comic book artist sean chen—who got his start illustrating the “Iron Man,” “Avengers,” and “Spider-Man” series for Marvel—has left the traditional comics industry behind to produce his own work leveraging Web3 technology.

With the help of Web3 start 247 comicsChen is developing a new NFT-powered comic series called “Genesis” and for the first time, he is also sitting in the writer’s seat.

“Genesis” follows Asian-American scientist Lucas Zhang and his daughter, who have a tenuous relationship. He deals with concerns around robotics, massive corporations, militarism, and immortality. It even includes scathing Disney allusions, all while delivering a mix of dark humor and sci-fi action featuring characters Chen himself dreamed up.

The first issue of the story offers a variety of vignettes to set up the world. Gritty military scenes of giant robots with remote human operators are juxtaposed against the pastel-colored theme park of Bobo World, a place that’s cheerful on the surface but offers darker experiences for adults.

Chen will offer fans Ethereal NFTs of the characters in the work, with the goal of giving readers a new sense of ownership and fandom in the digital age. Chen and 247 Comics editor Carl Choi have already pitched one of the characters: a giant gorilla named fool—as a fractional NFTs which acts as an early access pass to select 247 Comics content.

“Biplane Bobo” NFTs alone have seen over 553 ETH (nearly $900,000) in total volume traded so far. Chen and Choi shared that plans for more characters to become NFTs are likely on the horizon, though they most likely won’t splinter like Bobo.

marvel money

Throughout his comics career, Chen has worked for Marvel, DC Comics, and Valiant. But while he was prolific, working on comics based on some of entertainment’s best-known characters, Chen said decipher that making a living in the traditional comics industry is a constant struggle for many artists.

“There are very predictable sales and there is a very predictable path that these things go down,” he said. “And it’s usually not a very pretty picture.”

Echoing familiar refrains from other industry creators, Chen explained that while comic book publishers have made profits from blockbuster movies and valuable licensing deals, little of that revenue has trickled down the corporate scale to actual comic book artists.

In fact, some comic creators, much like Thanos creator Jim Starlin, have fought Marvel for fair compensation when their characters are used to power hit movie franchises. And Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting, who developed the Winter Soldier story that was later adapted for the movie “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” said in 2021 that all they got was a “thank you here or there” from Marvel. .

“What really got me is those movies, obviously, everyone has seen them, and they’re all household names and they’ve done phenomenally well,” Chen said. decipher. “And they made Marvel and Disney a lot of money.”

“But it was born from ideas of creators who, many times, have aged [of the industry] now and can’t afford medical care. They are just in very bad shape,” he continued. “A lot of it doesn’t filter down to the original creators.”

In fact, Chen himself believes that he has had a major influence on Marvel’s film interpretation of Iron Man. Chen worked on dozens of “Iron Man” issues during his time with Marvel, as well as many “Wolverine” issues in where Iron Man appears.

Choi explained that Chen’s Iron Man designs “are often used by Marvel licenses as brand guides for vendors looking to license the property.” Chen also confirmed that Marvel has repeatedly cited his version of Iron Man as a key reference.

“My run on Iron Man falls into a sweet spot where a lot of the classic, iconic look [is] mixed with modern aesthetics”, said the artist decipher.

decipher He reached out to Marvel for comment on its use of Chen’s Iron Man designs and its approach to compensating creators for film and media use, but did not immediately hear back.

The Wild West of Web3

While finding success, especially financial success, as an artist in the comics industry is far from certain, Chen still saw the leap to Web3 as a risky move, but an important one.

“I’m in a lucky position where I don’t really need to work desperately to put food on the table,” he said. decipher. “So that allows me to take the big gamble and write something for the first time and actually take control of the project, and then have this bold way of doing it.”

But the comic book industry has already seen a backlash against NFTs, as many voiced their frustration over the “Judge Dredd” co-creator. pat mills and the heritage of the Marvel legend Stan Lee for the release of NFT.

Image Comics similarly took flak in 2022 for putting a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT character on the cover of a comic, and Archie Comics has yet to release their archieverse initiative—which would see him build a virtual writers room of NFT headlines—after a significant pushback to last year’s announcement.

“There is a lot of resistance from the community,” Chen said. “They really want to stick with the way things were done in the past, and I’m not sure why, because for the most part, it’s not very successful.”

As many musicians, filmmakersY creators Building on Web3, Chen sees NFTs and tokenization as a way to establish a more direct connection between artists and fans.

“This new model, it’s more creator to reader or consumer,” he said, adding that the traditional comics industry is anchored in companies that are “just one machine” and that the model “exploits a lot of the creatives” behind the books. .

While he views some previous profile picture (PFP) NFT projects launched by others as “cash raisers,” Chen doesn’t think that means people should give up on the technology or its potential.

“I think most people with brains can see that this is what’s going on,” Chen said of “digital collectibles,” a term that some companies like online community platform Reddit—use as a synonym for NFT.

As he looks to the future of comics, Chen isn’t worried about traditionalists who prefer physical editions to digital ones. He believes that his own work “looks so much better digitally” and that digital experiences help readers “get into the space” and participate.

The world of Web3 comics is, as of now, a fledgling industry. That said, Chen and 247 Comics will have to compete with the likes of “Hunger Games” co-producer Bryan Unkeless and his development team.Runner“, just like him Huxley NFT Comics created by noted concept artist Ben Mauro that has generated a trading volume of nearly $9 million to date.

Regardless of the pushback from some fans and the uncertain path forward, Chen remains optimistic about the future of Web3 comics.

“This is the first thing that is a real paradigm shift in the way comics are consumed,” he said.