Pilot Season (comics)

Pilot Season
Cover of Velocity: Pilot Season 1 (Oct 2007). Art by Kevin Maguire.
Publication information
Publisher	Top Cow Productions
Formats	Original material for the series has been published as a set of one-shot comics.
Publication date	August 2007
Reprints
Collected editions
Pilot Season 2007	ISBN

Pilot Season is an annual initiative begun in 2007 by American 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.

The entrants for the 2007 season are:

Over 4.1 million votes were received over the space of one month, beginning from December 17, 2007 and lasting until the closing date of January 21, 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 were slated for release as series in fall 2008. While Cyblade was released on schedule, Velocity suffered a series of delays.

Joshua Hale Fialkov and Rick Mays continued writing duties and art for Cyblade, and released a four issue miniseries.

Initially, Joe Casey resumed writing for Velocity, but ChrisCross took over from Kevin MacGuire on art. In December 2008, ChrisCross announced his resignation from the Velocity project due to "unforeseen differences". The series was officially cancelled in February 2009 without a single issue released. In an interview, writer Joe Casey indicated that he had written three issues, and ChrisCross had pencilled one, before "that famous Top Cow brand of common sense disappeared into an unexpectedly bizarre rift in time and space." He cited mass company dismissals of staff, including that of "our beloved editor", as contributing factors to the demise of the series. Following their departures from the title, Joe Casey and ChrisCross teamed up to create the DC Comics miniseries Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance.

In June 2010, Top Cow relaunched Velocity. Despite the new series being released under the Pilot Season banner, the creative team behind Velocity's 2007 win were not involved in this new incarnation. Instead, Ron Marz assumed writing duties, while Kenneth Rocafort was responsible for art. In a press release, Marz is quoted as saying "We're going to pay off Velocity's Pilot Season win with a story that's got her literally running for her life, and the lives of her teammates."