Regarding Wowio’s woes: Rumors are spreading that they’re late on paying second quarter royalties.

Update: Wowio publisher T Campbell goes into detail and recommends people get out now.

Regarding the Webcomics book review, I guess I’ll have to start reading PvP — at least this week.

Regarding the awesomeness that is Middleman: Creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach is interviewed by my old roommate Alan Sepinwall. I am very sad that the show isn’t doing well, and even sadder that we were going to see how the “Middleman developed his old-fashioned, upright persona” but now we likely won’t. I would buy this show if it went straight to DVD. I love it.

Last, the final word on Kramer’s Ergot #7, the $125 anthology: Supporter Tom Spurgeon talks with editor Sammy Harkham about its contents, contributors, and the rationale behind the price point. Among the factors: due to its size, each copy has to be bound by hand. Custom shipping boxes had to be made. And the editor wanted to do an on-site press check, so he had to fly to Singapore.

Brain Scan Studios wanted to release their comic Serial, about real-life serial killers, through Wowio, only to be turned down due to content. Now, although the publisher calls it “censorship”, Wowio (owned by Platinum Studios) has every right to decline to carry titles if they feel they aren’t a good match for their readership.

However, if they’re bumping some titles and others are choosing to leave (via) because of decreased downloads and feeling “uncomfortable” about the new ownership, how many are they going to be left with?

Warning, snark approaching: which value do you think will go to zero first, titles offered or readers?

When Wowio was down for its ownership transfer earlier this year, I said I wanted to be notified when they returned. Because of that, I got an email with a link promising a free gift. It’s an almost 14-MB download of an 87-page sampler. The contents are

• Wowio Overview — “introduces the highlights and features that’ll help you make the most of your Wowio experience”
• The Adventures of Tymm: Alien Circus #1 — a 50-page Platinum kids’ comic, ending “to be continued”
• The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County — the 1865 Mark Twain book, with illustrations

The overview section is two pages of “we’re great.” I found it interesting that the options discussed are “read online for free” or “purchase and download”. They’re trying to eliminate the previous model of “download for free”, it appears.

If you want to see for yourself, that link doesn’t appear to be restricted or protected. Unfortunately, their mass mailing didn’t include an “unsubscribe” link, which I thought was standard in such emails.

I’d love to see a good instructional manual with all the tips and tricks for not only making a webcomic (which anyone can do with minimal help) but creating a successful one. This book, subtitled “An Insider’s Guide to Writing, Drawing, and Promoting Your Own Webcomics”, gave me hope, but it doesn’t live up to the promise, in part because of its divided focus.

Webcomics 2.0
Buy this book

The title comes from blending the subject, webcomics, with current hype term Web 2.0 (used for interactive websites like YouTube). I don’t think it’s the best idea, in part because I’m not sure most webcomics can be accurately described that way, but more because it gives the impression that this book is either a sequel or a revised edition.

Since it’s being blurbed as by “insiders”, let’s look at the author credits for Steve Horton and Sam Romero. I knew of the former because he wrote the manga-styled Image miniseries Strongarm, but he’s also credited as “co-creator of the long-running webcomic Grounded Angel” and for running “a comics publishing company, Smashout Comics, which publishes digital comics through the Wowio e-book service.” Unfortunately, neither of those are ongoing at this time. Grounded Angel is described as “romance action manga” and seems to have concluded, while the Smashout titles I checked are no longer part of Wowio after the recent changes (an understandable choice).

As for Romero, he “is the creator of the popular webcomic Edge the Devilhunter, featured at Graphic Smash.” I plugged “Edge the Devilhunter” into Google, and the actual, updating site shows up as the fourth link. The first is an earlier mirror site that stopped updating in October 2007; the next two are reference sites. So I can understand why he needs to list the host site in the description. When you do visit the strip (NSFW), the first thing I saw (as of this writing) was a topless female with breasts as big as her head. The comic is apparently a manga-styled adventure; after that image, I didn’t stick around to find out the details. The Comixpedia description says

The webcomic itself is noteworthy not only for its extreme violence and sexual content, but its controversial left-wing political content and liberal use of racial epithets.

