FAILURE By Karl Stevens
Alternative Comics is well regarded as a publisher of some of the best independent comics you’ll find. Now, ComiXology has partnered with them so you can enjoy Alternative Comics digitally.
Press Release For 8 May 2013:
Key titles from creators Sam Henderson, Steve Cerio and Karl Stevens released today!
May 8, 2013 – Cupertino, CA / New York, NY – ComiXology and Alternative Comics announced today that the long-time independent publisher Alternative Comics has entered into an all-new digital distribution agreement with comiXology, the revolutionary cloud-based digital comics platform available across the iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire, Windows 8 and the Web.
Independent comic fans will be reading Alternative Comics in an all new dynamic way with comiXology’s cinematic Guided View™ technology. iPad with Retina display users will experience every fine detail of indie comics with comiXology’s high definition format dubbed CMX-HD!
To celebrate the announcement, Alternative Comics is releasing five titles on the comiXology platform from independent comic luminaries, including Karl Stevens’s Failure, Steve Cerio’s Pie, Sam Henderson’s Magic Whistle series including the Humor Can Be Funny collection and 2012’s twelfth issue of the long running humor comic.
“Alternative Comics has an extensive, hilarious and thought-provoking catalog of work by tremendous independent creators and we’re excited to be able to share these stories worldwide on comiXology,” said comiXology’s co-founder and CEO David Steinberger. “Now fans and newcomers alike will be able to get access to these great titles and experience them in a whole new way with our Guided View reading technology.”
“Making Alternative Comics available digitally on comiXology is a big step for us that we are truly excited to take,” said Alternative Comics General Manager Marc Arsenault. “Bringing high-quality independently created comics to a larger readership has always been our mission and having our extensive back list and all of our new books available through comiXology will give a whole new generation of comic fans access to our catalog.”
Here’s a full list of the Alternative Comics titles debuting today across the comiXology platform:
Failure GN by Karl Stevens
Humor Can Be Funny (Magic Whistle) GN by Sam Henderson
Magic Whistle #7 by Sam Henderson
Magic Whistle #12 by Sam Henderson
Pie #1 by Steven Cerio
Future digital releases from Alternative Comics include their first day-and-date release Alternative Comics #4, coming June 26, 2013. The all-ages graphic novel Peanut Butter & Jeremy’s Best Book Ever, by 2012 Eisner Award winning creator James Kochalka (Dragon Puncher, Johnny Boo), is also scheduled to debut digitally this year.
Alternative Comics is an independent comic book publisher with an extensive back catalog of humor, satirical and original creator-owned titles. Jeff Mason ran the company from 1993 until 2008, and it was re-launched in June 2012 by industry veteran Marc Arsenault.
About ComiXology
Founded in 2007, comiXology revolutionized the comic book and graphic novel industry by delivering a cloud-based digital comics platform that makes discovering, buying, and reading comics more fun than ever before. ComiXology’s Guided View™ reading technology transforms the comic book medium into an immersive and cinematic experience, helping comiXology become one of iTunes’ top 10-grossing iPad apps in 2011 and 2012. Its new comiXology Submit platform enables independent comics creators to efficiently self-publish and immediately profit from their work. Offering the broadest library of comic book content from the top 75 publishers, plus leading and emerging independent creators, comiXology will not stop until everyone on the face of the planet has become a comic book fan. The privately held company is based in Gotham City. For more information visit ComiXology HERE.
About Alternative Comics
Alternative Comics is an independent publisher of creator-owned graphic novels and comic books based in Cupertino, California. The company was founded by Jeff Mason in Gainesville, Florida in 1993. Alternative Comics’ creators and books have been nominated for and won multiple comics and publishing industry awards. Alternative Comics’ publications are distributed by Diamond Comics Distributors, Inc. and Last Gasp.
Review: ‘Failure’ by Karl Stevens
I certainly hope that artist Karl Stevens never abandons what he’s accomplished in the pages of his latest collection, “Failure,” simply because he might feel compelled to rip apart what he’s done up until now and strike out fresh. He can do whatever he wants, for sure. But I hope he continues to build on what he’s accomplished so far. “Failure,” I dare say, is a success. This collection shows growth but it’s consistent growth. There isn’t a weak page in the whole lot. It’s more an evolving viewpoint: the angry young artist keeps pushing and pushing until he gets what he wants, a reaction; afterward, he finds he’s pushed his way into new terrain and he finds himself breaking new ground.
There’s all that explaining for a couple of pages at the start of the book about how the Boston Phoenix yanked the comic strip in 2012, after an illustrious seven-year run. All because of a joke that maybe went too far. Well, does it really matter at this point? Nope. What matters is the artist and man, Karl Stevens, and his work. He’s had some success with critics with three previous books and, with “Failure,” we can observe an artist evolving with these final installments of his comic strip.
It’s a process all of us artists most go through. There’s a time when you’re acutely sensitive to the fact only a few people will ever get you. They will never get art and so they will easily never get you. It’s a very real time that some artists never get over. This can lead to despair or, if all goes well, it can launch a career, likely to be mingled with despair too but you can’t have everything. Getting back to the point at hand, it is a time filled with one’s first overwhelming feeling of complete uncertainty that will stick with you (cause you never forget your first). You start to think that cats and dogs have a better shot at getting you than your fellow humans. Thus, we find a good share of eloquent cats and dogs in this strip.
Then we get a little comfortable and settle into something but we don’t want it to become too easy, a phoned-in gimmick, something that has already been done in The New Yorker or observed by Douglas Coupland. The above strip is a good example of finding your way within the long history of social satire. The humor is broad and yet there’s a sense of the specific. The young woman claims she was “nerding out” to Chekov. This is an annoying, and perhaps disturbing, prospect to her older friend who wonders out loud about what has become to simply being “intellectual.” The artwork is a refined crosshatch that itself harks back a hundred years ago which just adds to the joke, the tension between the proper order of things and the brashly new.
So, you do keep at it. Listen to your own special blend of neurosis. And it will come out. Stevens has mastered that play between the old and the new, the high and the low. “Failure” offers us a very funny look at an artist growing up. It’s a pleasure to see that evolution, that special blend of Karl Stevens come out.
Visit our friends at Alternative Comics. Visit Karl Stevens HERE. Purchase a print edition of “Failure” HERE. And, now, you can purchase a digital edition of “Failure” at ComiXology HERE.
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Filed under Alternative Comics, Art, Comics, Comixology, graphic novels, Humor, Karl Stevens, Satire
Tagged as Art, comics, Entertainment, graphic novels, Humor, Illustration, Pop Culture, Satire, Social Commentary