New web-based imprint for DC

[drice6900]

linky

 

DC ANOUNCES ZUDACOMICS.COM

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“Click here to continue.”

 

The ubiquitous online phrase is now the tagline of Zudacomics.com, a new digital imprint being launched by DC Comics in October which will publish webcomics featuring new characters and concepts by creators yet to be found. The official announcement of the new webcomics venture came via The New York Times.

 

“There is an explosion of creativity in web comics,” said Paul Levitz, DC Comics President & Publisher in a release. “We want to build a great stage for this new generation of creators to perform on, a solid system for their work to reach audiences online and in print, and for the creators to share in the profits their creations can generate. In this time of rapid technological and cultural change, DC wants to be a good publisher for the evolving and growing community of online comic creators, so that we can be their partner for showcasing new kinds of works to entertain future generations.”

 

Titles to be published by the new imprint will ideally run the gamut from humor, romance, science fiction, fantasy and superheroes. Editorial for Zudacomics.com will be handled by Ron Perazza, DC Comics Director of Creative Services and Kwanza Johnson, DC Comics Online Editor, and overseen by DC Comics SVP-Creative Director, Richard Bruning.

 

We spoke with Perazza and Bruning for more.

 

Newsarama: Rich, you’ve got the seniority here, so before we even get into the questions about Zuda, let’s start with both of you explaining what your role in the whole thing is…

 

Richard Bruning: It’s challenging to define roles in this, because it is such an unusual editorial imprint. When we started this whole process, Paul [Levitz] had given me the assignment of “let’s do webcomics,” and of course, it’s a much deeper story that. I knew that Ron Perazza, who was working in my Creative Services department would be the one guy who could handle actually making it happen. So we’ve been working pretty much shoulder to shoulder on this for over a year now. So Ron’s really the hands-on day-to-day guy, and I’m the guy standing over his shoulder saying, “Good job.”

 

NRAMA: And you’ve partnered with IBM on this?

 

RB: Right – we’ve partnered with them to help build the site, and they’ve just been tremendous. We looked at a number of different firms when we were looking to build this site, because we knew it was going to be an ambitious site. We’ve done a lot of our own web building within DC, specifically within Creative Services, which is one of the reasons why we’re so deeply involved in this, but we knew this one was going to be above what we could handle. Amazingly, IBM, who people might think of as being the stodgiest and most conservative came back with the freshest, most interactive and inventive ideas, so for the last four to five months, we’ve been working with them on a daily basis, and they’ve been great.

 

NRAMA: Now for the “imprint” itself – Ron, what is Zudacomics in your words?

 

Ron Perazza : The easiest way to answer that is to run through the site from a user’s perspective. That might answer a lot of questions and explain what it is. The simple answer is Zuda is webcomics. It’s comics on the internet. More important than that, it’s new, all-original comics on the internet. It’s a new imprint from DC with all new stuff.

 

So, with Zuda, a user can come to the site, they can read comics, and if that’s all they ever do, great – they’ve read some great comics, hopefully. But, if you want to do more, then you can register for the site and you can interact with those comics in various ways, everything from just leaving a note to tagging and rating to actually taking part in the decision making process to determine what we publish. So – as a user, you can come to the site, create a profile page, tell us a little about yourself, set up your avatar, and you’re ready to go.

 

NRAMA: And the site is open to submissions?

 

RP: Right. Say you’ve done everything I just said, but you’re a creator too and you want to be a part of what’s going on, so you submit your comics, and there’s a specific way that you can submit your comic to us. We’ve taken some pretty extensive measures to outline what that means – right now with webcomics, there are a lot of different formats, and we’ve gone through a lot of those a lot of those to narrow down a way to best enable a creator to do whatever it is that they do in a manner that we can publish it online and use it as part of Zuda.

 

NRAMA: Exactly – so what format will Zuda comics be in?

