That title is perhaps a bit scarier than I intended.
“Alpha”, the first chapter (the twelve pages of comic and cover!) of Alpha Flag has been collected neatly into digital form and is available for purchase, starting today! Get it in the header (how neat is that javascript?), or in the Store tab.
It’s got some extras in the back that won’t go up on the site, as far as I’m planning now. It’s even got the page that’s coming out tomorrow in it as a pre-thank you for testing this system. Basically, it’s a sweet little condensation of the art side of this site, not cluttered with blog posts, comments, ads and all of that excitingly internetty detritus. You can read it offline, in a comic reader, or on your various digital devices (provided they like CBZ or PDF files)! What’s it cost, you ask? Well, that’s just the thing…
It costs whatever you want to pay for it.
I’ve never been too comfortable pricing (or swallowing pricing of!) digital goods. All of the hours involved to produce the digital file have value, but the fact that the finished product is infinitely reproducible and costs functionally nothing to store reduces the value of it (in my mind, at least) to zero. That’s not to say that the ephemeral comic that’s represented by an incredibly specific array of flipped bits has no value. Just the file.
The price of the file is set to a dollar, but mostly because the storefront requires a number. It’s freely editable from zero up to infinity, I assume. If you want to pay me infinity dollars, I will gladly be your drawing slave for life. The value you enter, is basically just what you feel like paying for the time we’ve already spent making the comic. If that’s zero, I won’t hold it against you; I would greatly appreciate something more than zero, though. Every little bit helps keep the wolves from our doors. Even better, any sort of money helps to keep our fathers from offering us even more unsolicited career advice. (If you don’t want to buy it, that’s cool, too! Please keep reading, and hopefully enjoying it on the site! Thanks for that!)
Not that piracy of a webcomic is really that much of an issue, but I’d just like to say, formally, that I’d love it if you shared the file with your friends if you so desired! Fanart is more than welcome! In fact, if you’d like to cut up the images and use them for avatars or signatures or collages or toilet paper or highly negatively critical posts about me, feel free! Just don’t make money off of the stuff I’ve produced and you and I are way cool. (If you can somehow make money off of fanart, I should probably hire you as a business partner, anyway.) I just ask that you link back to the site whenever appropriate. Here’s my creative commons license. Check it:
I think that’s all I needed to say. Here’s an itemized tl;dr, though.
• First chapter (of 12 pages) available as a digital download
• Pay what you want for it
• Alpha Flag is Creative Commons licensed for now
• Thanks for reading and participating. We really appreciate it.
Jon
