ComicSpace and WCN are Merging, and Getting Investment Capital
by Joey Manley
Today, Josh Roberts (owner of ComicSpace and Onlinecomics.net) and I are excited to announce that we have signed a Letter of Intent to merge our businesses into one corporate entity. We will be working with E-Line Ventures, a New Jersey-based ‘double bottom line’ early-stage investment firm (they look at both the financial and social impact of their investments) to secure the necessary funding and support for us to effectively merge and run the combined business.
It’s been obvious to me, and to anybody else paying attention, that my websites are too ambitious, and have grown much too quickly, for one person to manage properly. As some of you know, I’ve spent the better part of two years looking for the right partners to help me step my efforts up. A lot of people and companies have come calling during that time, but nothing felt quite right, for one reason or another.
A few months ago, Josh and I were corresponding on a technical issue, and our conversation sort of veered into this territory. Turned out he was in the same position I was in — and had turned down a lot of the same offers I had turned down, for the same reasons. Josh’s skillsets are quite different from mine, but his goals and plans are very, very similar. Each of us fills a gap in the other’s area of expertise. After brainstorming for a while, we realized that we would make a great team, that each of us would be stronger with the other at his side, and we decided, way back then, to merge our businesses — but only if we could find investors, and get the funding to build out the kind of stable business infrastructure we’ve both been lacking.
E-Line has provided a blueprint for making that dream come true, without our having to sell out our core beliefs. We’ve been working with them for what seems like a year or two now (but has really only been a few months), to bring our vision for offering the most useful, empowering and engaging services for digital comic creators and readers to life. The folks at E-Line not only understood and support this vision, they have complimentary skills to help us make it happen. Those guys rock. You’ll be meeting some of them – as well as some of our own new co-employees — over time.
The websites to be part of the new venture include: ComicSpace.com, WebcomicsNation.com, OnlineComics.net, GraphicNovelReview.com, TalkAboutComics.com, ModernTales.com, Girlamatic.com, Serializer.net, and GraphicSmash.com.
Those last four (Modern Tales, Girlamatic, serializer and Graphic Smash) will continue to operate as separate brands, with their own domains, though they will gets lots of cool new features thanks to our increased development resources.
All of the others — ComicSpace, WCN, OnlineComics, GNR, and TAC, will be merged into one fully-integrated site, combining all the best features from each of the existing sites with many other new features, all designed to empower creators to reach their own goals — find larger audiences, make a living (or at least a little more money) from their webcomics, and reach out to new distribution channels, like mobile and print, etc. — while maintaining full control and ownership of their intellectual property.
That combined will be called ComicSpace.
For those who have multiple accounts on several of these sites, we’ll be working with you to get all your information merged into one convenient place. And pre-existing webcomicsnation.com or talkaboutcomics.com URL’s (like, to an individual comic, or even an individual forum post) will redirect to their new equivalent locations on the new site seamlessly. So don’t stress on that front. We’re still a few months out from the launch of the new ComicSpace. Until that time, the individual sites will continue to run just as they have in the past.
If you have any questions, feel free to respond here, or pop me an email: joeymanley at gmail.com.
[update: Josh's announcement]
October 29th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Woo hoo! I hadn’t seen that one coming in a million years!
I’ve been setting up original art sales on ComicSpace and I was thinking that there were some things CS was doing better than WCN, but I was reluctant to point that out to you. If only I’d known….
October 29th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Yeah. I saw your recent blog post on that subject, and shook my fist at Josh! Ha!
October 29th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
wow. that’s very interesting and awesome. I’d been thinking for a long time now that you needed help on the back end of things. congrats on holding out until you found what seemed like the right answer. I’m interested to see how this all goes!
October 29th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
As someone who is firmly entrenched in Joey’s world (GS, WCN, TAC) and Josh’s world (CS, OLC), I’m very interested in how this is going to play out. In a word, it sounds great! Both Joey and Josh have been very innovative as one-man teams, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what they can do together, armed with capital and a dedicated team.
October 29th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Congrats to both parties—really looking forward to what will grow out of this!
October 29th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Well, now this sounds like very interesting news. I look forward to this merging of great minds!
October 29th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
webcomicspacenation.com is still unclaimed.
October 29th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Wow! Congrats! This is great news! I love all those sites. Can’t wait for this to come together.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
This may not be as much of good news as you think. If you think it’s hard to get your site seen amidst the slew of titles already present in all those domains, now it will be EVEN MORE DIFFICULT to get spotted due to the mergers.
I think I’ll go look for a needle in a haystack, excuse me.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Really great idea! It’s a perfect match. Comicspace has needed a robust and quality system of displaying webcomics, and WCN has needed a better social aspect for readers as well as creators. This meets all this requirements excellently!
