Screenshots and Questions

Here's a collection of random screenshots from this weekend and the questions they inspire...

1) How does one get an invitation to Komic's Live?

I've never mentioned this group before on this blog. I think they came along after I had discovered Z-Cult, so I never explored them. I do know they were the comics downloading site of choice of Matt Fraction (or so someone with his screen name said on the Warren Ellis forum)

Anyway, apparently they are an *invite only* forum and several of their threads seemed to link to this blog, so I'm interested in seeing what they are saying.

2) Why don't more people download Herbie the Fat Fury?

I have no idea whether Herbie is in public domain or whatnot, but damn it's a funny comic! Apparently, only 100 people on Zcult agree with me. Almost as many people find Kade worth downloading. Go figure.

3) What is Suske en Wiske, and why must it be uploaded in single issue torrents?

Taking more room than it rightfully should I suspect, here is a foreign comic series that seems to be all the rage on Pirate Bay...

4) How many voters does it take to win a Zuda Competition?

Check out these two screenshots from the two Zuda Winners so far.

First, High Moon



Next, Pray for Death:



Now, albeit, it's possible that many factors are weighing into the visitor/voter relationship with both winners, and it WAS a Holiday season, so that might have affected the voting results, but overall, doesn't it look like Pray For Death won with just a little more than a third of the votes that High Moon previously got? And only half of the views?

Gentlemen, start your excel graphs now! :D

Who wants to create a Super-Heroine Contest

I get a lot of e-mails from people who want to create characters for the Flashback Universe. And unfortunately, I'm not always in a position to say yes to the ideas, even though they may be fantastic. However, the good folks at ShadowLine comics have a contest going on that might interest readers of this blog:

[ Who wants to create a Super-Heroine! ]

If you've been itching to take a shot at writing comics, check out the link above! The character you create will appear in a printed comic mini-series with art by drawn by *fan-favorite artist, Franchesco.*

Deadline for the contest is January 31st, so click on the link, read all the details and GOOD LUCK! :)

What's Scanned and UnScanned in the Marvel Universe

Thanks to the efforts of a fine gentleman named Nerone from Italy, I bring you the list of what's been scanned in the Marvel Universe:

http://www.flashbackuniverse.com/MarvelScannedList-Dec2007.htm

It's interesting to see how many old Golden Age comics have been scanned! Also interesting is that so many Malibu and Epic comics have been scanned.

Sad to see that the complete 70's Marvel Planet of the Apes has not been scanned...

...guess I'll have to search for them on eBay...

Happy New Year From Flashback!

This New Year's image comes to us from Diego Tripodi, who drew the TRex BackStory. Diego also told me that he is currently working on a comic that has been selected to be in the January Zuda Competition! Way To Go Diego!

The Top Ten Digital Comic News Stories of 2007

Hey, I'm back, and I hope you enjoyed your Holidays as much as I did! Well, with the year winding up, I thought it be nice to look back at 2007 and rundown the big news stories in the world of Digital Comics for 2007.

Note: Please don't try and figure out why one story ranks higher than another. In most cases, it's just an arbitrary call made by me...

1) Chrono/Theme packs become the big fad among the digital comic uploaders
For those of you who are not familiar with the term Chrono Pack, it's a torrent of comics of a specific character arranged in chronological order, thus the name. The most famous of these is the Marvel Chrono pack which saw a reseed on Zcult with a version 2 of the earlier packs. In addition to this, there was also a huge rise in C-list Chrono packs including... The Man-Bat Chrono Pack, The Freedom Fighters Chrono Pack, Galaxy of the Guardians Chrono Pack, Man-Wolf Chrono Pack... you get the idea. It seemed like every 3rd rate character was now the subject of a Chrono pack.

At the same time, Theme packs picked up steam as people started torrents on Witches, Werewolves, Zombies and Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis. While nothing new, there was quite a proliferation of these type of torrents this year.

2) Lost Girls is downloaded by over 65,000 people.
Now, if only half of those had been given the opportunity to *buy* the digital version at $1.00 a pop, imagine how much more money Top Shel would have made off the book.

