Comic Genius Pow! He sold his comic online. Bang! He made $100,000 a week.
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Back in 1996, few had experienced the Internet, let alonepurchased from it-but that didn't stop Marc Silvestri, owner ofTop Cow Productions Inc. in Los Angeles, from diving headfirst intoe-commerce and offering his hot new comic on the Web. The movecertainly paid off-he made $400,000 in just four weeks.
With publishing rights to the character Lara Croft from thewildly popular Tomb Raider video game released earlier thatyear, Silvestri arranged for a special-edition comic. Forgoing thecomic-book-store route, he risked selling it exclusively on hisWeb site."Even back then, we knew our core audience wasn't onlyinto comics and video games; they were also verycomputer-savvy," says Silvestri, 42. With most of his adsappearing in the industry trade magazine Wizard, Silvestriexpected to move about 70,000 comics. Instead, 150,000 copies soldout.
Top Cow has since caught Hollywood's eye. A film and TVdivision has been launched, nine movies are in development, and thecompany's Witchblade comic is enjoying a second seasonas a TV series on TNT. Sure, sales for 2001 were about $15 million,but that doesn't mean Silvestri has forgotten the risk thatstarted it all. "We'll do more experimenting," hesays, "and see how far we can stretch this whole e-commercething."
