Digital Comic Distributor Makes Grab For Displaced DC Creators

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The downsizing/closure of DC Comics’ webcomic imprint Zuda Comics last week caught many by surprise – Not least of whom, many creators who suddenly found that their strips had disappeared along with the Zuda website. Now, digital comics company Graphic.ly and online art community deviantArt are teaming up to offer an alternative outlet for those creators.

In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Graphic.ly’s CEO Micah Baldwin explains what the companies can offer former Zuda creators:

[W]hat we’re going to do is start a Group on deviantArt for Zuda Comic creators to come, and we’re opening our doors to make a place for them to go. Any Zuda creator that wants can give me a call directly and talk about the potential of distribution on the Graphic.ly platform. We might do something more formal, but for now we just want to make a place for Zuda creators to land… deviantArt is great for this because a lot of creators are already there, and there are all the social features of the site. What we’ll be able to do is leverage that relationship by setting up the Group to let everybody join and get to know everyone there. Then we’ll go through our standard curation process and reach out to the displaced winners to figure out whether they’re interested in distribution on Graphic.ly. I don’t want to step on any relationships they’ve got with DC, but we’re very open to independent comics. For us, that’s the next big thing, and working with established folks like the Zuda guys is the best first step.

One of the common comments when Zuda launched was why any webcomickers would go with them, as opposed to going it alone, and a common response was not only the publicity push that the imprint provided, but also the print editions that DC provided. Given that neither Graphic.ly nor deviantArt have the same resources, it’ll be interesting to see how successful this new co-venture will be.

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