In the world of comic books, you have your two giant players that everyone knows: Marvel and DC. Then you have the “independent publishers” who are still fairly large players in their own right, with many of their properties crossing over into movies, TV shows, and games – companies like Image, Dynamite, Valiant, Dark Horse, IDW, and more.
But it’s the truly independent small-press publishers that many times create the most unique and captivating content, and over the last several months, we’ve been receiving initial marketing updates from the newest player in town: Bad Idea Comics.
In a current comic-book market full of gimmicks, reprints, and crossovers, Bad Idea is taking a unique approach by getting back to basics: all of their titles will have no variant covers, the books will be offered as physical copies only (i.e. no digital options), and the titles will never be collected into trade paperbacks, hardcovers, or other formats.
The first offering from the new company will be ‘ENIAC,’ an alternate take on WWII history and the ramifications on our current world. From the publisher, the description of the series is as follows:
At the height of World War II, the world’s most ingenious minds began a race to create a super-weapon capable of ending the war with the push of a button. One of those projects gave us the atom bomb…and another produced the world’s first supercomputer: ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) – an immeasurably complex mathematical model that targeted the Axis war machine by calculating missile trajectories and troop deployments.
Everybody knows that. It’s real-life American history. Or so we were told.
On August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki… Only President Truman wasn’t the one who gave order.
It was ENIAC.
In the Allies’ determination to end the war, they had accidentally created the world’s first autonomous machine intelligence…which had quickly deduced that one bomb wouldn’t be enough. But ENIAC’s real plan was only just beginning…
Now, 75 years later, an encrypted countdown has just been detected in Earth’s satellite network and mankind only has three days left before ENIAC launches every weapon in the planet’s nuclear arsenal simultaneously. With few options and even less time, the Secretary of Defense has just given two covert operatives the most important mission in human history: kill ENIAC.
Bad Idea was kind enough to share a preview of the first 10 pages of the first issue, and from the looks of it, this title will have some serious bite to it. From long-time comic writer Matt Kindt and industry stalwart Doug Braithwaite, this is definitely a series to check out when it releases next year – currently, the first issue is scheduled for March 2021.
About the publisher itself, it describes itself thusly:
Bad Idea is a dangerously unruly, equally experimental, and audaciously entertaining new comics publisher built to service just one wild idea: Monthly comics, sold exclusively in comic books stores. No digital releases. No trade paperbacks or hardcovers. And no variant covers, either. Just super-high quality comics storytelling published in a deluxe, prestige format package that will always leave you wanting more – because we’ll never publish more than two in a given month.
You can find the current list of retailers offering the Bad Idea series by clicking here.
‘ENIAC’ is currently scheduled to debut in select comic shops in March 2021.
