Some
of the more observant among you might have noticed a small change on
this ol’ site. What is it? Well, for those of you visiting Von Allan Studio on a desktop or laptop computer, you might have spotted a new
area of the website called “Pirate Von.” What the heck is
that? Well, as much as I’ve given away many of my comics in the
past, these have almost always been in the form of webcomics. You can
easily find them on this site, but not all collated in the same
place. The Pirate Von section corrects that! And it corrects it with
gusto, because I’ve enabled easy reading in .cbz format, as
well as a few other formats, too.
In conjunction with the Internet
Archive, I’ve uploaded my comics to their site. One of the
really lovely things about doing so is that it allows for automatic
converting into various additional formats. PDF is the big one;
creating PDFs on my end can be a smidgen fussy. While I’d like
to present more options in that format directly created by me, the
reality is that it’s fussy enough to be an obstacle to doing
so (as the saying goes, there’s only so much time in the day).
If you really like PDF, then the Internet Archive has you covered.
Personally, I prefer .cbz, but there is definitely not a right answer
for these “format wars.” Just the right answer for you, and
that’s what the Internet Archive provides in spades.
Right
now three of my collections
have been uploaded and are ready to go. You can go to the “Pirate
Von” subsection and find all the links, or just visit the
Internet Archive (right here) and download directly in the format you
choose. The Internet Archive also provides torrenting options, so
there are not only multiple format options but also multiple download
options, too.
What
prompted this move? Well, a number of things. First and foremost,
Amazon’s decision to absolutely destroy ComiXology was a big
one. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say
that while ComiXology was never particularly indy-friendly (in my not
so humble opinion), incorporating (engulfing?!) ComiXology into
the Kindle platform made independent comics basically disappear. In
my own experience, even trying to search for my own comics on Amazon
was an exercise in futility; you had to have the exact title as well
as the exact name of the indy creator(s) to really turn anything up. I gave it
the old college try, but enough was enough. I’ve now
discontinued sales on all of my titles that I had “over there.”
You can now have them for free. And for those who did spend some hard
earned money on my work, then you still have them. My decision to
discontinue those titles on Amazon does not in any way, shape, or
form effect those purchases. And hell, you can even download those
free versions for even more reading options, too.
What
about WOLF’S HEAD? Well, having just finished the script for
issue 19 (!), my plan is to start rolling the series over to the
“Pirate Von” section, too. And discontinuing them on
Amazon, as I discussed above. That process will be starting in the
near future, so watch the “Pirate Von” section for that
roll-out. And when they become available for free, I’ll be
discontinuing them over on Amazon, too.
2024 Update: This has now happened! WOLF’S HEAD is rolling out!
Are
there any drawbacks to losing Amazon? Well, the only one is the
panel-by-panel view. However, that’s a small loss. Why? First,
because creating the panel-by-panel
version —
something that ComiXology used to do for free, I might add —
added far more work for me.
Uncompensated work, I might add. And it was pretty fussy work, with
very little ability to get any feedback from Amazon directly about
any potential questions or even resolutions to pesky problems. The
latter point was particularly annoying. I uploaded the last issue of
WOLF’S HEAD, issue 18, in October. Someone complained about
some issue with the panel-by-panel view and I received an automatic
email from Amazon detailing that. I responded, made some tweaks, and
waited to hear back from them. I have been waiting to hear back ever since! What…
the…
hell?! Three months just to determine if the problems have been
resolved to their satisfaction? Screw that.
And
honestly, you don’t need the panel-by-panel view. Why? Because there are free apps that will do it for you. For example,
Fabio Bezzi’s Comic Trim app creates the panel-by-panel view
automatically. I bought his app and I find that it works extremely
well. It is ideal for reading comics on a cell phone, webtoon-style.
Lastly,
for those of you who worry that giving away my comics hurts me, by eliminating a method of financial support, don’t. First, print copies of
my work are out there and easy to find. Yup, even on Amazon.
Alternatively, if you want to toss a few dollars my way, you can
easily use PayPal to do that (I’m at PayPal.Me/vonallan).
And
while folks buying my work means a great deal to me, sharing the love is always important. If you
like my work, then sharing my comics has just become so much easier.
Just download them and send them to whoever you’d like. Or pass
them the “Pirate Von” link (https://www.vonallan.com/p/pirate-von.html) and they can download my
comics in whatever format they want to. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
So
that’s that. Free comics, no restrictions. Period. Anywhere in
the world. Download ‘em, read ‘em, share ‘em.
If
anything, I have one regret: I should have done this a long time ago.
Other Links
UPDATE! While the Amazon deal described below has expired, I have decided to start making my comics freely available to all. Please visit https://www.vonallan.com/p/pirate-von.html for more information and download links!
For a limited time, eight of my comics formatted for Amazon’s Kindle are available for free! These are free anywhere in the world (well, at least those places that have access to Kindle). If you have been on the fence of trying my comics, this is a great way to give them a try. And, if you know people who might like my comics but have never tried them, please pass this along. Sharing is caring and all that and, of course, one can’t beat free.
