That’s the title of a feature from Wired.com which gleefully states:

I’m a huge fan of free things, especially free entertainment — really, who isn’t? Daily Bits has combed through the web, turning up a treasure trove of 17 graphic novels, all available for download.

We’re sure every comic book retailer reading these words is going kerplotz right about now — that is after the tempest that erupted after Boom Studios announced they were giving away the entire first issue of their new book NORTH WIND on MySpace.

Now first issue sampling online is pretty much accepted fare these days; even DC does it. So why the hue and cry that erupted on the private CBIA retailer’s forum, with store owners vowing to stop buying Boom books and all support of the company? Well, a couple of things. The online freebie was available at the exact same time as the first issue went on sale, and Boom had neglected to warn retailers about it.
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Our recap of the Z-Cult affair for PWCW yesterday had this quote from Todd Allen:

“There is a very real possibility that torrents, effectively advertising in this case, have been a factor in sales spikes. People will want a physical copy of an inherent physical product. Crossgen did the research on this 5 years ago and went under before they had a chance to properly implement that research.”

CrossGen! There’s a blast from the past. Their “all freelancers will work in the same office” set-up drew constant Jonestown jokes, but they were ahead of the curve on a lot of things, like the downloadable comics model initiative to post their comics to the web, which they called, amazingly, “Comics on the Web”. In fact someone sent us this link at an article from 2002 on how their implementation of comics downloads had an immediate impact on sales:

Less than 30 days after the launch of CrossGen’s Comics on the Web, retail sales of CrossGen’s comics and trade paperbacks are taking an upward turn, with much of it taking place the week after the launch of Comics on the Web, according to recent sales statistics.

According to figures from Diamond Comic Distributors, first week advance reorders for The Path taken the week after the entire issue was posted for free on CrossGen’s Comics on the Web increased by 54 percent over the level taken for CrossGen’s Sojourn Prequel, which was not posted online prior to its release. In addition, the second week reorders, which typically drop by 50 percent after the comic’s release, actually increased by 23 percent for The Path Prequel. Also, advance reorders for The Path #1, still two weeks from being released, rose by 45 percent in the first week after The Path Prequel’s release, and then another 45 percent on top of that the following week, further bucking the trends for low advance reorders before a book is released.

While this still wasn’t enough to save the company’s ambitious, expensive and fondly remembered by some line of comics, it’s still as close as anyone has come to documenting the effect of making issues available for free download online sampling.

As long as we’re talking about Crossgen, we’ll remind everyone that Checker Books is reprinting a lot of their graphic novels, under a license from Disney.

As the Z-Cult story continues to evolve, many are pointing to the recent ups and downs of the music industry as a reference for where comics stand in the new digital landscape. This Wired interview with Universal Music head Doug Morris has been widely quoted this week, and it even contains a L’il Abner reference:

“There was a cartoon character years ago called the Shmoo,” he says in a raspy tenor. “It was in Li’l Abner. The Shmoo was a nice animal, a nice fella, but if you were hungry, you cut off a piece of him and put onions on it, and if you wanted to play football you just made him like a football. You could do anything to him. That’s what was happening to the music business. Everyone was treating the music business like it was a Shmoo.

Well, we don’t quite get that, but we do get this:
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ComicMix’s Glenn Hauman posts his memories meetings with MARVEl people SIX YEARS AGO:

–which leads into yet another story of how I was brought in to discuss digital strategies with comic companies. This time I was brought in to meet with Gui Karyo, at the time the CIO of Marvel, in March of 2001 to discuss the status of their archives, digital and otherwise; their upcoming CD-ROM archives, and digital asset management in general for the company. I pointed out that Marvel’s in house archives were a disaster, certainly in comparison to DC’s– Marvel didn’t even have complete printed runs of the comics they published, with gaps as recent as the previous decade. Their film for publication had been stored in a warehouse in Arizona, and hot climates are always where I want to store four decade old film.

One of the things I had suggested was taking the time to build a system for digital asset management, so that the company would know what they had and everyone in the company, plus freelancers and licensees, could access it easily. As a demonstration, I pulled out a thousand dollar comic book– Man Of War Comics #1– and said that I could make a decent argument in either direction on whether Marvel owned the rights or not.

For a variety of reasons, Marvel still hasn’t done it, and as a result their own freelancers are now shelling out money to get reference that the company should be providing.

I

Who would have thought one of the biggest stories of the year would have broken over the Thanksgiving weekend? For those of you who have been living in a cave–or possibly on vacation for a week–both Marvel and DC have threatened comic book site Z-Cult with legal action regarding their plentiful torrents of comics. The site has agreed to remove ALL Marvel comics trackers, and to delay posting new DC comics trackers for 30 days. Newsarama has several news stories, and a zillion comments at their message boards. It appears that Top Cow, which has its own downloadable comics program in place, has joined Marvel and DC is asking for the trackers to be taken down.

We’re especially sad about all this because we’ve been getting rid of tons of books we had around the house for reference, thinking “Well, if we REALLY need it, we can just go to Z-cult”…and now THIS happens. Sheesh.

