Do or die time.
Want more Free Planet? Buy the single issues.
Today’s Free Planet #9 kicks off our second major story arc, picking up exactly where Free Planet volume 1 left off. This arc is set to run through Free Planet #14 but after that…things are currently up in the air. To put the finest possible point on it: If you want Free Planet to continue, we need your support. Head to your local comic shop and set up a subscription today; go ahead and tell your friends, family, and anyone still suffering through social media about it too!
Comic book first issues typically open strong, a function of retailer experimentation, reader curiosity, and the collector impulse. Issue #2 is where the trouble starts, with sales dropping between 40-60% and another 20-30% or so with issue #3 before settling into a milder but still-steady attrition rate.
As a new property, by creators without Marvel or DC runs on their CVs, with an obstinately unique approach and presentation, Free Planet outkicked its coverage in a dramatic fashion, astounding folks internally at Image, retailers, other creators, and pretty much everyone but Jed, Vittorio, Taylor and myself, who knew—without a doubt—that we had something special on our hands.
But as of right now, long-term attrition is catching up with us…
To be clear: 14 issues—comprising two six-issue arcs, a two-issue interlude, backmatter essays and illustrations, and the absolute best art on the racks—is nothing to sneeze at. Owing to a host of broader economic issues and an ever-increasing cultural fixation on properties owned by the biggest companies in the world, the comics market is currently more challenging than ever. And, as mentioned above, we not only beat expectations, but we outlasted a slew of books by much more well-established teams. However, the fact remains: We have years worth of Free Planet stories left to tell.
All of which brings us back around to where we started. It’s do or die time: If you want Free Planet to continue, you MUST order volume 1 and set up a subscription at your local comic shop.
Setting up a Free Planet subscription helps absolutely everyone. Obviously, it helps you, as it ensures that there’s a new installment of the geopolitical space opera waiting for you the second Wednesday of every month. It also helps your local comic shop, which buys all of its comics nonreturnable and relies on accurate sales predictions to maintain liquidity. Crucially, it also helps the Free Planet team, as it provides us with cash flow to fund production.
You can count on big companies to continue churning out stories whether you like it or not; that’s not the case with independent comics like Free Planet. “Vote with your wallet” is a tired and fraught cliche but, in this case, it’s necessary. Free Planet is the best, most challenging and complex comic I’ve ever created and the feedback received is more thoughtful and complimentary than we had dared to hope. I want desperately to keep it going but, in order for that to happen, we need to reverse the attrition we’re currently experiencing.
Okay, enough of the hard sell. What’s Free Planet #9 even about?!
Free Planet #9 is on sale NOW!
After the EXPANSION PROTOCOLS interlude (issues #7-8 in stores now!), series cocreator Jed Dougherty and I return to Lutheria in the midst of a FOOD RIOT driven by the Interplanetary Development Alliance’s embargo. Amid current events in Gaza, Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere, Free Planet continues to feel alarmingly topical. However, this speaks less to my prescience and more to extensive research and a distressing, unavoidable truth: None of this is new or unprecedented.
If you, like me, find learning about historical precedents and the cyclical nature of things oddly calming, you’ll enjoy perusing Dr. Aldous Foyroushi’s recommended reading in Free Planet volume 1. Some particularly relevant recommendations include Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chavez, Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom, and The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.
Free Planet has been designed to achieve novelistic depth not despite the comics medium but through it. This entails my thumbnail-led writing approach, Jed’s unmatched page layout genius, and both of our hyper-specific, expectations, requirements and directions vis-a-vis color and lettering. It’s the reason why Free Planet looks and reads unlike any other comic.
In Free Planet #9, this approach is perhaps best exemplified through the cut-away spread above. Jed deviled in the detail here but none of it is incidental or random; the labeled Orouran dreadnought is designed to further flesh out facts only hinted at previously while also establishing events still to come in subsequent issues. But what elevates the spread from a cool cutaway to complex, novelistic comics is how the diagram interacts with the inset panels and historical captions. This issue—like every issue—demands to be spread out on a table and pored over and, once you do, you’ll be rewarded with added understanding and thematic depth, particularly around Josef, the big dude with the wrench.
WARNING: I’m about to veer into an Aubrey bugaboo. One of the biggest reasons why so many comics read so similarly, why comics come and go so quickly, why they fail to pull people away from other forms of entertainment is this: The vast majority of comics are written to be, not art objects, but television shows; comics as storyboards. Due in equal parts to the assembly line process defining the medium and how many creators are desperate to use comics as a step to success in film/television, comics are almost universally ideated as a story that’s then chopped into issues, panels, and pages.
To address this problem, I make a special effort to use the comics medium beyond just depicting a scene, such as through diagrams, cutaways, graphs, maps, etc. Another technique that has become a signature Free Planet move is to run two scenes concurrently across a single spread, such that readers can’t help but discover parallels and contradictions. In pages 16 and 17 above, both scenes explore loyalty and devotion, through the overlapping lenses of religion and romance. Further blurring those lines and creating the ambiguity that is essential to serious fiction is the fact that both Keen and Fweha are quoting other intradiegetic texts, lending additional complexity to the reader’s interpretation. And finally, at the risk of burying the lede: Jed’s characters are all profoundly, astoundingly good looking.
Find me at Emerald City Comic Con!
I am so incredibly excited to be a guest at Emerald City Comic Con. Not only is it a show I’ve never been to, one that I’ve always heard amazing things about, in a city I love, but it’s also the biggest show I’ve ever been invited to appear at. I’ll have oodles of Free Planet stuff, as well as The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling, Stoned Master, BEEF BROS and more.
Come find me at Emerald City Comic Con, table c-22 in Artist Alley, all four days, March 5-8! Get tickets here.
I’m going to bang the drum one more time: Free Planet needs your support to keep going. In addition to continuing to spread the gospel truth (i.e., that Free Planet is amazing, essential reading), help us out with the following:
Order Free Planet volume 1 and review it on:
Buy issue #9 and set up a subscription at your local comic shop
Don’t have one? Order signed issues #7-14 from my local comic shop
And finally, a special treat for making it through this month’s email, a bloody sneak peek at Free Planet #10:
xoxo,
Aubrey