Talk about a bold move!
Popping online Monday and coming to our attention late last night, it appears that in an effort to bolster up more support for his already critically-acclaimed series, Jim Zubkavich has begin to put the entirety of Skullkickers online as a webcomic. This is of course notable given that Skullkickers is a serialized print comic for for $2.99 a pop, with two trades in stores, a giant hardcover collecting the two trades on the way and the thirteenth issue solicited for April.
If nothing more, this is essentially the final frontier in the battle against piracy. Why pirate a comic that you can already read for free on a hosted website? And if you like it, why not then buy it? With links to the issues on Comixology, Amazon, and a helpful store locator, Skullkickers online offers up every possible path for someone to enjoy the comic at their own preferred pace. The ultimate endorsed form of “try before you buy,” if you will.
As Zub writes on the site,
We’re thrilled to have you here experiencing our special brand of swords and sassery. Skullkickers is an Image Comics series that’s been running since September 2010. Each week we’ll be serializing 5 pages from our issues, bringing you into the world of our mercenary monster mashers in their endless search for fame and fortune.
If you love movies like Army of Darkness or Hellboy, you’re going to feel right at home with our brand of banter and violence.
If you’re enjoying the story and want to get caught up with our current chapter, click one of the spiffy links to your left to buy the trade paperbacks in print or digitally. We greatly appreciate your support. Good times ahead!
The argument has often been made that most pirates will agree to purchasing a physical copy of something if they like it enough, and by essentially giving it all away for free now, Jim Zub is very much challenging the more conventional methods of file sharing. He’s certainly not the first (Steve Lieber had a great up-tick in sales when he popped on 4Chan last year to share his comic Underground for free), but this is now the second comic of Jim Zub’s that he is offering up for free online (the first being his long-delayed finally-finished graphic novel Makeshift Miracle). However, I don’t think it is too outlandish to believe we’ll hear about a spike in Skullkickers sales quite soon.
At the very least, now you certainly have no excuse not to be reading Skullkickers.
With a two full mini-comics and the first two pages of issue #1 online, you can check out Skullkickers now over at KeenSpot.
