I used to work at Zenescope Comics

I used to work at Zenescope Comics.

Ask me anything.

Was getting a mostly female fanbase intentional?

100% accidental. It brought lots of booty to the booths.

Do you think that faster than light travel could be physically possible?

Prove it.

Are people actually happy they worked on these Wank rags?

Why so many grimm fairy tales spin offs?

They all sell like crap

Artist were happy to have their name in a publication regardless of quality.
More stories mean more covers with more tits.

>Was getting a mostly female fanbase intentional?
How the he'll did this even happen with the big titsy covers and general cheesecake style pushed by the company?

How is it living with a guilt of driving Al Rio to suicide?

why

wait, what? Zenescope has a mostly female fanbase? Prove it.

Got me. I would think it's because every main character is female, that might it, but I highly doubt it cause 99% of the stories blew chunks. If you ever read some of the earlier stuff, the stories were actually quite interesting. Once they realized that titty covers sold more books than story, they realized where to start investing.
Believe it or not, his agent was the worst. The day that Al died, his agent started posting all sorts of original art pieces on eBay and other sites featuring his originals. The sad part is I heard his family never saw any money from those sales.

How would you describe it to someone never heard of it?

How are you just hearing about this now? It's pretty common knowledge. Zenescope set out to make cheesecake mags, but beyond the cheesecake covers they still had to have actual stories inside, and since all their comics had female protagonists, they were pretty much the only publisher putting out comics with primarily female protagonists for years and drew a mostly female fanbase as a result.

That combined with the fact that women love "dark fairy tales" which is Zenescope's bread and butter and you have a recipe for accidental success.

You're not missing much. The reason most people won't ever hear of it is because the top level management spends too much time/money/resources on trying to cut a movie or TV deal as opposed to focusing on making compelling comic content. It's like saying "Hey I made a comic, can I have a TV show please? Walking Dead has a show so it's got to work, right?"

The comics themselves aren't even cheesecake, and even the normal distribution ones really aren't.

Its usually the con-exclusive ones and the site exclusive ones that seem to be more cheescakey.

Er, and that's just talking about the covers. Not the comics themselves.

This!

The retail covers are only a minor fraction of their income. They will sell exclusives direct to retailers from what they can't sell at shows.

who's the biggest name you guys signed?

J. Scott Campbell or Greg Horn. But the big titty covers are usually from smaller names and have bigger demand.

Have you guys ever considered getting porn artists to work on these?

Not during my time. But they aim more for cheesecake/burlesque style images as opposed to hardcore porn.

Franchesco is probably my favorite cover artist.

Why did Al Rio kill himself?

Was there ever a push from any of the editors/creators to shift the brand to better written stories or is everyone comfortable with the shody writing+cheesecake formula?

Did any of the artists draw the monsters bangin' the girls?

This is purely for research...

There's more than a few covers with some implied tentacle raep.