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

The SLG - ZCult FM mixup

Over the weekend, there seeems to have been quite a bit of mixup over whether Slave Labor Graphics would allow Zcult-FM to torrent their digital comics. (which I predicted earlier this week.)

From Serj, the Site Admin at Z-Cult:

Our statement and update in response to this news article:

UPDATED 25th Nov 2007 - 02:21)

In our first news post on this subject we posted the following statement from SLG Publishing:
Quote:

To the members of Z-Cult:

SLG publishing would like to thank the moderators and forumers of Z-Cult for the respect they have shown in regards to our ban request. Obviously, our preference is to have each comic legally paid for, and the efforts undertaken to honor this desire have clearly shown that Z-Cult is not a forum overrun by those expecting a free ride. In return, we have decided to lift the ban from our independently published titles being distributed on Z-Cult. Of course, this is not an entirely selfless act - we hope that exposure to our large library of titles will help encourage support of our legal download site, www.eyemelt.com.

It is our belief that there is a market for legally downloadable comic books, and we hope that we can prove this to the comics industry by showing success through our our digital distribution system.

Unfortunately we cannot lift the ban on any SLG/Disney titles, for reasons that should be obvious. These titles are limited to: The Haunted Mansion, Tron, Gargoyles and Wonderland. Our apologies for being unable to allow sharing on these particular titles.

For those of you who took the time and effort to report and remove our material, and particularly to those who undertook the process of re-uploading your torrents over and over without complaint, thank you.

SLG Publishing

(Serj has) just been in contact with Dan (Owner of SLG Publishing) who has said this statement DID NOT come from him and DID NOT come from this company.

(Serj has) been in contact with Dan and SLG Publishing over this issue and the following is the reason behind this mix up.

Many months ago someone on behalf of SLG Publishing contacted (Serj) requesting (Zcult) removed SLG books from our website. As standard procedure we asked the e-mailer to verify who they said they were and their position in the company. The user provided proof they were speaking on behalf on SLG Publishing and so (Zcult) removed the books. Dan has stated in his recent email to (Zcult) that the user WAS requesting the removal of their books on behalf of himself. So (Serj's) background research was 100% correct.

When this same user emailed (Serj) the other day from same account with this statement from SLG Publisher it was taken to be 100% official and the user stated it was from the company as a whole. This was taken as official by (Serj) due to our earlier contact with this user and email account. So much to (his) surprise tonight (Serj) was informed the owners did not issue this statement so (Zcult) removed this post until we could verify it.

(Serj) contacted Dan directly and informed him of everything (Serj) had gotten from the person claiming to be SLG publishing and this is the email issued in response by Dan from SLG Publishing.
Quote:

Hello Serj,

[I HAVE REMOVED NAME] is a freelance writer. He did, with my knowledge, contact you in regards to having you take down SLG content from your site when we started EYEMELT.COM.

However he is not in a position to make policies, especially in regard to something like this. We never asked him to make a statement about removing the ban. This being an American holiday I was unaware of any problems with your site and Marvel/DC since I was out of my office and not checking my email. I was not even aware of any statement on our behalf until I was contacted by a comics news site for additional comment.

[SERJ REMOVED NAME] obviously wrote the statement himself. I'm not certain why he felt he had the right to make a statement on our company's behalf without contacting me. I'm sorry if you came out looking bad on this as I do believe you were acting under the impression that [REMOVED NAME] was sending you something on our behalf. Again, why he thought he could issue a statement on my company's behalf without contacting me is beyond explanation. [REMOVED NAME] is very devoted to the notion of digital comics and he must have felt he was acting in everyones best interests.

I'll be issuing an amended statement on our blog and news site and I will be sure to mention that you posted the SLG statement under the honest assumption it was from us. As for the lifting of the ban, just so you can come away from this with something, you can go ahead and make our stuff available for download. I am not certain what our digital plans are going to be in the coming year, so I may come back and ask you to drop them again.
Dan Vado

So there we go. I followed up this email asking if they wanted banners as stated in the "offical" statement that turned out to be false and Dan said:

Quote:

As for the banners, go ahead and leave them up for now. Lets see if there is any jump in sales long term because of this.

Sooo SLG comics still good to go and banners remain..

I am sorry for any confusion this might have caused but seems a little mix up and confusion has taken place on both sides.

End of Serj's Post.

UPDATE: Here is more information from Blog@Newsarama...
http://blog.newsarama.com/2007/11/25/dan-vado-apologizes-to-z-cult-fm-and-well-everyone

My biggest take away from all this is I'm a little curious about Dan's comments about what his future digital plans might be. Also, I think it's really quite awesome of him to support Zcult-FM by allowing Zcult to torrent the SLG books.