Back to the book. The presentation is very professional and easy to read, with large subject headings making it easy to find a particular section. There are 13 chapters plus a glossary for a total of 225 pages of content. However, the authors don’t start covering webcomic creation until the eighth chapter, 90 pages into the book. After a short introduction, there are chapters each on humor, adventure, and manga and additional chapters on other examples and “gathering the [creative] team”. I find the genre division odd — manga is more often considered an art style or influence instead of a genre, so I’m not sure why they split it that way, unless it’s a reflection of how both authors are known for work in that style. Read the rest of this entry »

Now webcomic provider Wowio is owned by Platinum. How have things changed? Let’s look at a couple of customer reviews.

Sean Kleefeld discovered that some of the books he had planned to download for free will now cost money. They can still be read for free, but only if you’re online, thus removing a lot of the convenience. Moving the price from “free” to “$3.99″ per issue is quite an adjustment. $3.99 is not a deal compared to standard comic pricing, especially considering you don’t get a printed copy. Add in that Plowio is trying to charge for books that are available for free elsewhere, and it looks a lot like gouging.

Willow at Seeking Avalon found that some of the books she was reading are no longer available for download at all, at any price. She goes on to complain (justifiably) about unreadable screens and poor quality. She’s also found a lot of material has disappeared from her pre-Platinum Wowio library. Put together all this poor customer service, and it’s driving her to investigate competitors. That’s got to be the opposite of what Platinum wanted, but that’s what you get when you make the contracts less favorable to contributors. A number of publishers have left the site as a result, or because they don’t want to be involved with a company with such a bad reputation.

Platinum has upped the number of their books available at Wowio, but since they’re charging the same price for online as they do for the print books, I think it’s pretty obvious they Don’t Get It when it comes to online. (Regardless of how many comments Wowio employee Gerry makes in response to critical posts.)

WOWIO worked for everyone: free comics for readers and real payments for creators of 50 cents a PDF download. (I previously interviewed Bill Williams of Lone Star Press about how well it worked for them.)

Then they were acquired by generally shady Platinum. Even if you don’t mind the ethics, Platinum lost over $5 million last year, mainly because their business plan appears to be “acquire comic properties, don’t publish them, hope someone gives us lots of money to make them into movies”. This is not a mature business plan.

A financial analyst speaking generally about publishers said movie and video game deals are typically seen as one-time windfalls, not a bankable business strategy. And the auditor’s going-concern warning took into account Platinum’s future business plans. Much of Platinum’s financial challenges owes to the company’s spending, which one former employee called “outrageous.”

D.J. Coffman, cartoonist and internet gadabout, was one of Platinum’s biggest supporters, because he won one of their contests (which involved them, at the end, taking his property, neglecting to pay him what they promised, and threatening him legally when he told people what was going on). Now, even he refuses the new Platinum-rewritten Wowio contact. As he points out, there are way too many unanswered questions and clauses that basically say “trust us” when the company has demonstrated it’s completely untrustworthy.

But then, company CEO Scott Rosenberg has a very long history of shady comic dealings.

Which leads me to a digression: I was talking with friends one night who hadn’t heard certain stories about unethical behavior from certain comic publishers because it happened last decade. It was fun digging up the old dirt, sure, but I also realized that some people, if they can just stick around long enough, will get a fresh start because comics doesn’t have much of a memory for these kinds of things. Which is a shame, because it’s what allows crooks to keep preying on people. Combine that with the “oh, that won’t happen to ME” egotism many have, and you have a recipe for predators to keep culling the herd.

So, anyway, it appears that the Golden Age of Wowio is over, and while it may return, it won’t be the useful tool it once us, because a gang of crooks put themselves in the middle of it.

