’s fine.
Read the whole thing here
