During a time when the price of comic books seems to be constantly increasing, Red Flag Publishing has decided to offer its next anthology for FREE!

Over the coming weeks, RFP will present the second issue of Red Flags, the anthology of new comics talent, for FREE at WebComicsNation.com. When uploaded in its entirety, the free on-line comic book will feature three eight-page stories with twisted endings that live up to the company's tagline of "Funnybooks for serious readers."

The company will offer the book for free until the printed version is solicited in 2008.

"We decided the best advertising was to simply let people read our stuff," said Biff Humble, founder and publisher of RFP. "We believe that the product we're creating is top quality, while at the same time different from what everybody else is putting out there.

"We know there's an audience out there for comics that don't treat readers as if they are too dense to grasp subtle points and must be beaten over the head with the message. That's who we aim to reach: readers for whom fiction is a way of reexamining what they know about the world around them.

"Unfortunately, with the bottleneck created by today's comics distribution system, if you don't fit into a formulaic pigeonhole, your work is ignored," Humble said.

Red Flags artistic director Joe Williams, who drew the first story posted, "The Copy Editors," noted that even good reviews don't pique the interest of monopolistic comics distributors.

"Our premiere issue of Red Flags received some good reviews but, as both an anthology and a vehicle for unknown creators, our book wasn't exactly what the comics book direct market wanted to see," Williams said.

"In the same way bands are circumventing the major labels and the big box stores by releasing their music on MySpace or through iTunes, Red Flag Publishing has always sought to find ways to directly reach the audience that wants to see something new and different. This is just another part of that effort. It's our goal to not only create great comics for fans who want something different but also to find new ways to reach that audience," he said.

Writer/editor James Hitchcock noted that the original idea behind Red Flag Publishing was to widen the perception of what a comic book was, and draw in audiences that are turned off by the broad brush with which comics have been painted as either "kid-lit" or boring art with no point - criticisms that are not always too far off-base.

"Comics can be anything, but, even in today's supposedly diverse market, most exist only at two opposite poles," Hitchcock said. "We're trying to bridge that gap and find the vast audience that's heard about a new age of graphic novels but still hasn't found much that interests them. Unlike a lot of publishers who see comics as a way to get a deal in Hollywood or to test the waters for toy merchandizing, RFP is serious about creating quality comics for a literate, adult audience that wants something between deconstructed superheroes or pretentious drivel."

To read the second issue of Red Flags for FREE, go to WebComicsNation.com/redflag. For more information about Red Flags or Red Flag Publishing, go to RedFlagPublishing.com. To contact the publisher or any of the creative talent, email Biff Humble

Ladies, here's your chance for fortune and fame! Send us a photo of you* in a black t-shirt, we'll photoshop our logo onto it, and send it back. Post the photo, with our logo, as your profile pic on your favorite social networking site, and send us a link. We'll send you a free downloadable comic!

And, if we like your photo enough, we'll post it on our web site as our NEW RED FLAG GIRL!

Email your photo, along with the photo release below,* to Joe Willy

*Please copy the following text, paste it into your email, and fill in the blanks:

Screen name: ________________________
Social Nework site:____________________
Profile URL: ___________________________
Hometown: _______________________________
*********************************************
The following information will not be published, but is for our records:

I certify that I am at least 18 years of age, and hereby give my consent for Red Flag Publishing to use my image on their website.

Signed: _________________________________________
(Typing your name on the line above is considered an electronic signature, to allow us permission to use your photo.)

Only from the psyche of someone who endured years of Catholic education could such dark tales erupt. Yet they are as funny as they are frighteningly historically accurate. And there are many more to come!

A native of the picturesque Slovenian town of Skofja Loka, located at the confluence of two rivers and with an imposing castle looming over it, Bertoncelj's tales are as twisted as the city's steep, winding and slightly mysterious streets lined with quaint 16th century buildings.

We're sure you will enjoy the brilliant work of Matjaz Bertoncelj that we are presenting, in downloadble form, on our website. Please check it out, and read the free sample pages from the first episode. We think you will be as blown away as we were.

Dear Readers,
While we search for Biff, our editorial director has offered to step into Biff's shoes, and do some of the marketing and promotions for our next publication. Pencils are beginning to come back from the artists working on Red Flags Anthology (Watch for upcoming announcements on our new collaborators) so James dug through Biff's desk, and found the following notes on the project that Biff had scribbled on a series of cocktail napkins:


The book employs a variety of genre to explore Druckerian cautionary tales in comics format, borrowing heavily from the vintage EC Comics storytelling style.
For anyone not familiar, economist Peter Drucker described human progress not as a linear upward trajectory, but instead, a series of steep upward slopes toward plateaus, each ending at a wall that demarcated some limit in social or technological knowledge.

A wall-shattering discovery, Drucker said, brings about societal and technological progress on a cataclysmic scale, so completely changing the world that the generation at the beginning can no more imagine what life will be like for the next generation than the next generation can imagine what life was like for the previous.

Indeed, the shattering of the wall leaves far behind those who did not recognize or heed the RED FLAGS of the impending change.

So, what is to become of those of us who are born within the period of the current cataclysmic shift in the dissemination of knowledge? How are we to discern the RED FLAGS indicating there is a freight train bearing down upon us? And, even if we see the train coming, to which side of the tracks do we step? Can we look to where we have stepped before to avoid danger?

Drucker argues that the changes he describes are so complete and world-altering, that looking to the past for solutions is futile.

So, does that mean the old axiom, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it" is no longer valid?

Or was it ever? It assumes that everyone learns the same lesson from history - the one WE want them to learn. Yet, time and again, those who've studied what are accepted as the facts of history have come away with vastly different lessons from it.

What about the effect of Point of View on our understanding of what truly are the facts? As they say, "History is written by the victors."

And finally, what happens when the facts no longer exist in tangible form? We are rapidly approaching a time when our collections of facts are stored as a string of ones and zeros, rather than on countless pieces of paper bound into millions of books. Will that allow the victors to constantly rewrite history?

I see some big friggin' RED FLAGS out there, waving like crazy.

I'm not sure I can figure out what to do about them.