Gotham Girls was ahead of its time. Jointly produced by Warner Bros and World Leaders Entertainment, the flash-animated, online series debuted in 2000, featuring a catty of improbably proportioned heroines and villainesses from the world of DC’s caped-crusader, Batman.
It begins with Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Batgirl, Catwoman, and Zantanna, in some type of lesbian fantasy where the women have super powers and all the men in Gotham have disappeared, and ends three seasons and two years later with a five-part, physical comic book mini-series that leveraged its online counterpart’s success.
Little action has occurred in the world of comic book-derived web shows since. With the unimpressive exception of Strange Detective Tales, nearly all experimentation with new media has come from the literary side of book publishing. There, you can witness the initial rumblings of change in the process of promotion.
Publishers of books like Celebutantes and Foreign Body precede print releases with web shows meant to popularize titles, hoping to increase awareness and sales. But this phenomenon hasn’t yet caught on in the world of comics. Until now.
New media studio, 60Frames announced that it’s partnering with indie graphic novel and comic book publisher, Oni Press to create web series based on past, present, and future titles in their library.
The first two slated for production are Ark – a science-fiction combo of live-action and CGI set to launch in early 2009 that follows a “young woman who wakes up in a coffin-like capsule and quickly discovers that she is in fact on a large spacecraft” – and Men with Guns: Assassin – “a gritty drama that follows a high-end assassin who is eluding the cop who is trying to bring him down, and their respective children, who are star-crossed lovers,” conceived by Tom Fontana.
I wonder why this didn’t happen sooner. Aesthetically, it’s a near perfect combination. Comic book panels are almost the exact same size as online video players, and their bright colors and emphasis on action works perfectly on computer screens. I expect this to be the first of many similar comic-book/web-show announcements.
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I just watched all ten of the episodes of Gothem Girls that you linked. I forgot how awesome Harley Quinn is, too bad she isn’t going to be in The Dark Knight, though I guess they could bringer her in in a sequel or something as a vengeful ex-lover.
Also, I just went back and watched Celebutantes, wow! The title alone made me automatically hate it, and it’s a subject that am intensely apathetic for, but that was a great promo. The OC was such a shitty show despite having a handful of excellent characters that made you force-feed yourself the rest of it’s tripe. Seth Cohen was probably the only recurring good character, but Taylor Townsend, Reeser’s character, was definitely the best guest character. She’s awesome, I want to see her in more things.
I remember a year ago going to http://www.vidlit.com/ and watching two of their videos, which I enjoyed a lot, and still vividly remember. One was from a book called Craziest, which was about a girl who became obsessed with going to scrabble tournaments so that she could some day play the word Craziest in a certain spot on the board that would give her the single highest scoring word possible, because she felt the randomness of the bag would be like an affirmation of fate, then right as she’s about to play the word, her opponent dies and she’s unable to play it. Then she goes crazy. It was awesome. The other one I watched was “How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater,” which I told my dad about, and he asked if it was some gay thing, and I said no… But later found out that it was.
But, all of that said, none of these things, despite being awesome, have actually made me purchase books. So maybe they’re not that effective? One thing that makes me buy books (and I hate to buy books, I feel like a sucker because I consume so much free text every day, why should I pay for it?) is if I have some kind of (seemingly) personal relationship with the author. I’m more likely to buy a book if it’s by someone whose blog I read, or watch, or someone I talk to, or have met or admire. Not as “book promo” stuff, but, y’know, if it’s someone who genuinely has a blog and happens to write a book. Of course the downside of that is that bloggers probably don’t make good novelists (my terminally unfinished signed copy of One Red Paperclip is a testament to that), and novelists probably don’t give an F about blogging, probably for cow/free milk reasons (Hodgman’s blog is a handful of sentences).
…I forgot what I was talking about. Oh yeah. Free promos are awesome because they are free, and buying books is lame because they’re not free.
Holy shit I think my comment was longer than the original post. Oops.
Agreed! Makes so much more sense to do a comic book web series than a web series based on a book
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