The contracts for DC’s much talked about new webcomics initiative have been posted a few weeks before the site’s October debut. Go read and digest.

Yay! A new controversy!

Webcomic collective Chemistry Set welcomes another strip:

The Chemistry Set is pleased to announce that Filipino comicker Andrew Drilon and his series, Kare-Kare Komiks, is joining it’s line-up. Previously displayed at Warren Ellis’ forum The Engine, Drilon is bringing his unique and emboldened take on comics to a bigger semi-monthly starting September 19th, 2007.

“These are wonderful,” says Warren Ellis. “I swear, the Pinoy make comics in the same way that the Icelandic make music … Fucking genius.”

‘Kare-kare’ is a traditional Filipino dish that incorporates various assorted ingredients into a delicious, meaty stew. ‘Komiks’ is a term for sequential art made in the Philippines, referring to Pinoy mass-produced newsprint comic books. Put these two together and you have Kare-Kare Komiks, the new semi-monthly webcomic at The Chemistry Set. Kare-Kare Komiks is an ongoing collection of self-contained short comics by Andrew Drilon that explores new flavors of the sequential art experience.

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While the comics industry worries and frets about distribution and continuity and what not, the webcomics world just putters along, a seemingly free flowing fountain of creativity that, it is easily predicted, will someday take over the world. To wit, Shaenon Garrity writes of new additions to the Modern Tales line-up:

Modern Tales (www.moderntales.com), one of the Web’s premier webcomics sites, is proud to announce the addition of five new comics to its lineup for the second half of 2007. The new comics are:

+ Little Dee, by Chris Baldwin, (above) a daily strip about a little girl raised in the woods by animals. Baldwin is best known as the creator of Bruno, one of the longest-running and most acclaimed webcomics, which ended early in 2007.
+ Planet Saturday Comics, by Monty and Kelli Kane, a monthly comic about “childhood, parenthood and memory,” based on the creators’ own experiences as kids and as parents.
+ Gothbunnies, by Joanne Wojtysiak, a whimsical fantasy about three rabbits dealing with their new home and its overgrown, magical garden.
+ No Stereotypes, by Amber “Glych” Greenlee, a sprawling fantasy about an immortal searching for his lost love, the ordinary girl who might be what he’s been looking for, and the troublemaking gods who get in their way. No Stereotypes is returning to Modern Tales after a long absence.
+ All Knowledge Is Strange, a new strip by renowned experimental webcartoonist and minicomics creator Daniel Merlin Goodbrey. All Knowledge Is Strange replaces Goodbrey’s previous comic on Modern Tales, Brain Fist.

Most of the new comics are running on Modern Tales now; No Stereotypes will debut in the coming weeks. Modern Tales editor Shaenon K. Garrity will interview the creators on the blog Talk About Comics (www.talkaboutcomics.com). The first interview, with Little Dee creator Chris Baldwin, is already available here.

Last week’s INFINITE CANVAS opening of webcomics art display at MoCCA continues to be one of the best covered comics events this side of a Cup O’ Joe panel, proving that these webcomics people are pretty web savvy. Dean has the photo parade:

Ryan Roman pix Links:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Tim Hamilton pix links:
Part 1
Part 2

Wizard’s Brian Warmouth interviews curator Jennifer Babcock:

“I pitched the idea back in March,” explained Babcock, a Los Angeles native who specializes in Egyptian artwork. Babcock, who publishes her own webcomic C’est la Vie, joined with MoCCA to plan and assemble the exhibit, titled “Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics.”

Organizing the exhibit, which according to Babcock is the first museum exhibit of its kind and scale focusing specifically on webcomics, demanded a great deal more strategy and inventive presentation than most MoCCA floor shows. In addition to the original penciled and inked examples, Babcock needed to accommodate comics that are entirely digitally produced and stretch them out to sizes beyond what conventional printers are capable of handling.

Nikki Cook - shares photos from the PARADE WITH FIREWORKS party AND the INFINITE CANVAS opening at MoCCA> THe latter was a rip-roaring success, with many cool people including the Zuda Crew and other local webcomics luminaries. Scott McCloud was on hand and dropped by for a bit at the beginning and end — the middle was interrupted by a wild rush to rescue his beloved Cintiq from savage cannibals or something — we didn’t quite get the whole story.

