Digital comics updates and experiments

The Z-Cult FM story continues, with the site receiving and complying with requests from DC Comics and Top Cow to remove all trackers to scans of their comics.

Top Cow comics have been available for legal download at Direct2Drive for a while now, while it’s safe to assume some kind of service for DC’s print comics will be coming at some point.

But it’s interesting to watch this blow up now, as the timing is strangely random. Glenn Hauman over at ComicMix talks about meeting with execs at DC about 2½ years ago in which he laid out an online strateg for the company. The result is telling:

They thanked me for my time, but suggested that a certain higher-up at DC would never go for it-- even though there would have been more than enough support from the online advertising market and from their corporate parents, and even though it would have been an obvious source of revenue that would have benefitted DC's bottom line and supported all sorts of new comic initiatives.

He also recalls meeting with Marvel more than six years ago to discuss building an infrastructure for managing the company’s assets, both digital and not.

Meanwhile, “High Moon” won the first competition at Zuda Comics, which is currently “between competitions.”

Artist Colleen Doran writes about her experience trying to get Marvel’s new Digital Comics Unlimited service to work after signing up for it.

After poking around on the site at a few of the free samples on the site this morning, I was intrigued enough to give it a shot for a month or two to see if I will actually read a lot of comics in this format. While Doran had trouble, I had a surprisingly nice experience reading through a few comics such as The New Mutants Special Edition #1 (one of my all-time favorite superhero comics), the Ed Brubaker-Steve Epting Captain America #1 and Fantastic Four #251.

After a bit of experimenting, I found the “Smart Panel” mode was the easiest way to move quickly through the book, though there were some issues that I hope will be addressed: For some reason, the bottom of the page was sometimes cut off by the frame in the browser, forcing me to switch to another mode to read some balloons in this part of the page. There also were some strange zooms, especially on pages with large vertical panels. In some instances, I could click on part of the panel and the browser would zoom in, making the text easy to read and the art nice and big; but sometimes it didn’t and there wasn’t an easy work around aside from switching to another reading mode. (It’ll be interesting to see if Marvel will adapt the way it makes print comics to make them work more easily in digital formats.)

The comics themselves looked very nice and the way the browser zooms in on the art displays it at a much larger size than you see in the print version. In some instances, it gave otherwise small panels more of an impact and got me to see things I hadn’t seen in print. The art on the older books was sharp looking, keeping the classic color scheme of the era.

So far, I’m pretty happy with it. As long as it always works at least this easily, it’s definitely preferable to the experience of using a reader to look at cbr or cbz files, which usually require tons of scrolling and zooming to get through a page. My few attempts to try to read something in thsi format were frustrating enough for me to just drop the idea of reading books that way. I look forward to experimenting further and seeing if my interest in reading comics this way will hold up after the novelty wears off a bit.

Marvel, DC bite into BitTorrent

Now that both DC and Marvel have jumped into the digital comics space – albeit with completely different approaches – they’ve been forced to address the issue of comics piracy.

Working together, Marvel and DC sent legal letters last week to the operators of Z-Cult FM, a popular site for BitTorrent trackers that allow users to download comics, including the most recent issues of those publishers’ titles. According to posts at the site, the letters gave the site three days to act before the publishers would take further legal action.

The site, which is based outside the United States, has its own policy for allowing publishers to request their material be removed. After verifying the letters were authentic, the site says it agreed to take down all Marvel trackers from its site within seven days. While the site has confirmed the letter from DC is authentic, they have, as of this writing, not posted any reports of further talks. In lieu of any talks with DC, Z-Cult FM has decided not to allow trackers for any new DC titles until the book has been on sale in comic shops for 30 days.

The publishers also went after a prolific uploader of scanned comics named “Oroboros,” who decided to stop using Usenet forums, though will continue to “scan and release into the wild like I did a year ½ ago.”

You can be sure there will be more of this going on as each company gets further and further into the digital comics realm. There already are some people reporting easy workarounds for saving the hi-res images from Marvel’s new Digital Comics Unlimited site to your hard drive.

