Terry Moore’s creator-owned horror comic Rachel Rising saw its first arc conclude this week with the release of Rachel Rising #6. Not only does it wrap the first storyline in dramatic and game-changing fashion, but the issue is also the first time that Moore–whose previous books Strangers in Paradise and Echo have made him one of the most beloved and respected independent comics creators of the last 20 years–has released one of his books digitally on the same day as the print release.The story that just ended can be pre-ordered on Moore’s website or through Amazon now, under the title Rachel Rising Volume 1: The Shadow of Death.Moore joined us as part of our ongoing series of postmortem interviews, and touched down not only on the end of the arc and the beginning of digital for Rachel Rising, but also on his relationship with the direct market and what it’s like to be writing a long-form, open-ended story like Rachel Rising again after a few years of writing a three-act story like Echo.You generally have issues available for a couple of weeks at your website that aren’t available in the stores until later, due in no small part to Diamond’s fairly arcane distribution system when it comes to smaller titles. Will you eventually start moving these items to digital-first, or do you see that as a step too far as far as the direct market is concerned?No, I can’t go digital first because that would not be fair to my brick-and-mortar partners. Imagine if you’re a shop in NYC, and customers were buying books before you had a chance to even put them on the shelf. That would be disastrous.