 

RP: We came up with a 4:3 aspect ratio. By declaring that as our “screen,” that gives people a space to work in. It gives them a “page,” and creators can be as creative within that page as they want. If you want to have a straight-on newspaper strip, like a Doonesbury or something like that, great. If you want to do something a little more abstract, like a Family Circus that’s all in a circle, fantastic. If you want to do a more traditional action-adventure periodical, you can do that too, but it will be displayed in these half-page increments, but you can still do it.

 

NRAMA: This announcement of Zuda is coming in around the same time as the debut of the iPhone, and of course, a large thrust of online content over the past few years has been to move it off the desktop and laptop to phones and other devices. Will Zuda’s format allow for that?

 

RP: Obviously we can’t predict every device that’s going to come out, and we can’t necessarily plan for every business relationship that DC or Warner Bros might enter into, which is why we went with that 4:3 aspect ratio – it’s an industry standard. It’s a monitor size, a television size. If your device can handle that, they should be able to work with Zuda.

 

NRAMA: Back to the process of submission, then – how do creators handle it? Is it all online?

 

RP: Yeah - there will be a web form that you can fill out that will walk you through the process, and as a part of that you’ll be able to define the genre of what you’re doing, enter some text that describes your high concept, and then upload and eight panel sample, and it’s submitted. Then, we have an editorial group, internally, dedicated to Zuda, led by Kwanzaa Johnson, who will go though all the submissions. From there, we’ll collect them into ten submission increments, and put those ten online for the community to evaluate.

 

NRAMA: And community members can vote on them?

 

RP: Right. You can interact with them – rate them, vote on them, comment on them. If a particular series gets a lot of views, that counts for something – building a reader base is important. So, all the actions you have from a user standpoint, even something as simple as reading a comic, go toward making a decision in some way – that is, which one of these ten submissions should we publish as an ongoing series on Zuda? At the end of the month is when we’re looking at having the voting, and whatever the community votes on, we’re going to enter into a contract with that creator or creators and publish that series.

 

Additionally, we’re going to reserve the right to declare as many as six submissions as instant winners during the calendar year, that is, if something comes in that’s just too good to pass up, we can bump it up and make it an ongoing without a community vote.

 

NRAMA: What’s the length of the commitment by DC to the series?

 

RP: It’s a year long contract to be a webcomic. That’s the core of where our content will come from, and we’re going to do that every month. So, every month, there will be a new ongoing series that’s vetted by the community.

 

RB: And then there will be ten new contestants for the next months’ contest.

 

RP: Right – every month will see another ten.

 

NRAMA: So this will be growing by one a month, so by the end of Zuda’s first year, you’re looking at having 12 ongoing series?

 

RP: Hypothetically, yes, but more than likely, more. There’s a lot of this that is still yet to be determined, and I don’t mean that in a negative or unprepared way. If, for example, the strip that is selected is something that the creator produces daily, there’s a certain contract that will explain that they’ve won a years’ contract, and this is how that’s defined. There’s a publishing operations side to this that will work with the creators so that the exact delivery schedule will be worked out on a case-by-case basis, depending on what that specific creator is doing.

 

But yeah, in a very broad stroke sort of way, one a month. One new series a month as chosen by the readers.

 

NRAMA: A quick follow-up to clarify what was said earlier – DC is seeing this a new imprint, correct?

 

RB: Right – it’s our first online, editorial imprint.

 

NRAMA: Other DC imprints have been unified by theme – Vertigo, going back to its roots, as comics that give you that feeling of “vertigo,” or an uneasiness, of pushing boundaries; the DC Universe is superheroes, Wildstorm has heroes as well as its own flavor for its projects. Will Zudacomics have a unified theme or feel other than just its delivery method?

 

RP: Well, obviously, the delivery method is a very specific unifier. This is the internet, and there’s a large community that makes this distinct in a way that a print imprint can’t be by virtue of its involvement. A print comic is really the editor and the creator working back and forth to make something that is delivered to the community when it is done, and the community votes with their dollars. Zuda is going to have much more community involvement where the community is taking on an editorial role and obviously, the community itself will be supplying the creative talent. So there’s a lot, in that sense, that defines this imprint differently than, say, Vertigo or DC or Wildstorm or CMX, even.