How far Marvel and DC will go is unclear. It seems unlikely they would go after end users who download comics the way the RIAA has with music downloads. But going after trackers and the sites that host them is futile, too, as there are already so many copies out there of pretty much everything those companies have published and no shortage of sites willing to post trackers that are beyond the legal jurisdiction of U.S. IP law.

As with music and movies, the best plan would be to make legit copies of comics available so easily and so inexpensively that it’s just easier to buy them than it is to steal them. But given how long it’s taken both companies to get this far, that’s unlikely to come along any time soon, especially with DC still not making any of its vast library available online in any way or at any price.

Webcomics Start to Come of Age

If there were truly any doubts left that the Internet is going to succeed Howard Stern as the king of all media, the number of recent announcements that blur the line between new media and the historically resistant to change comics industry should help dispel them.

It’s taken a while, but with DC and now Marvel both getting into the web with major initiatives designed to bring in new readers and eventually money, the merger of comics and the web is starting to look extremely promising. It’s so promising in fact that a lot of companies that would previously have never considered having comics as part of their business plan are now crossing that line. It surely won’t be a smooth ride to riches for everyone involved, but it’s also unlikely that with so many approaches being tried that at least some of them won’t be successful.

Kicking off this train of thought is Marvel’s big announcement last week of its Digital Comics Unlimited service, for which you can read the PR here and journo Douglas Wolk’s interview with editor in chief Joe Quesada and online VP John Dokes here.

Marvel has opted for a subscription model, charging fans either $9.99 a month every month or $59.88 for a whole year, which comes out to $4.99 a month. Those fees give the reader access to a bunch of new and classic titles. There will be limits on what’s available, with new comics going online six months after they’re published and the mix of classic titles said to be in a rotation that will see some stuff go down after a while to be replaced by new offerings. Readers won’t be able to download the comics to their hard drives and can only access the comics through a web browser, requiring an internet connection. The interface is not bad — it’s basically the same as they’ve been doing for a while now with promotional digital comics — though reading it on a smaller screen like a laptop or iPhone will be a bit of a challenge.

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.

WGA strike post follow-up and debate

My Monday post on the WGA strike and comics got a number of responses across the internet. Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter took issue with some of my points here; my response to his response (and a few more comments from Tom) is here.

Comics tech: Zuda's live; MySpace's Coalition; Platinum doings

* Zuda Comics is up and live. The first thing that strikes me is the interface, which appears to have been well-thought out but still has some bugs to work out. The art looks great on my laptop in full-screen mode, but so far the keyboard commands for advancing through pages doesn’t work in this mode. Conversely, shortcuts work fine in the regular browser window, but the lettering on the image at that size is jagged and too small to easily read. Again, there’s a few bugs to work out, but the presentation overall is pretty good.

Meanwhile, Zuda has announced its first instant winner: "Bayou," by Jeremy Love.

* MySpace is hosting an interesting experiment called Coalition Comix, in which readers have a chance to shape a new comics project. Running the project as “MySpace Storymaster” is Mike Carey, a veteran comics writer currently guiding the fortunes of the X-Men for Marvel. According to the PR, Carey determines the questions that will be put to readers, who have a chance to influence the story “on the deepest levels.” Coalition is a partnership between the MySpace Comic Books site and publisher Virgin Comics.

* Platinum Studios has teamed up with Skyward Mobile to create Mobile Comics, which the companies describe as “a new application that delivers a never-before-possible comics experience to users over their mobile devices.” Platinum’s “Hero by Night” and “Kiss 4K” will be the first comics featured in the application, which works on multiple platforms and can be downloaded for free www.platinumstudiosmobile.com and at www.skywardmobile.com through Dec. 31.

Meanwhile, Platinum has terminated its involvement in the comics news site Broken Frontier. The site reverted completely to editor in chief Frederik Hautain, who explains things here.

Updated: DC's Zuda set to go live Oct. 30

DC's long-awaited webcomics initiative Zudacomics.com goes live on Tuesday. The company is ready to kick things off with a submissions party in New York City. Official PR on the party (and a link to the invite required to get in) follow in the jump.