3) Todd Allen becomes a columnist at ComicBookResources
For those of you not familiar with the knowledgeable Mr. Allen, I will introduce him here as the _EXPERT_ in all things Web Comics. His book, The Economics of Web Comics is MUST reading for anybody considering a future in Web Comics.

....a quick read will reveal that no one at Zuda read the book, but that's neither here or there...

While not *directly* related to Digital Comics per se, I think it's significant that reading comics on the web have gained enough traction amongst the mainstream comic readers that comicbookresources saw fit to have Allen start his column. Also, Allen sometimes has interesting notes about the Digital Comics scene (though he's not the Digital Comics nerd that I am...)

4) Amazon starts selling Kindles.
They look like crap and are way overpriced, but one day, you might be able to read American Flagg on them while sitting in an airport. Not really a Digital Comics new related item, but it's a step in the right direction, so there you go.

5) A developer in Australia develops a way to read comics on iTunes
Here's the link to the original post I did about this story. http://flashbackuniverse.blogspot.com/2007/11/flashback-on-your-iphoneipod-touch.html
Note: I have actually used this last week and flashback comics look great on the new iPod.

6) Marvel launches its Digital Comics Universe
Yeah, it's wrapped in an half assed Flash interface and NO they are not downloadable, but still full comic books on the web are a good thing right? Yeah...I know. I'll see you in alt.binaries.comics.reposts...

7) DC lauches Zuda
While DEFINITELY not Digital Comics, the Zuda project, like Marvel's DCU is an acknowledgement by one of the major players that the web is where the future is. I predict that DC launches its own Digital Comic site next year as well.

8) Marvel pulls its liscensing from GIT
So, once Marvel decided to launch its DCU it also pulled the liscensing for the PDF collections of comics on DVD that GIT was making. While I'm not a fan of PDF comics, this really feels like bad move. Here's the original story from the FB blog: http://flashbackuniverse.blogspot.com/2007/11/git-loses-marvel-liscense-gains-archie.html

9) Slave Labor Graphis starts Eyemelt.com
While not given as much ink as Zuda or Marvel's DCU, Eyemelt was definitely the best in class example of how to sell Digital Comics in the year 2007. Besides having a great assortment of comics, Eyemelt provides users with a very easy system for buying their comics instantly. Dan Vado and company are to be commended! The aholes at PullBoxOnline should take note.

10) DC and Marvel send Zcult (and other torrent sites) cease and desist orders.
I don't think this will surprise anyone who's a regular at this blog. What I do think most of us found surprising was just what an uproar this little incident caused the *mainstream* comics web world. 3 years ago, I'd argue that the phrase Zcult meant nothing by and large to your average comic book message board poster. This year, it was a rallying call.

Well, that's all for this year. Quite a list aye?

I eagerly anticipate 2008!

Now, go get drunk! :D

- Jim

Christmas Break

I'm headed home for the Holidays, so I don't know how much posting I'll be able to do, so in the meantime, Pierre and I would like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday!

Behold! The Power of Prometheus!

Chad Bowers happened to send me some of the great artwork Chris Nye has been working on for their Prometheus story...so I thought I'd share a few of the pages here.

For those of you just joining us, this particular Prometheus story is going to guest star Amanita and picks up from the last* issue of Prometheus where he was at the mercy of that Hoodoo Powered Heavy Metal band Blood Money.

This is Chris' first time at coloring a comic in Photoshop, and the results are looking great! Check out these pages...

Here is the Opening Splash page with Prometheus being strangled by a Sonic Serpent. (Which is just what I'm calling it. btw...)



Here we see Amy Nettles slipping off to a discreet place to change into her superpowered alter ego - Amanita.



And here we have Prometheus and Amanita ready to wail on Blood Money.



I actually saw quite a bit more pages than this and they all had that awesome 70's vibe about them that you see here, so you can imagine how jazzed I am about this comic!

Maybe Friday, I'll show you some more pages from Chris Sims' So Falls The World comic...

*Note: The *last issue* thing is just a joke. Please don't email me asking if there really are any other issues of Prometheus. :D