A bevy of new Zuda contestants are up for the month of January—the entrants seem to have taken a move towards the surreal comedy end of the spectrum and look more polished. And we’re happy to report that many of the Flash problems which so annoyed us last month seem to have been smoothed out for the most part. BTW, last month’s winner was PRAY FOR DEATH; our fave THE CROOKED MAN was #2, but certainly that team will go on to do more stuff…we hope. Anyway, here’s the PR — we’ve added links to the creators where we could find any.

DC Comics announced today the ten entries in the first www.Zudacomics.com contest of the new year. The selected comics are diverse in both their subject matter and tone, spanning a wide variety of genres— from comedy to thrillers, to fantasy and science fiction. Each is the unique vision of an aspiring comics creator.

Fans and fellow creators are invited to vote for one of the ten comics to continue as a regular web comic on the site. Previous winners of the www.Zudacomics.com contest have been Pray for Death by Nicholas Doan and Daniele Serra and High Moon by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis.

The new Zudacomics.com contest features the following webcomics:

Title: A Spelunker’s Guide to the City
Writer/Artist: Gary Epting
Summary: Macbeth, MacHeath, Mabuse, Moriarty, Fu Manchu and Dr. Moreau, all these evil M’s have had their turn. It’s a new day in Null City and it belongs to Odile Moiré. In some stories he is the driving force, in others a bit player. Sometimes he is only referenced; an ominous warning, tagged on a wall. No one can put a face to the name, but the dread is real and overpowering. In Null City, surrealism is a way of life.

Title: Absurdity At Its Best
Writer/Artist: Victor Bonilla
Summary: Whether it is the secret history of the pickle kings of yore, or the maniacal ranting of a communist chair, Absurdity At Its Best aims to inject a little absurdity into your daily life.

Title: Danetropolis
Writer/Artist: David Daneman
Summary: In the world of Danetropolis, David Daneman is king, jester, the cop on the street, and that guy talking to David Daneman on the train because the other guy is David Daneman too.

Title: Demons in the Closet
Writer/Artist: John Zakour
Summary: Demons in the Closet is the story of Sky, who discovers his little sister’s closet is a nexus to another dimension filled with “demons.” The demons insist they are “just here to help,” but of course, they are demons…

Title: The Legend of the Fool King
Writer/Artist: Alexander Kanaris-Sotiriou
Summary: Follow the twisting path of fate as destiny forges a lowly jester into a world’s heroic savior in an epoch-shattering fantasy romp

Title: Pieces of Eden
Writer/Artist: Seth Sherwood
Summary: A serial killer has been stalking women and his latest victim, Eden, has somehow survived. In surviving, Eden absorbed little pieces of each the other victims’ personalities. With this quiet menagerie of voices in her mind, Eden sets out for revenge.

Title: Supertron
Writer/Artist: Sheldon Vella
Summary: Somewhere in the future, robots rule the land. In this harsh mechanical wasteland lives Supertron, a robot of unprecedented power and wit. His only equal is Spinbot; a maniacal bot of style and speed. This is their story…

Title: Thomas: Agent of Chaos
Writer/Artist: Larry Jamal Walton
Summary: Midway through the journey of life, most decide that their life will be greatly improved by a “bundle of joy”. Thomas was one such bundle of joy. Like all kids, Thomas is an Agent of Chaos. His only goal is to be unpredictable, cause mischief, and insert as much uncertainty as possible into the lives of those around him. Couples are always told that life will never be the same after having kids. Agents of Chaos are the prime reason for that statement.

Title: Untrue Tales
Writer/Artist: Sam Little
Summary: These are the untrue tales of Gabriel Stein; his life, his loves, his string of failures. Each story in the series will be a self-contained tale connected to the life of Gabe, the occasionally charming loser.

Title: Urbis Faerie
Writer/Artist: Robert Richardson
Summary: A young woman’s life is complicated when her evil parents demand she leave a town where everyone is descended from fantasy creatures and come back to live with them… all on the same night her would-be boyfriend discovers he is really a werewolf.

As with the inaugural contest, www.Zudacomics.com’s visitors will vote for the webcomics that they want to see continue on the site. The competition winners will, in turn, 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.

Herb Trimpe on MySpace.com !

[Thanks, Kurt!]

With THE BOTTOMLESS BELLY BUTTON a 720-page graphic novel coming out later this year (from Fantagraphics), stories in MOME and Marvel Comics, and the online serialization of his new comic Body World busting across the blogosphere this week, Dash Shaw is set to break out big time in 2008. Mixing themes of botany and anatomy — plant and animal — with a visual approach that uses diagrams, call-outs, text and other non-comics elements, his work looks like nothing else you’ve seen. His stories are rich, complex explorations of family dynamics, and misguided relationships. His characters can sometimes barely communicate verbally; Shaw uses his elegant symbolism to connect their dots for them.