Zuda also announced the 10 candidates for its first competition, featuring some interesting indie comics names such as Corey "Sharknife" Lewis and Pop "Spyboy" Mhan. Descriptions from the PR:

Title: Alpha Monkey
Writer/Artist: Bobbie Rubio/Howard M. Shum
Summary: In a misguided attempt to save his son from the destruction of Earth by a comet (which then happens to miss the Earth entirely) a scientist rockets his son into another dimension. The child ends up on a parallel world ruled by Monkeys! Given unique powers by the planet’s bananas, the young boy fights off invading monsters as the planet’s new defender, Alpha Monkey!

Title: This American Strife
Writer/Artist: Jason Longo
Summary: A quirky, humorous “Dear Diary” recounting of the artist’s observations on life, This American Strife is a sharp-witted visual stab at editorial blogging.

Title: Battlefield Babysitter
Writer/Artist: Matthew Humphreys
Summary: In a family of superheroes, in a city of superheroes, in a world of superheroes, Katherine Fields is a babysitter. But when a routine night of babysitting turns into a villainous invasion, Katherine finds herself transformed into a super strong heroine. At $8.00 and hour, it’s going to be a long night.

Title: Black Swan
Writer/Artist: Mulele Jarvis
Summary:  A young college student, Nina, is embroiled in a 500-year-old vendetta when she encounters a spirit bound to a mystic dagger left on her doorstep. Implicated in murder and on the run from a detective possessed by a rival spirit it’s up to Nina to relive an age-old battle – without dying in the process.

Title: Dead in the Now
Writer/Artist: Corey Lewis
Summary: When Braz – a young, cynical boy – discovers the world’s first authentic zombie he decides to end Earth’s monotonous routine and usher in an age of zombie-infested, chaotic adventure! Gathering supplies and weapons, Braz sets his friends up like modern, urban Lost Boys with himself as their Pan.

Title: The Dead Seas
Writer/Artist: Pop Mhan
Summary: Legions of undead controlled by Necromancer warlords destroy life as we know it, plunging the Earth into a futuristic Dark Age. But it’s adventure and romance on The Dead Seas as a swashbuckling young pirate named Devin teams up with an adventurous crusader name Luna. Armed with the secret of Pandora’s Box, they set out destroy the Necromancers and save the world.

Title: The Enders
Writer/Artist: Tim Smith III
Summary: Aluna didn’t ask to be given godlike power and she certainly didn’t ask for her parents to be killed in the process – but the enigmatic alien known as The Ender works in mysterious ways. Without time to grieve, Aluna is tasked with using her power to save the Earth from imminent destruction.  The only question – how?

Title: High Moon
Writer/Artist: David Gallaher/Steve Ellis
Summary:  It’s the fading days of the Old West in the late 1890’s when an enigmatic drifter, Matthew Macgregor, ambles into the dusty town of Blest, Texas.  The nights are cold in Texas as Werewolves secretly haunt the town, but Macgregor has a supernatural secret of his own.  When the sun sets it’ll be a showdown at High Moon.

Title: Leprenomicon
Writer/Artist: Greg DelCurla/Fernando Ruiz
Summary: In old Ireland, when the banshee sings for you it means that your time on this Earth is coming to an end. But American Michael O’Connor refuses to take this news lying down. With the (forced) help of a kidnapped Leprechaun, he intends to solve the mystery of his own death even if it turns the world of faeries, gods, and plain old normal folk upside down.

Title: Raining Cats and Dogs
Writer/Artist: Sho Murase
Summary:  A young, snake-haired gorgon named Mika, winds her way through the contemporary, everyday wonderland of dating, work, after-hours adventures and everything in between alongside her friends Apple (a rokurokubi energy-vampire),  Feebe (a bake-neko cat girl) and Akiha (a normal human).

DC COMICS ANNOUNCES LAUNCH DATE
FOR ZUDACOMICS.COM

ZUDACOMICS.COM INVITES WEB COMICS CREATORS AND JOURNALISTS TO CELEBRATE SITE LAUNCH WITH
HAPPY HOUR AND LIVE SUBMISSIONS EVENT

(October 24, 2007; New York, NY) —Zudacomics.com, the first ever web comics imprint from DC Comics, will go live on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007, it was announced today by Richard Bruning, DC Comics Creative Director, SVP.

