Glasgow comic artists ruin their own career by giving away work for free.

Alternative Taking Flight cover by Garry Kelly

Well, it's free if you know where to find it. Otherwise you can actually buy Taking Flight by Garry McLaughlin and Stephen Sutherland in physical formats from the Laser Age Comics website. Here's their rationale behind seeidng the book on Demonoid:

Okay folks, here's an update on 'Taking Flight':

The coloured version is with UKomics for printing, and will be available to purchase at the QMU Comic Mart on April 7th. After that, it'll be available to purchase online, and we'll try to get it out there a bit further afield.

The comic is also currently being seeded on Demonoid. Recently fellow GLoW member and Glaswegian comics creator Gordon Maclean found his brand new comic 'No More Heroes' was being pirated on Demonoid. Rather than wail and gnash his teeth at this, Gordon decided to turn it to his advantage, and has received a lot of press from comic sites and blogs, interested in his take on this fairly new and emerging situation for indie comics creators.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while - is it better to clamp down on this and try to prevent piracy? Is it better to just allow it to happen and make the most of it? Or is it an idea to just put it out there yourself and see what happens?

Stephen and I aren't in this for the money, and from previous experience, I know that it's highly unlikely we'll make any profit from the comic - we're doing it because we love making comics, and because we want to get our stuff out there, increasing our skills and exposure in the hope of getting professional work at some point.

So 'Taking Flight' on Demonoid is *not* pirated, it is a genuine, free torrent, direct from the creators. Of course we'd love for those of you who know us to buy the comic if you can, but if you want to trial it, or if you have no intention of buying it, feel free to download it.

No, I'm not providing links. You'll have to go out there and discover it for yourself. This is an experiment that could backfire on us slightly, but so far, 95 people globally have read 'Taking Flight'. In two days. That's more than ever read any single issue of the Year of Fear titles. And we're already getting constructive comments and dialogue from those readers and it's significantly upped the traffic to the website, www.laseragecomics.co.uk, which is great.

Whether you do decide to buy or download your copy, we'd be interested in hearing from you, and why you went for the decision you did.

Meantime, if you want to pre-order your colour copy, head over to the website now.