This post is just a place marker really as we attempt to catch up on this story, but Glenn Haumann over at ComicMix adds color with his account of a meeting with DC to deal with illegally pirating…2 1/2 years ago.. The post has a bunch of informative comments from ex-DC staffers, as well.

A few musical notes. One of our correspondents is sad we didn’t note the release of the new Radiohead album last week, but we only now had a chance to download it (paying £5 which seemed only fair) but we need a few more listens before it becomes a part of us. We were also enthused about Moog Acid, the mashup of Luke Vibert and Jean Jacques Perrey, the French electro pioneer. That is primo noodling, bleeps and blips, especially the track that sounds like Delius.

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SLG adds another comic to it’s downloadable EYEMELT site, Thomas Behe and Phil Elliott’s CONTRABAND. Each issue is downloadable for 89¢ — a print collection of all four issues will eventually be made available.

Some months ago, cartoonist Phil Elliott was approached on the street by a teenage girl asking for money. It’s a sad but common enough occurrence in cities, but when Elliott refused, the situation became something much different from anything he’d experienced. “A younger kid — he must have only been about ten — started swearing at me, ‘Give us some ******* money!’” he recalled. “I was then aware that there was another girl filming all this on her mobile phone. What was going on here? Were they trying to provoke me? What happened to the video?”

The incident took on a greater significance for Elliott when writer Thomas Behe contacted him to see if he were interested in drawing a comic he’d written, which explores a voyeuristic underground where profit-hungry youths prowl the streets secretly filming violence and catastrophes with mobile devices. That comic became Contraband, the new digital comic from SLG Publishing, distributed on their online comics site Eyemelt.com. The four-issue series will begin its serialization in October 2007, and a print collection of Contraband will be published in February 2008. A preview is available at SLG’s website, www.slgcomic.com.

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A couple of notes on downloadable content. ICv2 had an interesting chat with Viz’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Dan Marks, who talks about Viz present and possible future forays into downloading manga and anime. Part 1
Part 2
Marks points out the big differences between Japan and the US, in large part a technological one since they are years ahead of us on the whole cel phone thing:

One, it’s a mature market. On the magazine side manga sales have been decreasing for probably eight to 10 years. The way the cell phone is used in Japan would boggle the mind of most Americans. That has cut into manga sales for years. I don’t know if it’s illegal downloads and the availability of the content digitally, actually that may help in the long run. In the United States, manga sales have been growing for the past years and are projected to continue to grow because it’s not a mature market — we’ve barely broken into the market. As far as the effect of downloads in Japan, yeah, it may have hurt, but the market had already hits its peak. In the U.S. there’s so much room to grow, hopefully it doesn’t affect the U.S. market that much.

§ Although it has nothing to do with comics, we found this link (sent by Abel Padilla) interesting as well: It seems romance titan Harlequin is making all of its books downloadable — a fairly groundbreaking move for a traditional publisher. Although it’s not comics, Harlequin’s serial genre novels are consumed (albeit by a different audience) in ways very similar to superhero and manga fans.

“It’s every single line, every single title, so it’s over 120 titles a month,” Malle Vallik, Harlequin’s director of digital content, told Quill & Quire magazine, an industry publication. Harlequin will become the first Canadian publisher to do such a thing, Vallik said. The company thought the move was necessary to be relevant to younger readers who can download to laptops or cellphones, she added.

Vallik also feels that the digital format will allow some confidentiality — gone will be tell-tale piles of romance novels on bedside tables.

Harlequin sold more than 130 million books in 2006.

Via PR, news of a new legit venture to allow fans to create their own scanlations:

Manganovel Corporation and Toshiba Corporation today announced that they will bring the universe of Japanese manga to the global market with the launch of “Manganovel,” an on-line service that allows readers not only to download and read manga in Japanese but to post and offer for sale their own translations of content. The service started beta testing in June this year, and is now officially ready to take manga characters to anime lovers around the world. The site can be accessed at: URL: https://www.manganovel.com .

“Manganovel” will serve as a distribution source for Japanese publishers, and go beyond that to create a community of readers. In a world-first for the comics industry, members will not only be able to download and read Japanese versions of manga, but, by making full use of the potential offered by Web 2.0, be free to upload and even sell their own translations of the comics. Potential readers can get advice on the quality of any individual translation offered on “Manganovel” by reading the comments of other readers on the site’s discussion boards. The whole operation will offer secure digital rights management with “MQbic” (Multi-cubic), digital copyright protection technology developed by Toshiba.

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uClick has signed up BONE for its GoComics reader:

Fone Bone, Smiley Bone and Phoney Bone are coming to mobile phones! uclick has announced an agreement that brings Jeff Smith’s wildly popular Bone series to mobile phones through the GoComics Mobile Comic Book Reader.

The first mobile installment of the critically acclaimed series launched on July 26. New chapters are released weekly.