 

RB: One of the specific reasons DC wanted to do this was to get the diversity that was difficult to achieve in a print imprint. We always have benefited from the imprints with a very specific target, though – you could build a Vertigo reader by keeping a commonality to the material being published, but with the web, you’ve got both the diversity of possibilities and submissions, and the flexibility. So by involving the community, we’re kind of letting them, in a sense, define how diverse this is going to be. But with that said, we don’t have a preconception of a particular tonality or point of view or style or genre.

 

RP: That’s a big thing. Not only do we anticipate that there will be a diversity of styles, and genre, we want that – we want that level of diversity. We recognize that the internet has an incredible array of extremely talented people that don’t fit into a specific niche. We want to do business with those people. Quality is quality.

 

NRAMA: Richard – why now for DC to focus on webcomics as opposed to three years ago or three years from now? Obviously, as both of you have said, webcomics have been around for a while – what took so long for DC to both notice and get on the boat, so to speak?

 

RB: That’s a fair assessment of it. A lot of times, in all honesty, DC has never been the kind of company to jump on a bandwagon just because we saw one pulling out of the gate. Sometimes we’re frustrated that we didn’t, and other times we realize that we were pretty smart by holding back. Just before the internet bubble burst, we had talks about putting all of our comics online, and move a lot of things online, but overall, it just didn’t feel right or ready yet. In retrospect, that probably made sense, because we would’ve lost a fortune doing it.

 

Also with DC, we have a lot at stake, so we want to think through it and do it right, and sometimes it just comes down to waiting to have the right people in place, having the right facilities in place, and having the support of the company above us, which we have a lot of support from the top all the way down on this one. We felt that we learned enough in the last couple of years – Ron’s group in particular with creative services has been doing more digital comics online for our custom comic efforts, both with publishing partners and business partners – like the online comics we’ve done with Pepsi and Powerade. So we felt that we’d learned enough that it just felt right. Paul said “now’s the time,” we all agreed, and we got started. It’s actually proven to have worked out pretty well for us – we’ve learned enough, technologically – internally; and I think emotionally, it just felt like a good time.

 

NRAMA: That said, how do you see Zuda being a) something different to readers, and b) something different for creators when you’re entering a field with strong competition in the likes of sites such as Modern Tales, or a webcomics collective such as Act-i-Vate?

 

RB: We pay.

 

RP: We recognize that this is not just a hobby for people. They’re putting a lot of effort into this work. The ten creators that make it to the final voting will be paid for their work – and that ongoing creator who lands the contract will be paid as well. That’s a business relationship with DC. He or she’s a pro at that point. Just as much as anyone’s a pro in this business.

 

NRAMA: Just to be fair here, there are sites that do pay their contributors, let alone creators who’ve gone at it on their own and have found success, such as Penny Arcade and PvP among others. Obviously, not every person who puts a webcomic up is being paid, but there are opportunities for payment in webcomics. This isn’t a new business model that you’re creating here.

 

RP: Without getting too much into the specifics of how Zudacomics creators will be paid versus how other webcomics creators are paid – if it’s just a percentage of their clicks and thereby a measure of their popularity that determines their payment and comparing business models…obviously, the paying is an important piece of it, not the only piece of it. Our site has a lot more community involvement – it’s not just DC deciding that we’re going to enter into a relationship with these certain creators, and here you go audience, “read!” The reader and the community is really important here. The internet community is pretty critical to the success of a webcomic, and we want to invest a lot in that community and grow that community and work with that community to determine what we’re going to publish, not just publish stuff to give to them.

 

RB: Also another attribute that DC has to offer is that, long term, we’re hoping that some of these strips will be popular enough to warrant print publications, and obviously we have tremendous success in that, which is something that not a lot of webcomic ventures have that. And these are also properties that could be movies or television shows or videogames. We’ll have the full resources of Warner Bros and DC behind this effort. I think that, as a broad picture, gives people a much greater opportunity, potentially, than other sites do.

