Slashdot Mirror
Warren Ellis Curates new Webcomic Site
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."
While I usually look down at "how did this get posted?" comments, this time I gotta stop.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?! How the hell did this get posted? What standards are being excercised to push this story to the front page? Slashdot is the grand-pappy of the tech/nerd webblogs, but some days, it's kinda like listening to grand pappy talk about the amazing things he did in "the war" while trying to avoid looking at the slowly spreading wetspot on the front of his stained sweat pants.
If this is news for nerds that matters, then I've got the next story: "Title: Chairboy is freakin' cool" with a summary of "Three out of four doctors prefer Chairboy's presence to that of their dentist. Visit his website to see all the cool things he does, ps, he's inviting submissions to his neat new Star Trek Slash-zine where the cast members are all furries and the author is the main character".
...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.
Breakfast served all day!
from his ridicilous bombastic look-how cool-I-am run on hellblazer to the outrageously stupid oh-cyberpunk-sells-so-let's-try-something simular Transmepolitan Warren is the worst writer ever to find his way into the comic scene. No wonder DC and American comics in general sux SO much
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!
Bandwidth isn't cheap if you become popular.
Providing a site that is supported via Google ads and such would save those artists from having to come up with the bandwidth cash themselves.
"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...
Push Button, Receive Bacon
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...
Sooo... Who is Warren Ellis and why should I bow at his comic-hosting feet?
Seriously, wtf?
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
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 ^^
When I found Warren Ellis had an account on imeem.com that was the point I realised that it was a cool place to be after all ;-)
It's funny how certain people can lend credibility to communities.
Just cos they shows sum titties doesn't mean that they's written fo anyone smarter than kiddies.
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.
These days, there is a better model: Why not let the community decide what is most valuable in the collection? Why not let the community decide what is "in" and what is "out"? Why not let anyone publish, and leave out the self-elected controlling individual. Then the community can decide what is best for itself.
Maybe, now that I'm thinking about this: it's cost. Heck, if anyone could post content to MY web services, I'd likely be overwhelmed by the storage and bandwidth costs. Oh oh... I should get back to work.
From his ridiculous bombastic look-how cool-I-am run to the outrageously stupid Oh-first-post-so-let's-try-something-similar Slashdot replies, Anonymous is the worst writer ever to find his way into the internet community. No wonder Slashdot in general sucks so much.
Edison hate future shirt that I ordered 3 months ago. If you live in Canada and want one of his shirts expect to wait that long.
dchub://hub.twofo.co.uk:4144
spam it to death bitches!
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.
"Edison hate future shirt that I ordered 3 months ago"
Edison, do you often refer to yourself in the first person and third person within the same sentence? So sorry about the future shirt!
Where were you when the voynix came?
So, what you want is a clear separation between "News for Nerds" and "Stuff that matters", yes?
I want for dick sucking comic book fags to get out of their mothers basement and learn there is more to life than this shit. That goes for you too asshole.
You're right, I am a bit of a recluse. I should probably get out more and meet fascinating people such as yourself.
I think a subscriptionless comic site is a great idea. I hope he gets the content to get it kicked off.
/. 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 /.?
While I understand that some Slashdot nerds like comics, I'm wondering a) who this guy is, and b) how many
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
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.
7h3$3 4r3n'7 7h3 Ðr01Ð$ ¥0 4r3 £00|{1n9 f0r. M0v3 4£0n9. --OB1
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*
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
and we ALL know how much quality material DC puts out