“I’m always excited about trying new things,” said Bone creator Jeff Smith, “and GoComics lets you have the Bone adventures at your fingertips. Besides, it just makes sense to have Fone on your phone!”

One of the greatest success stories of independent publishing, Bone began in 1991 as a self-published, black-and-white comic book found only on the shelves of specialty stores. The story quickly caught on with fans, becoming an instant cult hit and soon exploding into a national phenomenon.

Today, the multiple Eisner-, Harvey- and National Cartoonist Society-award-winning epic is collected in a black-and-white, 1300-page single volume edition as well as newly colorized graphic novels from Scholastic, available everywhere from comic book shops to bookstores and even public libraries.

While Smith has a long and storied history as a publishing maverick, uclick Manager of Product Development Harold Sipe asserts that the debut of Bone on GoComics will be groundbreaking, representing an unprecedented endorsement for comic books on mobile phones.

“Bone is a stunning work that belongs within the pantheon of great comic book literature,” said Sipe. “Its whimsical characters, perfect blend of humor, adventure and fantasy, and of course, dazzling full-color artwork absolutely shine on mobile phones. Fans are going to love the way this story unfolds on their screens.”

GoComics offers a wide variety of exciting comic books optimized for mobile phone screens. Their star- studded lineup includes Virgin Comics, the sci-fi fantasy hits GØDLAND and Elephantmen, the webcomic-turned-comic-book PvP, the manga and anime horror import Guilstein, high-flying martial arts fun starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many more. The Mobile Comic Book Reader is available on all major carriers, including Cingular, Verizon and Sprint.

For more information on uclick’s GoComics mobile line, visit www.gocomics.com/comicbooks.

At a recent tech conference, mobile content delivery platforms were debated:

At the YPulse Mashup conference in San Francisco this week, a lunchtime discussion about mobile marketing among representatives from Microsoft, Disney, Viz Media and teen cause group YouthNoise provided an inside glance on the mobile of today (think early AOL) and the mobile of tomorrow (kiss your laptop good-bye).

Microsoft in particular betrayed an odd preoccupation with size, foretelling the death of the laptop “as we know it” in favor of ever-more-sophisticated smartphones that double as sync-able remotes for big screen TV/computers. (Think revival of Microsoft Media Center.)

So in the future of communications technology, there is no room for middle ground. Portables go into pockets, and at-home interfaces are wall-sized.

Comics content is discussed along the way. Hello Zuda? Hello Flex?

Okay are you sick of Zuda speculation and commentary yet? If you just can’t get enough of it, Todd Allen has the ultimate guide to parsing Zuda pr complete with speculative monetary breakdowns, and the idea of the “Citizen cartoonist.”

“Citizen Cartoonists” have been around for quite a while. It’s the basic premise of www.webcomicsnation.com. Generally speaking, its popularity that turns a “Citizen Cartoonist” into a professional webcartoonist (or print, as that line blurs as popularity increases). If this talent search is really paying proportional rates, that would be extremely egalitarian. It also serves to further blur the line between professional and amateur. This may not be a bad thing, depending on your perspective, but it’s going to be really interesting to see if the pro set gets frustrated by attention paid to this talent search and Intellectual Property development lab. Or if the rates are much lower and it really is a cheap place to develop and test market new ideas.

The other Zuda must-read is Newsarama’s webcomicker opinion round-up, in which Warren Ellis sensibly points out that Zuda goes great with Flex, the mobile phone technology DC recently acquired a stake in.

First off, you have to immediately assume Zuda will mesh with Flex, the comics-on-phone company DC invested in. Secondly, Zuda is high-concepted for news stories: it’s Pop Idol/American Idol for comics, essentially. (It’s a MainStream Media story only — you can’t successfully spin this as, say, a Web 2.0 project.) That demands the third point: the concept begs the formation of an online community around it. It’s probably compelling enough that DC will be able to access a sizeable and active audience, and that’ll give them a base to expand internet operations from. Which has to happen, because, as much as people continue to say “well, no-one likes reading comics on screen,” it doesn’t seem to be making scans, scanlations, comics torrent sites and e-books go away. Quite the opposite.

So there.

§ Warren Ellis’s SUICIDE GIRLS column, The Sunday Hangover, is now underway.

It was a grim Sunday in Iceland when my hosts drove me out into the interior of the country — the central area that they close off for six months of the year because if you go there you will just die. The interior of Iceland looks like the moon, only with moss speckling the rocks. Apollo astronauts trained here. The moon probably looks nicer. And in a spacesuit you don’t have to inhale the tang of geyser-polluted air that makes much of Iceland smell like an army of sick old men have been farting on it since Noah was a boy. We drove out to a black cave in the middle of nowhere. Just a hump of black rock. The hollow didn’t extend back more than thirty metres from the mouth. It was full of language: Icelandic words scratched into almost every inch of the rock. “My neighbour,” one of my hosts said, “was one of the last people to be born here. In 1929.” I looked around again. All those scratches. The marks of families who’d lived in this cave, generations going back hundreds of years. And empty for less than a century. It wasn’t a cave. I was standing in an old house on a stand-in for the moon.

