DC Spills The Beans (REVISED, UPDATED, EXPANDED-- If You're Going To Link, Link Here.)
We now know the name of DC's online initiative: Zuda Comics. Comics will be submitted by users and selected by editors, and the most popular of them will get a one-year contract. Comic Book Resources has an interview with Ron Perazza while The New York Times has more details (reproduced for non-subscribers at CNET.) Official press release is here. ICv2 has more facts here.
For now, a few thoughts:
Ron is a bit slippery when it comes to who gets which legal rights, but it does sound as if Zuda's contracts will be worth a closer look: "I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not exactly sure what the specific legal terms are to use, but throughout the company we make all sorts of deals and they're not all buyouts or work-for-hire and so forth. This is a creator driven initiative, so our deals reflect that." Glad to see they're at least taking the creators' rights question seriously, but we'll have to see a contract before we see what their answer really is.
(CLARIFICATION: No one should be under any illusions that publishing with DC means retaining as many IP rights as publishing independently: the Times reports that Zuda "views the initiative as a chance to increase its library of intellectual properties, which can be lucrative as films, television shows and toys" and that "DC Comics will also have the right to print the comics in collected editions." Two questions remain, one general, one personal. What are the specifics of the deal? And would such a deal seem a fair trade-off to you?)
Paul Levitz: "One of the problems that comics have today, I think, is that open door is much more closed. This creates a more open door." In other words, "We're tearing down the wall..." Backlash to this kind of statement has already begun. I think Levitz is using the word "comics" as shorthand for "direct-market comic books." This is a mistake, but it's a common mistake, and it's a hard one to avoid when your audience knows little about true webcomics. Levitz addresses the webcomics-illiterate on a daily basis.
The New York Times gets it wrong with its first paragraph. I wish I could say I'm surprised by that. This is not a "slush pile."
Slush piles contain every submission that a publisher receives, which means that many Web 2.0 sites like YouTube or Blogger, where publication is instantaneous, are like "digital slush piles" that almost never get edited.
But as Ron says at CBR: "If you want to actually make comics, you can submit your stuff to us and all the submissions will be poured through internally to make sure that things are of a certain quality or standard, then we select a bunch of those and put them online every month."
So, apparently, Zuda is a collection of its best submissions as chosen by editors. What you'll see on the site will already be filtered, unlike the content of a Webcomics Nation, Drunk Duck or Comic Genesis. More like Modern Tales.
It might be more on target to call this an "online comics reality show." American Idol puts twelve singers through a competition, and one of them gets a recording contract, a similar incentive to the one-year contract Zuda is offering. But obviously Idol gets thousands of applicants, and has to filter them before broadcast.
(The comparison breaks down a little because Zuda is also offering a chance to go straight from submission to contract, presumably by being so awesome that Zuda thinks it's worth taking the chance to lock you in immediately.)
Specified: you should put your work in a 4x3 format.
Proudly unspecified: what genre you should work in, whether you should do a continuity strip, whether you should be inspired by newspapers, comic books, or (Heavens!) other webcomics. Presumably original ideas are also welcome.
(I keed, I keed. It's easy to pick apart DC Comics' rhetoric as it struggles to come up with words that will play well with the webcartoonist community, webcomics readers, the comic-book community, the general public and Warner Brothers shareholders. It's probably not fair to pick on them for using Family Circus as an example. But the example says something about the culture clashes sparking behind an effort like this.)
Maybe should be specified: how frequently you should publish. If there's a one-size-fits-all deal for comics that come out three times a week and those that come out five times a week, that could be an issue. On the other hand, sometimes three-per-weekers outperform five-per-weekers: Penny Arcade, anyone?
The San Diego Comic-Con initiative is interesting: would-be cartoonists will be given postage-paid postcards to send back to Zuda. That idea seems to respond to the popularity of Postsecret, a blog that's currently #9 on the Technorati Top 100. Explosm.net, which topped two of our recent webcomics traffic surveys and placed fourth in the third, is #32 on Technorati. Postsecret usually features words and pictures in combination, in a sequence chosen partly by chronology and partly by the site creator. If you're flexible with your definitions, you could argue that this means Postsecret could be the most popular online comics series in existence. But that's another discussion.
Ron Perazza and online editor Kwanza Johnson will be among the attendees at the con, and it would be shocking if they didn't have some kind of panel on which they could field questions. Or duck them, depending.
Commentary here and here and here and here and here and here. That makes all my usual stops except Fleen, which might scarcely mention it at all.
Predictably, reactions range from cautious optimism to deep skepticism. I'm not committing to any judgment, one way or another, until there's fine print for me to read. But I'm so glad I decided to go to San Diego this year, after all!
