Why would most ppl even waste time thinking about this, or about how terrible this is gonna be for webcomics, or about how deadly a trap this is for the unwary webcomicker?

Hello… it's going to have 1-2 new titles per month tops. In an entire year, the site will have 12-20 comics titles.

99% of the webcomics in DD will not even have a chance to be seen in Zuda. And if you do work your ass off on your submssion and it passes, prepare to quit your day job or your weekend softball team, because you're going to work your ass off for a year to keep up your updates and maintain top quality. Not many of us can do that, or want to.

Whoever said it is right - most webcomics are labors of love and done by amateurs. For most of you, don't even pretend you're gonna become pro. I know I won't.

Mlai never say never my friend!!!!!!!!

is anyone going to give me a deal im doing all this on my own writing and drawing and i learned coloring not that long ago.lol…..but anyways i dont like the idea bout the whole DC comic thing……if it were marvel they would have a better plan than that rip off.DD should sue.lol


but not be honest here i think thats a rip off.I want be seen dead posting my stuff there.


everyone has there own style. i love DD because of that.sure alot of us cant draw like they do but damn it there are lots and lots of great comics……if they want war i got characters ready for battle.lol


THIS IS DRUNKDUCK!!!!!!!!!

that kid yellow
Mlai never say never my friend!!!!!!!!

is anyone going to give me a deal im doing all this on my own writing and drawing and i learned coloring not that long ago.lol…..but anyways i dont like the idea bout the whole DC comic thing……if it were marvel they would have a better plan than that rip off.

Keep in mind, the person DC just hired to head up their web presence is the guy that used to do the same job for Marvel. Kwanza Johnson, aka Marvel Dog, IIRC.

;)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!lies all lies take it back. lol

mlai
And if you do work your ass off on your submssion and it passes, prepare to quit your day job

That would just break my heart.

Hijuda
It likely won't result in a terrible comic getting a deal (it still goes through Zuda's editors), but it could result in an otherwise #2 comic getting the contract, or at least an average comic becoming a finalist.

Well the editors at DC choose which ten are finalists, so I imagine they would only choose comics that they have realatively the same amount of faith in. And if I were them, hell if the race between first place and second place is that freaking close that one dude can vote for himself a couple times and pull out a win, I really wouldn't care. In fact I'd probably throw the other guy a contract anyway, because enough fans clearly like him to make it worth while.

Vindibudd
That would just break my heart.

Haha, lol. QFT

mlai
Hello… it's going to have 1-2 new titles per month tops. In an entire year, the site will have 12-20 comics titles.

So by your argument you perfer quantity over quality? Blanklabel had 12 comics and they do just fine, because they're 12 really freaking good comics that update regularly. Whoever wins DC's little monthly contest is going to have to have an editor, which has all kinds of positives and negatives that come with it. You'll be obligated to update on time, you'll have to do quality work or do it over. These things are great for readers.

The big negative is that you're going to have some one that could very well tell you that “you can't do that” and if your comic is something that requires you to do things that other people might not want you to do, then you probably don't want to submit that one to them. Zuda looks like it is going to be a collection of professional level comics on the net. It won't be the first one out there, but it's nothing like DD. As long as there are gateways like DD or CG there will always be a voice for comic artists who want complete control over their comic.

But if you have some other ideas that you'd enjoy doing and don't need complete control over them, I can't see why you wouldn't want the opportunity to get paid for them. Hell, if anything it would give you more time to draw the comic you love to do in between drawing the comic you just “like” to do.

How many projects does fern have going on? If he got paid to do Daphne Descend daily on Zuda, do you think he'd just stop doing Teenage Wasteland? Hells no, Teenage Wasteland would become the bastion for all the jokes they wouldn't let him do.

Thats a total hypothetical. Fern is to damn loyal to even CONSIDER working for DC. word.

mlai
99% of the webcomics in DD will not even have a chance to be seen in Zuda. And if you do work your ass off on your submssion and it passes, prepare to quit your day job or your weekend softball team, because you're going to work your ass off for a year to keep up your updates and maintain top quality. Not many of us can do that, or want to.

Whoever said it is right - most webcomics are labors of love and done by amateurs. For most of you, don't even pretend you're gonna become pro. I know I won't.

The thing to remember is that you have to look at that contract and know exactly what they want and how much they are willing to pay you. If the pay is good enough then it might be worth dropping a few extra curicular activities. The main thing alot of people are going to use this for is a chance to get noticed. I admit I had my doubts, but they are less as time goes on. To me it now seems that this is going to be an online version of Image.