With the launch of the site, visitors will immediately begin to shape and define the Zuda experience. Online submissions will begin, allowing aspiring web comics creators to submit their work directly to the Zuda editorial team. The Zuda web community will be invited to vote on the first ever Zudacomics.com competition, choosing one from the ten webcomics offerings. In addition, all visitors will be able to read the first ever Zudacomics.com Instant Winner, which will have been selected by Zuda editorial in preparation for the launch.

To celebrate the launch of this ground-breaking site, Ron Perazza Director, Creative Services, and Kwanza Johnson, Zuda editor, are inviting aspiring web comics creators and journalists to attend a special launch event in New York City on Tuesday, October 30. As Perazza explains in an e-mail sent to the Zuda community:

If you're going to be in the New York City area (and are 21 years of age or older) on Launch Day (Tuesday, 10/30) then come on and join the Zuda staff for the Zuda Comics Launch Event and Live Submissions...um...Extravaganza! Face it, you can submit online any day of the week, but for this one night only, from 5:30 - 6:30 PM, Ron, Kwanza and Nika will be reviewing pitches live! Bring your best! And don't worry, if you can't make it at that time for the next couple of hours we'll still have a drop box where you can leave your submission and we'll have some laptops where you can submit "ye olde fashioned" way - digitally! Where will this magic happen? At one of the most magical places on Earth, of course.

Lansdowne Road
599 10th Avenue
(between 43rd and 44th Streets)
New York, NY 10036

-Team Zuda

P.S. In order to get into the party, you're going to need to bring an invitation.

An 'FF2" offer — and a BitTorrent experiment

A cool offer from BitTorrent, the P2P downloading service that now offers legit downloads of movies, TV shows music and games, creates an opportunity for a little experiment.

The offer is for readers of this blog to follow this link to a page where you can try the service and download a legit, licensed copy of "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" for a mere 99 cents, a big savings off the regular $14.99. This offer is good through 3 p.m. PT on Oct. 23, 2007.

That's the cool part.

The experiment is this: It only supports Windows XP computers and I'm an all-Mac guy, so if anyone out there gives this a shot, please drop me a line and let me know how well the service worked, what the quality of the offering is, and (if you feel strongly about it) what you thought of the movie. I'll post a follow up after getting some responses.

Comic-Con: More details on Zuda

Zuda Comics web site is making its Comic-Con debut, in advance of its October launch.

DC's director, creative services, Ron Perazza, says a few projects developed in house will be ready at launch, when submissions will start being accepted. The first submitted work will begin to appear about a month later, he says.

Perazza says there are plenty of advantages to webcomics creators for going with Zuda. "You're working with a major publishing partner," he says. "You don't have to do everything." That includes promotion and the intricacies of running a website.

DC promoted the site at the show with postcards that people can draw something on to create a giant webcomic. (The first one on the site comes from Jim Lee.)

The interface for the site was unveiled at a Comic-Con party Friday night. We were unable to attend, but those who did see it were impressed and said it worked well.

Still, making the grade at Zuda will require a strip to have something special. "We're not looking at this as an amateur thing," he says. And those who successfully pitch the site will get solid support from the company. Contracts for the deal will go online soon, but it's been clarified on the site that ownership for comics selected for the site will remain with the creators. "It's a good deal for a lot of people," Perazza says.

"ReBoot" returns

“ReBoot” was a pioneer in computer animation series, debuting in 1994 — the year before “Toy Story” first brought the technique to the big screen — and earning an enthusiastic fan base in its run on ABC, YTV and Cartoon Network.
Rainmaker Studios, the Canadian VFX and animation house that evolved out of original “RBoot” creators Mainframe, is looking to bring it back as a feature film trilogy — and has asked the fans for help along the way.
The studio has teamed with Zeros 2 Heroes, a new social media company that is hosting a competition on its webcomics site in which five fan pitches for the relaunch have been chosen to be developed in conjunction with Rainmaker producers. Pitches will begin appearing today, with the vote for the winning pitch set to take place a month later. The winning pitch will be produced as a webcomic based on the winning idea.
At the end of the process, development on the film trilogy will begin in earnest, and Rainmaker plans to make the connection with “ReBoot” fans established in this contest a big part of that.

