November
19 Webcomics Start to Come of Age

There’s a lot of questions this model raises that will be fascinating to see how they play out. Subscription services like this one have had trouble as people have increasingly preferred to get the content they want either for free through advertising supported sites or by paying to download only the material they want and being able to use it on their favorite device or, in the case of comics, print it out. The subscription model on the other hand does have advantages. Not only is it easier to try new titles, but it will save you money (and a trip to the comics shop) if you read even two comics a month on the service that you otherwise would have bought in store for $2.99. It’s perhaps the first workable solution for companies reliant on the problematic periodical format, which long ago stopped delivering enough bang for the entertainment buck. What would be a really interesting idea is a system that lets you do both: a subscription that lets you read certain things as much as you’d like on a temporary, browser-only basis and an iTunes style store that lets you pay to download, keep and print out specific comics you like enough to hang on to.

There are other issues at play here, not the least of which is the reaction of retailers. Some will surely see this as Marvel bypassing them and selling direct to the consumer; others will see it as promotions that can pay off for them, since Marvel is mostly putting up material that’s in print and at least part of the reason for this initiative is to drive readers to the print edition. It will be interesting to see how this service will affect demand, especially among fans who either don’t have a nearby comics shop or can’t get to one on a regular basis. This may be a way to once again reach the kids who used to make up comics’ main audience back in the days of corner store spinner racks.

DC, meanwhile, has gone in the complete opposite direction with Zuda, which been up now for a few weeks and seems to be doing well traffic wise, judging from the number of comments. While Marvel is, for the moment, not planning any original comics content for the web, Zuda is all original and all user-generated. The business model is far more current, but the appeal of the content has yet to be determined. Having read through all the content, it’s certainly a wide range of genres and styles. My personal favorites have been the first competition winner "Bayou" and "High Moon." Writing wise, the entries so far are paced a lot like manga, which is probably good for bringing in new readers though it may put off some of the fans of traditional comics. While the content so far is good, it’s still a bit too early to get a good sense of where the site is going, as the strips up now were ordered in advance of the launch and we’ve yet to see a batch of reader-submitted strips to compare. The overriding purpose of Zuda seems to be as a way to develop IP by paying webcomics creators for their efforts and getting a head start on securing the rights to properties that take off. Whether DC has any plans for exploiting its back catalog, which is more extensive even than Marvel’s, is yet to be seen.

Over at Zeros 2 Heroes, animation and comics writer Paul Dini has been hired on as editor in chief. To give you an idea of where this site thinks things are going, Dini — currently running the show on DC's weekly Countdown to Final Crisis series — is working on the site alongside Rainmaker Animation’s Paul Gertz and Greg Zeschuk of the videogame developer Bioware. Z2H uses its site to develop pitches from writers, artists and fans into digital comics that can then, obviously, be further developed into animation and game properties. The company pilot-tested its approach with the "ReBoot" project a few months back and the addition of Dini shows their interest in the using the web to exploit the comics-animation connection.

Meanwhile, more publishers are looking to webcomics for material, with the recent “Heroes” volume that collected the online comics from the show’s site to be followed by "Lifelike" from IDW Publishing next month. Expect more of this to follow, with the web increasingly likely to take over the function once served by periodical comics in terms of testing the market for the most popular material to put into print editions.

All of which paints a picture of a 21st century comics industry that's as flexible, creative and potentially profitable as its ever been.