Above: Elizabeth Genco and Nikki Cook.

UPDATE: The webcomics world reacts to the show, via Gary Tyrell at Fleen:

Last night, the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art in New York City opened its latest exhibit, and for the first time webcomics made it into the world of culture and connoisseurs. I don’t get to too many museum exhibition openings, but I do know one thing — when the room is packed wall-to-wall and the air conditioning is insufficient to cool the air from all the people, it’s not because of the snacks or the booze. It’s because people want to see the pretty stuff on the walls. By that criterion alone, the opening of Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics would have to be judged an enormous success.

Despite what this poster implies the main feature of tonight’s Webcomics art show at MoCCA will not be oogling male cartoonists….it will be ART!

As Mike Gold put it, the worst kept secret in comics was announced yesterday at the Bltimore Comic-Con — ComicMix.com is going to be doing new webcomics content, leading to the staff pointing excitedly to a computer monitor, as seen above.

Please note. I said “brand-new” and “major comics talent.” And I said free.

What talent, you might ask? Well, to name but a few, and in alphabetical order, we’re talking about Mike Baron, Rick Burchett, Chris Burnham, Michael Davis, Ian Gibson, Dick Giordano, Mike Gold, Stuart Gordon, Mike Grell, Bo Hampton, Glenn Hauman, Marc Hempel, Lovern Kindierski, Linda Lessman, Jay Lynch, Frank McLaughlin, William Messner-Loebs, John Ostrander, Andrew Pepoy, Bob Pinaha, Michael H. Price, Bill Reinhold, Nick Runge, John K. Snyder III, Joe Staton, Martha Thomases, Robert Tinnell, Timothy Truman, Trevor Von Eeden, Mark Evan Walker, Matt Webb, Mark Wheatley, Skip Williamson, Marv Wolfman, and John Workman. And more. You think we’re going to tell you everything?

But we will say this: here are the features we’re working on: Black Ice, Demons of Sherwood, EZ Street, Fashion In Action, Fishhead, Glamours Inc., GrimJack, Jack Johnson, Jon Sable Freelance, Munden’s Bar, Naked Brain, PayDay, The Prowler, Simone & Ajax, and White Viper. All are trademarks of their owners, by the way, so watch your ass or Glenn Hauman will get very angry. If he’s got to “TM” everything in sight, you should respect his loving efforts. And not all of that stuff will be going up on Day One – we’ll be starting with six.

The new stuff launches on October 2, the first of many ambitious webcomics initiatives in the works.

Newly announced LEGION writer Jim Shooter tells Wizard what’s going on:

Okay, as a former writer, EIC and current comic book legend, what do you think of the current state of the industry?

The art in comics is generally better than ever, the writing is often clever and glib, but in spite of that, far too many comics are utterly unreadable. Even hardcore fans find many comics daunting to follow! The craft of comics storytelling is all but lost. A who’s who of industry big shots have privately agreed with me when we’ve discussed exactly this subject, but it’s a tough problem to fix, given the often huge egos of the creators, general creative anarchy and lack of trained editorial people. I’m happy to say that where I work now, DC, appears to be taking the lead in bringing back the craft. My editor, Mike Marts, is really good. He knows what he’s doing and makes you make it right. A lot of good stuff is happening at DC. I’m back where I started 42 years ago…and very happy to be there.

WaPo express interviews Percy Carey, aka MF Grimm whose graphic novel just came out:

» EXPRESS: Are there incidents that you just couldn’t include?
» CAREY: It’s a lot of things that I didn’t include. That’s another reason why the medium of the graphic novel was cool. Say, for instance, if it was a film, then there’s a lot of detail that you would have to put in between. But a graphic novel was to my satisfaction, or my taste, because I was able to dictate it the way I chose. In my music I talk a lot about my life, but at times there’s no way to edit certain things when you’re discussing via MCing, or poetry, or things of that nature. The graphic novel is a great medium when you just want to get a story across but not tell everything about yourself.

