Comics Articles of Note [UPDATED: 03/08/13]

We've come across some interesting overseas comics trends, as well as coverage on the Australian comics scene by major arts blogs. 

Amazon has just jumped into digital comics publishing via its imprint – Jet City Comics, which is exclusively available on the Kindle. Read all about it at Bleeding Cool "Amazon Publishes Its Own Comics, From George R.R. Martin, Mike S Miller And Jimmy Palmiotti". 

ArtsHub has covered Aussie comics in two recent articles – one chronicling a publisher's journey and the second one chronicling a creator's journey. "Australian Comic Industry Still Finding Its Feet", focuses on Gestalt Publishing and "Breaking into Comics" focuses on Nicola Scott (Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman). 

Salon has also run an article on "Great graphic novels from 2012", which features Pat Grant's wonderful Blue, the tale of the coastal town of Bolton, a gang of truants who skip school because they want to check out the dead body on the railway track, and the noodle-eating blue-skins who come in as boat-people (nay, "boat-creatures") and attempt to assimilate but end up imposing their own cultural values and traditions on the town and its inhabitants with nary a thought or any respect. The Top 10 list also includes Sailor Twain, Or: The Mermaid in the Hudson by US graphic novelist Mark Siegel, which we covered in a previous blog post.

It's great that Australian comics are finding their way into mainstream arts media. Congratulations to Nicola, Pat and Gestalt for their respective coups!

More Cloud 9 Comix Commentary

John Retallick from Melbourne's "The Comic Spot" radio show on 3CR, interviews Praz Hari about Cloud 9 who are digitally publishing comic books. The first titles are coming out via iPad now.

Check out Part 1 and 2 below ...

Cloud 9 Comix – Australian Digital Comics Publishing

Spectrum Pacific Publishing has just announced the launch of Australia's first digital comic book publisher – Cloud 9 Comix – which will be bringing out the best comics from around the world via iPads and then following up with Android and other platforms.

Spectrum Pacific Publishing – founded by Benjamin Slabak in 1996 in Sydney – has developed and published over 30 computer games and is now venturing into publishing for digital handheld devices under the Cloud 9 umbrella. Mr Slabak says:

"... we will work with and support independent comic book authors and small publishers in making their titles available to an audience that’s wider than ever before. A myriad of digital tablets and e-reader devices are slated for release during 2011 and we expect the digital comic book scene to experience a boom in 2011."

The ever-growing Cloud 9 Comix family, which now features over 150 unique titles from all six continents, makes Cloud 9 Comix the only truly global digital comic book publisher. Additionally, comics will be available in a variety of languages including Italian, Spanish, German, Croatian, and others.

Cloud 9 Comix has currently collected the best of Australian comic book titles under its brand and titles such as Dark Detective: Sherlock Holmes, Vienna, Dark Nebula, Southern Squadron, The Wraith, and others, which are already available for purchase in the Cloud 9 Comix iPad store. Most comics are priced between USD$0.99 and $1.99.

The full catalogue of comics is available on the official Cloud 9 website where you can also download a free iPad app and sample some of the comic book titles.

WOWIO ... Not So Wow!

We recently received a rant from fellow Australian comiker Matt Elder, who's had problems buying e-comics from the WOWIO website.

Just to put you in the picture, WOWIO promotes itself as:

... a unique eBook marketplace that stands apart from the crowd by offering significant advantages to readers, authors, publishers and advertisers.

Furthermore, they –

... know authors and artists work hard to create their books, and we believe they deserve fair compensation. That’s why on WOWIO, they get to set their own prices, and keep 100% of those prices (less the credit card processing fee). That’s right. Authors and publishers keep 100% of the revenues of all retail sales.

In theory, this sounds good unless, of course, customers can't get hold of a product because they live outside the US.

Matt wrote us the following about his experience of shopping online at WOWIO:

I went to WOWIO site a couple of weeks ago to buy some books and had a horrible experience.

Just some background info. I was trying to support a guy by the name of Kurt Belcher – I inked one of his stories for the Something Wicked Anthology 4/5 years ago. So I was just going to the various sites with some of his books. I went to:

http://comics.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=86626

and managed to download it no worries... and for 99cents, I'm more than happy to pay for it.

