When it comes to breaking into the comics industry, competition can be fierce — it’s not an exaggeration when they say that more people play in the NBA than work on comics at the professional level.
But nowhere was that competition more out in the open than with Zuda, DC’s online comics initiative.For more than two years, every month had creators submit the opening pages of their stories, with voters deciding which comic would stay. Yet on the Zuda blog, Ron Perazza announced last week that the competitions would be no more.
“The format absolutely has merits; engaging the community and giving them real decision making power, giving creators a level of exposure that they might not have otherwise had and encouraging an ongoing dialogue about storytelling, quality and what makes good comics,” Perazza said. “However it’s also had its shortcomings; accusations of cheating, confusion about the process, spamming in the the name of promotion and argumentative, dismissive or even aggressive behavior. Is there a better way to achieve the former without having to endure or encourage the latter? I think so.”
It’s interesting to think of the implications of this call — although I can agree with Perazza that it will certainly raise the civility of it all, at any rate. Comics are hard enough to get into without trashing other people — but at the same time, I can also see the argument that even with spamming and promotions and ultimately the ones with the best connections/best pro credentials arguably getting the best platforms, this was still a democratic choice. What say you, Rama readers? What do you want to see for Zuda 2.0?
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:48 am
“it’s not an exaggeration when they say that more people play in the NBA than work on comics at the professional level.”
15 man roster per team (including inactive reserve), 30 teams, equals 450 players.
There have to be more than 450 people working professionally in comics, no matter how restrictive you define the terms. DC and Marvel publish almost 200 new comics a month. If you generously assume the average penciller does 1 book a month, the average inker does 2 books a month and the average writer does 3 books a month (all numbers on the high side) that would take over 350 people (not even counting letterers, colourists and editors), and that’s only half of the new comics in standard print format distributed through Diamond, never mind people who publish in original graphic novels, comic strips, webcomics, etc.
May 3rd, 2010 at 12:15 pm
What I find interesting is that in the Shortcomings he lists, he doesn’t include the most damning from a business perspective, and that’s that the because the contests had a sort of *Vote Now for ME PLEASE!* feel to them, that they end result was you might end up with comics that really didn’t have a lot of fans, but comics where the creators were able to round up a lot of friends.
This Friends vs Fans aspect would have made itself very apparent over the long run as a comic that might have gotten 1000 votes but only had 80 returning readers each week definitely would have seemed like a poor business investment.
I’m actually of the opinion that it was this aspect (and the whole no play on iPad dealbreaker) that sunk the boat for Zuda v1