The Webcomicker

Who watches the watchmen?

Monday, February 27, 2006

This is news?


Preview of Volume 4 cover, from Megatokyo.

So, today at Megatokyo Fred announced to the web (having previously announced at the New York Comicon this weekend) that Megatokyo was being picked up by DC Comics.

This immediately prompted from me a "Wow... a webcomic is being printed by DC Comics. That's pretty awesome." But after about a minute of thinking about it, I realized, "wait, this is Megatokyo we're talking about... what's the big deal?"

I mean, this is hardly a huge step up for Megatokyo. The first three volumes were all published by no less than Dark Horse, and while they're certainly not DC or Marvel they are the third largest comic book publisher in the U.S. (guess who's ahead of them). Megatokyo already appears in basically every bookstore around the country and has even been used on those fricking "READ" posters. DC is not really opening up a whole new world of opportunity for Megatokyo here. Now, if DC were to pick up something like Dominic Deegan or Inverloch, then we'd have something to talk about. But Megatokyo? For Megatokyo this is just like a baseball player getting traded to a new team. It's the equivalent of a mid-tier webcomic switching collectives. It's really not huge news.

But, I suppose congratulations are in order anyway, as the first webcomic to break into DC. So, congrats, Fred. *shrug*

4 Comments:

At 5:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, it's remarkable that CMX -- a dedicated manga imprint -- are picking up one of the very few OEL manga which manages to escape national bias bollockry. A lot of people who would refuse to buy Dramacon, Rumble Girls, Steady Beat or Shutterbox "because it's not really Japanese" will still go out and buy Megatokyo. They'll probably even treat it as manga in the process.

Dark Horse publish Japanese-sourced manga, and were marketing Megatokyo as such, but they also don't make particularly clear divisions about their product. There's not much sense that the manga is over here and the American comics are over there; it's all been pretty much a communal wash since the sale of Studio Proteus, and the divisions were pretty murky to begin with. CMX's branding has been very, very specific from the outset.

 
At 9:33 PM, Blogger tedzsee said...

is it just me or does the guy in that cover picture have a really weird ear?

seriously, not only are the proportions odd, the little lines inside the ear are all weird.

weird.

 
At 2:31 PM, Blogger Gilead Pellaeon said...

Well, he is a demon.

But yeah, I don't think anyone's ever claimed Fred is a stickler for proportions. He was trained as an architect, not a cartoonist.

 
At 3:00 PM, Blogger Kneefers said...

I kinda tend to agree. It's good for Megatokyo, but it's nothing really spectacular or out of the ordinary, as far as the big picture.
...d00d. Dominic Deegan or Inverloch getting picked up by DC would be too awesome for words. Hehe...

 

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