§ Sequential Tart is now weekly — guess monthly updating just isn’t viable any more in the world of daily blogs and RSS feeds. Other improvements underway:

First things first: doubtless many of you hit the homepage yesterday looking for new content and didn’t find any. The start of July (well, actually the second day in July) marks a shift in Sequential Tart’s publication schedule. We’re now a weekly publication. And in celebration of that fact, we decided to make a great deal of July’s content food themed. Every Monday, we’ll be serving up a toothsome assortment of new interviews and Tarticles. Come hungry (for great content), leave happy.

It’s July. Con season has kicked into high gear. You’ve doubtless seen Tarts at Heroes Con and Wizard World Philly, and you’ll be seeing several of us at San Diego, where we will be partnering with Comicon.con Pulse to publish daily updates from panels and around the con.

§ Scott McCloud makes a splash at PLATFORM a very forward looking animation fest. In fact as animated content on the phone is now a reality in America thanks to the iPhone, this is a key confab:

The Platform festival is helping to widen how the audience thinks about animation and looks at its use beyond traditional platforms of the television and big screen. Festivals have begun to feature Internet competitions and Platform was no exception. However, it was notable that they included a competition specifically for mobile devices and jaw-dropping installations, curated by artist Rose Bond.

An entirely different medium can also help us reconsider what makes some elements of animation tick: comics. While not all animators are into comics and vice versa, there are many who enjoy, derive inspiration from and create in both media. Many current animators are producing comics in printed and digital format. Walt Kelly and Osamu Tezuka were both animators and comic book artists, as is Hayao Miyazaki. I’ve recommended comics on fps before that I think some animators will enjoy, because of the cinematic quality of their stories.

§ The Student Operated Press takes a no-holds-barred look at women in the DCU!

Strangely, Kendra Saunders is known as Hawkgirl, and Karen Starr is named Powergirl– even though the former is 20-something and the latter is over 30; this seems a subliminal undermining, since “girl” is perceived as a lesser form of female than “woman“. Powergirl has powers to nearly rival Superman, and she was recently promoted to Chairman of the Justice Society. And yet she still doesn’t have, and never had, her own title. Renown for her costume choice that displays her ample bosom, she is both annoyed and accepting of her breasts– because she realizes she is more than her body, stating: “shows what I am: female, healthy, and strong. If men want to degrade themselves by staring and drooling and tripping over themselves, that’s their problem, I’m not going to apologize for it.”

Bonus points to DC for this elegant inside joke, commentary on the industry and a reasonable utilization of big breasts. But how does a potent character like that not have a book?

§ Matt Kindt interview talks about his cartooning workshops in St. Louis.

The Image title UMBRA by Steven Murphy and Mike Hawthorne will soon be available on cell phones:

uclick, a leader in mobile entertainment, has announced an agreement that will bring the critically-acclaimed comic book series Umbra, by Stephen Murphy and Mike Hawthorne, to mobile phones throughout North America, UK, Australia and South Africa.

The first weekly installment of Umbra will launch in June through uclick’s GoComics Mobile Comic Reader, available on all major carriers, including Sprint, Verizon and Cingular.

[Murphy Quote] “I’m very excited to be able to offer Umbra to an expanded global audience through uclick,” said series creator/writer Murphy. “This story, with its imperfect heroine, exotic locales and blurred division between dream and reality – not to mention Mike’s brilliant artwork – really resonated with fans in print, and it’s been fascinating to see it make a smooth transition to mobile.

“Mobile fans will read it in weekly installments, which I feel actually adds a level of tension to the already-intense storyline. I think they are definitely going to enjoy the ride.”

Originally published as a three-issue mini-series by Image Comics, Umbra is a mystery set in Iceland during the year 1999. The story’s protagonist is a young, self-medicating police forensic scientist named Askja Thorasdottir whose first big case involves the discovery of a strange skeleton hidden in a glacial cave. Umbra joins a GoComics mobile line that boasts several popular titles from a wide range of genres, including the sci-fi fantasy hit Godland, the webcomic- turned-comic-book PvP, the Manga and anime horror epic Guilstein, martial arts adventures starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many more.

“One of our goals with the GoComics Mobile Comic Reader is to offer comic book fans a mobile experience that reflects the diversity of the comics medium,” said uclick Manager of Product Development Harold Sipe, “and Umbra certainly does that. It’s a finely-crafted detective story with dramatic artwork that plays out beautifully on the mobile screen.”

For more information on uclick’s GoComics mobile line, visit www.gocomics.com/ comicbooks or text “COMIC” to 26642 on your mobile phone.

We’d been getting some PR, and heard a few rumblings that indie publisher Silent Devil was changing its business model, and an email to FORMER editor in chief Christian Beranek confirmed this. In addition to his stepping down as EIC, they are de-emphasizing publishing and emphasizing the Hollywood-esque aspects of their company. Beranek writes:

Yes, Silent Devil is no longer accepting new submissions. We’re going to fulfill our commitments to our current titles and then start concentrating on stuff that my brothers and I can control the rights to. We’re busy producing films with various companies, so we’re working to phase out SD as a publisher and begin publishing under other people.

