After jumping into comics earlier this year, Substack is entering in a bigger way by signing several major creators to its platform, the New York Times has reported. The new slate of writers includes Saladin Ahmed, Jonathan Hickman, Molly Ostertag, Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV, with other writers and artists to be announced at a later date. 

As with other Substack writers, comics creators will send their work out in a newsletter format and charge subscribers directly for their work. During the first year, they'll be paid by Substack which will take most of the subscription revenue, and after that, the platform will take a 10 percent cut. Creators will retain ownership of all their materials.

Tynion IV, who recently won the Eisner award for his work on DC's Batman and other titles, said he'll work on Substack exclusively. "This wasn’t an easy decision," he told the NY Times. "In order to invest my time in new material, I needed to choose. I could not do both."

DC had presented me with a three-year renewal of my exclusive contract, with the intent of me working on Batman for the bulk of that time. I was grateful of the offer, but I couldn’t help but look at the success of my original, creator owned titles and wonder if it was the right choice.

Substack first got into comics back in June when it signed Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man writer Nick Spencer. Spencer reportedly spearheaded the idea and was the liaison between Substack and newly signed creators. On top of comic book stories, they'll publish, essays, how-to guides and other content on the platform.

Until recently, Substack has mostly focused on newsletters covering politics, technology and more. Comics, meanwhile, have been around forever on the web, but have largely been funded by ads and merchandise sales. By joining with Substack, creators will be able to engage directly with readers in a model that more closely resembles comic book sales. 

In his Substack launch post, Tynion said that he effectively turned down a three-year renewal of his DC Batman contract when Substack signed him "to create a new slate of original comic book properties directly on their platform, that my co-creators and I would own completely," he wrote. "I’m going to dedicate my whole brain to building a bunch of really cool stuff on my own terms, without having to get permission from any publisher to make it."

Those who religiously attend their local comic conventions now have the chance to go the biggest one of them all thanks to a new Omaze giveaway. The company's latest sweepstakes gives you the chance to win 4-day badges to San Diego Comic-Con 2022, with access to a special preview night. In addition to the badges, you're also getting reserved seating in Hall H for the entire convention, a personal concierge, a private tour of the Comic-Con Museum, dinner in Balboa Park and tickets to the "Night at the Comic-Con Museum" special event. The winner will also have travel to the convention and lodgings covered.

Enter to win at Omaze

The 2022 Comic-Con will mark the return of the in-person event in San Diego as the 2021 convention was postponed. Instead, the organization held the online Comic-Con Home from July 23-25 this year, and its hoping to have a smaller, supplemental "Comic-Con Special Edition" event in November, if conditions allow. You have until December 8 to enter this giveaway and the winner will be announced before the end of 2021.

Like other Omaze giveaways, you don't have to spend money to enter — and anyone can use the code AFF20 at checkout to get 20 bonus entries. But if you do buy entries, you'll increase your chances of winning. All funds raised in sweepstakes like this go to charity, and this one in particular benefits the San Diego Comic Convention, which is a nonprofit public benefit corporation devoted to increasing public awareness and appreciation for comics and similar art forms.

If you're unfamiliar with Omaze, it's a site that raises money for charities through giveaways and experiences. You can read more about how the allocation of funds works by reading the "Fundraising Transparency" section at the bottom of the giveaway page.

Pricing and availability is subject to change. No donation or payment necessary to enter or win this sweepstakes.See official rules on Omaze.

We've seen augmented reality bring art to the great outdoors, but Italy's museums are now using cameras to measure the appeal of paintings instead. The country's agency for R&D has developed a new system that can measure how long you look at and how close you get to a work of art. ENEA's cameras are placed in the vicinity of artworks to collect data on the amount of observers and their behavior as they stare at the pieces. The collated info defines the “attraction value” of works of art, the researchers behind it told Bloomberg.

More broadly, the so-called ShareArt system is viewed as a way of boosting visitors to museums and galleries after a period of disruptive lockdowns. It could ultimately be used to give certain works more prominence in a collection. The data could also result in changes to the staging of a piece, including how paintings and sculptures are lit and placed in relation to one another.  

ENEA

Though it dates back to 2016, museums like the Istituzione Bologna Musei have only recently begun rolling out the ShareArt system, notes Bloomberg. Thanks to the tech, researchers are already gaining surprising insights into the way we perceive and interact with art. They found that the average artwork observation time is just four to five seconds, with very few pieces capturing visitors' attention for longer than 15 seconds. They add that if mask restrictions are dropped, the system will be able to track facial observations without compromising privacy, allowing the team to monitor cognitive reactions, too. 

The ShareArt tool is the latest example of art melding with technology. On the other end of the spectrum, machine learning systems are already mimicking the styles of famous painters and dreaming up psychedelic works of their own. While AR-powered smartphone apps have put entire exhibitions in our pockets.

Netflix has shared a new trailer for Spriggan, its upcoming adaption of Hiroshi Takashige and Ryoji Minagawa’s seminal manga of the same name. The streaming giant first announced series in 2019, at which point it said it would release the show in 2021. Spriggan is now slated to debut next year, following production delays related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Spriggan manga ran between 1989 and 1996 and was most recently adapted into a movie in 1998 that was overseen by Akira director Katsuhiro Otomo. The source material might not be familiar to most anime fans in the West, but if you follow the medium there’s a good chance you’ve seen the work of some of the people who are working on the new series. David Productions, the studio behind Jojo’s Bizare Adventure, is on animation duties, with Hiroshi Kobayashi (Kill la Kill) directing the project and Hiroshi Seko (Attack on Titan, Mob Psycho 100) penning the show's screenplay.