cow-pilot

Pilot Season

Pilot Season is an annual initiative begun in 2007 by comics publisher Top Cow Productions. Readers are able to vote on the future of six one-shot pilot comics released throughout the year. Voting takes place on the Pilot Season MySpace page and the highest vote-getters later become ongoing series.

2008

The entrants for the 2008 season are:

Twilight Guardian #1 (winner) (W) Troy Hickman (A) Reza (Cov) Hendry Prasetyo
Lady Pendragon #1 (W) Matt Hawkins (A) Eru (Cov) Drew Struzan
Alibi #1 (W) Joshua Hale Fialkov (A) Jeremy Haun (Cov) Jeremy Haun
Genius #1 (winner) (W) Marc Bernardin & Adam Freeman (A) Afua Richardson (Cov) Afua Richardson
The Core #1 (W) Jonathan Hickman (A) Kenneth Rocafort (Cov) Kenneth Rocafort
Urban Myths #1 (W) Jay Faerber (A) Jorge Molina (Cov) Jorge Molina

The 2008 season included 4 new original properties. Only 2 of the comic books, Twilight Guardian and Lady Pendragon, had a history of publication prior to participation in Pilot Season. This was a markedly different situation from the 2007 event, in which all five of the Pilot Season issues (along with the cancelled Aphrodite IX pilot issue) had been based upon pre-existing Top Cow characters.

The voting period ran from August 4th through to September 8th 2008. In a departure from the previous year's competition (which allowed people to vote as often as they liked), individual computers were only able to vote once per day.

The final distribution of votes has been detailed as follows:

Twilight Guardian 29%
Genius 24%
Urban Myths 22%
The Core''' 15%
Lady Pendragon 7%
Alibi 3%

According to Mel Caylo, Top Cow Vice President of Marketing & Sales, some entrants that did not win the 2008 competition may still have a future at the company. "While we have two, very clear winners in TWILIGHT GUARDIAN and GENIUS, voting for the other books was so fierce that it doesn't preclude us from ever doing something else with those properties down the road."

2007

The entrants for the 2007 season are:

Ripclaw #1,(W) Jason Aaron (A) Jorge Lucas (Cov) Tony Moore
Cyblade #1 (winner) (W) Joshua Hale Fialkov (A) Rick Mays (Cov) Rick Mays
Velocity #1 (winner) (W) Joe Casey (A) Kevin Maguire (Cov) Kevin Maguire
Necromancer #1 (W) Joshua Ortega (A) Jonboy Meyers (Cov) Francis Manapul
The Angelus #1 (W) Ian Edginton (A) Stjepan Sejic (Cov) Stjepan Sejic
Aphrodite IX #1, (W) Dan Jevons (A) Eric Basaldua (pulled from schedule, never published as part of Pilot Season)

Over 4.1 million votes were received over the space of one month, beginning from December 17th 2007 and lasting until the closing date of January 21st 2008. Voters were allowed to vote as many times as they wanted. Although anyone was able to participate in online voting, those who had purchased the books themselves were able to increase their voting power by inputting special codes that appeared on their copies. These practices were not continued in Pilot Season 2008.

The protagonists in both of 2007's winning comics, Cyblade and Velocity, were characters spun off from Marc Silvestri's popular Cyberforce comic series.

Both Cyblade and Velocity are slated for release as series in fall 2008. Joshua Hale Fialkov and Rick Mays will continue writing duties and art for Cyblade. Joe Casey will also resume writing for Velocity, but ChrisCross will be taking over from Kevin MacGuire on art.