DC sets Zudacomics.com web hub for fall launch

DC Comics has announced the pending arrival of Zudacomics.com, a new portal for webcomics due to launch in October.

While the initial description sounds very much like other webcomics hubs, there are some differences that will have people buzzing. From the PR:

The site is scheduled to launch this October and will feature multiple ongoing web comics. Following the site’s launch, the majority of the web comics will be selected by Zudacomics.com’s visitors, who will vote on new web comics presented to them in periodic competitions. Winners of the competitions will receive commissions to create a year’s worth of their web comics for the site, and will have their work published in print formats as well.

[snip}

Creators will be encouraged to send submissions that run the full gamut of comic book genres—from humor, romance, science fiction, fantasy and superheroes. Editorial for Zudacomics.com will be handled by Ron Perazza, DC Comics Director of Creative Services and Kwanza Johnson, DC Comics Online Editor, and overseen by DC Comics SVP-Creative Director. Richard Bruning. Johnson and Perazza will be charged with selecting the submissions for the site’s competitions; additionally, the editors can declare as many as six submissions as instant winners during the calendar year. All Zudacomics.com creators who are instant winners, competition winners and competition finalists will be paid by DC Comics.

I"m sure the blogosphere will explode over the next few days trying to figure out how much DC will pay and what the rights situation will be for webcomics accepted by the site. But for DC, this looks like a big deal as the first of the big two to get such a site out there. More details sure to come at Comic-Con, which is now a mere 2 1/2 weeks away! Full press release in the jump.

DC Comics TO launch ZUDACOMICS.COM,

A NEW WEB COMICS IMPRINT

(July 9, 2007- New York, NY) —Already established as the largest English-language publisher of comics in the world, DC Comics announced today the creation of Zudacomics.com, a new web comics imprint. The home to such iconic characters as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Sandman, DC Comics will soon publish new, never before seen online content featuring new characters and concepts through Zudacomics.com.

The site is scheduled to launch this October and will feature multiple ongoing web comics. Following the site’s launch, the majority of the web comics will be selected by Zudacomics.com’s visitors, who will vote on new web comics presented to them in periodic competitions. Winners of the competitions will receive commissions to create a year’s worth of their web comics for the site, and will have their work published in print formats as well.

“There is an explosion of creativity in web comics,” said Paul Levitz, DC Comics President & Publisher. “We want to build a great stage for this new generation of creators to perform on, a solid system for their work to reach audiences online and in print, and for the creators to share in the profits their creations can generate. In this time of rapid technological and cultural change, DC wants to be a good publisher for the evolving and growing community of online comic creators, so that we can be their partner for showcasing new kinds of works to entertain future generations.”

Creators will be encouraged to send submissions that run the full gamut of comic book genres—from humor, romance, science fiction, fantasy and superheroes. Editorial for Zudacomics.com will be handled by Ron Perazza, DC Comics Director of Creative Services and Kwanza Johnson, DC Comics Online Editor, and overseen by DC Comics SVP-Creative Director. Richard Bruning. Johnson and Perazza will be charged with selecting the submissions for the site’s competitions; additionally, the editors can declare as many as six submissions as instant winners during the calendar year. All Zudacomics.com creators who are instant winners, competition winners and competition finalists will be paid by DC Comics.

Zudacomics.com’s official tagline is “click here to continue.” The site will have numerous variations of a site logo that reflects the scope and ambition of the imprint. “In designing the Zuda logo, it was important to echo back to the interactive nature of the web, the creativity of our medium and the diversity of the comics community,” said Richard Bruning. “We soon realized that there shouldn’t be just one logo. We wanted to reflect the different ‘faces’ of web comics that we are looking to publish. It’s all about the diversity of the readership and the medium.”

Unlike a traditional comic book page (which traditionally measures 6 5/8” X 10 1/4”), a Zuda web comic will consist of a series of 4:3 aspect ratio screens, so that users will be able to read a web comic installment without opening an additional window in their browser or excessive scrolling. Ongoing Zuda web comics will run for at least 52 total installments, in addition to the initial submission.

