Are Online comics in your future or The Future?

by: Lufguy 2 years, 2 months, 2 days, 20 hours, 23 minutes ago 2

When every comic book starts on the Web

For generations of Americans, comic books were the first real page turners. But the audience for their digital counterpart, called Webcomics, has for the most part been limited to a niche group of comic book creators and their most ardent followers.

Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, the chairman of Platinum Studios, a privately held California entertainment company that develops and adapts comics for other media, wants to change that.

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 opened the revamped site this week at the same Web address as DrunkDuck 2.0.

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.”

The digital impact on previously print-only content reflects similar pressures on other traditional media. Comic books, which have appealed almost exclusively to children and young adult readers, who are more likely to be lured to electronic entertainment than their parents, have been especially hard hit as sales decline and press runs grow more costly.

But the comic book industry has more than $500 million a year in revenue, and still has many very popular titles. And Rosenberg has shown that he can produce hits. With his previous company, Malibu Comics, he published “The Men in Black” comic books and was credited with taking the concept to Hollywood, where it became a billion dollar movie franchise for Sony Pictures, starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.

That payoff for what began as an independent comic series is something Rosenberg hopes to repeat, starting with DrunkDuck.

Reborn DrunkDuck

DrunkDuck was founded four years ago by Dylan Squires, then a freelance computer programmer. (The name came from a logo created by a friend, based on Squires’ pet duck.) Squires, who lives in the Canoga Park section of Los Angeles, operated the site in his spare time, and it quickly became an extended community of Webcomics artists, writers and fans. As part of the deal with Platinum, he has been named director of software development for Platinum Studios’ New Media Group.

The revamped DrunkDuck site will continue to encourage the growth of independent comic book creators by distributing their work digitally at no cost to them or to consumers, Rosenberg said. Some of the comics appear as static panels, while others are lightly spiced with soundtracks, audio effects and minimal animation, and this will continue.

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

For example, 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 cell phones and mobile media devices like iPods, comics related ringtones, wallpaper and items like T-shirts or plastic scale models of comic book characters.

Product creators, Rosenberg said, can expect to receive 10 percent of the adjusted gross revenue earned by sales.

At the same time, Platinum, which has the rights to thousands of comics characters, is moving to make the Web another outlet on a par with its print publications.

“We are making online our first window,” Rosenberg said. He said that beginning this week, all of Platinum’s comics, including 100 graphic novels and series in production, would be published online at DrunkDuck 2.0 before any are printed.

“We want to make a statement that it is safe to do this, that people can do this.”

Some Webcomics that draw a large readership could be printed and distributed as traditional comic books, as well as be developed into television shows and feature films, he said.

Platinum recently announced that it was creating Platinum Studios Mobile, a division that will sell sound and image downloads for cell phones. And products could begin with simply a catchy logo on a T-shirt or a mug, which could ultimately drive interest for the development of a full-fledged comic book.

“We can make them work for the Web,” Rosenberg said, “and then we can figure out how to make them work for print.”

Waiting for the moment

Marvel Entertainment, the industry leader, also has digital comics on its Web site. But the Web-based comics are used to promote printed Marvel comic books, like “Daredevil” and “Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four,” said Marvel’s publisher, Dan Buckley.

“We realize what a great promotional tool the Internet is,” he said. But like other print media, “we’re all waiting” as digital technologies create challenges and opportunities, he said.

Buckley said he was not yet convinced that reading a comic book online delivered the “whole experience” of reading a printed comic book. In the meantime, Marvel Mobile sells Marvel character based products, including downloadable ring tones, wallpaper and video games for mobile phones.

Many see no alternative for the industry but to adapt to digital technology.

“With the Net, you can get to a smaller group of people at a larger scale,” said Heiko Ramirez, who produces a popular podcast about Webcomics on the blog Digital Strips, where he is editor in chief. He noted that a comic that might attract only a handful of readers locally could, at no additional cost, find a readership of 10,000 nationally.

Nonetheless, “print will never go away,” he added. “People like to own what they love.”