Will this have any impact on Adultwebcomics?
October 29th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
AWC is not part of the new venture. It will continue to be owned and operated solely by Joe Botts, as it has been all along. My original codebase for it will still be used, but I won’t be involved in upgrading or operating it.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
John: we have a solution for that. More details to follow.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Just wanted to and an idea, many online art/comic community sites dont have special features/accounts for groups/studios of multiple people. Kind of like ‘yahoo groups’ where all the projects of that one group is listed and access is givin to all the groups members and special access to the leader/over seer.
I hope this new comic space has this feature
October 29th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I hope so, Joey… I’ve been to WCN and ran for the hills. Compared to the relatively-easy “onlinecomics.net”, and the even easier (and better) “comicspace.com” WCN bombards you with advertising and is an otherwise visual explosion. Extremely difficult to even FIND how to list a comic, but you can sure find out how to advertise with Projectwonderful.com at first sight!
October 29th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Sorry to hear you had a bad experience with WCN, but I’m glad to hear you found Josh’s sites useful. Josh is definitely better at building usable websites than I am — which is one reason I’m so excited to be working with him! The elegance and simplicity of what he’s built is a model for every website to follow. Those kinds of things will definitely be where his leadership role in the new venture represents a major improvement over my own stuff. Couldn’t agree more!
October 29th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Laurie: very good feedback. I can’t give too much away at this point, but this kind of thing is definitely on our minds as we work through the development of the new site.
October 30th, 2007 at 2:43 am
Wow! Good luck; I hope that the merger goes smoothly, and ends up benefitting everyone involved.
October 30th, 2007 at 6:29 am
[...] [Top Story] Online comics entrepreneurs Josh Roberts (Comicspace) and Joey Manley (Modern Tales) have announced plans to merge their empires, funded by a New Jersey venture-capital firm: [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 8:16 am
So.. uh… Do us Modern Tales/ Graphic Smash people get any sort of kickbacks?
Maybe a back rub?
October 30th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Aw man, awesome! I can see this being a great success, especially considering how complimentary both you guys and your projects are to each other.
October 30th, 2007 at 9:58 am
[...] Gary So one of the many things I like about Joey Manley is that he answers his email promptly. He dropped a fairly big announcement yesterday afternoon, I happened to catch wind of it in the first half-hour or so and send him some questions, and twelve minutes later I’ve got the answers. That’s the sort of thing that makes webcomics journo-hackery easy. [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
[...] ComicSpace and WCN are Merging, and Getting Investment… from TalkAboutComics Blog [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
“complementary,” not “complimentary.”
Unless you mean their skills are in shallow flattery.
(”CAN I stop nitpicking language? Yes. WILL I? No.”)
October 30th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
We’re good at complimenting one another (with sincerity, though), and our skills are also a good synergistic match! So it works either way!
October 30th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
This is good news (somewhat); much more convenient for everyone, I think. All I hope is that this doesn’t turn TOO corporate…know what I mean? =\
October 30th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Now just add a *print-on-demand* feature to the new ComicSpace and you’ll be even more than perfect!
October 30th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
To do that, they’ll have to merge with Ka-Blam or ComiXpress. (I recommend Ka-Blam myself)
If this merger leads to more promotional opportunities for webcomic creators, I’m all for it. Actually, I’m all for it anyway, though John’s point about comics getting lost in the shuffle is one to consider…
October 30th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Joey – Congratulations! This is excellent news.
While I understand that you’re probably not currently able to discuss timelines for a variety of reasons, do you think that creators considering launching new projects via WCN should go ahead and do so? Or wait for the merger to roll out?
October 30th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Go ahead and do so! Everything will be seamlessly redirected once the changeover happens — so even if people bookmark or link to individual pages, or to your comic’s homepage itself, at the old URL, anybody clicking that link or that bookmark after the changeover will never even notice that there’s been a URL change.
October 30th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
We WCN folks gonna have to change our URLs mang?
October 30th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I’m sorry, Joey.. I guess I should rephrase. Onlinecomics.net, and comicspace.com are equally well put together insofar as the design, etc… IMHO the reason I give comicspace.com the edge is actually due to the features like the comic galleries being a focal point, and the easier ability to “befriend” people, etc. It makes it feel more like a community than onlinecomics.net where it feels more like a labyrinth to get to where u want to go.
I do like onlinecomics.net better for the advertising though! Can’t beat $6 per week!
October 30th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
John, WebcomicsNation isn’t a place to “list” comics, it’s a comics hosting site. It seems like you might be mixing up the aims of the two sites.