DC Comics has chosen IBM Global Business Services to design and build the new Zudacomics.com site. The site will embrace leading Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging, commenting, rating and tagging to encourage maximum community participation and feedback on artists' submissions. The DC Comics creative and technical teams are working side by side with consultants, visual designers, information architects and developers from IBM's Media & Entertainment practice to design everything from the technology architecture to the look and feel and overall user experience for the site. Through the use of open source technologies, the new site will enable collaboration and innovation as well as flexibility to allow DC Comics to continue to enhance the site with industry leading functionality over time.

The Zudacomics.com teaser site will go live in July, timed to this year’s San Diego ComicCon; the teaser site will allow pre-registration for the site and provide updates for the imprint throughout the summer. “Zuda Comics will be a transparent publishing operation,” said Ron Perazza, Online Director. “We’re asking the community and the creators to participate in the growth of a new business. They need to have access to every bit of information we can provide, so we’re going to roll out our submissions process, our contracts and agreements throughout the summer, well before our October content launch.”

DC Comics, and its various imprints, currently publishes more than 70 comic book series, MAD Magazine and MAD KIDS and more than 300 books a year, including manga titles from CMX and titles from the new MINX imprint aimed at teenage girl readers. With the launch of Zudacomics.com, DC Comics furthers the company’s commitment to publishing diverse material for an increasingly diverse readership in new and diverse platforms.

I'm a Marvel, and I'm a DC

There's a lot of parodies out there of Apple's Mac vs. PC ads, but these comicbook movie clip starring Spider-Man and Superman action figures on YouTube is pretty funny. Like the Apple ads, these are pretty one sided in Marvel's favor as Spidey pokes fun at DC's recent movie efforts. There's four clips in all, available here, and this is the first one.

DC takes "Countdown" to MySpace

DC will be previewing its new weekly series "Countdown" on MySpace.com's comic book area. Details from the PR:

DC COMICS PARTNERS WITH MYSPACE FOR AN EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW OF COUNTDOWN

New York, NY - COUNTDOWN, DC Comics’s new, yearlong weekly series, will be supported with an unprecedented preview of the first two issues of the series on MySpace’s new comic book community.  MySpace Comic Books, located at www.myspace.com/comicbooks, will be the only place to see the first two issues of COUNTDOWN online, in their entirety. The online content will roll out over a series of three weeks:

•       The first ten pages of COUNTDOWN 51 will be on www.myspace.com/comicbooks on May 4.
•       The last 12 pages of COUNTDOWN 51 will be on the site on May 11, along with the first 12 pages of issue 50.
•       The last ten pages of COUNTDOWN 50 will be on the site on May 18.

DC will also launch a DC Nation MySpace page on May 2.

“We have so much faith in this series that we did something special with MySpace to get the first issues out in front of as many eyes as possible,” said Dan DiDio, Senior Vice President — Executive Editor, DC Comics. “This is our biggest series of 2007 and we’re presenting it in the biggest way possible.”

With placement on MySpace Comic Books as well as the MySpace home page, COUNTDOWN will reach a sizeable online audience.  MySpace is the premier lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, discovering popular culture, and making a positive impact on the world.  As the most trafficked web site in the United States, MySpace has nearly 65 million unique monthly users. MySpace Comic Books (www.myspace.com/comicbooks) is the site’s online destination for fans of manga, graphic novels and comic books.  Fans and friends of MySpace Comic Books can check out the community to find the most exciting projects, creators, news, and events in the industry.

Additionally, DC has now revealed widespread yearlong coverage, including:

•       Feature and review coverage have also been secured in various mainstream press outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Scripps Howard News Service, TV Guide and scores of local newspapers across the country.

•       Monthly coverage in Comics Buyer’s Guide.
•       Regular coverage in Comic Shop News, including an interview with series editor Mike Marts timed to the release of the first issue.

•       A weekly conversation with the editor of COUNTDOWN on Newsarama.com, including cover debuts, roundtable commentary and interior page previews.

•       Regular print coverage in Wizard and weekly coverage online at WizardUniverse.com.

