News Free Comics Shuts Down

Alan Gardner at Daily Cartoonist catches a mention that Randall Vanfossen's attempt to do a mail-order service featuring strip comics without the newspaper surrounding it (which I believe is there to keep the comics page dry) is now off the table, before getting to the publication stage. I guess what happened is that a subscription model was floated, but the reaction was so small it not only didn't raise capital for the project it outright indicated there was going to be little interest. Any money raised will be returned.

I understand looking at sales figures and deciding not to do a project, and Vanfossen mentions he had enough capital on hand to do a couple of years if there had been more significant interest. Still, it's hard not to be reminded of all those instances in comics where a publisher doesn't bring the capital to the table necessary to launch an idea, support it, and make a successful model that will eventually attract customers because they believe it's a good one. I think if you look at the most successful things in comics, almost all of them lost money for an extended period at their start. I hope that someone in the future will try different publishing models with the strip form, and get further along in their plans.
 
posted 3:14 am PST | Permalink
 

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