That Brian K. Vaughan is a pretty popular guy right now. He’s got one of the most popular comic books on the stands in Saga from Image Comics, and the film version of his Y: The Last Man series seems to be moving forward again. Vaughan launched a new project this week at panelsyndicate.com titled The Private Eye. The series is written by Vaughan with art by Marcos Martin (The Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil) and colors by Muntsa Vicente. The plan is for the series to run 10 issues and is available digitally. Now here’s the big deal about it: readers can download the issues for any price they want, starting with the 32-page issue #1 available now.

We’ve seen this done before, most notably when the band Radiohead released their 2007 album In Rainbows with the same “pay what you like” model. And there are other comics that have been released digitally outside of the major publishers, perhaps most notably Mark Waid’s Thrillbent webpage. The Private Eye seems to be a unique pairing of digital publishing and a new way to make money off comics.