Free Comic of the Week: Vision Machine by Greg Pak

A new feature I'll be having up here on the blog is to present the best of free comic books available online.

First up is Vision Machine by Greg Pak. You can read the comic on Comixology or download the PDF.

Greg Pak has an exclusive interview up on Comics Alliance where he mentions that not only are you able to download/read the comic for free online, but eventually there will be a free print version available as well.

Which is really interesting, having a book put together by money from the Ford Foundation and put out under Creative Commons license which means anyone can expand on the universe created within the pages or is able to remix or mashup the story however they see fit as long as the original source is credited. Truly free creative information. The article also has a lot of interesting points about digital comics and creator royalties.

Which leads me over to another article discussing ICv2's number crunching of digital sales which is ultimately summed up as:

"While the news for print was less than positive, with manga sales facing an estimated 20% drop in 2010, the news for digital comics was very good indeed, with Griepp projecting that digital comics sales would see a more than ten-fold increase this year over last."

And:

"But while manga and graphic novels decline, the real energy and growth has been in digital, which has expanded from a $500,000 market in 2009 to an estimated $6 to 8 million dollars in 2010, a more than ten-fold increase. Quite simply, digital comics are "the fastest-growing part of the comics business," said Griepp."

It's interesting seeing this comic going out into the public, with its theme of free creative information with a donation based payment setup and the Orwellian Big Brother aspect of controlled information. I'm eager to find out which direction both the story within the comic and the story of the growing digital distribution and the role that this free comic plays in that.

K