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Warren Ellis Curates new Webcomic Site 63

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the creator-to-curator dept.
Warren Ellis has announced on his blog that he has finally been talked into curating a mass webcomics site titled "Rocket Pirates." The submission process is completely open via Warren's gmail account and invites anything as long as it isn't too terribly formal. While Rocket Pirates doesn't pay authors for submissions the site is apparently going to allow each author to post their own advertising via "Google Ads, Amazon Associates ads, ads for their own products, rate cards for prostitution services or any other damn thing on their comic's Rocket Pirates page."
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Warren Ellis Curates new Webcomic Site More

Warren Ellis Curates new Webcomic Site

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  • And the goal is ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Sunday August 06, 2006 @03:14PM (#15856038) Homepage
    ...what?

    No, seriously, what's the point of doing this? The comics will be hosted on this site; check. But the arrangement is non-exclusive, which means the creators are still free to host them on their own sites, also -- which presumably they would have done anyway.

    Wouldn't it be much easier to create a kind of "Drudge Report" of Web comics, that aggregates links to new episodes as they appear? Seems like just about anybody could do that with some blogging software.

  • Great way to break into the business (Score:3, Interesting)

    by QuantumFTL ( 197300 ) * on Sunday August 06, 2006 @03:16PM (#15856046)
    This will be great for artists who have the talent, but really need exposure. One of the most powerful things about the WWW has been the collective filtering of content on places like Slashdot, YouTube, and Digg. Hopefully this site will help overcome the SNR of the WWW - I don't read web comics because almost all of those that I've come upon just didn't seem funny, at least not to me. Maybe with the enhanced variety of many sources, this pressing problem can be solved!

    • This will be great for artists who have the talent, but really need exposure.

      My wife has been working on her online semi-weekly comic strip for over a year now. Her drawing/photoshop skills have come a long way since she started. Even though her paintings and drawings have been featured in local (Columbus, OH) galleries, it's been a fight to gain an audience for her comic larger than family and friends.

      Perhaps this is because RocketFuel follows her real life very closely, down to the clothes she wears

  • "Rocket Pirates." The submission process is completely open via Warren's gmail account and invites anything as long as it isn't too terribly formal. While Rocket Pirates doesn't pay authors for submissions

    hmmm.... I think I've seen this business model somewhere before...
    • In that he must have every blog-related doo-dad invented since 1998 all crammed up in the sidebar. From last.fm, to an incoming links feed, to a myspace link.
      This link circle-jerk digirati bullshit has to be stopped. He's fucking farming out his content creation with this RocketPower thing which is borderline ironic.

      *sigh*

  • Ads Ads Ads (Score:3, Insightful)

    by posterlogo ( 943853 ) on Sunday August 06, 2006 @03:20PM (#15856058)
    With your own ads for stuff, and presumably his sponsors' ads, won't that make the website very ad-ridden? Still an interesting business model, though...

  • Who? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Aladrin ( 926209 ) on Sunday August 06, 2006 @03:21PM (#15856061)
    Sooo... Who is Warren Ellis and why should I bow at his comic-hosting feet?

    Seriously, wtf?

    • Re:Who? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Whiney Mac Fanboy ( 963289 ) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Sunday August 06, 2006 @03:44PM (#15856133) Homepage Journal
      C'mon - I had no idea who he was either, but just selecting "warren ellis", context clicking and choosing a google search gave me his homepage [warrenellis.com] and his wikipedia entry. [wikipedia.org]

      While /. submissions could occasionally use a little more background, its not that hard to find out wtf the article's talking about (usually in less time than a post asking for said info).

      He's an influential british comics writer - who's biggest work was transmetropolitan for DC's vertigo comics line.

      • Re:Who? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Khuffie ( 818093 )
        Ya, but at the same time, it really wouldn't have hurt the submitter to simple state: "Warren Ellis, influential British comic book author, has announced...". Yes, I'm lazy, and I want the work to be done for me damnit! But still, it's just good article writing.
      • Yes, I realize that. I guess I should have been more transparent about my distaste for them assuming the entire world knew and worshipped him.

        • Challenge: Name that tune.

          Rewrite the original post, even with the newfound knowledge.

          I'm certain someone will mod you some karma in compensation if you provide an excellent example.

