| August 24, 2007 - Vancouver Sun (Feature business story) | | Print | |
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Comic website shoots for stars
Friday, August 24, 2007
VANCOUVER - If all goes well, future blockbuster adventure movies and video games will come from a Canadian website.
Zeros 2 Heroes Media (Z2H), a Vancouver-based social media company that publishes online comic books, has received funding from Telefilm Canada to launch Canada: Comic Creation Nation.
Zeros 2 Heroes is asking Canadians writers from all disciplines to submit storylines to its website Zeros2Heroes.com through an interactive pitch packager Z2H designed for Comic Creation Nation. Visitors to the website can vote on what stories they like.
The company plans to have its first comic story chosen by Oct. 31 and the story will be illustrated by Z2H studio artists.
Depending on the number and quality of submissions, Z2H hopes to publish a new comic weekly for up to a year. Z2H will produce, promote and represent the titles.
Telefilm Canada, which gave Z2H $60,000 for market research and to make a prototype early in the company's existence, will not state its most recent amount of funding.
But Earl Hong Tai, Western regional director for Telefilm Canada, thinks the company is at the forefront of something big.
"There's a real cross-platform opportunity for comics," he said. "If you look at the Marvel Comics history, it starts with the traditional comic book, then moves into film, television, the Internet and video games. This cross-platform entertainment opportunity is exactly what we're looking for in terms of our corporate mandate."
Z2H president Matthew Toner hopes that film, television, direct-to-DVD and video game producers will check the comics in search of projects.
Writers will not initially be remunerated for their stories, but will retain copyright and partner with Z2H in any development deal signed with an entertainment company.
"We look at comics as the ultimate pitch package for film and television," says Toner, speaking from the Z2H studio. "They're better than scripts and storyboards. They're rich and detailed and very much alive, and Hollywood's been snapping them up and optioning them for the last couple of years. "We're hoping this is a whole new storytelling vehicle for writers out there who haven't been discovered yet."
This isn't the first venture of this sort for Z2H. Last month, it partnered with Rainmaker Animation, which plans to make three ReBoot animated features, for an online contest where Z2H readers can vote on a five storylines for a ReBoot comic book.
So far, Z2H has had more than 10,000 responses to the storylines. Toner and his staff like to call their company "the people's publisher" because readers have a say on which projects see the light of day.
"One of our philosophies is to take over from the middle man, the agents, managers, development executives, editors, people who send out rejection letters," says Toner. "The fans are the best judge of what they want to see in genre entertainment, and we want to give that power back to the fans."
To prevent a writer's friends and family "crowd-hacking" the voting, Z2H has set up a system whereby voters are weighted by how long they have been actively involved on the website. In other words, a website regular's vote carries more weight than someone who registered 10 minutes ago, although all opinions count for something.
Z2H takes one to three months to develop and produce a comic book, using writers and artists in different parts of the world. One recent comic book involved a writer in Vancouver, an editor in Philadelphia, an artist in the Philippines and a colourist in Argentina.
Zeroes to Heroes Media, which began operation last year, does not charge membership fees, earning its revenue from website advertising and sponsorships.
The company sees itself as providing comic book fans with what they want, and acting as a springboard for virtually unknown artists and writers to not only get published, but to possibly hit the big time with a movie, television or direct-to DVD deal. Hence the name: Zeros to Heroes.
Toner compares Z2H with what MySpace has done for independent bands who are now being discovered on the website.
"If we can get something optioned or get a development deal, that's a huge home run for everyone," said Toner.
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