First thing today, we posted reactions from various creators in the Zuda community about Zuda itself going away and their titles being integrated into DC’s new online platforms. However, we wanted to provide both sides of this story, so now we have a quick talk with former Zuda head Ron Perazza about the events that transpired recently. It’s a very interesting talk, and one that sheds a lot of the light upon what exactly is happening with the current and future state of Zuda (and to a certain degree, DC Online).
Thanks to Ron for chatting, and take a look after the jump.
At the end of April, submissions were put on hold and the Zuda competition went away. While this concept is getting integrated into the DC mothership (so to speak), did the competition/submission aspects of Zuda originally go away because of the digital rollout we just saw? Or were these two changes not related?
They were related but maybe not as closely as you might think. When we first started to talk to the Co-Publishers about what ZUDA could be one of the immediate issues that we needed to be addressed was just how costly, both financially and in terms of manpower, it was to run each competition – time and effort that yielded comparatively little ongoing comic content and seemed to become increasingly cumbersome with each month. So ending the competition was sort of like the first step in thinking about how best to allocate our resources to producing the best content possible, as efficiently as possible.
While it sounds like it is still in its infancy stage, do you have a timeframe for when we’ll see the new submissions process that the Co-Publishers are developing?
That’s something that is no longer exclusively the realm of ZUDA. Their goal is to have something comprehensive that can cover submission of an original concept or something as straightforward as pencil submissions for an existing, ongoing DCU title. In the immediate future we’re continuing to our submissions process at the major conventions, like San Diego Comic-Con. I can’t speak to a timeframe beyond that since this is obviously something that hits a lot of different areas of the company beyond the Online team.
How are the Zuda comics translating to the new Sony Playstation Network and the ComiXology app? Will these twenty page “issues” be twenty Zuda frames, or will everything be set up differently?
This might not hold true for every single series but generally speaking we’re dividing each Zuda Comics Season (60 screens) into three, 20-screen issues. In some cases it’s 19 screens, in some it’s 21, it depends on where the story breaks are, but I’m sure you get the idea.
With Bayou and High Moon launching and a number of other titles upcoming, there is a good spread of Zuda Comics going digital. What happens to those titles that do not make the cut? Will we find out which titles will not carry on in the future?
You can absolutely expect more ZUDA series through this channel. We’re still working on a release schedule and one of the things we need to do across the board as a company, not just with ZUDA, is figure out a way to let people know what’s coming out week by week. The normal solicitations handle that on the print side but there’s no parallel process for digital just yet. This kind of communication is going to be critical in order to keep people informed and build an audience. We shouldn’t assume that everyone buying digital knows about print solicitations, what’s old, what’s new and what’s original or archival. I can say that next up for ZUDA is THE NIGHT OWLS and then right after that is AZURE.
For those that have won recent competitions like “Eldritch!”, “War of the Woods” and “Monsterplex”, what will happen with their titles and to the creators who crafted them?
Unfortunately not all of the titles that were a originally planned to be a part of the site are migrating to this new system. I don’t want to get too into the private business of these creators but I’m already reaching out to them to discuss the next steps. Our intention is to settle the contract side of things and completely revert their rights so that they can move along in whatever way they see fit. There’s no reason we should let paperwork for a website plan that doesn’t exist at this point prevent them from developing their series on their own.
Continued belowWith Zuda going away, it looks like you’ll now be the head of DC Comics Online. What will your role be going forward?
Well, actually, my “Creative Services” title is sort of misleading in that I was already the head of DC Comics Online before ZUDA came about. For years. Dave McCullough, the tech lead on the Zuda site, is actually the tech lead for all of DC Online. In fact, ZUDA was originally created as an area within DC Online to act as kind of a digital comic content think tank. So we’ve always had this sort of privateer aspect to what we were doing. I think that DC Comics as a whole benefits from that.
What is your vision for DC Comics Online, and how do you see Zuda integrating into that vision?
That’s a HUGE question. I don’t know quite how to answer it briefly. I don’t think you can look at digital as an “extra” – as if it’s just an add-on to an existing area of business. That’s a pretty naive and limited view of things. I think it’s simultaneously an area of vast, untapped creativity, the most efficient and effective method of communication and a gigantic, diverse, passionate community. We need to respect that not exploit it.
