The Comic Master Plan (Vision Africa)

The Comic Master Plan (Vision Africa)

GUY SEND ME MAD NIGERIAN COMICS TO READ!

Let me tell you a story. About a year ago after i was done with school, i asked a friend of mine,  Kayode Ogunyomi now the creator of Kadara for a list of kick ass Nigerian comics i could read to reimmerse myself back into the Nigerian Comic Industry. He sent me a list of maybe 5 to 7 comics he thought were really good and wished me happy binge reading.

A month later he buzzed me on IG to ask how i found some of the comics.  I hedged and delayed and finally admitted that i had only read one. The rest were painfully difficult to find. A google search for a Nigerian comic would bring up a random things like a dairy farm in South Africa, a small advertising firm in Oregon and a tumblr page where the earch terms appeared randomly. Maybe on the next page of the google search (which NOBODY goes to) would an obsure reference to the artists word press blog pop up.

I had gone through the searching experience several times during that one month that i became convinced something had to be done about making Nigerian comics very easy to find. Combined with the fact that for the past few years i had be involved in the Nigerian Comic Industry and had experienced every artist believe the part to Supa Strikas riches was to draw some pages, splash in colours, then roll up their sketch pads and laptops and trudge from company to company searching for advertisements, product placements and restaurant distribution deals.

Imagine their horror when they discovered they couldn't get past the gatemen of said companies and neither could their clumsily coupled together proposals showing N10million naira in 18 months. If only the company would sponsor them just N1million naira to get past the tables of secretaries and receptionists. I knew paper comics were still the way to sustainable revenue in the industry but not the way comic artists were going about it. 

It became increasingly clear to me digital distribution would have to bridge the gap between making comics, building a brand and audience reach and converting that to a constant cash stream that would fuel the continous process of more creation and even larger distribution. Nigerian artists just wanted Texaco to sponsor them and Mr Biggs to carry their comics. Na so.

My recent travails attempting to read the comics of the 5 or so studios Kay sent me resurfaced those convictions of mine and this time i decided to do something about it.


First, we solve DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION

Fast forward to November where after a heated session of discussion with Olaolu Olaofe, a friend back in school, agreed to cobble together the first prototype for what became ComicWox.

The idea for ComicWox is not just a website.

Let me explain. I came to the conclusion that the problems facing the typical Nigerian artist were;

1. Creation: Finding artists, writers, graphic artists to collaborate with, finding time to actually draw, taking months to complete just one issue and completing issue two a year later;
2. Monetization: No money to publish hence no comics to sell and make money, using graphical design skills to design magazine covers and other graphic related works and;
3. Distribution/Marketing: Making a comic today and having ten thousand people read it by tomorrow. 

ComicWox was created to solve distribution first. This website will be the one place where an artist can finish making a comic today and by tomorrow its out there and has a hundred thousand or even more views in the first 24 hrs.

It would be the one place where to read a Nigerian comic you simply enter the website and search from the hundreds and thousands of listed comics, all in one place, instead of combing through Facebook pages and obscure hidden blogs.

To that end our aim is to have a hundred (100) comics available for binge reading on the site and 10,000 views by comic fans.

100 comics. 10,000 views.

That is it.

Welcome to ComicWox, the largest collection of Nigerian comics in one place for your binge reading pleasure.

Onibudo Oluwaseyi, Founder of ComicWox Inc.