AVIVA-Berlin interviews ANGRY LITTLE GIRLS creator Lela Lee — Lee’s strip has just been reprinted in Germany:

AVIVA-Berlin: Did you expect your “Angry Little Girls” to become so successful, even international? Why can women from all over the world identify with your characters and their stories?
Lela Lee: Honestly, I had no idea it would become such a success with women all over the world. I think women all over the world are thought of as second class citizens, not as capable as men. So maybe that´s why “Angry Little Girls” resonates with women. We are universally connected by frustration of what women are expected to be.

This is actually a pretty significant show, with Penny Arcade, PhD, Sluggy Freelance, User Friendly, Diesel Sweeties, Mom’s Cancer, Act-i-vate, Finder, Supernatural Law, Questionable Content, Something Positive, Scary Go Round, Achewood, Narbonic, Goats, and Scott McCloud all represented. The opening is September 14th.

The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) is proud to announce its upcoming exhibit: Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics, set to open on Sept. 13.

“Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics” brings comics from the web page to the MoCCA stage. The exhibit explores three aspects of online comics: the unique format and design of webcomics, their appeal to niche audiences, and the transitions between web and print comics.

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Transmission-X the Canadian web comic consortium has announced even more improvements, now including a monthly video broadcast. (Above, THE ABOMINABLE by Karl Kerschl.)

In addition to its daily schedule of free comic strips, Toronto-based webcomics collective Transmission-X is set to launch a weekly video broadcast, entitled TX-TV, beginning Friday September 28 on YouTube and iTunes. TX-TV will present the creative professionals of the Transmission-X collective in candid situations as they struggle to conceive and assemble their comic strips while balancing industry commitments and a fiery studio group dynamic.

Each episode will run approximately 5 minutes in length and will spotlight Transmission-X strips, in-studio creative struggles, round-table discussions, comic con footage and more, and feature all the members of the Transmission-X collective and guest professionals from throughout the comic book industry.

TX-TV will be available to watch on the Transmission-X Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/transmissionxcomics) and for download from www.transmission-x.com in several formats and resolutions, including versions optimized for iPod and hi-res AppleTV (720P). Subscriptions will be available through YouTube.com and the Apple iTunes Music Store.

TX-TV is created and produced by Brenden Fletcher, formerly of the award-winning podcast “The Horcast”.

Seriously if that single panel isn’t enough to make you read this, you have the Beat’s pity. But just in case, two more.

The story is running in the MySpace version of Dark Horse Presents.

Ultra talented tooners Arthur Dela Cruz, Ramon Perez, Michael Cho and Brian McLachlan are joining the Transmission-X webcomic cooperative:

Toronto-based webcomics group Transmission-X has added four new ongoing comics to its daily schedule. In addition to the five comics that launched the site – Karl Kerschl’s Ragni: The North Sea Epoch and The Abominable Charles Christopher, Andy B’s Raising Hell, Scott Hepburn’s The Port and Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo - Transmission-X is now proud to announce the debut of Ramón Pérez’s Kukuburi, Arthur Dela Cruz’s Kissing Chaos: Til I Die, Brian McLachlan’s The Princess Planet, and Michael Cho’s Papercut.

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Here is one of those mystery kinds of press releases, in which we’re told about the online comics called THE SURREAL ADVENTURES OF EDGAR ALLAN POO joining online webcomics collective The Chemistry Set. The opening paragraphs give a good idea of the story:

The Chemistry Set is pleased to announce that the webcomic The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo will be joining its line-up in September. Created by writer Dwight L. MacPherson and illustrated by Thomas Boatright, the series began at DrunkDuck.com and is now moving to The Chemistry Set.

Hailed by critics (”A brilliant fantasy epic on par with Mouse Guard.” - Broken Frontier) and creators (”I’ve seen enough to convince me to buy it.” - Kurt Busiek), the first collected volume will be released from Image’s Shadowline imprint on the 22th of August and make its webcomic debut on The Chemistry Set on the 17th of September.

