Marvel Studios founder David Maisel launches Mythos Studios’ first NFT collection
Mythos Studios, an intellectual property (IP) entertainment company founded by David Maisel, the founder of Marvel Studios, announced the launch of the Ekos Genesis Art Collection, which is now on view in a virtual gallery at ekos.io.
The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) collection features original art from the late comics artist Michael Turner and his frequent collaborator Peter Steigerwald, known for his work across Marvel and DC comics, as well as teaming up for to illustrate comics for Turner’s Aspen Comics.
Mythos Studios owns a 50% stake in Aspen Comics, as well as the underlying intellectual property. The Ekos collection centers around characters from shows like Fathom and the self-proclaimed Ekos, Turner’s final project which was unreleased at the time of his death.
Maisel has been a longtime fan of Turner’s work and began collecting it in 2003. Each NFT is built on the original line art of Michael Turner and adds colors inspired by different elements, such as the Pop Art movement, black light posters or neon lights.
“We’ve worked so hard to create this Ekos Genesis Art Collection and we’re now extremely excited to give people a chance to own this Ekos-inspired 1-of-1 original hand-crafted digital art. This wouldn’t be possible without Web3,” David Maisel said in a press release shared with CoinDesk.
In 2021, a two-volume digital collection of Turner’s work that contained the original line art and published color covers for the first issue of Fathom sold for $100,000, seen below:
2 May at 10 PT, Eko’s Genesis Art Collection is starting a Dutch auction of 995 1/1 NFTs. The date has special meaning for Maisel, as it marks the 15th anniversary of the theatrical release of “Iron Man,” the film that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Dutch auction will last 88 minutes and bidding will start at 10 Ether (ETH), then drop by 0.5 ETH every four minutes until the price reaches 0.5 ETH. Finally, it will drop to 0.2 ETH for the last eight minutes of the auction, assuming the collection is not already sold out.
Before the Dutch auction, interested buyers can place a deposit for the NFTs starting on April 24 at 10 PT. Anyone who deposits 10 ETH before May 1st can lock in a piece of Eko’s Genesis Art.
The first 100 early deposits will also receive an early collector’s bonus of an additional NFT, from a separate collection of “Ekos Genesis Art Portraits”. The collectors who qualify for one or more bonus NFTs will be able to select their specific artworks in an order that prioritizes the earliest deposits (so the first to deposit gets first choice and so on). Finally, the top six collectors overall at the end of the auction period will be awarded one of six unique NFTs with art generated from the same Fathom cover art from the 2021 sale.
