AGP cover 3 pencils.jpg
In case you haven’t noticed, Image Comics is gunning for the Big Two this year, in terms of creators and concepts and now, bang for your buck. Jonathan Ross and Bryan Hitch are releasing AMERICA’S GOT POWERS in April, and the first issue will be 38 pages for $2.99, which, they point out, is a lot more story than you get with a Marvel comic.

Oh yeah, it’s going to be THAT kind of war of attrition.

They also released a few pages of art along with the below statement. Oh yeah, go Hitchy, go! Widescreen!

page 4-5.jpg

TWICE AS MUCH AS MARVEL FOR A DOLLAR LESS.

Okay, that’s a bold statement and possibly contentious enough to get you to read this but it’s absolutely true.

AMERICA’S GOT POWERS launches in April from Image by us, (Bryan Hitch and Jonathan Ross). We told you a bit about it in January. What we hadn’t told you until now was that issue one has THIRTY-EIGHT pages of story and is still only $2.99. 

Here’s why. 

Bryan says:  Since I started drawing Ultimates issue one in late 2001, I may have only delivered two or three 22 page books. I’ve always pushed the story either with additional visual material to underscore what’s been written or to pump action to the level we all wanted but would never have had the room for. So I just drew it the way it felt right to do so. 

Go count the pages in each issue of Ultimates, Captan America: Reborn or FF. Not many 22 page issues. I got hell of course but my deal has always been that giving the story the best work it can have is the only deal that matters. I even did some pages for free to get them in the issues. 

We have taken stuff out of AMERICA’S GOT POWERS issue one, moved it around and walked around the room whistling. It should have been a 22 page first issue but there were things we felt had to be there and those scenes needed to breath. The story needed to be told properly; it ALWAYS does. So we put it back in and told the story the way we wanted to. Thirty-eight pages of it!

Normally a book this size would be at least $3.99 but that didn’t seem fair to us. It was our decision to make the first issue this big and it’s not right to ask you guys to pay extra for it. We are proud of AMERICA’S GOT POWERS, insanely proud and we want to pass that on. 

Big time.

We’re just another small business like many of the retailers and we believe completely in the story we’re trying to tell so instead of putting out a 20 page issue and asking you to pay $3.99 for it, we’re giving you nearly DOUBLE that for a dollar less.

It’s had a knock-on effect though. Initially we had intended to release issues one and two in the same month, a sort of double whammy to kick-start the book. We’ve changed that plan slightly as most of that material is now in a single 38-page issue rather than two separate books. 

As a result issue two will move backwards slightly into May, issue three into June etc so our team doesn’t kill themselves providing this much awesome in a single month

So we ARE still releasing what we intended to in April; the same TWO ISSUES of story but now it’s in one book and only the price of a single. We’re giving you what we said we would but at half the price. 

$2.99

Boom.

And, to emphasize that boom, here’s a sneak peek at a big boom in a cool two pager from the first massive double-sized issue of AMERICA’S GOT POWERS.

Did we mention it was 38 pages at $2.99? It’s also worth mentioning that we can’t guarantee any of the other issues won’t exceed 20 pages either. Though if they do, they’ll never exceed $2.99 

Enjoy the pencils sneak peek. Over the next few days, we’re going to properly introduce you to our characters and the amazing world they live in along with loads of pencils and inks from the first issue to get you excited. 

Jonathan and Bryan

1 COMMENT

  1. That’s just cool enough that I’ll give it a try in April. Image hasn’t really been on my radar much in the past, but the Big Two have been struggling to keep my attention lately. And with this big push of new and interesting sounding books from Image, I suspect they’ll be getting more of my money before long.

  2. Probably a good way to market in today’s page-starved, too expensive despite what certain editors tell you comic marketplace.

  3. two creators who haven’t been able to meet deadlines in years? I’ll wait for the trade, thankyouverymuch…

  4. Maybe they kept missing deadlines because they spent all that time making extra pages then throwing them away :P

    I’ll wait to hear about some actual substance in the story before I jump on…though this is a step in the right direction in theory!

  5. It’s also worth mentioning that we can’t guarantee any of the other issues won’t exceed 20 pages either. Though if they do, they’ll never exceed $2.99.

    I’m not sure I understood this part. Does this mean that future issues might not exceed 20 pages? I feel like they should have qualified this statement with, “If the issue’s story takes less than 20 pages to tell, then so be it.” or something.

  6. “I’m not sure I understood this part. ”

    I believe they are saying that future issues may exceed 20 pages as well, but that they’ll always charge only $2.99 for them.

  7. I’d like to support this – based on their comment about Dissing Marvel’s content and Price. But Hitch’s track record of delayed books is making me think I might pass.

  8. David Brothers already pointed this out on Twitter, but 22 x 2 is 44, not 38. (Are Marvel’s $3.99 comics still 22 pages? Even if they’re only 20…)