And then continues on with some laudatory comments which you can read in the jump. However no where is it explained what this comic is about, or more specifically…WHY IS EDGAR ALLAN POE BEEN TURNED INTO A TURD? A little sleuthing revealed a laudatory review at Broken Frontier where we learn the truth:

…the historical E.A. Poe, taking care of business in an outhouse latrine, ejects a Mini-Me version of himself, a miniature little tin-type that falls down the toilet hole and into a world that’s one part surrealism a la Alice in Wonderland, two parts high fantasy anthropomorphism a la Redwall, and three parts dark epic danger in the vein of Lord of the Rings. Perhaps Little Nemo in Slumberland is the closest, stand-alone comparison to be made, although even then — in case my flailing from classic to classic in desperate attempt to explain this magnificent bastard of a graphic novel hasn’t already clued you in — the work in question is plainly unique, and stands on its own, a story well worth the read no matter how overexposed to past fantasy standards one may or may not be.

The art does look pretty and the hero does not look fecal in nature, but still…why a poo?

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ITEM! Quick and Flupke, two also-ran characters created bhy Tintin great Herge, are getting their adventures rereleased in India.

ITEM! Venerable Brit comics Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan are making the jump to Distrbution via mobile phone.

ITEM! Josh Neufeld talks about his Katrina webcomic with the Toronto Star

“I’m ashamed to admit it but I’m literally working on each chapter up until the minute that it gets released. Like chapter six, we’re really trying to get it up the Sunday before the anniversary of Katrina, so I guess that would be the 26th. I just finished the script a week and a half ago and I’ve been drawing it before the script was even finalized. It’s kind of always like this, that’s just the way this project has worked.”

The second season of the webcomic La Muse, by Adi Tantimedh and Hugo Petrus has just launched at Big head Press.

We we mentioned yesterday, The Engine, the Warren Ellis-founded message board is shutting down. So far everyone is pretty philosophical about it. While blogging it, Xerexes wondered what ever happened to Ellis’s Webcomics portal Rocket Pirates? The site is still up, but Ellis put it on hold a long time ago, alas.

Kat Roberts and Dean Haspiel collaborate n one page comic.

Here’s a little bit of news we managed to miss: Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield are doing a webcomic called FreakAngels:

FREAKANGELS is a free online comic debuting later this year, by myself and artist Paul Duffield, via Avatar Press. It’s an open-ended, long form story told in the equivalent of five pages a week. I never got to do weekly comics, unlike many of my British peers, so this is fun for me. We have a shitload of pages already done, so there’s a big buffer in place.

And in other Warren Ellis news, over on his blog he gives a FAQ for his run on ASTONSIHING X-MEN with Simone Bianchi:

* When I say, in the interview, that I want to leave Joss’ run alone, it doesn’t mean I’m treating Joss’ stuff as poison. It just means I don’t want to fuck up what he’s done.

* This has nothing to do with Joss threatening me on MySpace TV.

I can’t actually commence writing on the book for another month or so, as I’m waiting on a stack of editorial notes to come out of an X-Office summit. Because the first issue of AXM:SS doesn’t come out until next summer, I basically want to pick a point in the ongoing timeline that I can call “status quo” and write from. AXM:SS, like Joss & John’s AXM, runs parallel to mainline continuity, sort of looping in and out of the timeline like a drunk driver cutting you up on the open road.

(Shush. This sort of thing is important to some people.)

This means that, like Joss, I can do four stories without having to refer to, react to or otherwise deal with monthly shifts in continuity. It’s as close to complete creative freedom as you can get on a major franchise book. It means that I can ring changes without having to worry about anyone else. I already told the main X-writers that I am their blood enemy now. I don’t think they quite understood. This is why I don’t have any friends.

The secret word is DIGITAL! You can’t spell Web 2.0 without COMICS, it seems, as all sorts of digital deals are being announced at this year’s San Diego, or else bubbling under the surface. Today’s big news: MySpace and Dark Horse are teaming to bring back the digital version of DARK HORSE PRESENTS with creators such as Joss Whedon, Rick Geary and Gerard Way on tap. The site goes live today.

More: PWCW’s son coverage.

