Digging into Digital: Dark Horse Plans Unusual Promo Campaign for Furious

I don't tend to do a lot of sharing of press release stuff from the major companies, because you can get those at your favorite comics news site. It's not that I don't have thoughts on, say, Valiant's new release for April (they look really good), but that's not really what Panel Patter is for.

But when something like this comes along, I definitely want to mention it, because the idea is rather nifty, taking advantage of a Twitter trend and possibly helping a book that might get missed garner extra attention.

Dark Horse passed along that on Monday, January 27th, at 7pm EST, using the hashtag #whoisfurious and the account @furiouscomic, they will be holding a "press conference" with the main character, Furious.

Created by Brian JL Glass and Victor Santos (Mice Templar), the series features a female superhero whose plans go awry when the media gets involved and the fight is on to define her and her message. The art samples look solid, and the idea behind it will definitely appeal to those who enjoy stories like Never Ending or Deathmatch, where the idea of heroics and heroism is on trial.

I think we're all aware of the many, many fake character accounts on Twitter (the Hulk ones number dozens alone), with J. Jonah Jameson perhaps being the best of them. Some creators have made first-person accounts for their creations (Wonderella, Dr. Dinosaur), and tapping into the concept to launch a new book is a really intriguing idea that I can't remember seeing before.*

While I am unlikely to participate (I generally have a freelance client meeting every week at that time), I'll definitely be checking in afterwards to see how things turned out. This could be the start of something new, or just an idea that doesn't play out. The internet is a fickle thing, and it could easily go either way.

Furious #1 is out January 29th, 2014 from Dark Horse Comics.

*If you have, please point me to information about it. I'd love to know if it worked!