Gary Tyrrell on Zuda … But Wait …
by Joey Manley
One of these things is not like the other. One of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you guess which thing is not like the other? And tell me before I finish this song?
Gary Tyrrell of Fleen thinks that DJ Coffman, and only DJ Coffman, has a right to an opinion about Platinum Studio’s intellectual property farm mechanism, the Comic Book Challenge. After all, Tyrrell argues, DJ is the only person who has won that contest, and the only one who has seen the contract. And he seems to be happy. So there. “Crisis resolved,” says Tyrrell.
On the other hand, Tyrrell has a lot of opinions about DC Comic’s new Zuda project, despite the fact that there’s not even a “winner” of the “contest” yet who would be qualified (per the terms of Tyrrell’s previous post) to tell us whether the deal is a sour one or not.
Gary Tyrrell is a good writer, usually one of the best webcomics bloggers out there, and most of the time he seems like a reasonable guy. I admire his work. But in this case, his former position may have been more informed by webcomics politics, and in particular by the strident lobbying of one particular webcartoonist, than he is able to admit.
No, we don’t have to wait for a “winner” in one of these little contests to comment on their viability as a means for cartoonists to advance their careers, and, no, depending on the word of one of those “winners” (who necessarily doesn’t want to look like an idiot for signing a bad deal, making him/her more likely to tell you that it was a good deal after all) is not good enough.
Or maybe I’m just the only one who sees the inconsistency? That’s entirely likely.
[corrected the spelling of Gary's last name -- my apologies again]
July 11th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Who is this “Tyrell” of which you speak?
July 11th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Sorry. Long night of indigestion, haven’t had my coffee. Am correcting!
July 11th, 2007 at 11:26 am
And, for the record, no lobbying by DJ towards me. It’s just that Platinum is a dead story (since we know what the contracts say there) and Zuda is an exciting new story that we get to speculate and pontificate on. See? Just like two entirely dissimilar things in a pod.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Do we know what Platinum’s contracts say, though? One of the parts of DC’s announcement that tends to make me more pro-Zuda than I might be otherwise is that they’re promising to release the actual contracts to the public before asking anybody to sign them. When I asked Rosenberg to do that, in the infamous Scott/Scott/Joey interview, he laughed and told me that *nobody* does that.
July 11th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Olive Branch post—
I totally don’t believe I can be the only one to have an opinion on Challenge because I’m the only winner so far, nor do I think someone else should think that, or that Gary even thinks that, but yeah, he was saying I’m satisfied, and I am.
Joey, as far as contracts go, and you already know this, it is out of the ordinary to post confidential contracts, I would expect what we’d see from DC will be a sort of “sample” contract that wouldn’t spell out exactly how much a winner would be paid. I’d be surprised if it had the breakdowns of percentages on royalties, etc– because from he side of he creator, it’s confidential and you often don’t want people knowing or breaking down how much you make, etc. Same goes for Platinum– they have a standard contract that they show to people, but it’s not the ONLY one. I’ve had 2 other contracts since being there actually, so I guess it all depends on your own business sense on dealing with those things.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Seems to me that the only person really qualified to comment on Fetus-X is Eric Millikin, and near as I can tell, he’s satisfied.
July 11th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
They didn’t say it would be a sample contract. They said it would be the contract. Neither of us really knows yet, though. We’ll find out soon! And, yes, it is highly unusual — which is why that part of it caught my eye. If they can deliver on the full transparency they’re promising, that will be an astoundingly good thing for the comics industry as a whole, and may help whip other players, large and small, into shape. Let’s all wait and see!
July 11th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
For once, we agree.
July 11th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
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