          Tip: Take the time to write, preview, edit, spell check, grammar & punctuation check[1], edit, etc.

          Lots of people write something, scan it for what they think might be embarrassing[1], and submit it. It's not a race to post first.

          Invest a few minutes and show us your best.

          ________________________________________

      • Re:Who? (Score:3, Funny)

        by jrockway ( 229604 ) *
        > its [sic] not that hard to find out wtf the article's talking about

        This reminds me of the old saying: Teach a man to research slashdot stories; he's a subscriber for one day. Give the man an answer in the comments, and he's a subscriber for life :)
    • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Ellis [wikipedia.org]
      http://www.warrenellis.com/ [warrenellis.com]

      Finding these was less work than posting here.
  • After him doing "Transmetropolitan", "Authority", and various other great things, I'm inclined to check it out, even though I hate the amateur connotation most webcomics bear.
    Good show for helping out indie artists! I love this guy ^^

  • Comics are for kids (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just cos they shows sum titties doesn't mean that they's written fo anyone smarter than kiddies.

    • Re:Comics are for kids (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Also, books, poems, art, movies and television. Ha-yuck-uck.
    • Yes, because the medium is so much more important than the content...
  • I think it's a neat idea. Hosting a website with a bunch of comics will be might give it a lot of hits. I'm hoping that this comes out good. Especially with funny comics.

  • Just what we need! (Score:4, Funny)

    by daeg ( 828071 ) on Sunday August 06, 2006 @04:14PM (#15856219)
    I've all but lost hope for the Internet but now my faith has been renewed! Yes, provide any cartoonist with hosting! I enjoy looking at badly written, unfunny, and largely idiotic cartoons! While you're at it, can you please duplicate LiveJournal? I am seriously lacking in my daily need to read higschool Emo-kid drama. A duplicate of MySpace would protect my prowling habits when MySpace.com goes down. Help me, Warren Ellis, you're my only hope.

    In all seriousness, though, it seems like a duplication of existing services with a fancy name attached to it. I would have rather seen him do something for the web comic community by aggregating existing comics and posting reviews and commentaries on them blog-style.
    • Hope and faith in the internet? You'll have a better time of it if you place your hope and faith with people; yourself and, judiciously, others.

    • If I've read it correctly, Warren Ellis is providing hosting services for webcomic writer/artists for free and allowing them to post their own Google AdSense links so they can collect on ad revenue. That's something a lot of 'free' hosts don't allow, as they're the ones that collect on the ad revenue to support your hosting fees. While I don't think the host itself is precluded from its own ad revenue, this should be a boon to potential digital indie comic creators; free hosting, your own ad revenue, and in

    • As the term "curator" implies, and the article pretty clearly says, this is not going to "provide any cartoonist with hosting." It's going to provide cartoonists who Warren Ellis thinks are worth promoting, with hosting. That a big name in paper comics like Ellis is getting involved in webcomics is, perhaps, somewhat interesting; and Ellis has very good taste and a sharp eye for coming trends (as you can see on his blog [warrenellis.com]), so his webcomic picks will probably be of a fairly high standard.

  • Who is this guy? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gunfighter ( 1944 ) on Monday August 07, 2006 @12:51AM (#15857489)
    I think a subscriptionless comic site is a great idea. I hope he gets the content to get it kicked off.

    While I understand that some Slashdot nerds like comics, I'm wondering a) who this guy is, and b) how many /. readers actually know who he is. So the question remains... who is Warren Ellis and why does he rate to be on the front page of /.?
    • Warren Ellis [wikipedia.org] is one of the premier writers in today's comic book scene. He's worked for pretty much every major comic book publisher and in the comic book world his name carries a lot of weight.

    • Re:Who is this guy? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by aiwha ( 993742 )
      Warren Ellis wrote Transmetropolitan, which is considered by many to be a postcyberpunk classic. He is on the front of slashdot page for the same reason that you occasionally see the names William Gibson and Neal Stephenson on the front page of slashdot.
  • Jargon, Hype, Trends, whatever. It's all about the content. Speculation died with Red Herring. Stop trying to reinflate the internet bubble. It's either consumer-friendly attractive content that will drive advertising, or it won't. The attractiveness (economically) of the internet is that you can ride the marginalia of society and still make a profit. Sometimes it is all about the niche market strategy.

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