Our goal was always to be a production company. We just saw so much great stuff out there [and] wanted to help get the word out about those titles.

As for myself, I am way too busy with freelance writing to be objective. I have my own goals that are now coming to fruition, including writing the screenplay for Dracula vs. King Arthur with Kickstart Productions.

Currently we are going to continue publishing Devil’s Panties, Dracula vs. King Arthur, The Death series and a few new titles already on the slate.

According to its website, Silent Devil has been around since 1996, and while they were always modest in goals and achievements, they were certainly one of the better established “mini publishers” of straight ahead genre material. In baseball terms, it was a “farm team” where people got some chops while producing some entertaining material in its own right.

So, if nothing else, this is another nail in the coffin for the comics pamphlet, the format in which most of Silent Devil’s books originated. It just isn’t profitable any more, even on a very modest basis, unless you’ve got a movie to back it up.

We also got the following PR from Beranek, announcing the launch of a new comics on the web venture called Comflix Studios. You can read it all in the jump.

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Todd Allen, a frequent source of commentary on webcomics, e commerce and so on, has launched a column at Comic Book Resources, and already he’s putting things in some context:

Want to work in comics? If you’re already using your skills in a different field, you might be startled and dismayed by the salaries in comics. Point in case: Devil’s Due recently posted an opening for an “Online Web Store Manager” (as opposed to an Offline Web Store Manager, I suppose). Go ahead and take a look. You’ll find they want a lot of territory covered for a whopping $11/hr. Finally, a comics position that makes an assistant editor look like a high-paying job. Passing this listing around e-commerce and interactive types has produced a combination of laughter and disgust. A typical response being a creative director saying “we pay our interns $14/hr.”

He also looks at emerging sales channels for comics. Worth a read.

Although this looks like one of those simple new media tech acquisition announcements, we hear quite a few people were interested in the Bomb- xx system, and the examples we’ve seen of it at work have all been quite well done. At the very least, it’s more sign of the coming iPod/YouTube/cartoon alliance apocalypse. You can hear me now and believe me later.

MTV Networks Music Group, a unit of Viacom’s MTV Networks, today announced an exclusive deal with Gain Ltd, creators of the proprietary system Bomb- xx that develops extremely engaging audio-visual experiences, to develop new media versions of comic books, graphic novels and children’s books. Each experience will be customized across multiple media screens, including computers, portable video players, portable and console gaming devices, and mobile phones. Gain Ltd was co-founded by Jeff Shuter and Daniel Viney.

“Some of the best characters and stories come from comics and graphic novels, but until now distribution channels have been very limited,” said David Gale, Executive Vice President, New Media for MTV Networks. “Gain combines the original format of comic books, graphic novels and children’s books with the emotional excitement of a great movie that fans can see on-the-go or on-demand, but always in high-quality.”

MTV Networks Music Group’s vast array of television and digital platforms will allow for extensive distribution of Gain’s unique content, beginning with MTV. Various projects will bring together comic book publishers, creators and distributors to create and market existing and original content produced to maximize distribution and build a broader fan

base from the traditional niche market for comics and graphic novels. In addition

forthcoming projects will be distributed across other new media formats outside of the MTV Networks’ brands.

“Comic books historically have ignited people’s imagination and intuition to piece together and decode the story as it unfolds on each page,” said Daniel Viney, co-founder, producer and creator, Gain Enterprises. “Our mission has always been to curate new proprietary formats that enhance the user experience and spur even more intrigue in the story.”

“What’s unique to our product is that each experience is highly music- based with animation that is much like choreography to a dance,” added Jeff Shuter, co-founder, producer and creator, Gain Enterprises. “Every moment and beat is highly charged to keep fans engaged in the storyline. The goal is to transcend the conventional comic book experience and we are excited to work with MTV Networks to continue forming connections between the traditional comic book and new media worlds for the benefit of audiences everywhere.”

Gain founders, Viney and Shuter, made their mark with their Bomb- xx adaptations of comics for major movie studios, including Fox Atomic’s first film “Turistas” and the recent “28 Weeks Later,” as well as Lions Gate’s “Saw 2.” Gain also created original works for the Weinstein Company’s movies “Arthur and the Invisibles” and “The Protector,” and an adaptation of Marvel Comics’ “Ultimate Spiderman.”

Gain Enterprises was co-founded by Jeff Shuter and Daniel Viney with the mission to develop hybrid forms of content and entertainment for the new media space. Both Shuter and Viney serve as lead producers and creators.

Comics Comics #2, the most excellent alt.comix zine by Dan Nadel and T. Hodler is now sold out…but you can download it from their blog:

So if you missed out on getting your own copy (and unfortunately, this one really does work best in its oversize paper form), you can now finally enjoy:

Peter Bagge on Spider-Man!