I then went to WOWIO to get his Winter War, as well as a couple of comic titles created by others:

http://www.wowio.com/users/product.asp?BookId=234782

I joined up, added books to the shopping cart, filled in credit card details and hit the "submit" button ... and then had that dreaded moment when you don't know if your credit card transaction has been processed or the browser has screwed up / crashed or what.

(Attached is the screenshot when I went to try to buy one of the books.)

So I tried a whole bunch of different browers, a Mac and a PC, and various Operating systems (in case there was some computer issue on my end) but all kept doing the same thing, just hanging.

I contacted Kurt saying I couldn't buy his books to support him. He came back pretty quickly saying he and his publisher had had problems with WOWIO and anyone outside of the US trying to download books would have problems. He gave me another alternative to get the books for free (but I still wanted to give him some $$$ – when someone does it for a hobby and only wants 99cents for the book, who can say no).

I also contacted WOWIO and informed them in great detail about the problem so they could fix it (obviously not many other people are going to spent 1.5 hours trying to buy a book / comic let alone give enough information to the e-retailer so they can troubleshoot the problem on their end. I mentioned I was in Australia and so was wondering if there was a content / isp filtering issue.

They took four days to get back to me with a short message:

"I had our technical team look into it - they are suggesting to try a different credit card here. We are not seeing any notices on our end. We hope this helps, Thanks"

The credit card I've used I've had for almost 10 years and been using it for internet transactions for all of that time. I've only ever had one problem with it on the internet – way back when and it turned out to be a computer glitch. It's a major credit card through a major bank so there is a 0.5% chance that was the problem.

So, not only can you not give money to WOWIO, when you explain the issue to them in great detail, they don't understand it (even their other customers have experienced the same problem) when they do decide to get back to you. I'm just really surprised because there are some Image comic books (Darkness, Witchblade etc) on the site so it isn't some small time operator.

For me, WOWIO is now a damaged brand and I would be extremely hesistant to use them again. Apart from an exercise in how not to make money, how not to handle customers, [it] might be worthwhile letting Australian comics creators know as they may not realise they are missing out on international sales.

I must add that I've purchased several other comic books online in PDF format from other retailers and actually enjoy the process and the work – paying like $1-2 a book and getting them instantly.

End of ramble.

From our POV, there doesn't appear to be anything majorly sinister going on with WOWIO except that their customer service may need some attention. However, Matt's experience does highlight a need to be vigilant about where you place your e-books and e-comics. Comics creators work tremendously hard to bring out their titles, and if customers are not able to buy them because of flawed technology, then those lines of passive income begins to dry up for the creator.

Our advice ... before becoming a publisher on WOWIO or other similar sites, become a customer first. If you find it problematic to buy and download a e-comic or two from the site (and you might want to try different browsers and computers in the process) then think seriously about whether the site can be properly trusted to service your digital backlist.

The Copyright Adventures of Colleen and Congress

The illustrious Colleen Doran has made a mark on Washington and her stance on the need to bring in hardline anti-piracy laws. In her usual concise articulate way she has presented a compelling picture of what happens to a creator when their work is digitised without permission by online pirates. Indeed, as you will read, copyright infringement of this calibre is not a victimless crime.

I spent the last two years working on a graphic novel called Gone to Amerikay, written by Derek McCulloch for DC Comics/Vertigo. It will have taken me 3,000 hours to draw it and months of research. Others have contributed long hours, hard work and creativity to this process. But due to shrinking financing caused by falling sales in the division, these people are no longer employed.

The minute this book is available, someone will take one copy and within 24 hours, that book will be available for free to anyone around the world who wants to read it. 3,000 hours of my life down the rabbit hole, with the frightening possibility that without a solid return on this investment, there will be no more major investments in future work.

We read the piece when it first published online and when it had around eight comments; today it's up to 115! WOW! Here's the full article "The 'real' victims of online piracy". To use a Molly Meldrum catch phrase, "do yourself a favour" and go and read it!

MUST READ ARTICLES: Publishing Company Exposé, How Not to Get Hired and iPad Comics Revolution

Check out two stories on superhero protector of comics creators Colleen Doran's blog. The first is iUniverse iMock, which is an exposé on iUniverse which promotes itself as a:

... publishing and author marketing services provider, is the leading book marketing, editorial services, and supported self-publishing company.

Also check out How to Hire an Artist by a Client Who Should be Avoided At All Costs if you're an artist looking for work in the comics or gaming industries. For Aussie artists who don't know what to charge for their work or indeed how to value their work, go read the Australian Society of Authors Minimum Comics Pages Rates.

