When TKO Studios barreled into the comics scene on Friday with a long list of impressive creators attached to its first line of books and (evidently) plenty of funding, they’ve now fulfilled their early promise to provide readers with a chance to surf their password-locked website ASAP.

Late Sunday, TKO posted a lengthy Twitter thread explaining their unique approach to comics publishing.

“At TKO we want to be the first modern comic book company,” they wrote. “So, we’ll be doing things a bit differently.” In addition to working with some of the top creators in comics, including Garth Ennis, Roxane Gay, Jeff Lemire, Natalie Chaldez, Gabriel Walta, Steve Epting, Josh Dysart, Elizabeth Breitweiser, Giulia Brusco, Jordie Bellaire, Andy Belanger, and more (see the thread for the full list — it’s long), TKO Studios will release every issue of its mini-series all at once, rather than on a weekly or monthly basis.

They’ll also offer three different formats for readers to choose from (or combine, if they’re into collecting).

The three formats are:

  1. Full six-issue set in a collector’s box
  2. Trade paperback
  3. Digital download to read on desktop, tablet or mobile devices

Each book is “printed in DELUXE OVERSIZED FORMAT, so you can take in every detail of our incredible art.” TKO Studios prints everything in the USA. For interested readers who want to dive in immediately, the publisher is offering every first issue for free via their website.

The first wave of TKO Studios books is currently available for purchase. Per their thread, they are interested in working with local comic book stores, so retailers who want to work with them are encouraged to reach out at [email protected].

To gain access to the TKO Studios website, use the password vipaccess to check out their first wave of books, read some free comics, and purchase the mini-series that really strike your fancy.

6 COMMENTS

  1. i don’t fully understand what need this is filling in the market?

    Also i wonder if by asking creators to fully complete a series before anything is printed, collected or sold, does that mean they only get paid at the end of that marathon? 6 months of work without a paycheck is a long time. Are they paying upfront or as issues get completed? That would make the most sense, but i wonder if they have that kind of cashflow?

    It will be interesting to see how long they can keep this model running.

  2. Nope. You have to buy the whole run, but you can read the first issue for free.

    I’ve posted elsewhere on this, but I really like what they are doing with their release model, and they have a great lineup of creators for their launch.

    The big mistake I see them making is the format of the single issues. They’ve elected to make them oversized, so they won’t fit in any standard bags and boards, nor in any conventional storage box that most people use to keep their issues. Unfortunately, based on the pics on their social media, even if you could find bags and board for them, it wouldn’t fit in the collectors box they ship in. I think doing an oversized tpb is a great idea, but individual issues is a huge fail.

    Their prices for shipping internationally are also pretty brutal. Shipping 2 tpb to Canada is $20 on top of a price that is the top end for a tpb. Regarding price for content, Individual issues break down to $4.17 each ($24.99/6, I dont hold any value for the “collectors box” as it will likely get banged up in transit), which only puts Sara with 22 pages as the worst deal of them all. The rest have a lot more pages in the first issue, but it remains to be seen what the subsequent issues hold in terms of page count.

    It will be interesting to see how the DM responds since they are bypassing Diamond. It depends on how they plan to deal with stores, or if the stores even bother to reach out to them, other than a few of the bigger ones.

  3. So much for buying in singles at my LCS!

    I think getting a first issue cheaply/free is the best form of advertising for a series. Not liking the not-going through comic shops though. Being in Australia, I can see the only way I’ll get these issues affordably is via digital. That’s a shame.

  4. Their Terms of Sale for retailers are a complete joke: absurdly high minimum numbers tied to truly pathetic discounts that no store could possibly even break even on, let alone profit. Its hard to imagine any store stocking these books as a result.

  5. It’s weird to offer single issues when you also offer the trade at the same time. Given the market, most readers I think would go for the OGN every time over singles. Most smaller publishers abandoned floppy issues some time ago and went to the OGN format unless the creator insisted on single issues. Which would be on a very limited case for case basis.

    Anyway, I look forward to seeing what you got. The creative teams sound great.

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