Here’s another story coming out of Marvel’s South by Southwest panel in Austin yesterday — VeVe, an online collectibles site that sells NFT collectibles and artwork, has launched a digital comics storefront that now includes more than 300 titles from Marvel.
VeVe already has partnerships in place with Marvel, DC, Todd McFarlane and more to sell NFTs. Now they’ve expanded to selling digital comics that can be read in their app (much like Amazon), as well as “limited edition” versions of those same comics. These cost more but are collectible NFTs that can be sold in their marketplace and read using their augmented reality reader (which I’m very curious to see, especially if it can be used with the Apple Vision Pro). Each limited edition comic comes in a variety of variant covers, which apparently you buy “blind” and hope you get a rare one.
While Marvel is the only company currently on the platform, VeVe says they plan to expand that in the future.
“Being passionate readers and collectors ourselves, we recognized that digital comics fans have been calling for a more immersive experience,” said David Yu, CEO and co-founder of VeVe. “Our aim is to create a platform that makes comics discovery fun and easy—one that’s centered on function and design, fosters community and accessibility for all. We understood those pain points and created VeVe Comics to be the solution.”
Publishing | Scholastic has teamed up with the nonprofit Little Free Library, which provides those free library boxes to neighborhoods and schools, to promote the upcoming release of Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder.
The Dog Man-themed Little Free Library will be installed in Cleveland, Washington, DC, New York City, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, New Orleans, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco and more, with Scholastic and author Dav Pilkey providing 50,000 copies of Dog Man and other books to fill these libraries. Communities can apply to have a Dog Man Little Free Library added to their town.
Creators | Award-winning letterer Todd Klein has been working for a number of years on a book about the history of comic book lettering, and on his blog he details the current status and the outlines the issues he’s had with his publisher. He’s also posted the contents for the book on his website.
Retailers | Writing for The Comics Journal, Zach Rabiroff interviews Joseph Koch, owner of Koch Comics Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, about their pending closure.
Retailers | At Publisher’s Weekly, Brigid Alverson marks the 50th anniversary of the direct market by talking to several retailers about the appeal and future of comic book stores.
Awards | The British Book Awards shortlist for this year includes three graphic novels in their category that honors illustrated books — Bunny vs Monkey: Multiverse Mix-up by Jamie Smart, Dog Man: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea by Dav Pilkey and Heartstopper: Volume 5 by Alice Oseman.
Awards | The Libby Awards, a new book award voted on by librarians, have announced the winners of their first-ever awards. They include The Talk by Darrin Bell, which won in the “Best Comics/Graphic Novel” category.
Anniversaries | Congratulations to Heidi MacDonald and The Beat, who celebrate 20 years of comics and pop culture commentary and reporting this year.