ABOUT COUNTDOWN: Emmy award winning creator Paul Dini (the writer/story editor of ABC’s Lost and the producer/writer of Batman: The Animated Series) will be the head writer for COUNTDOWN. COUNTDOWN will commence publication with issue #51 on May 9th, 2007, and count down backwards, one number a week, until issue #0 is published in 2008. Over the course of a year, COUNTDOWN will span the entirety of the DC universe and showcase DC’s rich history by focusing on characters as diverse as longtime fan favorite (and Superman’s pal) Jimmy Olsen and cult favorite (and former Wonder Girl) Donna Troy.  As he did with Lost, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, Dini will balance character development, a large cast of characters, intrigue, suspense and, oh, yes, lots and lots of action.

Slave Labor sells digital at Eyemelt

Newsarama has an interview with Slave Labor chief Dan Vado about selling comics online. SLG has quietly launched a site called Eyemelt.com that sells digital comics in PDF or CBZ format for $.69 or $.89. The site will be open for other publishers to sell their content at a price of their choosing. Vado doesn't say much about digital entertainment that hasn't already been learned the hard way by the music business, but it's good to hear from a comics publishers. A few good bits include:

DV I actually spent time and a little money looking at DRM systems. I almost settled on one and then read that it had been hacked by some kids in a daycare somewhere. I am of course kidding about the daycare kids, but DRM systems are a huge obstacle in the download environment. Steve Jobs recently went on record as saying he felt that record companies needed to drop their DRM requirements from the downloadable music business. He cited the fact tat the record companies were selling non-copy protected content in the form of CD's already and that the download sites should not have to be hampered by a limitation the record companies cannot put on their own products. Basically what it comes down to is if you put some kind of heavy handed DRM on your downloads you wind up making the download more expensive, making it less usable by the end user and ultimately end up sending that customer back to the torrent sites to get this stuff for free.

And ...

DV: We are going to be moving a lot of stuff that would have come out as comics onto our download site. The comic book format seems to be breathing its last and I think releasing a comic with sales under 1,000 copies not only is a money-loser for us, it doesn't do anything to build circulation. At 69¢ and with the notion of instant gratification, the barrier to trying something becomes reduced.

Again, the music biz and Steve Jobs figured this out a while ago, but digital offers so much potential benefit to smaller comics houses that it's encouraging to see a publisher with Slave Labor's reputation for quality jump modestly but convincingly into the market.

Comic Mix goes live

Comic Mix, a website devoted to news about comics and the things comics fans care about, has gone live. Contributors include longtime industry pros Dennis O'Neil, Michael Davis, Elayne Riggs, John Ostrander, Peter David and Mike Gold.

This will be one to watch.

Fans flock to ComicSpace

Nearly 7,000 fans, creators and other people in comics have flocked to ComicSpace.com, a social networking site for comics fans obviously inspired by MySpace. The site opened a mere two weeks ago and has been very active. The site is still ramping up, but promises to let users host their own webcomics on the site and let others track their favorites. You can check out my ComicSpace page here.

Fourth Rail wraps it up

The world of comics review sites is undergoing a transition as critics Randy Lander and Don McPherson have decided to let their long-running site The Fourth Rail fade away. Lander has already jumped over to a new review site, called Comic Pants. McPherson says in a press release he is planning a new site to launch at a future date.

Pics and Notes

Pics from the floor:

Also, our former Bags and Boards colleague Jevon Phillips is blogging from the con for the L.A. Times and his stuff is worth a look.

Marvel blogs

Marvel has launched a bunch of blogs, which can be found here. Among the bloggers are exec editor Tom Brevoort and a blog from the X-Men office. There's also some non-comics blogs to check out.

Let's Link

A few sites and articles of interest to comics fans:

* L.A. Times columnist and host of KPCC’s Talk of the City Patt Morrison admits she’s not up to date on all the current superhero comics, but she does have a few ideas for some California-inspired heroes in today's Opinion page. Maybe this will inspire Marvel to bring back the West Coast Avengers …

* David Kaplan was kind enough to alert us to an article in BusinessWeek listing the smartest superheroes in comics. They make some interesting points about the lack of supersmart female heroes (only former Batgirl Barbara Gordon, now better known as Oracle in Birds of Prey) made the list.

* And the medically inclined should check out Polite Dissent, a site that looks at the portrayal of medicine in comicbooks. It’s also great for those comics fans who enjoy the TV show “House,” which also gets a pretty thorough and entertaining examination.