Finally, read about how iPad is revolutionising digital comics and increasing consumers' acceptance of this platform and mode of delivery:

Industry observers say the iPad's size, portability and color screen make it a good fit for reading comics ...

"The iPad is much better suited for comics, and on that platform comics are expanding very rapidly," said Milton Griepp, president and publisher of the trend-watching magazine, ICv2, which reported sales of between $500,000 and $1 million in digital comic sales on moble apps in 2009.

Here's the article: iPad Books Appeal of Digital Comics. Good news we would think!

Jozef's Artwork Posted on a Blog Without Permission or Credit [UPDATED: 3/8/09]

One of my artworks has been posted uncredited on this blog: http://tresfabsweetie.blogspot.com/

I titled the cowboy character in pink that wears a "GAY" buckle – "Gay Ranger". I'm usually fine with people using my artwork online, providing they request permission. I also insist that the artwork is properly copyright credited and attributed to me with links to my website such as the example below:

© 2009 Jozef Szekeres
www.elf-fin.deviantart.com/

What is most concerning in this case is that the person who appropriated my art also removed my signature from my piece with dodgy Photoshop (see the pic on this blog post). Here is my original link of the artwork on Deviant Art so you can compare.

UPDATE: 4/08/09
The offending blogger has removed my artwork from his blog without applogy or comment.

How to Do 3D Comics

We've been following a series on Newsarama.com called "Brainstorming: Digital Comics" and this week's post is about creating 3D comics. The results are impressive. Here's the technique that the artist came up with in his experiments:

It’s pretty simple. Just copy the stuff you want in front on the top layer, remove the foreground items from the background with the stamp tool, copy the background 'screen' a cyan layer over one background (red over the other), merge the respective backgrounds with each color, set them to ‘multiply’, then just nudge the cyan layer left a few and the red layer right a few. BOOM. 3D.

For the entire article, more hints and some pretty cool images go to Brainsttorming Digital Comics#19.

Comics Digital Distribution through iVerse

Comics distribution has been very topical in the comics print and online press lately. The Newsarama website and blog has now weighed in on the matter with an interesting article "Brainstorming: Digital Content", which focuses on iVerse Media releasing digital comics through iPhones and iPod Touch. The article tells us that:

The opportunity to pave a new market for digital comics has never been greater. Some have said that all it will take is an iTunes for comics before digital comics will take off, well now comics are on iTunes... most go for 99c which isn't bad for full length comic book content.

The method of viewing is simple, the panels and word balloons are cropped and placed into 480 x 320 segments that you scroll through with your finger.

The article further explains some of the formatting disadvantages for comics created prior to the iPhone but that creators can now begin to keep the iVerse specs in mind when developing new content. Check out the article here, and specifically look for three examples of panel layout (located at the bottom) to give you an idea of how these digital comics will be read/viewed via the technology

IMPORTANT NEWS – Diamond Distributor Raises Minimum Threshold for Comics Publishers [UPDATED 22 & 27/1/09]

Diamond Distributors, which describes itself as 'the world's largest distributor of English-language comic books, graphic novels and related pop-culture merchandise" has just raised its minimum order threshold for comics publishers from $1,500 per month to $2,500 per month, which is predicted to have a devastating impact on small press.

Comic Book Resources tells us that:

The increase of the purchase-order threshold means each book needs to generate at least $2,500 of revenue to be listed in Previews [the order catalogue sent to retailers, which lists upcoming comic books and graphic novels]. 

... SLG Publishing's Dan Vado points out that figure means "a litle over $6,000 in sales at retail based on the discount we give to Diamond."

That means the average $3 comic would have to sell more than 2,100 copies – a rare feat for many small publishers. (The number of copies varies depending on the discount offered to Diamond.) 

CBR follows up with another article on iVerse and its Total Digital Distribution package, which offers hope to publishers and creators to get their product out electronically into the market place and to get paid in the process. William Schanes, Vice President of Purchasing at Diamond, speaks out on the policy change in this interview.

In the meantime, Dwight L MacPherson (creator of Edgar Allan Poo) seems to have his finger on the pulse in regard to alternative avenues of comics digital and print distribution. Check out his blog to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 in a series which analyses the advantages and disadvantages of putting your product onto WOWIO or print on demand publishing through IndyPlanet.