I Was Right About Online Comics

Kinda...

I spoke out last month about Online Comics and their place in the medium. In my post "To bit torrent, or not to bit torrent", I suggested some different ways that the comic book publishers could benefit from digital comics. And now it seems that there is some movement on that horizon from DC Comics. Of course, I had nothing to do with it, but I do feel a bit of self-righteous justification to know that my previous article wasn't just me spouting off at the mouth, but there are other people who feel the same.

According to CBR, DC Comics announced today that they are venturing into online digital comics with their new website at http://www.zudacomics.com. According to the press release, Zuda Comics will feature "comics by creators who've yet to be discovered, with content covering a wide variety of genres." They have released the 8 different logos that you can see on the right, which "reflect the wide range of content they expect to publish".

Now I admit that this is not exactly what I was talking about a month ago, but just the fact that one of the major companies is getting into online comics has got to be a good sign of bigger things to come. If this is sucessful and popular, an they see that this new branch of the medium works, what would be to stop them from taking the next step, as I have suggested previously?

So what else do you need to know about Zuda Comics? Well, I got just about everything they have released so far right here.

• Zuda Comics will be all-new, original comics made specifically for the web.



• Zuda Comics will collect submissions from the Zuda community — that means you. You make the web comics and send them to us for publication.


• Not only that, but the majority of comics we publish will be selected by the Zuda community. We'll put up a batch of the comics you submitted each month. Then you and all of the other users will vote, comment, and rate the comics. The one you guys like the best is the one we'll sign up for a one-year contract.


• Zuda Comics official tag line is "Click Here To Continue."


• Zuda Comics are all-original — that means we're not taking ideas based on characters or stories from DC Comics' other imprints — you know, like Batman.



• Westerns? Biographies? Actions? It's all good. What we're after is quality. We look forward to a full range of genres and styles.


• Zuda Comics is headed up by Ron Perazza.


• Dave McCullough oversees the Online group.


• Zuda's Editor is Kwanza Johnson.


• Our Coordinator and Assistant Editor is Nika Denoyelle.


• Richard Bruning is our boss — the SVP — Creative Director of DC Comics.



• A Zuda Comics page is actually a 4:3 aspect ratio screen.


• We're giving away postcards at the San Diego Comic Con in order to make a giant collaborative Web Comic.


• The full Zuda Comics site will go live in October, 2007. Thats when you'll be able to submit comics, vote on your favorites, build your profile page and more.


• We partnered up with IBM to build this site.


• We're using a lot of open source technologies to build the final Zuda Comics site. That's just how we roll.


• We'll be updating this site all the way through the summer and on to the full site in October. That's why you should register now — that way we can let you know about the updates.



• We take great characters and great stories seriously. We hope you do too.

Sounds good to me, kind of a comics youtube or something along those lines. We have a comic book MySpace, so a user created community of comic books was a logical conclusion. I am pretty excited about this and later this summer, I am going to try out my artistic chops (which are more or less non-existent) and gt a comic ready to submit when this goes live in October.

They will be using a 4:3 aspect ratio, so if anyone else wants to get in on it, use that as a template or check here. The site promises regular information and you can register to have anything new sent to you as it becomes available. Or you can just check here regularly and I will post everything about this that I find.

CG