The titles in question are as follows:
WIZARDS FOR HIRE — CHEAP!
STORIES! 2015 TO 2019
And the first six issues of my ongoing series WOLF’S HEAD. Oh, and please do not forget this: since the first six issues are available for free, buying the entire series in digital format (17 issues!) is now about $12.00 US cheaper than normal. In addition to that, these first six issues also make up the first collected hardcover volume, so if you’d like to try the series out but felt that the hardcover was too pricey, this is a great to “dip a toe in the water.”
I’ll put the links to both Amazon.com and Amazon.ca below. For those of you visiting from other parts of the world, please note that all you need to do is replace the “dot com” or “dot ca” with your own regional domain and you’ll be taken to that Amazon site. For example, if you are in Spain and use Amazon.es, all you need to do is replace the “dot com” part of the link (for example, my author page at https://www.amazon.com/Von-Allan/e/B002BM77EM/) with “dot es” (https://www.amazon.es/Von-Allan/e/B002BM77EM/). And voila! There’s my author page for Amazon Spain!
With that out of the way, here we go!
Amazon.com
WIZARDS FOR HIRE — CHEAP! —
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089QXBYY9
STORIES! 2015 TO 2019 —
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089QX5LJC
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 1 —
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089V1DVY7
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 2 —
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089V7356R
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 3 —
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089VJYMT2
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 4 —
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089X8Q7WN
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 5 —
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089XFBPFL
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 6 —
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089XSTJKC
WOLF’S HEAD Entire Series (Issues 1 through 17, with issues 1 through 6 free) —
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MTGCS49
Amazon.ca (Canada)
WIZARDS FOR HIRE — CHEAP! —
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089QXBYY9
STORIES! 2015 TO 2019 —
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089QX5LJC
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 1 —
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089V1DVY7
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 2 —
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089V7356R
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 3 —
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089VJYMT2
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 4 —
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089X8Q7WN
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 5 —
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089XFBPFL
WOLF’S HEAD Issue 6 —
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B089XSTJKC
WOLF’S HEAD Entire Series (Issues 1 through 17, with issues 1 through 6 free) —
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08MTGCS49
Teaser Images
Here are some teaser images for all eight comics!
Other Links
Well, this is an unexpected treat! A treat so unexpected that I’m going to take a moment to explain it first.
I first wrote the following short story, titled “Sheba the Great!” back in 2004. Almost twenty years ago… the mind kinda boggles at that. Anyway, at the time — and as I’ve discussed in the past — my drawing skills were not that strong. As a result, I wound up deciding to not draw the story. Instead, I shelved the story and moved on to other projects. Fast forward to the spring of 2015. My drawing skills had really improved and, looking around for something to draw, I stumbled across my old short story from, at that point, a decade before. So I did! It was a fun project and turned out really well. I didn’t colour it, but I did pencil and ink it.
And then something kinda goofy happened. I was in the process of working on a number of short stories (you can see some of those here) and once I finished “Sheba,” I moved on to other things. Shortly after that, I wound up having a pretty spectacular computer crash. Now, I back up everything regularly and I try to keep some of my key art files off-site, too. When I restored everything, “Sheba” had disappeared! I remember being extremely frustrated, but I was faced with a quandary. “Sheba” was seventeen pages long. Did I really feel like re-drawing and re-inking the entire thing? I decided that the answer was a pretty firm “No.” Part of that was my frustration, of course, but I also really didn’t feel like going backwards and re-working something I had felt that I already completed. Moving on felt right. And so I did.
Since the past year was pretty chaotic (to say the least) and as the holiday season was approaching, I wound up going through a couple of old hardrives that I had thought had “given up the ghost.” I was able to partially get into one of them and (drum roll please!), I discovered that I did have a copy of “Sheba” after all! What a pleasant surprise!
Looking over my art and storytelling, I felt that the story and my approach to it held up pretty well, all things considered. I wound up having some spare time over the holidays, though, that gave me the perfect opportunity to finally complete it. I spent a little bit of time tweaking a few things here and there (‘cuz, you know, one never stops growing with art). And, of course, it had never been coloured so I needed to do that from scratch. Plus lettering the whole thing, too. I was able finish the entire thing just before New Year’s Eve. That just left it for my erstwhile editor to give the story a final pass and the official “go ahead.” That has now been done. And so, here we are!
“Sheba the Great!” is a light-hearted sci-fi comedy that was a great deal of fun to write and a blast to draw. And it’s probably the oddest story I’ve ever presented you, dear reader. Written in 2004, drawn in 2015, tweaked in late 2022, and finally coloured, lettered, and edited also in late 2022. In other words, different aspects of me, working together across time. Kinda weird, but kinda wonderful!
