If the theme of NYCC was “Recession? What Recession?” then the subtitle was “webcomics are the new floppies.” Digital distribution of comics is clearly going to be a hot topic in 2009.

For a quick overview, take a look at Kiel Phegley’s writeup of the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference, which includes sound bites from all the participants in the webcomics and social media panels. Thanks to poor planning and a late train, I arrived late for the webcomics panel, alas, but my impression was that aside from the presence of the very impressive Dave Roman, both these panels consisted entirely of people from large and medium-size publishers, and the panels could have benefitted from having more of an actual webcomics presence. Dave posted about his panel at his LJ.

But how will people read these comics? No one seemed too sold on the Kindle, and while Tokyopop makes comics for the Sony e-Reader, it seems like folks are still waiting for that killer app. The tech blog io9 took in a UClick panel and was mighty impressed with their comics for the iPhone, but the thing that jumped out at me was an almost offhand comment made by DC’s John Cunningham in the State of the Publishing Industry panel:

Amazon has been able to have their way with Sony by emulating Apple’s model: I have the software and hardware combined, I am going to deliver somebody else’s IP. Do you think Apple is going to let Amazon have hegemony over that? One of big rumors is that Apple is looking at in fall 2009 a 7 x 9-inch iPod touch. That is going to happen sooner rather than later.

Here’s Ron Hogan’s writeup of the panel, which mentions digital media but not the iPod rumor; I’ll try to do my own report later in the week.

The Zuda panel was impressive, with over 15 creators packed onto the stage and SuperTron creator Sheldon Vella participating from Melbourne, Australia, through the magic of computers. Continue reading →

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Attribute Twitter with yet another news catch worth posting.

Steven L. Cloud has announced that his critically-praised, existentially-presented strip, Boy on a Stick and Slither (heretofore known as BOASAS) has seen its final update on Comics.com, the official realm where webcomics go to lose their souls. 

Steven requested, via a Tweet today, that people be alerted to the move for those who (for whatever reason) read BOASAS on Comics.com, and so, it is done. Change your bookmarks, if necessary, to Boasas.com (gosh, so much easier than www.comics.com/boy_on_a_stick_and_slither).

Also, enjoy the short conversation The Geek and I had about the matter, as dramatized below:

What’s tougher and sharper than a Diamond? Could it possibly be a… Comics Monkey?

Ok, so the ad slogan might be a bit difficult to write, but Ka-Blam has taken the wraps off its new direct distribution alternative to the Diamond Distributors behemoth and its name is Comics Monkey. Thus far, there’s little to go on other than pure speculation and hopes and dreams which may or may not be shattered, so I’ll let the presser speak for itself.

Distribution into the direct comics market system is something we’ve had on the drawing board almost since we launched in 2005. It’s a daunting prospect and we’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of years puzzling through how we wanted to approach it. We had planned to roll out a brief pilot program of sorts – offering a limited catalog of items available only to a handful of volunteer retailers – by summer of this year. And then take what we learned from that program, retool a bit, add the full catalog, and launch the actual service sometime this fall.

Continue reading →

Sean Kleefeld noted on his blog yesterday that things don’t seem to be going to well at Wowio—one of their creators still hasn’t been paid for content that ran in the second quarter of last year (before Platinum acquired the site), and their staff is making minimum wage. Then he takes a look at the Alexa numbers, which suggest traffic to the site is way, way down.

Click on the comments to get to the good stuff, though. That’s where Brian Altounian, president and COO of Wowio’s parent company, Platinum, posts a spirited response to Sean’s comments. He starts by pointing out that the entire economy is down, and therefore no one should be surprised that the numbers are down at Wowio as well. And then he reveals something interesting: You remember the big bucks that folks were making on Wowio? Altounian says that money came from investors, not revenues:

Who do you think was paying publisher royalties during the two years prior to Platinum’s purchase? Advertisers? Sponsors? NO! They came from Wowio founders and initial investors who, after two years, decided they didn’t want to shell out royalties without an income stream… Our change in the business model has been to pay the publishers when a book is paid for, either by a reader or a corporate sponsor.

Then there’s some back and forth, as Kleefeld and Altounian discuss the wisdom of investing in a company with significant debt, and it all ends more nicely than it started.