Update: Sean Kleefeld is more optimistic than I am, although he does provide advice for users to download whatever they’re interested in quickly once the site reopens. He also has an interesting rumor, that providers will be required to line up their own advertisers. Like him, I’m not sure that’s plausible; if that’s the case, then what, exactly, is Platio providing that justifies them taking half the proceeds?

WOWIO seemed like a magical place where everyone’s wishes got answered. Readers got free comics for download as PDF. Creators got paid 50 cents per download. It all supposedly worked due to the magic of embedded ads (which was why the service required registration and was only available in the U.S.).

Now, the site is down, with a message that they will be back in mid-July and operating globally. Brigid rounds up what news is known. Some of the numbers are quite impressive, with one small publisher claiming they’d made over $90,000 a year from the service. I hope it’s not gone for good; it was a creative approach to serving the needs of both reader and creator.

I previously interviewed Bill Williams of Lone Star Press about his company’s experiences with WOWIO.

The following comics are now available for reading online, with your choice as to whether to buy them in print.

Duel #1

by Seth Wolfshorndl, Three Trees Studios, $2.95 in print or free online

Two kids have a sketch battle, coming up with new characters to defeat each other’s creations. Originally a 24-hour comic, this simple story is well-suited to online display, which makes the creator’s decision to put it on WOWIO a smart one. (Once you register at that site, you can download free PDF comics with ads included.) It’s imaginative and faithful to its characters, and I enjoyed reading it (in large part because of its innocence), but I don’t see any need to own it. Loved the ending, and it really gave me the feeling of hanging out for an afternoon with two eight-year-olds who love their monsters.

Rook City #1

by Seth Wolfshorndl, Three Trees Studios, $2.95 in print or free online

Same author, same release setup, but this one’s a bit more ambitious, the story of a college student who’s the only normal one in a city of weirdos. In various short stories, we see an ancient vigilante in a nursing home; a gang of vampire wannabes called the Vlad Squad; a stolen museum piece; and fake superheroes. If you’re at all interested in any of these concepts, you’ve likely seen better done before. There’s more time spent on setups than perhaps the gags require, and the stories just peter out, as though the author didn’t know how or when to end on something punchy.

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword

by Barry Deutsch, www.hereville.com, $15 in print or $5 for an e-copy or free online (but at a rate of only one page a week, to complete in December)

There are many webcomic creators who are publishing their works a page at a time, with thoughts of eventual collection, but Deutsch is doing it the other way around: he’s already done the story, all 57 pages of it, and now he’s doling it out online. If you don’t want to wait, you have two options for getting the entire story now, a somewhat expensive print version (but with a print run of only 100, you don’t get any economies of scale) or an electronic version. I think his prices are too high for the generally accepted ranges of such things, but if he can get it, more power to him.

Deutsch describes his series as a quirky fantasy adventure comic for fans of Bone or Courtney Crumrin — I’d add Amy Unbounded to that list as well. I reviewed the CBZ version, and I found the lettering full of personality but hard to read on a small screen. (I use a laptop, which keeps me from reading lots of online comics, especially the page-based ones.) There’s lots of dialogue, unfortunately for me, since that’s where the humor and meaningful characterization comes in.

Mirka, our heroine, is a willful young girl resenting having to learn feminine stuff like knitting. She’d rather be slaying dragons. In the meantime, her argument-loving stepmother (a hoot!) is a burden to her and her younger brother humors her wishes until she gets a chance to actually act on them.

It’s a charming story, with lots of good feeling and attention to tradition, made all the more unusual by its Orthodox Jewish background (in a fantasy world, yet — that’s something very rare), but I sure can’t see reading it only a page at a time. Too much of the energy and flow would be lost. Oh, and Deutsch promises to do more “Hereville” stories after this one concludes at the end of the year; he’ll publish them after he’s completed them.