MySpace, the nation’s most trafficked website, and Dark Horse Comics, pioneers of creator owned and licensed comics material, today announced a partnership to revive one of the most celebrated comic anthologies with the launch of a new online comic book, “MySpace Dark Horse Presents” (http://www.myspace.com/darkhorsepresents). The online series will include original content by top creators and premiere artists, all available exclusively on MySpace and free of charge to users. The announcement was made on-site at Comic-Con International in San Diego.

“MySpace Dark Horse Presents” takes its cues from the original Dark Horse Presents, a hard copy comic book published from 1986 to 2000, where high celebrated comics including Frank Miller’s Sin City and Paul Chadwick’s Concrete, made their mark in issues of the anthology and were later spun off into their own standalone comic franchises.

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A new ACT-I-VATE comics kicks off on July 25th: THE BLACK CHAMBER by Rob Schamberger. Much more preview in link.

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.

Like the announcement of Minx, the announcement of Zudacomics has proven that everyone on the internet has an opinion — didn’t see that one coming. We’ll be getting to the Talk Soup portion of our program in a minute, but first: we got a lot of private communiques on the subject of Zuda, some of it germane, some not, but we did hear one interesting tidbit. One of the more unfortunate aspects of the breaking story was the New York Times’ infamous “virtual slush pile” line — slush pile being a term of opprobrium in the publishing world. Interestingly, this comment was written by a Times editor, not the bylined George Gene Gustines. Given that the Times is itself in the middle of a huge generational shift as it moves to an increasingly greater online presence, this may have been as much of an editorial comment by an old guard type who can’t conceive of user-generated content being of any value. And ironically, it proved that the old guard of layers of editors and fact checkers can be just as inaccurate as a schlub typing in an internet cafe like me.

That “slush pile” comment is very revealing about the entire paradigm shift. The reality is that the kids are the ones doing it, whether it’s Sergey Brin or Mark Zuckerberg. Or Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, for that matter. Big corporations that jump on new trends are just following the trail of the real entrepreneurs. The radicalizing thing about the internet is that for the first time, creators have access to a full arsenal of tools to monetize their own IP. Tycho and Gabe, Scott Kurtz, R. Stevens, Chris Onstad and Nicholas Gurewitz have been there, done that. Frankly, while the Act-i-vate model may work as a way to serialize more traditional for print, the giant successes of webcomics will be — and already are — bite sized chunks of humor that people can quickly enjoy. For the people who can already do that, they’d be better served ringing up Ted Rall at United Media, which already knows what to do with this stuff.

That said, while Tom’s warning (see below) is well heeded, it’s not really fair for anyone to be bashing DC for IP theft just yet. The contracts will be put on online for all to see as soon as they are hashed out, and we can all put on a rubber glove and have a nice probe around then.

In the wider scheme of things, while I don’t know what DC’s current take on creators rights is — the new paradigm of movie studio comics company to movie option calls for a lot more rights than in the Epic Comics days of yore — in the past it was nothing to be ashamed of. Of course people have been ripped off at all stages, and other people have bitched and moaned about this and that. Once you sign up for a big company’s sales and marketing force, there are plenty of places to get annoyed.

I will say that as a creator’s rights supporter, I never had any problem asking anyone to sign the contract when I worked there and I know for a fact that Paul Levitz is scrupulous in making sure that people get every penny due them on the contracts they have signed. (Of course this also comes under Rule 1B: YOUR KINDLY EDITOR WHO YOU LOVE TO WORK WITH MAY GET A BETTER JOB OR GET FIRED!/or conversely THE KINDLY PUBLISHING COMPANY MAY GO BANKRUPT LEAVING YOUR CONTRACT AS AN ASSET. Paul Levitz might leave DC to go take a job with Bebo, and the new gal might not give a crap about creator’s rights.

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The eyes are wisconsin title auto loans part of the body known to be poor at dissipating heat.

What a joy it was to wake up this morning, as the internet rose like a nice loaf of yeasty bread, swelling with reactions to DC’s ZUDACOMICS initiative. Dirk’s “Zunecomics” title was the shortest but funniest commentary. The reactions are all over the board, but thus far a deep deep suspicion over what rights DC will own is a continuing thread. Interestingly, the webcomics community is more neutral so far than the comics punditocracy, which is having a field day such as they have not enjoyed since Scott Rosenberg broke down the walls.