An interview with PShaw! (He has posted a nice color variation of this issue’s cover on his own site, by the way.)

Part one of a far-too-long essay on Steve Gerber’s cult ’70s Marvel comics (Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, etc.)! (By the way, don’t forget to read the article’s accidentally excised footnotes.)

Kevin Nowlan on color separations!

Dan on Dave Sim’s Collected Letters 2004!

And….MORE.

Download it here.

The native are restless. Or at least the artists are. In our previous item we mentioned Bryan Talbot and ALICE IN SUNDERLAND — it took him five years to finish it, and that’s a long time to be working on anything. The one downside of the graphic novel boom is that creators have to sequester themselves for years at a time, and sometimes they have to sequester themselves from a paycheck as well. It started with Becky Cloonan:

So we’re seeing this huge boom in “OEL” books right now, believe me I think it’s great. Many people are seeing more publishing opportunities and this 5×7 format has really taken off (my favorite size is still 6×9 for gn’s though). But I have a bad feeling about it– some people say the market is getting over-saturated– and I agree to a point. However, I feel that the biggest problem is that most artists weren’t meant to work this way, that is drawing 150+ pages at a time.

“But look at all the graphic novels coming out from Japan!” Yes, look at them! And they are all first published in small, 10-20 page chunks in a weekly or monthly magazine. (Not to mention most artists have assistants there– hmm it’s not much different than the so called “assembly line” production you see on mainstream American comics.)

Corey Lewis also chimed in:

But how fucking honestly reasonable is it to ask ONE DUDE to produce a roughly-200 page OGN in the span of a few months? IS THIS SOMETHING WE CAN REALLY DEPEND ON? I’m dying every fucking second. I have no studio. I have no “people”. Sharknife Co. Ltd. ™ is all one guy. It takes a shit ass load of energy and intelligence to construct an entire universe for this shit!!! I’m not complaining!!! I FUCKING LOVE TO DO IT. But without instant success, piles of royalty checks or some kind of media tie-in deal, the OGN format is amazingly hard for a young BASICALLY “freelance” artist to commit to.

A few days ago Tania del Rio piped up, and working on the monthly Sabrina comic, she had a different take.

But now that I’ve been working on Sabrina for 3 years I can definitely see the advantages of this format. Not only do I get the gratification of seeing my work on newsstands consistently, I have a steady paycheck. Every week I turn in pages, and every 2 weeks I get a paycheck. It’s nice! As long as I keep doing my work, I don’t have to worry about when my payment will arrive (a rarity in the world of freelance!).

I’ve also been lucky in regards to getting fans and loyal readers. Rather than putting out one graphic novel, and trying to maintain my audience’s attention for the next year until the next one comes out, I’m fortunate that new issues of my work are available at any given time, and that each month, I gain new readers. For every issue I get feedback - I can tweak a future storyline if I realize my fans aren’t digging the direction I’m going in, or sometimes I’ll deliberately do the opposite just to stir the fans up! (Hehehe)

Tintin Pantoja points out the economics of multi-formats:

The real money is in reprints, in the trade collection and merchandising.
You only really start to seriously profit from your comics after they’ve been reprinted and exploited several times, in different formats. I know it’s pretty cynical, but look at it this way: a comic artist has only so much time to work on a comic. Comics are notoriously labor-intensive. Sure you can have your $15 super-glossy-cardstock full-color album-sized masterpiece, but why not subsidize it by another edition of the same comic, but this time printed on toilet paper, selling for $1?

This is exactly Phil Foglio’s strategy: Girl Genius comes out on the web, as a black and white phonebook-sized newsprint ‘omnibus’ , and as a full color hardbound collector’s album. My argument here is that to make money, creators have to be a little more flexible in terms of formatting. That way one can have the art and the money too. Sure, the omnibus looks like crap (compared to the albums anyway) but they’re pulling in newer readers. We need a cheap disposable and serialized format AS WELL AS a prestige format, even if one or the other isn’t the bext format for your book.

Vanessa Santone also comments, while wondering if the Shojo Beat-like anthology can ever take off here.

I would love to see a low-price monthly anthology, but the industry doesn’t seem to be going that way. Shoujo Beat is $5.99 an issue. I assume that Shonen Jump is about the same. But nobody seems to want to try it with original comics in American. There’s an interview with Kurt Hassler on Newsarama (which I haven’t read yet, ’cause I’m lazy), about Yen Press. They’re going to be publishing a monthly anthology, containing translated Japanese comics, and original American comics. I’m hoping that if things go well with Yen Press, other companies might try following suit.

As a creator, I would love to get my comics out to people every month. (But then again, I’m not published, and I’m slow as fuck, so who am I to talk?) On the other hand, I don’t think OGNs are necessarily a bad thing, either. After all, comics are books, and prose novels don’t come out on monthly, one chapter at a time, schedule. I’m kind of torn on the subject.

