Zuda has some serious Symptoms

The Eclectic Micks have been experiencing in Symptomania as they celebrate Will Sliney's Zuda entry, The Symptoms. I really enjoyed the first installment of The Symptoms - reminded me a little bit of Mike Allred's Red Rocket 7 for its mix of rock and sci-fi - and hope it does well.

Zuda - the webcomics offshoot of DC Comics - highlights some of the strengths and weaknesses of the webcomics millieu. Many Webcomics are amateurish in execution, tend towards the throwaway and while the democracy of the platform can make it hard to for the reader to edit, lowering the barrier for participation in the medium can only be good in the long run.

By contrast Zuda is exclusive, high quality fare, which mainly encourages entries from established professionals in the comics industry (such as Sliney). Zuda applies some of the editorial expertise from the comic medium's print tradition, some of the 'wisdom of crowds' from the internet (in the form of voting) and I broadly think this is a positive development.

However, Sean Kleefeld and Jake Forbes made some interesting points recently that caused me to think about it again, especially in light of Tokyopop's decision to put more of its content online.

The problem arises, not in quality of design or content, but in distribution. Both Zuda and the Tokyopop sites currently online (such as Ikki) format their comics as Adobe Flash, which means that readers cannot subscribe to the comics as they would a blog feed, but have to visit the site to read the comic.

Forbes summed this up nicely:

"As a reader, I should have each of these needs addressed:

1. I liked this comic. Now tell me what to read next.
2. I want access to it NOW, regardless of who publishes it.
3. If it’s serialized, give me the option to subscribe.
4. I want access to it at home or on the go. What’s an appropriate screen viewing size should be up to me.
5. I should be able to preview before I buy."

I didn't think about this until I read about The Symptoms. I realised I hadn't visited the Zuda site in months. I read a moderate amount of webcomics, but all of them are 'pushed' to me, via my feed reader. I almost never visit the websites themselves.

I think most readers understand that finding a business model for publishing online is in everybody's interest, but the 'pull' model that Zuda and other established publishers adopt on the web needs serious reconsideration if they want to build an online readership.

Spiderman Must Die! (part 2)

(Read part one of this article here.)

I recently discovered Graphic Smash and Komikwerks, two subscription-based webcomics publishers. While webcomics sites like Comic Genesis or Webcomics Nation are swamped with poor quality work, these sites retain the editorial sensibilities of traditional publishers (in terms of quality control).

While some individuals will make go of it alone, this seems like the future for the majority of comics creators. It is interesting to note that Marvel has concluded Spider-Girl in print and is to re-launch it, next month, as a digital-only title.

I don’t think printed comics will ever wholly go, but given the ragged state of publishing in general at the moment - and with comics and graphic novels suffering falling sales - the industry must make some tough decisions to reinvigorate comics and prevent the medium from falling into obscurity.

As per part one of this article, OK Erok! proposes four ways to revitalise the comics publishing industry:

1. Kill ongoing/endless titles:
   Ongoing/endless titles, with their increasingly baroque continuities, alienate casual readers and stifle the creativity of writers. Finite/limited titles energise writers and offer more 'hooks' for the reader. Make them the cornerstone of the industry.
   
   
2. Release/relax copyright on existing characters:
   Encourage the current generation of comics fans and creators to offer their own takes on classic characters.
   
   In Japan, a dojinshi culture of amateur/unsigned creators, making professional-quality bootlegs of popular manga, is seen as a benefit rather than a threat to publishers. It's only a step forward from the comics industry's policy of harvesting talent from successive generations of comic readers.
   
   
3. Crowd-source comics:
   Without getting into the debate about whether or not crowd-sourcing is evil - the equivalent of making every worker a scab etc - it may also be a fact of economic life, especially in the 'creative industries'. Zuda is an early adopter of this approach.
   