 

NRAMA: Let’s talk about the potential Zuda creators who may be reading this and thinking that it might be the thing for them – what kind of relationship in terms of rights and creator relationship would they have with DC if they land the contract?

 

RP: There are a couple of things about that. Firstly, we are not interested in any way in pulling a fast one. We’re going to be very transparent about our contracts and our deals. They’re all going to be online, beginning in August. We’re launching the preview site for this in July for Comic Con, and that will run through September, and then the full site will go live in October. We’ll be doing updates during that time, putting the contracts up and the submission process up as well, so people can have the information that they need in order to make the decisions that they need to make.

 

In a nutshell, the rights and the participation and all of that is very consistent with the deals that we offer all of our new talent for new properties.

 

NRAMA: You both mentioned that the creators would be paid for their work. Obviously, that aspect of the deals will remain private, but big picture, will the rate be similar to print or something different since we’re talking about a different medium and different delivery?

 

RP: Again, not getting into the specifics, there will be a flat fee for the submissions that are selected for the ten finalists, with no claim on ownership. We’re not buying their IP [intellectual Property] at that point – that’s just a recognition for the work they’ve done and the time they’ve spent. Once one of the creators is selected, it’s a much more complicated relationship with contracts and so on, where there are participations and all of that. There will be the equivalent of a page rate – people will be paid for the work they’re doing. This will all really be made clear when the contracts go up online – they’re all being hammered out to be in plain English, so they’re easy to understand.

 

NRAMA: And will that be comparable to a page rate that a new creator working in one of the print imprints would see?

 

RP: It’s pretty different. For one thing, it’s a different sized page. A 4:3 aspect ratio screen is just a different physical dimension than a comic page, so there aren’t too many one to one relationships that you can draw between a traditional DC Universe comic and a Zuda webcomic, but like I said, it’s pretty compatible with the other deals that we get into with creators. We’re not really interested in ripping anybody off – that’s just bad business.

 

NRAMA: With DC’s print publications, there’s a royalty structure in place for number of copies sold, with creators seeing more money if a certain threshold is passed. Given that webcomics – popular webcomics – have the potential to be seen/viewed what, at least 100 to 1,000 times more than the top selling DCU title in any given month, is there going to be a royalty structure in place at Zuda, where creators whose comic sees 50 million readers a month sees more money than a creator whose comic sees 1 million readers a month?

 

RP: The short answer is that we’re not basing page rates or anything like that off of page views. It’s not that whimsical. The contract itself will spell out the different participations for the different levels, so it’s not going to be page views online that will determine if the creator made five dollars this week or ten dollars, it’s a long-term game.

 

NRAMA: In terms of the business model of Zuda – the money that’s being paid to creators – where will that be coming from? Is this imprint going to be ad-based in terms of generating revenue, or is this something where money has been allocated for the startup of the imprint?

 

RP: There’s only so deep I can go with that answer, not because we’re trying to conceal anything, but because I don’t know all the aspects of the accounting. But Zuda is its own imprint, so it has its own budget. As I said before, this is a long-term game for DC. This is us really recognizing that there is a lot of material out there, and a lot of creators out there that are really good, and we want to do business with, and we’re okay with investing in that, in time, effort, and money, for the future. It took 30 years for V for Vendetta to finally be a movie – that’s okay. It’s entirely possibly that we won’t be here when one of these things really comes into fruition. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the effort now.

 

NRAMA: In saying that, and it was mentioned earlier, is the endgame of Zuda then, for lack of a better term, a collection house for new IPs to them farm out to Burbank and see if they can’t get picked up for other media?

 

RP: I think there are a lot of rewards here. There is certainly the aesthetic and creation of the project is one level of reward in and of itself. Maybe it’s just semantics, but to call it a “collection of IPs” kind of devalues the merit of the IP in some way, and I don’t want it to sound that way. But if we can get an IP through this process of finding a successful webcomic, then awesome. If it becomes a successful print comic, great. If it becomes a videogame or movie, that’s great for everybody. That’s great for webcomics in general.

