Artists Elite Comics To Launch In June With Big Name Artists

Last November, Bleeding Cool reported that Artists Elite Comics was a new comic book publisher being created by Tyler Kirkham, Alé Garza, and Shawn Hudachko alongside a number of other famous comic book artists, with the aim to allow creator-owned artists to publish their own comic book stories and ship them directly through consumers and retailers, without distributors like Diamond, Lunar or Penguin Random House. Well,. that has changed somewhat.

The creators involved in Artists Elite Comics are some of the more commercial comic book artists today, many known for their collectible comic book variant artwork for the likes of Marvel and DC Comics. The creators named back then were Tyler Kirkham, Brett Booth, Ben Templesmith, Ryan Benjamin, Paolo Pantalena, Alé Garza, Freddie Williams II, Jordan Gunderson, Bosslogic, Alan Quah, Mico Suayan, Eric Basaldua (E.Bas), Chad Hardin, Jonboy Meyers, Sorah Suhng and Ryan Kincaid. All well-known comic book creators and cover artists, with strong fanbases. Some court controversy over opinions, and their creative choices,  some have openly criticised former publishers, and some are known for reasons they may prefer not to be.

Of those sixteen names, twelve will feature in Wave One, to be published in June 2022 and using Lunar Distribution to get to comic book stores rather than going direct. How that will work for the UK, where Diamond still distributes Marvel and DC, is unknown.