David Lloyd Talks Aces Weekly

V For Vendetta co-creator David Lloyd created his digital anthology Aces Weekly back in 2012 with Bambos Georgiou and here he talks about its genesis and evolution with a new volume currently running, Volume 71…

DAVID LLOYD:  It’s the same as it’s always been – an anthology of serials and shorts – but we’ve had more multi-volume stories than we used to have since we began.  Offered great stories that are longer than a seven-week serial is good news to us and gets us fantastic things like Golgotha, which is an extraordinary story about a time-traveller going back to save Christ from the cross.  And Paul Rainey’s, Why Don’t You Love Me?  Both of those, and other multi-volume stories, are still ready to buy and read from Buy at our site in all the weeks and volumes they occupy, and with the bonus of being alongside all kinds of other stuff, like it all used to be once in the comics pages of all the newspapers, where a mix of fun and thrills missed no one out in its reach and made it to a nice, wide audience.

DL:  If you mean generally, Webtoons is a big thing now, though they’re not similar to us and cater to a different audience.  I was privileged to be shown around the studio of one of its major producers, Kenaz, in Seoul a couple of weeks ago ( before this current hoohah ) and was surprised to find it was like the Marvel bullpen, with lots being done in-house : writing, editing, art, colouring, when I imagined it was all done by freelance creators.  Comixology went to Amazon, though that was never digital only.  Madefire’s no more.  Currently there’s a great company, the name of which escapes me, that’s producing great online strips in regular comic-page-form for scrolling, and apparently they’re doing well.  And there’lI always be webcomix of some kind made for profit or just fun.  And I guess there’s other things around too, that I’m sure I could find if I searched.  Most all, except for Webtoons, will be facing the obstacle of dedicated paper-lovers in some form, big or small, as we constantly do at AW, and whether any of them care about it or not ; or see it as an ally ; or just don’t think about it at all, it’s there and inevitably reducing the opportunity of greater growth for exclusively online comics production.

DL: Haven’t found any disadvantages.  Every contributor filling the six slots of each seven week volume with our minimum requirement of 3 pages per week, ends up producing the equivalent of a regular size comic book in length in every volume – 21 pages – so it’s a good length for a single story/serial over the 7 week run, or the first chapter of a multi-volume.  And 3 pages is a good pace for any writer/artist or team to produce per week.  Importantly, though, no one has to do that from the standing start of a volume – they can work way ahead to produce their full story if they want to, or supply a few weeks of it ahead while they’re doing the rest.  And if they prove to have a reliable work-pace, we’ve no problem actually taking their week’s work in on the weekend before it’s needed for basic proofing.  See, unlike any print publication, we don’t need to set print dates for all the art and such to come in as a block for repro and print way ahead of publication date, and then have room for packing and distribution and all that to get it in before publication date in stores.  Our art pages are just jpg files to be easily slid in to every week of the run on the weekend before, or sometimes on the Monday afternoon before we go live. Comics production in print is archaic.

DL: To entertain smart and discerning comics readers at a price low enough to attract interest and secure continuing interest.

DL:  Willingness to maintain what we do for those who appreciate it and believe in it enough to participate in it.

DL:  Do I like it and is it a story that’s been created from sincerity and enthusiasm to entertain, express emotion, or to enlighten – or all three at once.

DL: Never.  I was persuaded once to have two stories printed in Italy in one special volume under an Aces Weekly banner because I figured, a ) it might be a good advertising for AW and, b ) because the authors of the stories were going to be paid for them.  And even though one of those authors happened to be myself, I regretted the decision almost immediately.  Stating a case for the value of online comics in opposition to paper while at the same time joining the opposition is clearly an undermining of your own position.

DL:  So what’s in the seven parts of Volume 71? The deadly double of Pablo Barbieri Guionista and Jorge Luis Gabotto are back with another of the strange tales of life on Earth in its last days of civilization as part of their Outpost Z collection – The Order of The Holy Ones ; the excellent Stephen White is gracing us with two new and exclusive and fabulous Tara Togs stories ; Federico Zilli continues his deep drama of a son trying to help his father, in The Right Place ; Ertito Montana and Roberto Corroto take the two kooky contract killers of the Sicarios series into a mad place between heaven and hell ; the dark fantasy saga of Celestial Hunters, continues from Marcello Bondi and Alessandro Amoruso ; and we introduce a new super hero named Bright Darkness, painted in glorious watercolour by Niccolò Pizzorno, from a script by Petri Hänninen.