Over on his blog, he gives us the BodyWorld faq:

* New pages uploaded on the BodyWorld site every Tuesday starting January 1st.
* A romance about bodymind telepathy.
* Will have detailed explanations of how this telepathy works.
* In book form it will be 360 pages. 12 chapters.
* Looks like a weird Bruce Timm cartoon.
* I am having a blast drawing this comic.

Yet another business launch for Platinum Studios, this one billed as “the first web syndicated on-demand video network featuring free comic book-inspired animated content powered by the Splastk player.”

Platinum Studios, Inc., an entertainment company that controls an independent library of comic book characters from all over the world, and Comflix Studios, Inc., a Los Angeles and New York based multi-media company, announced today the creation of “Splastk,” the first web syndicated on-demand video network featuring free comic book-inspired animated content powered by the Splastk player and anchored by http://www.splastk.com/.

“Adding a dynamic element to the static print comic is the specialty of Comflix Studios,” said Platinum Studios President, Brian Altounian. “This partnership not only gives Platinum and Comflix an innovative vehicle to deliver great comics, it also benefits affiliate websites by supplying targeted premium content, enhancing overall user experience, while generating ad revenue.”

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There’s a new Zuda competition up, in case you forgot. As far we were concerned, both THE ADVENTUES OF MAXY J. MILLIONAIRE and THE CROOKED MAN should get contracts because they are both fine comics. Anyway, Gabriel Hardman, the artist and co-writer of THE CROOKED MAN, (with co-writer is Corinna Sara Bechko) sent us the above promo piece for the historical noir yarn and we wanted to share.

The New York Times very conveniently points out that the biggest selling American graphic novel of 2007 is available for free on the web and has been for some time:

Despite laments about youngsters spending too much time surfing the Web and not enough time reading, it turns out that many of them still want the format of old-fashioned paper stuck between two covers. Since an edited form of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” was published as a traditional book in April by Amulet, an imprint of Harry N. Abrams, it has sold 147,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 50 percent to 70 percent of retail sales. The book, written and drawn by Jeff Kinney, has spent 33 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. This Sunday, it will be No. 1 on the Children’s Chapter Books list.

That a book derived from free online content has sold so well may allay some fears that giving something away means nobody will want to pay for it. It also encourages publishers who increasingly scour the Internet for talent, hoping to capitalize on the audiences that a popular Web site can deliver.

Much more on free on the web vs print for pay, including shooting war and other websites.

PS: Do you remember when a story about comics in the Times or Time was a big deal? Now it’s a weekly thing! Yay team comics!

Jim Shelley has a somewhat technical yet comprehensible explanation of why Flash doesn’t always look so great and tends to “muck with your fonts.” Complete with screen grabs.

“But Jim, why would I ever reduce an image down by 15% or something like that?”

Well, you wouldn’t, but if you launch the Zuda image viewer on your pc/mac it’s going to set the image to a size that Flash thinks is appropriate for your monitor, which is why some comics look okay when the viewer is full size and some don’t. Flash does this by PROGRAMMATICALLY grabbing the size of your monitor and adjusting the viewer accordingly to completely usurp your screen area. - And since the people building the Zuda viewer don’t really have access to every type of monitor available, you’re gonna get some mixed results.

The second wave of Zuda comics is up. We didn’t see any PR on this wave, so we cut and pasted to bring YOU the facts! Here’s the lineup:
Adventures of Maxy J. Millionaire by Paul Maybury
Araknid Kid by Josh Alves
Avaste Ye by Kevin Cygan & Daniel H. Irving
Development Hell by Carlos Ruiz
Frankie by Manny Trembley
Ponbiki Z by Alberto Rios aka Ponbiki
Pray For Death by Nicholas Doan
The Crooked Man by Gabriel Hardman & Corinna Sara Bechko
The Mundane Overrated Misadventures of Spudman by Rory McConville
Word of Power by Marc Sylvanus

All in all it’s quite a varied list of genres. Of these, we were immediately struck by Maxy J. Millionaire, a charming Sendakian riff by the very talented Maybury. The Crooked Man also made us take note — a lively, evocative historical yarn set during (we think) China’s Boxer Rebellion in the Chinatown of 1906 San Francisco. Think Terry and the Pirates!