Vanessa is torn…WE’RE ALL TORN! Unfortunately, the pamphlet long ago ceased to be a “satisfying chunk.” The monthly comics ARE essentially one-story serializations of the graphic novels. Go back and look at that Web 2.0 business plan Joey Manley was talking about. With the monthly print anthology — Yen and Viz aside — still failing to find any traction here, monetizing web serialization for the eventual print collection appears to be the most likely business model for the comics of the future, whether its in the iTunes/Eyemelt model, or the Penny Arcade model.

As all signs point to Marvel and DC ramping up their online business plans, the delivery system is really going to become more and more important.

UPDATE: Joey Manley happens to have added a very long list of articles on webcomics and digital comics content right here. Great resource for anyone thinking about these things.

UPDATE 2: Now Tom Spurgeon has weighed in with a long post, but here’s the money quote for us anyway:

* I can’t for the life of me figure out why all the comics companies haven’t pursued this more aggressively. All comic books should be available in digital form by now. When the notoriously conservative newspaper strip business is years ahead of you, you’re moving too slow. My only guess is that media companies may be resistant to change by nature and it’s only when an undeniably effective application drives the business in a certain direction that businesses follow. It’s worth noting that what we have in comics right now isn’t a breaking through a wall driven by a super-great way of reading comics that is years ahead of what we thought possible, but a slow thinning of a membrane in areas like speed of downloads and screen size that make reading comics through existing applications increasingly pleasurable.

As of this writing (a mortifyingly late hour) our reading comics on computer poll stood thus:

I like it BETTER than paper! (724) 53.47%
Pixels or pulp — doesn’t matter to me as long as its Bendis! (72) 5.32%
Only in an emergency. (558) 41.21%

That was a BIG come from behind victory for paperless reading. As of 6 pm it was more like 74%– some 500 souls — preferred paper, but somewhere along the way, either 600 people came along who liked onscreen, or someone set up a poll-voting widget or whatever. The poll was completely unscientific, but you can make of it what you will.

We have a bunch of “new media/tech” blogs on our RSS feed, but we only get to read them once a week or so. We checked them out today to test the pundit zeitgiest. Dealing with snippets of fact like we do, sometimes it’s hard to put together a coherent big picture. we can only get a pointilistic view of the world sometimes. But all of it points SOMEWHERE.
(more…)

While all this was going on, a friend of ours happened to IM us with a link to ComicBookLover , which is apparently state of the art for reading those downloaded comics:

Boxes of comics in the garage? Or are you a more serious collector? Even if insured for the risk of theft or flood, nothing can compensate for the time spent building a collection. A digital collection won’t be the same as curling up on the sofa with a paper comic, but it will provide some comfort if you can’t afford to lose your comics.

There’s something about that picture that amuses us — whether it’s the rounded corners or orange lighting or the blinds and cables, it gives us this FORBIDDEN PLANET/Univac vibe. In other words, that photo makes it look like something powered by Gilligan on his coconut bike.

(Has anyone come up with a name for “early computing” era nostalgia? Punchcardpunk?)

We haven’t tried out this “Comic Book Lover” software yet. As we’ve mentioned many many times, we just don’t like reading full size comics pages on screen. (We had to proof an entire 88-page graphic novel on screen the other day and it was sheer hell, but that’s the way it’s done now.) Webcomics are fine, because they are sized for monitors. Sure, someday everyone is going to have 30-inch cinema display, but that day is not quite yet.

As we all know, comics publishers are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that everyone is downloading everything, and many people don’t want little pieces of paper in their homes, either. AT Newsarama, busy Chris Arrant talks to Dan Vado about SLG’s venture into downloadable comics, Eyemelt.com:

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. [snip]

The formats we choose were based on the need to remove as many obstacles to buying downloads as possible. We sell PDF’s because most computers have some sort of built-in PDF reader on them, so the customer does not need any additional software. The CBZ file is a little better than the CBR (these are the file formats most commonly found on the illegal download sites) in terms of working in a cross-platform environment. CBZ needs a special reader and our site has links to places where you can get free comic reading software.

NRAMA: Since eyemelt.com was launched, a major comics torrent site has stopped trafficking in SLG comics. Did you have any conversations with them to do this?

DV: No, they did that on their own. That site has always maintained that they would stop making files available from their site when publishers started making their content available for download at an affordable price.

Over at the SLG blog, the issue is confronted even more directly.

Will it be the same for comics? Well, it’s a bit different, since reading a comic as a tactile experience is different from reading it on screen in a way that listening to a CD and an mp3 are not (though we all know of people who insist on vinyl!). But it’s certainly something that I think will become the norm as more and more people grow to find reading comics on a screen a natural experience rather than a “Boyhowdy, that’s not the way it was done when I was a lass!” one.

Augie DeBlieck’s thoughts on the matter (discussed at the SLG blog) are ever here and the whole column is well worth reading:

Basically, I get ticked off by the self-righteous “The World Owes Me” type of fan who wants to give Dan Slott a hard time because he dares to ask his fans to buy his books legally, and not download them off of some torrent network. The fact is, Slott is right. If you enjoy his books and want to see him doing more work, the only way that’s going to happen is if Marvel’s coffers get a little fatter. Right or wrong, Marvel hasn’t opened up its current library for digital download. Those scanned in copies of their comics floating across the internet are illegal. That’s copyrighted material that you don’t have the right to download, read on your computer screen, keep a copy of on your hard drive, and then e-mail around to your friends.

