Warren Ellis - Fanzine / Flyers

Here's an idea I float out there
every couple of years:

Years back, I stole a term from
Bruce Sterling, "ideological freeware"
-- this predated Creative Commons
-- and applied it to the notion of
web distribution of printed matter.
We were talking in terms of the
dearth of good writing about comics.
Simply put, one could create a small
magazine about comics and format
it for cheap copying in black and
white, and free it so anyone could
print off copies.  And then put it
in comics stores.  Viral distribution
from pixel to print.  SAVANT was
the one that took up the entire idea,
and the first twenty or so numbers
of that were fireworks.

I'm talking specifically about web-
to-print here, rather than the mags
where the PDF was the end result,
not the intermediate form.

What occurred to me after that,
that I don't think anyone picked up,
was the broadside format.  The
single sheet.  The broadside has a
centuries-long history as a device
for disseminating news and ideas.

I mean, flyers go up on the web to
be printed off, sure.  But it's not
quite the same thing.  Getting an
idea, or a piece of writing, on a
single sheet and saying, yes, print
this off, copy it and distribute it
wherever you like -- that'd be
interesting.

In web terms, the costs are tiny --
host the image on a free hosting
site if you're worried about the
bandwidth hit.  Use Livejournal or
Blogger for the whole thing.

Hell, I might even do it myself one

Warren Ellis
of these days...