However, we are very sad to report that this second wave has brought to the forefront true annoyance on our part.
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We he isn’t running Rocketship, the trend-setting comics shop in Carroll Gardens, NY, Alex Cox monnlights as cartoonist Ben Boxer and sums up about 14 hours of opera in one webcomic. You must thank this man.

Click for more.

Rantz Hoseley interviews Australian animator, designer and artist Trudy Cooper at the Panel & Pixel message board. Cooper is the artist of the webcomic Platinum Grit which has been running on and off since…1994. The entire strip is archived online — unfortunately the early ones use Shockwave, which doesn’t work on an Intel Mac, so we couldn’t check them out ourselves, but the latest ones are very stylish indeed, with Sim-esque panel layouts, lettering effects, cross cutting and other sophisticated comics storytelling elements…all in an easy to use click for the next panel format. There you have it: conquered by technology one moment, mastering it the next.

PG is notoriously difficult to sum up. I’ve had 14 years to think up a snappy synopsis and still can’t! Very basically, it’s a magical-realism black comedy about a broken boffin (Jeremy) and the girl (Nils) who befriended him. On the surface it’s about their relationship, which is often unhealthy, occasionally deranged, yet ultimately touching (although some will say that we haven’t quite gotten to the touching bit yet. I say we have). Wedged into the middle of them is Kate, who belongs in the real world, but finds herself utterly caught up in the not-quite-right world that Jeremy lives in.

Underneath all that is the ticking clock of his family’s odd legacy, which he’s deliberately been kept in the dark about. Mysteries, secrets, and terrible terrible things.

T Campbell runs an analysis of Compete, Alexa and Quantcast, triangulates the results and comes up with a list of the most popular webcomics, with a bit of Dilbert thrown in for good measure. XKCD, a darkly funny stick figure comic is #1, showing,once again, that people like to laugh.

The big winners: Alexa and Compete agree on the top three webcomics: xkcd, Cyanide and Happiness and Penny Arcade. Those of us who believed in our hearts that Penny Arcade would remain the #1-ranked webcomic for the rest of our natural lives… we may need a moment to absorb that. The rise of xkcd has been greeted, belatedly, with a rash of mainstream media articles, gatherings of the fan base and other usual signs. Cyanide and Happiness’ gains have been a bit less perceptible, but its canny use of online video and community-building has served it well. Both sites have done well by adapting to certain changes in the Web, and in its audience– but that’s another blog post.

[Link via Dirk.]

For more on XKCD, which is the brainchild of ex-NASA employee Randall Munroe,
see this profile.

NASA roboticist-turned-car- toonist Randall Munroe started the increasingly popular comic strip back in January of 2006 when he discovered sketches and doodles drawn amid the graphs and equations of his old math notes. Munroe decided to put them on his website, and before he knew it, a cult following of comic readers emerged. He started to draw more seriously, and now makes his living as a full-time cartoonist.

Call us sentimental, but we’ve been following the story of Von Allan and his graphic novel “the road to god knows…” for sometime. His struggles to launch an unknown graphic novel have revealed valuable lessons for all. Thus, we smiled when it was announced that the story will be serialized at Girlamatic:

Webcomics have, over the past ten years, become a phenomenon and are read by people of all ages. This popularity has greatly increased both the diversity and sheer amount of high quality comics that might not have been able to find an audience in a traditional print format. Coinciding with this growth has been the development of a number of webcomic publishing sites that collect similarly themed webcomics under one roof. One of the most notable is GirlAMatic, primarily due to its focus on comics that would appeal to female readers both young and old. Canadian graphic novelist Von Allan’s original graphic novel the road to god knows… has recently been accepted into GirlAMatic and will launch as a webcomic on December 3rd, 2007. The story will update four times per week (Monday through Thursday).

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After a few glitches, like a site crash, Marvel’s comics online program — Digital Comics Unlimited or DCU– rolled out yesterday. While that name DCU keeps reminding us of something else, although we can’t remember just what, generally speaking, we’re thrilled, because it means more books we were keeping around for reference can now be cleared away. Of course, we found the interface just as clunky as most online comics reading interfaces, but it isn’t really aimed at us. We only read comics online in a pinch; others may find it more satisfying. We could sorta read a whole page on the roomy 17″ monitor of out iMac, but on the 12″…forget it! (We did like the “page turning” effect, though.) Over at MySpace, of all places, Douglas Wolk interviews Marvel’s John Dokes and EIC Joe Quesada on the larger iTunes-for-comics ramifications:
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Evidently, all the excitement over Marvel’s new webcomics has created such an online hubbub that Marvel.com has crashed.

They need to cowboy up!

Oh well.

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Marvel is putting out webcomics!

