Zuda Comics, DC’s new webcomics initiative, launched a couple of days ago, and people are talking about it …
Sean Kleefeld had some observations yesterday about who appears to be visiting the site:
As of this writing, there appear to have been a little over 3,000 people who’ve stopped by to actually read the comics. The most widely viewed so far has been Alpha Monkey and the least viewed is Leprenomicon, which has less than half of AM’s viewership thus far. I think this is reflective of the basic concepts presented, as it seems to follow what people were saying excited them thematically before the actual launch.
More interesting — and more relevant to the contest aspect of the experiment — are the votes cast thus far. Not everyone who’s viewed the comics have voted (it appears that only about 2% of viewers have actually voted so far) but there are certainly some titles that seem to be pulling out to an early lead. Most notable is High Moon with the most votes, followed by Dead in the Now and Battlefield Babysitter. Also worth noting is that High Moon has the largest percentage of votes per views, suggesting that it’s not only the best of these comics (in the eyes of viewers, at any rate) but also the most satisfying in terms of delivering on the promise of the original solicitation.
Seth Rosenblatt, writing for CNET’s Daily Download, has a round up of Zuda reactions from webcomics creators. Talking about the Flash interface, which I kind of liked except for the load times:
Although the layout works well for presenting Zuda’s mixed functions, the webcomic reader is Flash-based, and that raises a whole bunch of Flash-based questions. On the one hand, Flash players look nice. However, using a Flash player as a webcomic reader is nearly unique in the world of webcomics. Richard Stevens of Diesel Sweeties, one of the most popular webcomics that has also made the jump to newspapers, questions the use of Flash. “I really hope this doesn’t catch on; it makes bookmarking into a nightmare–there are no plain URLs! It’s too much technology for no real benefit.”
To clarify about the URL’s, there are plain ones for each story, but not for each page. If I wanted to link to the Alpha Monkey comic, I can get to it by going to http://zudacomics.com/node/101. But if I wanted to link to an individual page from one of the stories — and as a comics blogger, it’s safe to say that will happen one day — I’m SOL. And as they add pages to the ongoing stories, like Bayou, this could become increasingly annoying if I want to pick up where I left off. We’ll have to wait and see how they handle that.
King Fu Rodeo talks about the Flash interface as well, which he didn’t find as annoying as some of the folks in the CNET round-up:
At the site’s default size, the comics are nearly illegible. The full screen presentation is practically breathtakingly beautiful, but I’d hazard a guess that many, if not most people, aren’t going to use the full screen option. It’s one thing to surf through your daily comics in the morning at work, but it’s another thing entirely to have them take over all of your screen’s real estate. This is actually a pretty significant problem that Zuda’s going to have to figure out soon in order to cement themselves in people’s daily viewing routines, I’d think. Otherwise, I like the the flash interface more than I thought I would have, despite it’s minor Safari issues.
The fullscreen interface does look really nice, esp. on my new iMac … and the minor Safari/Flash issue looks to be a minor FireFox for the Mac/Flash issue as well.
As for the content, I haven’t read everything that’s out there yet, but of the six that I have, I would continue reading High Moon and Battlefield Babysitter if they were to continue. I’m also looking forward to more Bayou. Alpha Monkey and Black Swan I’d probably pass on, and This American Strife I’m kind of torn on, so I give it a maybe. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to read the rest this weekend.
Related: Benjamin Ong Pang Kean talks to all of the Zuda creators over at the mothership
November 1st, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I’ve only had time to view four of the ten Zuda submissions so far. And I don’t plan on voting until I’ve read all ten in order to make an informed decision.
I would hope most readers would take this approach, therefore I think it’s too early to form conclusions which strip is better in terms of quality based upon an early vote tally.
Otherwise, Howard Dean would have been the Democratic nominee in 2004.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:17 pm
They have some really interesting stories up there.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:57 pm
I read three pages before deciding that having to use the full screen all the time to be able to read the text was a pain. I hate reading in flash. The only comic I read using flash had animations at least.
November 1st, 2007 at 3:23 pm
I have a feeling that the voting is so low due to others having similar issues with registration as me. 3 days after I signed up, and I still have yet to receive any email confirmation from Zuda, nor a response to my email requesting help from their technical support.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:15 pm
As for voting being low, did anyone else feel like the announcement that they were live came out of nowhere? I’ve seen plenty of stuff about Zuda in general, but I don’t remember any ads or anything hyping a specific launch date.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:51 pm
The viewer device they are using is pretty clumsy and overcomplicated. Some nice looking work there though.