UPDATE: Well it’s turns out Steven Grant has also been pondering the topic du jour:

This is actually a place the companies can capitalize on bit-torrenting: selling advertising. If you’ve ever taken a magazine survey, one question they always ask is: how many other people read your copy of this magazine? Why? Because they count those people in their ad statistics, and extrapolate statistically from your answer how many other people who don’t buy the magazine read it. If, say, TIME’s survey reveals that their 100,000 readership shares the magazine with three people on average, they’ll figure their ad rates for 300,000 readers because what they’re really selling is exposures to each ad, not number of copies sold. Similarly, if three people buy a copy of, oh, THUNDERBOLTS, scan them, and distribute them via bit-torrent to 100,000 other people for free (does anyone have any idea what average bit-torrent download statistics are?), that’s 300,000 exposure per ad Marvel could claim on those three copies, theoretically. (I’m sure there are other governing factors I’m not aware of, but maybe not.) This ad rate thing is the same reason that magazines offer free or very cut rate subscriptions, particularly specialty magazines for targeted audiences. (I keep getting free subscriptions whether I return the offer cards or not, most of these magazines are so eager to get their “subscription” and ad rate levels up.)

So many news stories and essays are coming across our desk that deal with downloadable comics, internet copying and getting your entertainment for free, that we’ll be devoting most of today’s posting to that topic. Not that we have any answers. Downloading reached critical mass many years ago, and every time we walk by the empty halls of what once was our Mecca on Earth, Tower Records, we see the power of digital downloads.

To get things started, we’re going to run a POLL! How exciting is that? (It’s VERY exciting since we’re not sure if it’s going to work or not!)

Manga publisher Dr. Master has joined the ranks of publishers offering digital downloads via IGN’s Direct2Drive site. D2D already offers games and movies and has been slowly moving into the comics distribution business.

DrMaster Publications Inc., the publishing arm of DGN Production Inc., today announced an agreement with Fox Interactive Media’s digital retail store, Direct2Drive (http://www.direct2drive.com), to distribute its popular comic content to readers via digital download. The agreement will make Direct2Drive the exclusive home for downloadable DrMaster content, including upcoming new releases.

“Television, movies, comics and anime…Direct2Drive pulls no punches,” said DrMaster marketing director, Shawn Sanders. “Their download service has pioneered digital distribution for video games and exclusive content — including comics — and DrMaster is proud to add its content to Direct2Drive’s considerable content offerings.”

Initial titles from DrMaster available on Direct2Drive will include Volume 1: issues 1 and 2, of the new action adventure, Chinese Hero: Tales of the Blood Sword, which is available now and debuted on the site one week after its printed launch in retail stores. Direct2Drive will also be the official launch partner for, Purgatory Kabuki, an original manga tale that will be released in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Downloadable content from DrMaster on Direct2Drive will be delivered in high-resolution, full-color documents via Adobe Systems Incorporated’s Portable Document Format (PDF), enabling users to download, view and print the e-books on any standard Windows PC.

§ Local paper profiles cartooner:

Brian Ralph sits at a table in the sun outside Donna’s in Baltimore’s Charles Village and fidgets with his paper coffee cup.

The 33-year-old has messy hair, and wears a short sleeve shirt and blue jeans. His hand with the solid silver wedding ring rests on a yellow comic book with a frightened monkey on the cover.

“The thing I was really into was comics,” he says of his years in college.

§ Mobile phone manga downloads gaining popularity for shy fans, others:

For Japanese aficionados of this sort of stuff, there is a more convenient and discreet way to stock up on the latest stories without running to the bookstore: downloading them to a cell phone. That’s helped this type of manga reach beyond the female otome–or “maidens,” as they’re known–who are the genre’s die-hard fan base. “Women and girls in their teens, 20s, and 30s like BL for their portrayals of innocent love,” says Toshiki Fujii, a manager in the cell-phone content division at Nagoya-based Media Do. “But now those who might have been coy about walking into a shop can find what they’re looking for online.”

§ The Disney-Pixar stock scandal continues to have fall-out:

The Pixar stock options mess was more widespread than anyone knew … though the Mouse House now is doing its best to apply some significant Band-Aids. Company has acknowledged that many mid- and lower-level employees received backdated options at the toon company, not just execs. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Disney said it would issue newly priced options to those employees and pay as much as $34 million to those with backdated options in an effort to compensate those Pixar employees both for the discrepancy in the options price and for possible tax liabilities.

§ We didn’t listen to it ourselves, but we’re told by reliable source Ian Brill that The Sound of Young America: Podcast: Jordan, Jesse GO! Ep. 18: Misspent Youth contains a cue of interest to our readers at 28:49 when Bucky Sinister reads a poem about Batman.