Jonathan Ross and Bryan Hitch Throw Down the Gauntlet

Jonathan Ross and Bryan Hitch have been talking up a big game lately. Their new indie series America’s Got Powers is set to debut in little over a month, and they’re getting the word out. Check out their open letter to fans below…

TWICE AS MUCH AS MARVEL FOR A DOLLAR LESS.

Okay, that’s a bold statement and possibly contentious enough to get you to read
this but it’s absolutely true.

AMERICA’S GOT POWERS launches in April from Image by us, (Bryan Hitch and Jonathan
Ross). We told you a bit about it in January. What we hadn’t told you until now was
that issue one has THIRTY-EIGHT pages of story and is still only $2.99.

Here’s why.

Bryan says: Since I started drawing Ultimates issue one in late 2001, I may have
only delivered two or three 22 page books. I’ve always pushed the story either with
additional visual material to underscore what’s been written or to pump action to
the level we all wanted but would never have had the room for. So I just drew it the
way it felt right to do so.

Go count the pages in each issue of Ultimates, Captan America: Reborn or FF. Not
many 22 page issues. I got hell of course but my deal has always been that giving
the story the best work it can have is the only deal that matters. I even did some
pages for free to get them in the issues.

We have taken stuff out of AMERICA’S GOT POWERS issue one, moved it around and
walked around the room whistling. It should have been a 22 page first issue but
there were things we felt had to be there and those scenes needed to breath. The
story needed to be told properly; it ALWAYS does. So we put it back in and told the
story the way we wanted to. Thirty-eight pages of it!

Normally a book this size would be at least $3.99 but that didn’t seem fair to us.
It was our decision to make the first issue this big and it’s not right to ask you
guys to pay extra for it. We are proud of AMERICA’S GOT POWERS, insanely proud and
we want to pass that on.

Big time.

We’re just another small business like many of the retailers and we believe
completely in the story we’re trying to tell so instead of putting out a 20 page
issue and asking you to pay $3.99 for it, we’re giving you nearly DOUBLE that for a
dollar less.

It’s had a knock-on effect though. Initially we had intended to release issues one
and two in the same month, a sort of double whammy to kick-start the book. We’ve
changed that plan slightly as most of that material is now in a single 38-page issue
rather than two separate books.

As a result issue two will move backwards slightly into May, issue three into June
etc so our team doesn’t kill themselves providing this much awesome in a single
month

So we ARE still releasing what we intended to in April; the same TWO ISSUES of story
but now it’s in one book and only the price of a single. We’re giving you what we
said we would but at half the price.

$2.99

Boom.

And, to emphasize that boom, here’s a sneak peek at a big boom in a cool two pager
from the first massive double-sized issue of AMERICA’S GOT POWERS.

Did we mention it was 38 pages at $2.99? It’s also worth mentioning that we can’t
guarantee any of the other issues won’t exceed 20 pages either. Though if they do,
they’ll never exceed $2.99

Enjoy the pencils sneak peek. Over the next few days, we’re going to properly
introduce you to our characters and the amazing world they live in along with loads
of pencils and inks from the first issue to get you excited.

Jonathan and Bryan