Ram V is building something beyond the page. The Eisner Award-winning writer is launching Mirror Maker Studios, a new creative studio and ideas incubator, along with a Mirror Maker YouTube channel that will take fans behind the scenes of his work, Comics Beat reports.
Mirror Maker is meant to be home base for projects led by Ram V, with a focus on narrative art and stories that push boundaries across genres, publishing and other media. The YouTube channel will follow Ram V and his collaborators through their projects, with creator talks and process videos covering comics, writing and more.
The launch is timed to a new book. Deicidium Vol. 1, Ram V’s sci-fi graphic novel with art by Evan Cagle, arrives in American comic shops from Image Comics on Nov. 11 and in bookstores on Dec. 8. French publisher Morgen is releasing it internationally.
The channel’s first episode focuses on the Deicidium team and how they put the book together. “The Mirror Maker channel is meant to be a place where people engage with the process behind how creative things are made,” Ram V said. “So we brought together a bunch of creative people at the top of their game from all over the world; we locked ourselves into a small apartment and filmed the creative energy, early decisions and ideas behind making the book. It’s like watching a band come together to make a song that is somehow more than the sum of its individual parts.”
Future episodes will feature guests including Esoteric of the hip-hop group Czarface, Kickstarter CEO Everette Taylor, artist Becky Cloonan and artist Anand RK.
It is a big week for Ram V in another medium, too. The launch also lines up with the world premiere of an opera adaptation of The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, his acclaimed graphic novel with Filipe Andrade, on Saturday, Oct. 31 at 7:30 p.m. The two-and-a-half-hour opera was commissioned and developed through Minnesota Opera’s New Works Initiative.
Creator-led studios and direct-to-fan channels have become a growing part of how comics writers reach readers, and creator-owned books keep landing big announcements, from Hero Trade: The Butler to Ram V’s latest. Deicidium will be the first real test of how Mirror Maker connects the book to its audience.