You don’t make a comic somewhere else and go to WebcomicsNation to advertise it. You go to WebcomicsNation to host your comic.
I agree it’s a visually cluttered design, though. That’s another reason the ComicsSpace merger will be ace.
October 30th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Justin — all URLs will redirect automatically to their new home. That includes main URLs to your homepages as well as deep link URLs to your individual comics. I think I’ve already said that three times now! Ha! It’s a very important issue, and we’ll definitely keep painlessness of transition at the top of our priority list.
October 30th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Very Cool.
October 30th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Just promise me that WCN won’t start working like popular crap sites FaceBook and MySpace. Cuz that shit’s high school.
October 30th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
WCN won’t start working like FaceBook and MySpace. I promise. We will take some ideas from those sites, for sure. But we’re very much our own thing, with very different goals and modalities.
We went around and around about the name. ComicSpace is an excellent name in every way, except one … that it might make people think our scope is limited to being “myspace for comics” — which isn’t it at all. Blogger or LiveJournal would be better analogies, but even those aren’t quite right, either.
Just think about the things you can do today at WCN, ComicSpace, Onlinecomics.net and TAC: on WCN, you can host a comic; on ComicSpace, you can promote your personal self & your comic and connect with your friends; on OnlineComics.net, you can keep track of your favorite comics (no matter where they’re hosted) and get notified when they update (no matter where they’re hosted); on TAC you can host a forum, or post on a blog. Now combine all those things. That’s the core of the new site. Then make every feature better in every way (like the stats improvements I blogged about a few days ago — imagine every feature on all of those sites made that much better than they currently are). Then throw in some stuff that I can’t talk about yet. That’s what the supermegasite will be.
So yeah.
October 30th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
This makes me very happy, as these are two communities I’m proud to be active on. How will this affect us as content providers, I’ll be interested to see.
October 31st, 2007 at 5:12 am
Zoh my god!
O.O I’m really surprised, and slightly confused. What do I do, what do I do? Oh, wait, I don’t have to do anything. That’s OK then.
This sounds great. The only thing I have reservations about is the name. XD Sounds like MySpace! But no, great stuff. Bring it on. Whee!
October 31st, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Lets combine all our powers like in the Captain Planet cartoon and lets KICK SOME ASS MAAAAAAAN! Sound like a great idea!
October 31st, 2007 at 2:32 pm
[...] ComicSpace and Web Comics Nation to merge in a new venture. ComicSpace, Web Comics Nation, OnlineComics, Talk About Comics and Graphic Novel Review will merge into one fully-integrated site, combining all of the best features from each site. Good luck Josh and Joey! Also, here is the original statement on Talk About Comics. [...]
October 31st, 2007 at 3:44 pm
This is very exciting. I have high hopes for this new venture and wish the very best for it. What was lacking in WCN and ComicSpace is exactly why I scaled back the number of comic pages I have on these sites and embraced Blogger as the home for my comic.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Very much looking forward to the merged site – I’ve got a TAC board and a pretty active Comicspace page, so I’ll be happy to see them merge, and I can’t wait to get RSS and other features added to my Comicspace galleries. Good luck fellas!
November 1st, 2007 at 4:35 pm
I love you Joey!
November 3rd, 2007 at 3:45 pm
[...] When you think web comic hosting there are five names that come to mind: ComicSpace, Webcomics Nation, Smack Jeeves, Comic Genesis, and Drunk Duck. Eighty percent of the webcomics just may be hosted by these guys. Now here comes along the sort of news the corporate world would go crazy for but the government would fall apart trying to block. On October 29th Josh Roberts and Joey Manley announced the intent to merge businesses into one corporate entity. With the help of E-Line Ventures, a New Jersey-based ‘double bottom line’ early-stage investment firm, to secure the necessary funding and support to effectively merge and run the combined business. Here’s the best part of the announcement: [...]
November 3rd, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Good luck with this – sounds like a good idea and I’ve always liked Josh’s sites too, so it sounds like the perfect merger.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Sound Grrreat to me, I like BOTH.
Joel
November 7th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
;-D Wohoo! Congrats, hope the new gestalt get a long and happy life on the internet!
November 9th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
[...] Most comic readers are also big Internet readers. A few sites have already latched onto this concept, the most notable of which is ComicSpace. This social network has managed a reasonable amount of success, recently merging with another comics site and picking up investment capital in the process. [...]
April 18th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Great! This will make it easier with only 1 upload at a time instead of 1 each to WCN & CS!
May 15th, 2009 at 10:23 am
what ed richman said!!
June 11th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
I note the the announcement was made in 2007… can you give us an update on the progress of this merger?
Dan Graves