 

RB: Right. It’s not the specific goal of the site any more than the next Vertigo series. We don’t buy print publications because we think they’ll make great movies. If something happens after the fact and something does work out that way – bonus – that’s great. But that’s not why we buy the book, never has been.

 

NRAMA: One more on the creative side of things – you now the online creative community well by this point, and also we’re at a time when “homemade” and “viral” are valid means of distribution from everything to legitimate marketing to memes. There are plenty of creators out there who’ve seen their side hobby take the online community by storm. In your view, is DC’s marketing arm and the Warner Bros connection the main advantage for creators looking to sign on with Zuda compared to going it on their own?

 

RB: With a lot of these guys, they’ve been able to make really good livings out of doing webcomics. Fred Gallagher is a great example, as is Scott Kurtz and others. But that’s like going back to what independent conics were like 20-30 years ago – a lot of labor and a lot of effort. If you want to do that for a living, you have to handle all the aspects of it. You have to handle the online ad sales, the scheduling, the rights – it requires a lot for these people to do; and for some people that level of control is very important, and that’s the right thing for them to do. But for the people who really just want to focus in on writing and drawing their strip and don’t want to worry about the rest, and are willing to enter a business agreement where it is all very clearly spelled out as to who gets what out of the relationships.

 

If someone reads the contract and decides it’s not for them, God bless, and good luck. The internet’s a big place. DC’s never tried to stop people from publishing comics, because we never felt that we had to own it all. We’re just opening a door to a particular type of venue where we can offer the benefits that DC has to a creator that may not want to try and do it all themselves.

 

NRAMA: In terms of growth, what are you looking at both in terms of say, with the debut of your first ongoing comic, as well as a year into it, when you could have a dozen or more comics online?

 

RP: We don’t really know.

 

RB: Honestly, it is really hard for us to say. We’re just not sure.

 

RP: The key thing to remember here is that more traffic isn’t necessarily better. We’re looking for a deep site, not a wide site. We don’t want a million people to come for one second. I would much rather build a community than have a flash in the pan.

 

NRAMA: Generally speaking, for those creators who may be liking the sound of this, what are you looking for? What are the marks that creators who arte thinking of submitting to Zuda need to hit? What will make you raise your eyebrows versus reach for the delete button?

 

RP: For me, personally – quality and originality.

 

RB: And diversity. We’re looking to see stuff we’ve never seen before. I got to conventions and I see portfolios with great cartooning, and great concepts, but as a print publisher, we can’t be everything to everybody, but Zudacomics is a step towards us being able to do that. So if someone sends in something that’s just adorable, and it works, then we can publish them. I think that’s the most exciting thing for us, from Paul on down – we’re going to be able to do comics of a much broader range than we’ve ever done before, and DC’s already – arguably – the most diverse publisher of comics now, so this will just take us further down that road.

 

In fact, we’ve already implemented this into the design – Zudacomics will have many variations of its logo, which represent the different genres that the imprint can be a home to. We realized when we were designing the logo, that there shouldn’t be just one. We wanted to reflect the different “faces” of web comics that we are looking to publish. It’s all about the diversity of the readership and the medium.

 

And like Ron said, professionalism and quality, although, that’s not to say that if you had the funniest stick figure strip in the world, we would definitely consider it.

 

NRAMA: Finally, how are you going to be marketing and advertising the site, both to attract creators as well as readers?

 

RP: There’s a giant marketing plan behind all of this that I can’t speak to every aspect of, but some of this is pretty straightforward, like banners on DC Comics.com. Other stuff is more complex, and I’m not sure if we’re ready to reveal every aspect of it, but it will be rolling out over the summer, and have some pretty interesting stuff planned for the San Diego Comic Con. But we’re looking to get a lot of people coming to the site and participating – that’s one of the keys, it’s about us - all of us.

 

Look for a chat with DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz on Monday afternoon about Zudacomics.

[superman20]

cant wait to check this site out.

[SuperBird]

we did the identity work for this.

[drice6900]

we did the identity work for this.

 

Cool! What did that entail? I assume you are with IBM