• Alan David Doane

Of course, nothing will apparently be online for readers to look at until well into this fall. I can see how announcing it now will allow them time to collect material from Epic Comics victims hopeful creators, but that’s a long time for a whole lotta nuthin’ to be sitting there driving away people who click over thinking there’ll be comics to read. It’s also long enough for savvy would-be creators to talk to, oh, a lawyer or two about their “deal,” so, hopefully they’ll do that going in, so they can’t claim later on they had no idea that an international entertainment megacorporation might have the audacity to put its own needs and profits before those of would-be creators with stars in their eyes. You can be sure the comics will be progressive as all hell, after reading this quote from DC’s Ron Perazza: “If [creators want to do] a straight-on newspaper strip, like a Doonesbury or something like that, great. If [they] want to do something a little more abstract, like a Family Circus that’s all in a circle, fantastic.” That’s right folks, The Family Circus is abstract. Is their no boundary to their imagination?

• Xerexes at Comixtalk

Interesting. I haven’t heard of any recruiting going on so it may be that the initial lineup features work from comic book regulars (or simply repurposed comic book comics). Contests are always fun. Of course the above doesn’t explain who gets the copyright (DC traditionally does work-for-hire), how much the year’s worth of webcomics commission (i.e. pay) is and what the deal will be for ancialliary stuff like books, t-shirts, etc. Mentioning that the creators will share in the profits actually makes me suspicious that DC does in fact intend to treat this as work-for-hire.

• Dirk rolls out a heaping helping of snark

And how big will this paycheck be? Will it be enough to take the place of a full-time salary, or would the cartoonists be able to give themselves a payraise by quitting and taking up shop as a McDonald’s fry cook? At this point, Zuda’s “facts” page is little more than a collection of catchphrases and hype, and with more and more online cartoonists either attaining self-sufficiency on their own or landing publishing contracts that allow them to retain full ownership, it seems likely that the ones more confident of their abilities are going to look at this deal with suspicion. And that leaves the journeymen and the amateurs. Hell, you pretty much have to question any marketing strategy that essentially has Platinum Studios as a business model. Read any DrunkDuck.com strips, lately? Me neither.

• Joey Manley

b). The content model, where people submit a few sample panels, then DC editors decide on a small handful of comics to feature fully on the site, isn’t the kind of thing that has worked in webcomics before, and does not seem, to me, to be the best way to identify the real webcomics superstars of the future. Would six sample panels from the early Penny-Arcade strips have caught anybody’s eye at DC, way back when? What about Dinosaur Comics? No and no. But that’s only relevant if you’re looking for the next big webcomic star. If you’re looking for the kinds of artists who would be good to slide over to work-for-hire assignments on pre-existing company properties, then, yeah, this is probably the way to go. This is not YouTube for comics, by a long shot.

• T Campball:

(CLARIFICATION: No one should be under any illusions that publishing with DC means retaining as many IP rights as publishing independently: the Times reports that Zuda “views the initiative as a chance to increase its library of intellectual properties, which can be lucrative as films, television shows and toys” and that “DC Comics will also have the right to print the comics in collected editions.” Two questions remain, one general, one personal. What are the specifics of the deal? And would such a deal seem a fair trade-off to you?) Paul Levitz: “One of the problems that comics have today, I think, is that open door is much more closed. This creates a more open door.” In other words, “We’re tearing down the wall…” Backlash to this kind of statement has already begun. I think Levitz is using the word “comics” as shorthand for “direct-market comic books.” This is a mistake, but it’s a common mistake, and it’s a hard one to avoid when your audience knows little about true webcomics. Levitz addresses the webcomics-illiterate on a daily basis.

Our thoughts? DC does not offer WFH contracts on creator-owned material; although apparently their rights situation has tightened up a bit in recent days, they still offer a fairly liberal example of what is known as “creator participation” in which the creator owns or shares the copyright with DC, and participates from the first penny in any ancillary income from movies or royalties.

Frankly, the vaguely worded and still-murky rights structure doesn’t sound like it makes any sense. If creators are paid a page rate (as opposed to sharing in the clickstream) the whole site would need to be ad supported…and incentivizing creators with the online equivalent of royalties would seem to be a better way to ensure readable material — although the NYTimes unfortunate “slush pile” comment would seem to indicate that quality isn’t a real concern.