If you are not wanting to lose your life's work to DC and Time Warner then creat something specifically for this site. I doubt they are going to hold anyone to regular comic standards of deadlines. Hell even the pros don't regularly follow deadlines. It took Marvel almost 3 years to make Millar and Hitch do 13 issues of The Ultimates 2, DC has been late multiple time with Superman/Batman. The last couple of issues from Infinite Crisis were delayed back in 2006. So they understand things to an extent. And editors are actually better at making a successful comic alot of times. Not all the times but alot of the times. They know what works and what fans will respond to. They also let you know how much info to give out about your project during interviews and stuff. That way you don't give the whole story away, but you don't give the fans too little info either. Editors are also able to get solicits done, press releases, etc. Editors are great to have and I don't see them censoring what you want to do. After all they hired you because they liked what you were doing.

Someone
So by your argument you perfer quantity over quality?

What I'm saying is:

1. “OMG ripoff of DD!”
-No, it's not. It's different.

2. “OMG I won't betray DD to go there!”
-You think too highly of yourself. Most of us can't get in even if we tried.

Someone
But if you have some other ideas that you'd enjoy doing and don't need complete control over them, I can't see why you wouldn't want the opportunity to get paid for them. Hell, if anything it would give you more time to draw the comic you love to do in between drawing the comic you just “like” to do.

How much time do you think one person has? “I'll put in 100% effort on this top quality comic I'm being paid for to update on time, AND I'll draw some other nonprofit hobby comics on the side, AND I'll have time to relax/ go to school/ work/ etc!” I don't think so.

Someone
The thing to remember is that you have to look at that contract and know exactly what they want and how much they are willing to pay you.

Somehow I don't think the standalone pay is good enough. It's most likely something you'd do to jumpstart your resume.

Wow this got a little “angry”

I'm just here bitching 'cause i hate DC. Seriously you guys coulda said that DC was saving puppies from animal shelters and I still woulda been like “those bastards!”

;)

Funny you should mention DC and saving puppies…

I can tell SOMEONE in this thread thinks awfully little of his/her fellow comic enthusiasts… Sheesh.

AQua_ng
Funny you should mention DC and saving puppies…

Oh boy. THIS I gotta hear.

AQua_ng
Funny you should mention DC and shaving puppies…

Fixed.

SDJoyce
And editors are actually better at making a successful comic alot of times. Not all the times but alot of the times.

You know that in a way, an editor created Calvin and Hobbes?
Bill Watterson had been trying to get a comic syndicated after his political comic strip had been booted off the publication it had been in. So Bill did what many cartoonists did and started producing several different comics pitches and sending them to various syndicates in the hope of being published. However, Bill was so concerned with being published, he pandered to the syndicates and created the sort of comic strips he felt that they would like. This led to a lot of standard and average comics.
However, after rejecting one of Bill's comics, an editor suggested that Bill shifted the strips focus to a more whimsical part of the comic involving the younger brother of the main character and a stuffed tiger that the brother perceived as real. These characters were something Bill had included as a side thought, and had actually enjoyed writing for more the the rest of the strip.

Someone
Christie: Were you submitting different strips to different syndicates, or did you go after one syndicate?

Watterson: I didn't know a lot then – and don't know a lot now – asto what the best way to do this is, but my procedure was I would draw up the submission – a month's worth of strips, made to look as professional as I could, and send copies to the five major syndicates, and then just sit around and wait for their rejection letters. I would then try to see if I could second guess them or imagine what they were looking for that I could put in my next submission and gradually get a more marketable comic strip. In hindsight, as I say, I'm not convinced that that's the best way to go about it. Trying to please the syndicates was pretty much the same as what I had ended up doing at the Cincinnati Post, and I don't think that's the way to draw your best material. You should stick with what you enjoy, what you find funny – that'sthe humor that will be the strongest, and that will transmit itself. Rather then trying to find out what the latest trend is, you should draw what ispersonally interesting.

Christie: So after five years you just quit doing what you'd been doing and did what you wanted to do?