But they are their own comics!

Marvel’s much rumored online initiative was made public in several news stories today, starting with USA TODAY:

The comic book industry makes a long-delayed step into cyberspace today when Marvel Comics unveils the industry’s first online archive of more than 2,500 back issues, including the first appearances of Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Incredible Hulk.

Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited will offer the archive in a high-resolution format on computer screens for $59.88 a year, or at a monthly rate of $9.99, at marvel.com.

New issues will be put up six months after they are released in to the direct market, a far longer period than the 36 hour delay in posting to pirate sites, as someone alludes to in the article. The comics will NOT be downloadable, however. They will only be able to be read at the Marvel site via a Flash interface.

In a show of journalmalism rarely seen in comics book quarters, writer David Colton actually asks questions:

To help sell the experience to an audience unaccustomed to paying for content, Marvel will offer a free sampler of 250 titles. Asked why people would pay for superheroes when newspaper websites have been unable to charge for content, Buckley says, “You can get the news anywhere. We’re the only ones who have Spider-Man.”

The AP’s piece is even more analytical:

Still, it represents perhaps the comics industry’s most aggressive Web push yet. Even as their creations — from Iron Man to Wonder Woman — become increasingly visible in pop culture through new movies and video games, old-school comics publishers rely primarily on specialized, out-of-the-way comic shops for distribution of their bread-and-butter product.

“You don’t have that spinner rack of comic books sitting in the local five-and-dime any more,” said Dan Buckley, president of Marvel Publishing. “We don’t have our product intersecting kids in their lifestyle space as much as we used to.”

After even a brief consideration, it’s self evident that this is an inevitable move. It’s also another coffin nail in what we think of as “normal” distribution of comics periodicals. We’re not for one moment suggesting that the graphic novel or book is going to go away — however, the normal means for dissemination of periodical comics, whether in strip or story form, is swiftly moving online.

Our second question, as prompted by a saucy Beat correspondent: are creators getting royalties on these comics?

PR in the jump:
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Dash Shaw has just posted an excerpt of a new webcomic called BodyWorld and it cements his reputation as one of the most formally daring cartoonists out there.

His graphic novel THE BOTTOMLESS BELLY BUTTON is due from Fantagraphics in June.

The early reviews on DC’s new webcomics initiative are in, and as with most things on the internet, they are full of complaints, some legit, some subjective. We have our own complaints: Yuck, we HATE GODDAM FLASH! Bloggers all hate Flash because we can’t link to it.

Which leads us to the fact that you can’t read the strips at the regular size (wacky, unreadable lettering strikes again) and MUST go to the fullscreen resolution to read them. They do look awesome in the fullscreen mode, but we noticed something interesting about this mode: there is no room left for ads. That plus no direct linking…hm, HOW is this thing supposed to make money? Maybe it isn’t? A possible design flaw.

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11 webcomics are up at Zuda. We’ll have more on this tomorrow but for now go and read!

A little girl and peak oil are the subjects of a new webcomic by Claudia Dávila, which joins the webcomics collective Transmission-X every Monday. Given the topic, it sounds very very scary, but given the art, it looks very very cute, and yet with charts and graphs. Dávila has previously illustrated several children’s books.

Toronto collective Transmission-X is pleased to add “Luz: Girl of the Knowing” by Claudia Dávila to its daily schedule of free webcomics. Luz (pronounced “loose” but meaning “light” in Spanish) is a city girl on a mission to gather “the Knowing”: knowledge and experience about sustainable survival for humans, specifically in urban centers. She knows a big change is coming as she hears on the news and sees in headlines that petroleum is becoming expensive and scarce, and the climate is noticeably getting more erratic. Although surprised that no one seems very concerned, she doesn’t wait for somebody else to take the lead. She tries to figure out what her community will need when energy runs out as city-wide blackouts get more frequent, learning from her mother, grandma, neighbours and friends. With her handy notebook at the ready, Luz begins her list of skills to learn (like first aid, how to grow and preserve food, collect rainwater, make a woodstove from an oil drum…) and begins to gather vital “knowing” from her neighbourhood.

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Producer Joel Silver confirms what we all know: the Wonder Woman is on hold.

Joel Silver, who was producing the now-stalled Wonder Woman movie, told reporters that the project has been placed on the back burner in light of another impending superhero film. “They’re going to make the Justice League movie, and we’re kind of pausing on Wonder Woman now,” Silver said in a news conference while promoting Fred Claus. “Let them go ahead and do that picture [first].

But which tall, willowy starlet will play WW in that movie? The contest of champions is fierce enough for its own reality TV show.

