DC Comics just launched their online initiative site, Zuda Comics, the other day. Now I’m not so much a DC guy, but I’d been hearing a lot about this site / competition from a friend of mine who’s been busting his ass to try and get a comic together for it.
He’s got the story. He’s got the story boards. He’s got the characterizations. He knows what he wants it to be. This story has been baking for years. It’s all good to go but for one thing…
He’s a writer, but not an artist.
Ergo…
He needs an artist.
You’d think what with all the starving going on an artist would be easy to find. One would think, but not in this case. It’s been one thing after another with each potential artist – not enough talent, no comic experience, and no attention to detail / direction. In the meantime, the site launched and the competition along with it. That’s frustrating.
Still, there’s hope. I just spoke to him a bit earlier today and he’s got an artist that wants to and can do the job. The plan is to finish the first comic; self publish it online and then pitch it around. If Zuda has another competition, I’m sure he’ll submit it as well.
I’m looking forward to the final product. In my mind, whether or not it gets picked up by a publisher, just getting it done is a major victory. It’s one thing to talk about projects like this, and another thing entirely to actually get them done.
As for the Zuda comic site, I spent some time on it this morning and, for the most part, liked what I saw from both the art and implementation side of things. The comics are presented nicely with a full screen option that looks really great on my 21” monitor and the interaction response time is nice and snappy too. On top of that, the player remembers where you were so if you leave a comic and come back to it, you come back to where you left off. Not amazing functionality, but nice and the type of feature you might not even notice. As for the comics themselves, it’s kind of what I expected from people looking to break into the field – mostly good to sometimes great (albeit occasionally derivative art), mixed with fair to ok writing. There’s that and the fact that most of the stories seem to pick up in the middle and depend on people reading the synopsis – which is fairly hidden – rather than start off from the beginning. Given the constraints, it’s a tough proposition to strike the perfect complementary balance between story and art. Always is, no?
And hey – they’re doing it, which is cool in itself. Nice to see people with the ability to get it done and the stones to put their work out there for the fanboy nation to comment on it.
As for my favorite entry? It’s: This American Strife by JLongo.
Good news for your friend, it looks like Zuda’s doing another round of competitions right after the current round ends. And then they plan to do another, then another, then another, so tell him to get his comic in ASAP.
Best of luck to him!