Comics for your iPod

Jason Pearson’s comicbook “Body Bags: Father’s Day” has made its debut as a video comic available for free through Apple’s iTunes music store.

The comic is the first of many planned such video comics, which feature animation, voices work and sound effects, between publisher 12 Gauge and tech firm VideoTVisioN. Newsarama has all the details on the project. While the comic can be played on a video iPod, anyone can view the comic on a computer with the free iTunes software.

Unh! The sounds of battle

Pow! Oww! Wurrrg!! And the ever-present Arggh!! You know what they are, and may even sound them out while reading your favorite books. Well, many of them have been compiled, and commented on, by the Unh! Project.

What started out as a webzine has made the online transition. It's not a new site, but maybe one that you've never visited. There's nothing profound, but some of it is funny reading

http://members.shaw.ca/tom.t/unh/index.html

Soundwaves

We read their work and sometimes see them at conventions or local haunts, but now we can hear comic book personalities courtesy of the online radio show Comic Zone.

The show is hosted by Vincent Zurzolo, one of the nation’s leading comic book aficionados who is also a partner/COO of Metropolis Collectibles. On Mondays from Noon to 1pm Pacific Time, he interviews, and has interviewed, many of comics' historical figures, current stars (upcoming: Todd McFarlane), and industryites.

The current episode discusses GPAnalysis for Comics, a site and business that allows comic traders to instantly determine current and past prices for specific books traded. Run by George Pantela, owner of GP Investment Collectables, out of Melbourne, Australia, the site also graphs the performance of those titles. A cool listen if you want to get a taste of what the state of the comics world is Down Under and learn more about the aforementioned site.

Last week's interviews posted (March 8, 2004) were with EC Comics' Jack Kamen, one of the company's most prolific horror artists, and Al Feldstein, who gained the most fame by co-creating (with William Gaines) a new line of horror, science fiction, and crime titles that eventually became the popular Tales From the Crypt comics.

The lineups and guests are not always the most scintillating, but they're definitely informative. And Zurzolo is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic host. With all of the deals being done now, film execs may do well to listen to interviews to find possibly forgotten gems.

The talkfest is hosted by World Talk Radio, Inc., which is, according to its website, "the largest internet talk station with more than forty-five regularly presented shows." The San Diego-based business hosts numerous online broadcasts that are easy to access.

Blacksuperhero.com

Blacksuperhero.com

The Storms, Green Lanterns, Spawns, and Statics (now popular as a WB Kids star) of the comic world do have a history that's worth exploring at the Museum of Black Superheroes.

Chronicling the history of blacks in comics, site creator Omar Bilal has gathered all of the black super heroes that he could find (though I think he missed Mike Wellman's Mac Afro!). The site sports "exhibits," which spotlight different publishers' black characters (for example, in the TV/Movies section he even describes Jazz from the Transformers - the car's voice being distinctly African American); a gallery with drawings from independent artists; and an articles section compiling numerous stories related to black super heroes and general diversity in comics from fan perspectives like Fanzing: The DC Comics Fan site to mainstream sites like the New York Daily News.

The takeaway is that the portrayal of blacks in comics has gotten more inclusive over the years, but still has room to improve. Early on, stats were hard to come by, but heroes like the Black Panther (introduced as a villain and whose possible movie seems stalled) and Luke Cage (stereotypical at the time, but a breakthrough hero) helped open the door for today's popular characters.

Homemade Heroes Online

Seeing as how we listed Batman: Dead End as one of our runner-up choices in the Best translation of a comicbook to another medium category of our inaugural awards, it seemed only right to talk up the Comic Book Showcase offered by IFilm.

Sandy Collora's Dark Knight saga proved that comic-book based fan-made films can be done well, without using up little Susie's college fund or being overtly cheesy. There aren't many here yet, but take a look at some of the shorts, mostly CGI, ranging from an Aliens vs. Predator mini (not related to the upcoming movie) to a Silver Surfer homage. There's even an original Batman (the TV show starring Adam West) trailer. Hopefully, more filmmakers can create comic-book based works to be displayed here.

And you can't mention fan-made films without plugging Star Wars' fan films and subsequent awards or the Indiana Jones site, both of which have been collecting and displaying fan-made films for a while.