JFH: Justice For Hire

In 2007, JFH co-creator Jan Lucanus took an independent approach to spreading the word about his new comic series, doing a pre-release print run that debuted at the New York Comic Con, and calling upon his contacts in the martial arts community and across media to get the comics to people outside of the traditional comic book audience (the print comic book industry was notorious for marketing only to comic book readers, rather than targeting audiences outside of the niche market[12]). "JFH" comics were given away in martial arts contests[13] and at events for Warner Bros. Records, VH1, and Adidas. Later that year, marketing guru Ken Goldstein and entrepreneur Tonny Sorenson, along with partner Bob Johnson,[14] made Jan the first Artist-in-Residence (AiR) within their lifestyle brand, Von Dutch (the AiR program later transformed into the Planet Illogica agency[15]). Before the official market release, "JFH" comics were distributed within the SoHo, New York, and Los Angeles, California Von Dutch store fronts. On September 27, 2007, Jan co-hosted the Von Dutch-sponsored launch event for the "JFH" comic book - "Justice-For-Hire Presents Fight Night at the Von Dutch" in Los Angeles, CA. Gift bags filled with "JFH" comics and other sponsored items were given to a crowd of 1,100 spectators as they were presented with martial arts demonstrations and exhibition fights from Jan and his "JFH" fight team members, including champion fighters Hinton Wells,[16] Ian Morgan,[17] Maximillion Chen,[18] Gabe Dorado, Ahmed Best, Jesse Abrescy,[19] and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Master John Machado,[20] along with Jan's father Jan C. Childress[21] and creative partner Mercer Boffey. Other performances included an Oprah Winfrey-sponsored choir,[22] and acrobatics from Cirque du Soleil troop, REALIS.[23] Sponsors included Hollywood's Golden Apple Comics shop, Inside Kung Fu Magazine, Black Belt (magazine), Alacer Corp. (Emergen-C),[24] 97.1 Free FM (now KNX-FM), and martial arts promoter Tim Stell,[25] among others. Celebrities in attendance included Seth Green, Lea Thompson, as well as a slew of martial arts masters from across California.[26]

A year of independent promotions and the non-traditional packaging of comics & DVD's landed Jan's small, newly formed publishing subsidiary, Creative Impulse Publishing, a vendor deal with Diamond Comics Distributors, the worldwide monopoly for printed comics distribution. Creative Impulse Publishing officially released of the first issue of the printed "JFH" comic book/DVD bundles to comic shops internationally on December 26, 2007.,[27] and ran a bi-monthly release schedule into June 2008 to critical acclaim.[6] The "JFH" comic book received 4 out of 4 stars from Newsarama.com, which reviewed the book as "cinematic genius on the printed page...some of the most realistic kung-fu sequences ever drawn for a comic book". The live action DVD content received positive reviews from several media outlets including TheComicBookPage.com podcast, which is quoted, "the [live action] content was excellent. The basic premise for the series...absolutely brilliant"[28] However, the concept of "JFH"'s Retribution Industry has also been criticized by several media outlets including Comics Forge, "Overall because of the moral ambiguity in the story lines, I am going to rate this 4 of 5, technically excellent, but morally questionable",[29] and Geeksmash.com, "When all you need is money to get rid of a problem, the team could easily degrade into hit-men to the highest bidder. I don’t know if the creators are as concerned with these thematic messages as much as they simply want to put out a cool, tough fighting book".[30]

After the initial "JFH" print release, Creative Impulse Entertainment was approached by comiXology to produce a "JFH" iPhone app that carried both the comic and the live action video. ComiXology was concurrently developing a new digital comics service and was seeking indie publishers to release their comics digitally and prove the viability of the digital comics business to larger publishers. ComiXology launched the Comics App [31] in July 2009 with "JFH: Justice-For-Hire" as one of the launch titles. The "JFH" digital comic books spent nine consecutive weeks on the Top 25 Action/Adventure Downloads List[32] and twelve consecutive weeks as the number one ranked Martial Arts Genre Download on comiXology's Top 25 List. "JFH", along with all of Creative Impulse Publishing's first wave of titles, remained on the Top 25 Martial Arts Downloads List until comiXology updated the platform's user interface in 2012, removing the Top 25 listings by genre completely.[33] ComiXology remains the leading digital comic service in the industry.[34] With digital distribution on all mobile and desktop devices via partnerships with comiXology, Graphic.ly, iVerse Media,[35] and other digital distributors, "JFH" is one of the most downloaded martial arts comic book series on any digital comics platform.[36]