Also, we notice that in all the interviews stating that the site will be open to all genres, one is consistently missing: humor. (it’s mentioned in the press release, though.) Seeing as all the most successful webcomics are humor strips, it’s an amusing omission.

One big question remains…who will be the DJ Coffman of Zuda?

UPDATE: Answer — it’s Brian Wood!

Well, here’s a small story that may have somehow slipped by everyone today. DC is launching a reader-created webcomics site called Zudacomics.com, and is partnering with IBM to build the site. The New York Times kicks off the coverage:

The imprint, called Zudacomics.com, will permit aspiring cartoonists to register at its Web site and submit an eight-panel sample of their work. Starting in October and each month thereafter, editors at DC Comics will select 10 entries, post them for public view and invite people to vote for their favorite. Editors may also declare as many as six submissions to be instant winners during the calendar year.

“We’ve always found interesting stuff in submissions,” said Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC Comics. “One of the problems that comics have today, I think, is that open door is much more closed. This creates a more open door.”

Well, you can say that again. Richard Bruning and Ron Perazza, the masterminds of the Zuda initiative, are honest about this being a chance to create IP to spin off into movies, TV shows, toys or even comic books. A long article at ICv2 has more details:

DC Director of Creative Services Ron Perazza, in an interview with ICv2, described the business model for the site as “a long game for DC.” Although the site will carry advertising, its primary purpose will be to develop new intellectual property which DC can then use in its publishing, licensing, and other operations. Publishing could be in either single title collections, for which it would take a considerable amount of time to accumulate enough material, or in anthologies of multiple Zuda titles into a single volume. “It may take years for one of these IPs to develop into something more than a Webcomic,” Perazza said, “but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invest the time and effort to grow that IP.” Ownership of the IP will be shared, with “a deal that’s consistent with the other types of deals we offer for new talent for new properties,” Perazza told us.

Newsarama has an even LONGER interview with Bruning and Perazza which goes into details of the selection process, and the purpose of the site:

NRAMA: This announcement of Zuda is coming in around the same time as the debut of the iPhone, and of course, a large thrust of online content over the past few years has been to move it off the desktop and laptop to phones and other devices. Will Zuda’s format allow for that?

RP: Obviously we can’t predict every device that’s going to come out, and we can’t necessarily plan for every business relationship that DC or Warner Bros might enter into, which is why we went with that 4:3 aspect ratio – it’s an industry standard. It’s a monitor size, a television size. If your device can handle that, they should be able to work with Zuda.

All three articles are chock-a-block full of quotes which should keep the likes of Todd Allen, T Campbell and Joey Manley busy for a bit. Just a sample:

NRAMA: Richard – why now for DC to focus on webcomics as opposed to three years ago or three years from now? Obviously, as both of you have said, webcomics have been around for a while – what took so long for DC to both notice and get on the boat, so to speak?

RB: That’s a fair assessment of it. A lot of times, in all honesty, DC has never been the kind of company to jump on a bandwagon just because we saw one pulling out of the gate. Sometimes we’re frustrated that we didn’t, and other times we realize that we were pretty smart by holding back. Just before the internet bubble burst, we had talks about putting all of our comics online, and move a lot of things online, but overall, it just didn’t feel right or ready yet. In retrospect, that probably made sense, because we would’ve lost a fortune doing it.

More: CBR
Official Zuda fact sheet
While DC’s webcomics initiative has been rumored for months — and Online Editor Kwanza Johnson has been quietly developing content for the site for months — the open ended submission process should send the world of the wanna-bes into a tizzy. Fortunately, the 4:3 format will prevent every Thomasina, Dick and Buzz from polishing off any old crap they have kicking around to submit — well it may not prevent them from submitting it, but may prevent it from being accepted, let’s say.

Whew, and you thought MINX was a departure for DC! We’ll have the best of the reactions from the webcomics community throughout the day. Just remember, though, they’ll be competing with this (click for larger version.):

[ACHEWOOD strip posted via Chris Butcher.]