“Sheba” also wears its influences on its sleeves. In a way, “Sheba” is a love letter to certain stories that I grew up. It’s the best way I have to say thank you to creators like Pedro Henry, Steve Dillon, Harry Harrison, and so on.
I really hope you enjoy it!
Update! I’m very pleased that people are having fun with this story! To thank everyone and to give a bit of content back to the greater comics community, I’m releasing the story as a free download in .cbz format. Actually, I’m doing it in two versions: a low-resolution version and a high-resolution version and both are available through Dropbox. The low-resolution version is here and is about 20 megs in size. The high-resolution version is here and is about 75 megs in size. Oh, once you have downloaded either version, you’ll need a .cbz reader to actually read it. If you don’t have one, Wikipedia has some suggestions right here. As always, please be careful downloading anything that you’re not sure about. Please do your own research to find the one that best fits your needs.
So, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing and illustrating it! And don’t forget to visit the rest of my archives. There are a number of other short stories that you can read for free
right here. Thanks!
Other Links
As
WOLF’S HEAD BOOK ONE continues to make it’s way around the world, I thought I’d take a moment and talk about what’s
inside the book. At 176 pages, it’s packed full, featuring the first six issues of the digital series as well as loads of “extras” that serve as a peek behind the curtain of its creation.
Right from the beginning I tried very hard to design the series to work episodically as well as collectively. What does this mean? Well, each issue stands on its own, giving what I hope is a terrific reading experience. Probably the only exception to that is the very first issue. Why? ‘Cuz issue 1 ends on a cliffhanger! Issues 2 through 6 don’t, however, and I really wanted that to be an important of the series. This is the notion of “episodic closure” that I’ve discussed before. At the same time, I also wanted an impetus, that sense that events were building towards
something. Step by step, issue by issue, events and circumstances were racing towards a strong climax. That culmination is in issue 6 and I think that payoff is incredibly exciting; when the six issues are read together, one gets a really neat story. A story full of change, reversals, and excitement! The hardcover collects all of that in one handy place. Plus its a beautiful edition, too!
That’s something I love about comics. I also love it about storytelling in general, but I especially love it in comics. That sense of “Wait! What happens next?!”
WOLF’S HEAD has that in spades and I’m extremely pleased with how everything turned out.
Of course, you don’t have to own the hardcover to get that thrill. The digital series does the exact same thing, just in a slightly different format. While I think the hardcover is great for curling up and reading, reading on a tablet or even your phone can offer the same kind of experience. When it comes to my own reading habits, I’m not an elitist. I read paper books, I read on a tablet, and I read on my phone. And I read all sorts of stuff, including comics on all of these platforms. For digital, I tend to prefer reading on a tablet, but I’ve had lovely experiences reading on my phone, too. For the digital series of
WOLF’S HEAD, I worked very hard to ensure that even for those reading on their phone the experience would still be really smooth and intuitive.
So, what’s next? Well, I’m hard at work on issue 18 and that should be out in the not-too-distant future. And I’d also like to collect the second story arc into a matching hardcover, too. There’s no firm date for that yet, but it’s coming.
In the meantime, please enjoy
WOLF’S HEAD in whatever form suits you best. The whole idea was to offer readers a lot of different ways to enjoy the series. If it’s the hardcover, terrific! It’s the digital versions, great! Whichever way suits you best works just fine for me!
Oh, and if you’re brand new to the series and would like to learn a bit more, here’s the ol’ Elevator Pitch for
BOOK ONE: “Lauren Greene is an ex-police officer who turned her badge in after becoming frustrated with the police force’s corruption. She’s had enough of violence and is thinking about packing her bags and hitting the road to see how she can make a difference out in the larger world, when her mother Patty shows up at her door with a complication. It turns out that Patty’s employer — a secretive military corporation — has created an artificial intelligence to fight humanity’s wars. Unfortunately for the corporation, the AI fell in love with Patty’s humanity and orchestrated its own escape through her. Giddy with excitement, Patty brings the AI straight to Lauren for help, not realizing the danger she’s putting herself and her daughter in. But Lauren has dealt with people like this; she knows what they’re capable of and she is terrified. Her fears are realized when she and her mother are confronted by corporate goons who want the AI for themselves and are willing to do anything to get it. As Lauren does her best to keep herself, her mom, and her family safe, the tensions over the AI erupt into violence… and suddenly Lauren is on her own. The new little life form doesn’t want to go back to the corporation and Lauren realizes it cannot be forced to live out its life as a war machine. There is already enough corruption, inequality, and violence in the world; the AI has to have a chance to help humanity — peacefully — while figuring out its own existence. Together with the AI, an eccentric cast of friends and family, and her dog, Lauren must figure out her next steps… while keeping herself alive.”
Where To Buy
Here are all of the key purchasing links for the hardcover:
United States of America
Canada
United Kingdom
Mexico
Spain
France
Germany
The Digital Series
Don’t forget that the series page for the digital version of
WOLF’S HEAD on Kindle can be found using the following links:
Posts