All this made me curious to see what was going on at Wowio, so I clicked over and took a look. Continue reading →

This past week, Diamond Distributors, the largest and basically only company responsible for getting comic books into people’s hands, announced that they were upping their minimums, essentially shutting out many small-press publications from earning widespread distribution. As soon as the news broke, Brigid caught the story and commented about the image of the webcomics model getting better and better with each new restriction Diamond enforces.

Enter Ka-Blam. The already popular digital printing service has posted an intriguing banner at the top of their site:

Breaking News!! Ka-Blam to Launch Direct Market Comics Distribution System! Details Coming Soon!

Excitement doesn’t begin to describe the energy surrounding this possible paradigm shift. Stay tuned for the big news or immensely overhyped disappointment, coming soon!

One of the biggest stories of this week in webcomics, and one that Brigid has already briefly touched on, is the more widespread exposure of the pay-for-play service, Assetbar. Before this week, the only notable webcomic to take advantage of this pseudo-subscription-based,  fanbase barometer was Achewood. Now, both Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub have linked up their respective strips to this fan club of sorts and the floodgates are sure to follow, being opened by the sheer force of webcomics creators eager to share more of their already public lives with their readers.

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Brandon Thomas hates reading comics on his computer screen, but that doesn’t mean it’s not inevitable. This column sounds like it would be flamebait, but it’s really not; he takes a good hard look at the industry as a whole and concludes that while digital distribution is part of the solution, it’s only a part. The bigger issue is that people are reading the same old comics with the same old licensed characters, and one way to get them to read something new is to lower the price barrier.

On the other hand, digital comics are not immune from the recession: The Beat reports that layoffs at MySpace include Sam Humphries, who ran the comics features. We here at Digital Strips have been quick to criticize MySpace as a webcomics interface, but the fact is that it brought more eyeballs to comics, and that’s a good thing. Best of luck to Mr. Humphries, and we hope that MySpace Comics sticks with us for a while. EDIT: And it looks like it will!

The biggest publisher in Japan, Kodansha, is launching a new manga simultaneously online and in print; they are even allowing bloggers to republish the comic Misako-San under a Creative Commons license.

Related: This post at Oz and Ends discusses why people don’t enjoy reading from a screen, and there are links for those who want to dig deeper. If nothing else, this seems like an excellent argument against blinking banner ads.

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Rob Staeger interviews Shayna Marchese about her webcomic, Voids, at Blog@Newsarama.

Also at Blog@, Troy Brownfield has a few quick questions for David Gallaher, whose High Moon Zuda comic will be released in print form in October.

Larry Cruz talks to Neil Kleid about his erstwhile Zuda comic, Action, Ohio, and the experience of having a webcomic at Zuda versus Shadowline, Action’s current home.

Joamette Gil interviews Dava Butler, the creator of the My Little Pony fumetti Kimono’s Townhouse, at Manga Punk.

At Talk About Comics, Shaenon Garrity interviews Alexander Danner and Edward J. Grug III about Gingerbread Comics.

Brad Guigar rounds up the webcomics panels at NYCC at Webcomics.com. Brad also addresses an issue that is likely to become more prominent in the near future: Long-form webcomics. His post brings out an interesting issue, actually: Coming from the gag-a-day context, he recommends that each page of a comic be “satisfying,” with some sort of hook or cliffhanger on each page. That seems like it would change the pacing in a way that might not work so well if one reads a big chunk of the comic at once—a clear case of the medium affecting the message.

The notion of an online exhibition of webcomics makes Johanna Draper Carlson scratch her head at Comics Worth Reading, but there is an explanation in the comments section.

If you’re curious about what the world might be like if chickens demanded equal rights, you can download a free copy of issue 1 of Elmer, by Gery Alanguilan, at his website. You’ll need the CBR comics reader to read it, but you can get that there as well. The dead-tree version of the first issue is sold out, which is actually a pretty good reason to put it on the web.

At Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson writes about Tokyopop’s foray into e-book formats, particularly the e-reader. One big problem: They only have one volume of most series available.

Reviews

Larry Cruz on Femmegasm (The Webcomic Overlook)
Greg McElhatton on the print version of Never As Bad As You Think (Read About Comics)
Ren C. Henry on Sorcery 101 (Manga Punk)