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."

Comments

And the goal is ...

[PCM2]

...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.

Re:And the goal is ...

[zepher-109]

The point is that your comic is hosted on a website endorced by Warren Ellis, publishing companies will look in there a lot quicker for new talent then on Keenspace or wherever.

Great way to break into the business

[QuantumFTL]

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!

I suspect that it's about bandwidth.

[khasim]

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.

Ads Ads Ads

[posterlogo]

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?

[Aladrin]

Sooo... Who is Warren Ellis and why should I bow at his comic-hosting feet?

Seriously, wtf?

Re:Who?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

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 and his wikipedia entry.

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?

[Khuffie]

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.

Re:Who?

[jrockway]

> 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 :)

Just what we need!

[daeg]

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.

Who is this guy?

[Gunfighter]

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 /.?

Re:Who is this guy?

[aiwha]

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.

And his website, it's atrocious!

[Ayanami Rei]

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*