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Further Ado #260: Spinning Out of SDCC – Part 3

Further Ado #260: Spinning Out of SDCC – Part 3

Posted on by Ed Catto

Comic Conventions can be a lot of fun, but they take a lot of energy, time and money to do “right”. Here’s a glimpse at just a few more of the publishers who leveraged their onsite efforts to the fullest at San Diego Comic-Con last month.

DSTLRY

This cool start-up is more than just ComiXology 2.0. In fact, it might be the opposite. It’s been reported on everywhere from NY Times to The SDDC blog. Over on Reed’s Popverse, Chris Arrant summarized the start-up in this fashion:

Almost a year after leaving Amazon’s digital comics platform ComiXology, two of the company’s former leaders have announced what’s next — both for them and, if their ambitions are successful, comics as a whole. Get ready for DSTLRY, a new kind of publishing company.

ComiXology co-founder/former CEO David Steinberger and his former head of content Chip Mosher are aiming to rethink how business is done, and how to give creators what they deserve, with the company, partnering with major comics creators, major publishers, tech strategists, and even a movie producer to launch a company for creator-owned comics that aims to be a new kind of comics publisher.

Their SDCC booth was big and bold – and surprisingly uncluttered. It was located opposite where I usually find Mark Wheatley (he took a year off), right in the center of things.

They offered convention exclusives of their Devil’s Cut One-Shot. This reminds me of the old days when the TV networks would preview the seasons new shows with short clips of each one. Continue reading “Further Ado #260: Spinning Out of SDCC – Part 3” →

Brainiac On Banjo: The ComiXology Kamikaze

Brainiac On Banjo: The ComiXology Kamikaze

Posted on by Mike Gold

When I look over my shoulder, what do you think I see? Some other cat looking over his shoulder at me. And he’s strange, sure is strange. – Donovan Leitch, “Season of the Witch.”

When it comes to the digital world, sometimes all those zeroes and ones just don’t add up. Let’s look at ComiXology, what I once considered to be a genuine revolutionary force in the medium.

In the history of paper publishing going all the way back to papyrus, it’s often been a crappy way to make a living. Oh, sure, some folks have been enormously successful, but on the same hand some folks win the lottery. Expenses are high and nobody knows what the market wants. Paper is getting hard to find (soon we will have to make a choice between having paper and having oxygen and trees), and places to buy the finished product have run thin. “Book browsing” and impulse purchases have become 21st Century rotary dial telephones.

We needed an alternative way to get comics. In 1981, Marvel Comics published Dazzler #1 and made it available only to the then-growing number of dedicated comic book stores, and that showed us there just might be life after the newsstands and candy shops. To make a long story short, around that same time I turned to theatrical producer Rick Obadiah and said “hey, you know, we could do this.” And that’s the shortest origin story for First Comics ever told.

Things went pretty well until the overwhelming number of distributors bellied up after exclusive distribution deals kicked in. As those distributors were coughing up blood, the “smaller publishers” (meaning just about everybody except Marvel and DC) started getting paid late, if at all. Again, I’m making a very long story short. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: The ComiXology Kamikaze” →