Some say it will be model Megan Gale (below.)

She replaces last week’s favorite, blond Aussie actress Teresa Palmer.

But Mary Elizabeth Winstead is still out there stumping for the role.

WHO will win? We don’t know, but you can catch the real wonder Woman, Lynda Carter, this week at Feinsteins, performing “an array of jazz classics and standards with a six-piece ensemble, includes “Put the Blame on Mame,” “Blues In the Night” and “As Time Goes By,””

Chapel Hill Comics has put online a bunch of 24 Hour Comics from their event, including work by Nora Tramm, 9 year old Kevin M. Collins (above), Onur Tukel and Saul Zimet. Wild and unhinged! See what happens in the 23rd hour!

Dan Goldman also has his 24 Hour comic online,“Before You Were Here.”

Hm, will this be the killer app for webcomics? Joey Manley announces what could be a fairly significant venture:

Today, Josh Roberts (owner of ComicSpace and Onlinecomics.net) and I are excited to announce that we have signed a Letter of Intent to merge our businesses into one corporate entity. We will be working with E-Line Ventures, a New Jersey-based ‘double bottom line’ early-stage investment firm (they look at both the financial and social impact of their investments) to secure the necessary funding and support for us to effectively merge and run the combined business.

It’s been obvious to me, and to anybody else paying attention, that my websites are too ambitious, and have grown much too quickly, for one person to manage properly. As some of you know, I’ve spent the better part of two years looking for the right partners to help me step my efforts up. A lot of people and companies have come calling during that time, but nothing felt quite right, for one reason or another.

A few months ago, Josh and I were corresponding on a technical issue, and our conversation sort of veered into this territory. Turned out he was in the same position I was in — and had turned down a lot of the same offers I had turned down, for the same reasons. Josh’s skillsets are quite different from mine, but his goals and plans are very, very similar. Each of us fills a gap in the other’s area of expertise. After brainstorming for a while, we realized that we would make a great team, that each of us would be stronger with the other at his side, and we decided, way back then, to merge our businesses — but only if we could find investors, and get the funding to build out the kind of stable business infrastructure we’ve both been lacking.

E-Line has provided a blueprint for making that dream come true, without our having to sell out our core beliefs. We’ve been working with them for what seems like a year or two now (but has really only been a few months), to bring our vision for offering the most useful, empowering and engaging services for digital comic creators and readers to life. The folks at E-Line not only understood and support this vision, they have complimentary skills to help us make it happen. Those guys rock. You’ll be meeting some of them – as well as some of our own new co-employees — over time.

The websites to be part of the new venture include: ComicSpace.com, WebcomicsNation.com, OnlineComics.net, GraphicNovelReview.com, TalkAboutComics.com, ModernTales.com, Girlamatic.com, Serializer.net, and GraphicSmash.com.

Those last four (Modern Tales, Girlamatic, serializer and Graphic Smash) will continue to operate as separate brands, with their own domains, though they will gets lots of cool new features thanks to our increased development resources.

All of the others — ComicSpace, WCN, OnlineComics, GNR, and TAC, will be merged into one fully-integrated site, combining all the best features from each of the existing sites with many other new features, all designed to empower creators to reach their own goals — find larger audiences, make a living (or at least a little more money) from their webcomics, and reach out to new distribution channels, like mobile and print, etc. — while maintaining full control and ownership of their intellectual property.

That combined will be called ComicSpace.

Details on existing memberships and more in the link.

Corey Lewis has posted more infor on his new Zuda series in his LJ with some nice concept art:

“REVERSE-ZOMBIE TALE”
Doesn’t mean it’s a story about a world of zombies that are plagued by a “human” virus (although that… would be… cool… FUCK!). ANYWAY, my story deals with your standard zombie virus, but, unlike most all other zombie stories, Dead in the Now is about a person who finds the FIRST “root” zombie, and decides HIMSELF to let the usher in the catastrophe of allowing the undead lay claim to the world. Of course, the steps he takes to build his zombie army, and the moral issues he deals with along the way are the MAIN NOUGAT of what make my comic so awesome.

ZOMBIES. Wouldn’t want to bet against that in the popularity poll.

Speaking of Zuda, Todd Allen analyses the first contestants and discovers most of them are from the print comics world, concluding:

One thing possibly of note as a tangent to the overwhelming presence of established creators: is this a result of the copyright and trademark issue? The established webcomics community is blasting Zuda to no end over trademark control issues. For cartoonists used to the print world, the Zuda contract is nothing unusual and more benign than a boilerplate work-for-hire agreement. Are the webcartoonists practicing a “just say no” policy, and if not, where are they?