ALT-HERO COMICS' DISASTROUS YEAR

   In January, Red Pill cultist Vox Day announced, with considerable hoopla, the launch of Arkhaven Comics and the 'Alt-Hero' series. This series was supposedly going to dethrone industry leaders Marvel and DC Comics by celebrating the 'Alpha' ubermensch and the Game philosophy. A crowdfunding campaign netted about $250,000 to finance the project.

    After getting banned from his crowdfunding platform and nearly sued for co-opting the Comicsgate logo, a year has passed and Alt-Hero has been a complete and total failure in the marketplace. 

    According to Comichron, a website monitoring industry sales figures, Vox' publications haven't even reached the Top 500 in sales after all of this considerable publicity and crowing. It ought to have been a huge red flag---even for Vox' deluded followers---that The Supreme Dark Lord discreetly never mentions what his actual sales figures are. 

     Comichron shows that October's top-selling issue was DC's Batman #56, at 107, 578 copies, whereas the 500th spot was held by Scout Comics' Mall #2, at 1,212 copies sold. At a most optimistic estimate, Alt-Hero is doing no better than 1,200 copies per month, though we suspect that the actual number is a lot lower; probably not even into four figures. This suspicion is bolstered by the fact that Arkhaven doesn't even appear in any major retail venues. 

     Now astute readers have probably noticed that the hundreds of thousands of dollars expended in production costs nowhere near equal the profits from Arkhaven's sales. In a case like the aforementioned Scout Comics, the overhead is low because the company is essentially a consortium of independent producers. But Arkhaven is a standard industry business model where sales have to exceed expenses to be viable. 

     Alt-Hero produced five issues (with a sixth committed) before Vox went to the well for another crowdfunding infusion; meaning that each issue had a production cost of around $41,667 per month. Assuming the most optimistic sales-scenario of 1,200 copies; that figure is balanced against $4,788 in sales (at the standard industry rate of $3.99 per issue). This adds up to roughly an 88.5% FY loss; or, in more practical terms, $1 return for every $9 spent. (These numbers are of course inexact estimates, since Vox prefers operating with little or no transparency). 

     The discrepancies have begun raising some eyebrows within the industry. It does seem very strange that so many are willing to pump large sums into an unprofitable project, with no financial benefit. That's why Camestros' theory makes sense: Vox and some of his wealthy friends may indeed be using Arkhaven as a blind: donating large sums to a crowdfunding forum, grabbing headlines and fake publicity, then getting paid back or using the fund as a tax-shelter. None of this is illegal in the US (I don't know about the EU); but it is highly unethical and may explain why Vox got kicked off of Indiegogo lately. 

     Whatever the true story is, the undeniable fact is that donations to Alt-Hero are going up the chimney. Whenever the Alphas are involved, you can bet there's something fishy going on behind the scenes.