Black Mask Plans YouTube Comics Channels and Animated Movies

The publishing and media production company will unveil a series of YouTube channels devoted to comics Monday, and release "Godkiller," its first animated movie, this summer. Black Mask also is developing several TV series and, of course, its comics.

The main YouTube channel, which will begin with five series, is intended to build a new audience for the comics and a showcase for better "motion comics," which combine characteristics of print and animation. Black Mask has invested in voice actors to improve narration and directors to present and pace the comics.

"I watch YouTube stuff on TV, not just on mobile or desktop," said Matt Pizzolo, one of the three founders of Black Mask.

Pizzolo said he learned of an eager, untapped audience for comics on YouTube when he posted "Godkiller," his series about siblings in a post-apocalyptic world.

"It got 100,000 views without my telling anyone about it," he said, adding that it gained tens of thousands more viewers after being released on Netflix, Hulu and PlayStation. "We all love the core comic book readership, but we have to make sure new people are discovering it."

The five inaugural series on the YouTube channel will be a mix of comics published by Black Mask, including "Liberator," about vigilante animal welfare activists, and those from other independent publishers, like Image's "Five Ghosts," which focuses on an adventurer possessed by five characters from literature. The channel will include links to buy the books and related merchandise

Black Mask Studios was founded in 2012 by Pizzolo, a filmmaker; Steve Niles, a writer of horror novels and comics; and Brett Gurewitz, a musician and founder of Epitaph Records. The impetus was "Occupy Comics," a comic book project to raise money to support the Occupy Wall Street movement.

"It put a light on how difficult it was to get out comics with a message in them," Pizzolo said.

Soon, Black Mask will have a much broader platform from which to deliver its message. Before San Diego's Comic-Con in July, the company will release part one of the animated version of "Godkiller." Last month, Kirkus Reviews described the comic's first volume as "wickedly delectable" and "not so much a story as an experience." An animated version of "Liberator" will follow. Black Mask also is developing three comic-based TV series: "Sinatoro," by Grant Morrison and Vanesa Del Rey; "The Disciples," by Niles and Christopher Mitten; and "Ballistic," by Adam Egypt Mortimer and Darick Robertson.

The company remains small with only a handful of employees and a group of freelancers.

"We take advantage of the existing infrastructure behind my film company and Brett's various companies," Pizzolo said. "Black Mask itself is built very much like a startup. We're scrappy."

One of the ways Black Mask stands out from other comic book companies is that the founders stay involved in adaptations, including those for animation and television. They are executive producers and keep the comics' creators involved.

"In the past, some film and TV executives looked to comic books as a starting point," Pizzolo said. "Now they're making more faithful adaptations."

But relying on starry-eyed dreams of film and TV adaptations may not be best for comics creators.

"A lot more people are taking a piece of the pie," Pizzolo said. "The amount that gets back to the creator is not that much."

He expressed hope that, ultimately, Black Mask's new endeavors will lead to something very old school: comic book sales.

© 2015 New York Times News Service