   "...comic book culture has a higher percentage of productive fans than other groups. Even more significant, the productive fan of comic books can actually get a job writing, drawing, or somehow being involved in making the official adventures of his or her favorite character. Fans of Star Wars don't really ever get this chance." - Matthew Pustz
   

   This is the great, untapped strength of comics culture. Acknowledge the fact that comics fans are some of the most creative fans and build it into the system.
   
   
4. Anthologise monthly comics:
   DC has recently acknowledged the need to provide more content for their expensive products, by lowering their price and adding back-up features to their titles. Despite the failure of CrossGen Comics, which pioneered monthly anthology comics, the monthly book is a relic of another time and needs to be retired.
   
   
5. Decentralise publishing:
   The advantage big publishers have over indie producers is their ability to market and get exposure for their products. Change focus, from doing everything - outsource some of the creative work (as above) - to bringing comics to readers.
   

Review: Give Me Liberty

A young woman survives deprivation, war and political machinations in this bleak and charmless work.

‘Black humour’ must be among the most over-used, mis-represented descriptions of creative failure; usually it is heavy on the blackness and low on humour. ‘Political satire’ falls into the same category and few works have the political insight to justify the claim.

The comics industry owes Frank Miller a debt of gratitude. Miller's noir stamp on Daredevil and then Batman, in the 1980s, breathed fresh air into stale franchises and ushered in a new ‘gritty’ era of comics.

DC published Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in 1986, the same year as Watchmen. Liberating and fresh, these works seemed to demonstrate the potential of the comics medium to express adult ideas and stories. Unfortunately, the industry's vogue for ‘dark’ and ‘mature’ themes led them to fill their comics with gratuitous violence, cynicism and exploitative misogyny.

These qualities, always nascent in Miller's stories, came to dominate them. Miller's work never again hit the heights of Dark Knight and has increasingly come to parody itself.

Set in a dystopian near future, Give Me Liberty follows the adventures of Martha Washington, a black girl from a violent Chicago slum, who joins the US army and becomes a war hero. Martha's story provides a through-line for the degeneration of the US government and the internal political struggles.

Give Me Liberty is replete with gags. For example, Martha takes her name (presumably) from George Washington's wife. The US Army is renamed PAX - latin for 'peace' - ironically recalling the Pax Romana, the 'Roman Peace', a period of relative tranquility during the time of the Roman Empire.

There is no shortage of ideas - the title comes from Patrick Henry's famous insurrectionary quote 'Give me liberty or give me Death!' - but quite what Miller wants us to take from them, beyond the obvious 'irony' is unclear.

And if Miller’s work is not particularly nuanced or insightful of politics, at times it is very funny. The space-station occupied by ‘Aryan Thrust’ - a group of militant extremists, who assert that ‘the future is white, fascist and gay’ - takes the form of a gigantic phallus. Miller seems to want to say something about men, but what?

Indeed, apart from Martha there are almost no women in Give Me Liberty. With the exception of Elektra, Miller often conforms to the comic industry’s exploitative portrayal of women. Martha is no sex object, but nor is she much of a woman; her value lies in her malleability to the ends of power and her effective use of force.

The world of Give Me Liberty is not quite a Hobbesian war of all against all, but force is the idiom of society, power its highest value. Miller wants to say something about men, but he presents again an assemblage of ideas, without a strong organising principle.

Martha Washington herself is kept in a kind of developmental stasis. We learn little about her, or her motivations, other than her facility for killing and surviving. Martha is the still point, around which the chaos of the story revolves. It is tempting to see this as a kind of Forrest Gump move on Miller’s part; while Moretti, the ambitious military man, manoeuvres himself into power Martha fights and survives his wars.

It seems that Miller wants to have his cake and eat it. Power is shown to cruelly brutalise and instrumentalise, but Miller relishes in the violence which is Martha's sole purpose in life.

On the plus side, the storytelling in Give Me Liberty is expert, in particular the pacing, which moves along slickly. And Dave Gibbon's charismatic artwork evokes Watchmen. If only we could remember the brilliant visual style and storytelling Miller introduced to comics and forget what he has to say.