Watterson: It was a slow process, and actually what happened is anotherodd coincidence. One of the strips I'd sent had Calvin and Hobbes as minor characters. Calvin was the little brother of the strip's main character, and Hobbes was like he is now, a stuffed tiger that came to life in Calvin's imagination. One of the syndicates suggested that these two characters were the strongest and why didn't I develop a strip around them? I had thought they were the funniest characters myself, but I was unsure as to whether they could hold their own strip. I was afraid that maybe the key to their wackiness was the contrast between them and the more normal characters in the rest of the strip. I wasn't sure Calvin and Hobbes would be able to maintain that intensity on their own. But I tried it, and almost immediately it clicked in my mind; it became much easier to write material. Their personalities expanded easily, and that takes a good 75 percent of the work out of it. If you have the personalities down, you understand them and identify with them; you can stick them in any situation and have a pretty good idea of how they're going to respond. Then it's just a matter of sanding and polishing up the jokes. But if you've got more ambiguous characters or stock stereotypes, the plastic comes through and they don't work as well. These two characters clicked for me almost immediately and I feel very comfortable working with them. That syndicate, oddly enough, declined my strip, so I started sending it around. Universal expressed an interest in it and wanted to see more work, so I drew another month's worth of art, sent that to them, and they decided to take it.

From an Interview with Bill Watterson: http://bob.bigw.org/ch/interview.html

The problem with DC's idea is, if it IS intended to steal DD's thunder, its lofty expectations really defeat its purpose. The site curls up into a “safe” spot, only accepting what editors would think is the best work, and unless I miss my guess, that's pretty much limited to tried-and-true works. But probably the biggest appeal of webcomics is that you can try out all sorts of outlandish ideas without fear of consequence - if it sucks, just delete it off the site and try again.

Hapoppo
The problem with DC's idea is, if it IS intended to steal DD's thunder, its lofty expectations really defeat its purpose. The site curls up into a “safe” spot, only accepting what editors would think is the best work, and unless I miss my guess, that's pretty much limited to tried-and-true works. But probably the biggest appeal of webcomics is that you can try out all sorts of outlandish ideas without fear of consequence - if it sucks, just delete it off the site and try again.

i dont think the site is supposed to be anything like DD. it seems more like a comicbook challenge kind of thing where people's comics are voted on and someone wins.

I kind of agree with Eric Burns over at Websnark in that this is sounding more and more like a collective. A Modern Tales and Keenspot kind of thing. Except it seems to rely on an online community more than MT or KS in that they would need them to do the voting and really propel the site.

I still stand by the sentiments of my earlier post. I think if Zuda can develop a really strong online community then it has the potential to do wonders. DC does have the resources to attract enough eyeballs to the site but whether that resource can also convince them to stay and become fans of the site itself is an entirely different matter. I think it's the difference between a group of people who are all there to pimp their comic and are only interested in talking about their comic, and a group of people who socialize, joke around, and provide the site with a human face. One's all business and the other's a community.

I admit that I'm pretty bias though and this is a reflection of my own personal taste. I haven't created a regularly updating comic in years. Despite that however, I still hang around a webcomic community and am semi-involved in other webcomic-related activities. There's a lot of webcomic things I've done because I was interested in it enough to invest my own personal time into. And that's the kind of thing that propels webcomics. Hardly anyone goes into webcomics because it's a fast and easy business that promises a financially comfortable lifestyle. For many, webcomics is an interest that requires investment of your own time without any real financial returns.

In a way Zuda is trying to sell a dream but they're going to need a community of dreamers. And man, webcartoonists are a bunch of dreamers. :D

As a side note, I've been reading a lot of the blogs out there that talk about Zuda and man it gets on my nerves sometimes. I'm not going to name anything but when you have a blog that talks about linking to webcomic communities and how they're probably the most important voices but yet somehow managed to link only to Comic Genesis…well, that's annoying.

Black_Kitty
As a side note, I've been reading a lot of the blogs out there that talk about Zuda and man it gets on my nerves sometimes. I'm not going to name anything but when you have a blog that talks about linking to webcomic communities and how they're probably the most important voices but yet somehow managed to link only to Comic Genesis…well, that's annoying.

Which probably means they aren't actually very authoritative on the subject and the blog is mostly ill-informed opinion with not much real knowledge or personal experience. :(

-Not to say that a failure to link the Duck means you're a fool (I'd be a fool myself to say that!), but although Keen is big and has been around a long time, the community aspect is NOT as big a factor there as the free comic host part, which is what they're famous for. One would suppose people would link it because they went there once and it's the only one they really know of, while many other communities have emerged, grown and flourished over the years that really do have more focus on the social aspect.
But then they are blogs; while it's interesting to see people's points of view, any fool can write one… you tend to get a lot of personal opinions. Unlike real news sources there's no editorial oversight and no incentive to do any research or present a balanced picture. -heh, just like real journalism is becoming, but that's a rant for later…

I've been reading the post on this ever since it started. I agree with a couple of post that say that Zuda isn't a DD rip-off. It seems more like Transplant comics (I think thats the name). Where members of their community decide whether your webcomic is good enough to be on their site.