For now, a few thoughts:
Ron is a bit slippery when it comes to who gets which legal rights, but it does sound as if Zuda's contracts will be worth a closer look: "I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not exactly sure what the specific legal terms are to use, but throughout the company we make all sorts of deals and they're not all buyouts or work-for-hire and so forth. This is a creator driven initiative, so our deals reflect that." Glad to see they're at least taking the creators' rights question seriously, but we'll have to see a contract before we see what their answer really is.
(CLARIFICATION: No one should be under any illusions that publishing with DC means retaining as many IP rights as publishing independently: the Times reports that Zuda "views the initiative as a chance to increase its library of intellectual properties, which can be lucrative as films, television shows and toys" and that "DC Comics will also have the right to print the comics in collected editions." Two questions remain, one general, one personal. What are the specifics of the deal? And would such a deal seem a fair trade-off to you?)
Paul Levitz: "One of the problems that comics have today, I think, is that open door is much more closed. This creates a more open door." In other words, "We're tearing down the wall..." Backlash to this kind of statement has already begun. I think Levitz is using the word "comics" as shorthand for "direct-market comic books." This is a mistake, but it's a common mistake, and it's a hard one to avoid when your audience knows little about true webcomics. Levitz addresses the webcomics-illiterate on a daily basis.
The New York Times gets it wrong with its first paragraph. I wish I could say I'm surprised by that. This is not a "slush pile."
Slush piles contain every submission that a publisher receives, which means that many Web 2.0 sites like YouTube or Blogger, where publication is instantaneous, are like "digital slush piles" that almost never get edited.
But as Ron says at CBR: "If you want to actually make comics, you can submit your stuff to us and all the submissions will be poured through internally to make sure that things are of a certain quality or standard, then we select a bunch of those and put them online every month."
So, apparently, Zuda is a collection of its best submissions as chosen by editors. What you'll see on the site will already be filtered, unlike the content of a Webcomics Nation, Drunk Duck or Comic Genesis. More like Modern Tales.
It might be more on target to call this an "online comics reality show." American Idol puts twelve singers through a competition, and one of them gets a recording contract, a similar incentive to the one-year contract Zuda is offering. But obviously Idol gets thousands of applicants, and has to filter them before broadcast.
(The comparison breaks down a little because Zuda is also offering a chance to go straight from submission to contract, presumably by being so awesome that Zuda thinks it's worth taking the chance to lock you in immediately.)
Specified: you should put your work in a 4x3 format.
Proudly unspecified: what genre you should work in, whether you should do a continuity strip, whether you should be inspired by newspapers, comic books, or (Heavens!) other webcomics. Presumably original ideas are also welcome.
(I keed, I keed. It's easy to pick apart DC Comics' rhetoric as it struggles to come up with words that will play well with the webcartoonist community, webcomics readers, the comic-book community, the general public and Warner Brothers shareholders. It's probably not fair to pick on them for using Family Circus as an example. But the example says something about the culture clashes sparking behind an effort like this.)
Maybe should be specified: how frequently you should publish. If there's a one-size-fits-all deal for comics that come out three times a week and those that come out five times a week, that could be an issue. On the other hand, sometimes three-per-weekers outperform five-per-weekers: Penny Arcade, anyone?
The San Diego Comic-Con initiative is interesting: would-be cartoonists will be given postage-paid postcards to send back to Zuda. That idea seems to respond to the popularity of Postsecret, a blog that's currently #9 on the Technorati Top 100. Explosm.net, which topped two of our recent webcomics traffic surveys and placed fourth in the third, is #32 on Technorati. Postsecret usually features words and pictures in combination, in a sequence chosen partly by chronology and partly by the site creator. If you're flexible with your definitions, you could argue that this means Postsecret could be the most popular online comics series in existence. But that's another discussion.
Ron Perazza and online editor Kwanza Johnson will be among the attendees at the con, and it would be shocking if they didn't have some kind of panel on which they could field questions. Or duck them, depending.
Commentary here and here and here and here and here and here. That makes all my usual stops except Fleen, which might scarcely mention it at all.
Predictably, reactions range from cautious optimism to deep skepticism. I'm not committing to any judgment, one way or another, until there's fine print for me to read. But I'm so glad I decided to go to San Diego this year, after all!
Posted at
10:57 AM
1 Comments:
Ha, awesome entry man.
Bloody hell, that was exhausting.
I just read the whole thing and hit the links, oy.
It's all good, the Zuda thing, I think the main thing is that people have been so lax about webcomics, that now their seems to be real interest on the line for them.
I did my own write up too over at http://juannavarro.wordpress.com/
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