The New York Times took a look at webcomics this weekend, in particular Platinum Studios and their recent purchase of drunkduck.com:

Platinum, a relative newcomer in an industry dominated by Marvel and DC Comics, took the first step last month when it bought DrunkDuck.com, a popular Webcomics site, for an undisclosed sum. It is opening the revamped site today at the same Web address as DrunkDuck 2.0.

Mr. Rosenberg plans to begin publishing Platinum’s comic books online before they go to press for traditional distribution through stores and newsstands.

“We’re tearing down the wall” that has separated traditional printed comic books from those emerging online, he said. “We completely believe in this model.”

But will the model pay off? Rosenberg talks about the business potential as well:

But a crucial difference, he said, will be in how Platinum plans to use the site to create a broad mix of revenue streams, “full-circle commercialization,” for the company and its content contributors.

For example, Mr. Rosenberg said he planned aggressive marketing of the site — which already receives a million unique viewers a month, mostly drawn by word of mouth — coupled with advertising sales. While the advertising revenue would not be shared with the comic creators, artists would share in the revenue from downloadable comics for cellphones and mobile media devices like iPods, comics-related ring tones, wallpaper and items like T-shirts or plastic scale models of comic book characters.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Independent, Webcomics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.