I don't know if I could try and put a webcomic on Zuda. The memory of sending in submissions to DC (and Marvel) only to receive rejection letters is still fresh. And it probably won't be any easier to get into Zuda. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the artist and writers that will have a comic on Zuda would have already worked on a DC comic as a guest artist/writer.

Honestly, I don't think that the folks at DD have to worry about this. Even if Zudacomics does do well. Drunk Duck has such a strong and close community that is growing larger every day. Anyone with a comic idea, regardless of genre, style, content, or talent level is welcomed. Where Zuda seems like they're going to be an exclusive club. I don't see Zuda stealing any of DD's thunder.

carly_mizzou
Wow this got a little “angry”

I'm just here bitching 'cause i hate DC. Seriously you guys coulda said that DC was saving puppies from animal shelters and I still woulda been like “those bastards!”

;)

I could say even worse.

What if they hire assassins to sabotage the DD?


first the new pages do not upload…

the Next thing you know, Bruce Willis is Standing down town Harlem holding a Racist sign trying to appease the D.C. Black market web terrorists from shutting down the entire Site.

oh…the humanity of it all!
:spin:
(lights self on fire…dives out window)

Bruce Willis could handle it.

Bruce Willis can handle anything

kingofsnake
Bruce Willis could handle it.

Bruce Willis can handle anything

Platinum Studios doesn't have that kind of money. So they got the next best thing in their price range:

STEVEN SEAGAL holding a panda!

Seagal's GREAT movies:

Under Siege
Under Siege 2 Dark Territory
Executive Decision

But instead of the Everyman 007, he insists on playing the fat ghetto Kwai Chang Caine cop character all the time. Fail.

What makes me angry about this is how often Wizard Magazine disregarded webcomics as not a big deal. But ever since I got onto the webcomic scene, I've grown so much as an artist that I hate looking at regular published things anymore. It seems a lot of creators get their head stuck up their butts and aren't willing to adapt or change their work at all, or learn new things from other people.

And now with Zuda? New York Times publishes a story, and now Wizard will be kissing up to DC over this idea like no tomorrow. That makes me so angry. This is why I hate the American Comics industry. Somebody help me move to Japan.

KellyMarie
And now with Zuda? New York Times publishes a story, and now Wizard will be kissing up to DC over this idea like no tomorrow. That makes me so angry. This is why I hate the American Comics industry. Somebody help me move to Japan.

Can I come too?

I never really liked Wizard Magazine. Way too flashy.

marine

kingofsnake
Bruce Willis could handle it.

Bruce Willis can handle anything

Platinum Studios doesn't have that kind of money. So they got the next best thing in their price range:

STEVEN SEAGAL holding a panda!

BWA HA HA HA!
lol!



What ever they did must have worked because my pages uploaded today.

Zuda has me intrigued a bit, but I can't honestly say that I'd ever even consider submitting anything to them. I like being the one in control of my stories and if they suck I have no one else to blame. I don't think they should have this vote thing. It seems like a shallow way of building a community. If American Idol has taught us anything is that sometimes the more talented people don't win.

I think that DC is trying to break into a market that is already staurated with content. They will have to convince the existing web comics creators that it is a good idea to come to them. The problem is that most creators do this as a hobby (like myself) or do well enough on their own to generate revenue from their work. The promise of putting the work in print doesn't really seem like a huge incentive. There are a number of ways to print on your own and all it takes is a bit of money. I have stuff in a few stores across the province and it only cost me a couple hundred bucks thanks to online printers.

I don't know if any of that made sense, but for what they are offering, it seems that one could do it on their own if they were willing to put in the work which is really more satisfying experience in my opinion.

It's DC starting to wake up to the reality of the dying print comics market. That doesn't mean they can compete with Drunk Duck, but the folks at DC are smart enough to see handwriting on the wall. The 22 page monthly comic book is dead. Webcomics are the future. DC has figured this much out.

Any decade now, Marvel will probably come to the same conclusion. ;)

KellyMarie
Somebody help me move to Japan.

I have this really small wooden box…I hope you don't mind traveling in cramped spaces.