Kidjutsu blog - kids comics, webcomics, manga, technology, and web development

Today is Free Comic Book Day, the single day when comic book stores across the country give away comic books for FREE.

Many of the comics being given away are appropriate for kids and would have an all-ages comic rating on Kidjutsu. Here's a short list of the all-ages comics I saw in no particular order:

• Owly and Friends from Top Shelf
• Comics Festival! 2008 Volume 3 with Jellaby, Sardine, and many other favorite characters.
• Disney/Pixar's Cars #1 from Boom! Studios
• DC Kids Mega Sampler from DC Comics
• Atomic Robo and Friends from Red 5 Comics
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars from Dark Horse Comics
• Sonic The Hedgehog: Evolution of a Hero from Archie Comics

Wolverine: Origin of an X-Man from Marvel Comics should also be OK, but it's a tie-in for a movie that isn't suitable for kids.

Note that supplies are limited and not all titles will be available at all stores.

Tired of just reading comics on your computer screen? Now you can get the full comic reading experience with the new Smell of Books product from DuroSport Electronics.

This aerosol can is causing quite a stir. See:
http://www.teleread.org/2009/04/01/smell-of-books-doesnt-seem-to-excite/
http://www.teleread.org/2009/04/01/famous-e-book-lud-won-over-by-smell-of-books-while-meanwhile-a-patent-suit-may-be-in-the-works/
http://www.teleread.org/2009/04/01/smell-of-books-recalled-new-car-scent-mistakenly-substituted/

http://www.teleread.org/2009/04/01/authors-guild-attacks-smell-of-books-dear-author-responds/

I sense a business opportunity here. Should I franchise the Smell of Books product? Or is Smell of Comic Books a different enough product that I wouldn't be infringing on any of their patents?

Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media and a serial entrepreneur recently gave a keynote speech at the Emerging Technology Conference on ways entrepreneurs can help bring the economy out of its current slump.

A recent blog post at VentureBeat summarized O'Reilly's prescription for the economy as follows:

• Work on something that matters to you more than money.
• Create more value than you capture.
• Build a simple system and let it evolve.
• Be friendly to those who extend your reach.
• Be generous in supporting the work of others.

Although Kidjutsu is a relatively young company, our product and our vision were conceived and designed with essentially the same guidelines in mind.

Of course not all businesses need to follow such principles, but core values like these are what separates the Ponzi-scheme hedge funds, Washington Mutuals, and the inept credit rating agencies from the truly enduring and sustainable businesses.

Sandra and Woo by Novril and Powree

The Sandra and Woo webcomic is about a girl Sandra and her talking pet raccoon Woo. Written by Oliver Knörzer and drawn by Powree, Sandra and Woo is inspired and heavily influenced by Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. It features slightly more adult-oriented humor that children may not appreciate.

Here's a sample strip with Woo relaxing that I found amusing. I also liked these two strips about investment opportunities in derivatives of derivatives and onto the next big thing. It provides an interesting spin on how humans are always pursuing the next get-rich-quick scams. This is what got our nation into our current financial crisis. Bankers never heeded Warren Buffet's warning that derivatives are weapons of mass destruction before it was too late.

Bear and Tiger by Robert Quinn

The Bear and Tiger webcomic is a new comic strip about a Siberian military output manned by a Captain Tiger and Corporal Bear. Captain Tiger is pretty nutty, which is what makes the strip so entertaining.

Here's one making fun of competitive eating that I liked. And here's another one of the Yeti joining the People's Army of Russia. Bob just introduced more hilarity into his comic by bringing Laika, the drunken space dog on board.

Precocious by Christopher J Paulsen

The Precocious webcomic by Chris Paulsen is a conversation-driven webcomic about a bunch of gifted children and their antics. As an example of the trouble gifted children sometimes get themselves into, here's a strip about a surprise legal bill.

Chris often has very interesting things to say about parenting, especially of gifted children. For example, the most recent webcomic update jokes about how neglecting children sometimes results in more capable independent children. In a way, he's poking fun at all the parents who pamper their kids with hourly attention in hopes of giving them a head start in life.

Precocious was inspired by Calvin and Hobbes and other great cartoons like Peanuts, Ozy and Millie, Bloom County, and Fox Trot.

Calvin and Hobbes is my all-time favorite comic strip. It wasn't until high school that I realized the absolute genius of Bill Watterson. He peppered the conversations between Calvin and his stuffed tiger with such interesting social commentary that millions of readers of all ages found something enjoyable in his comic strips.

When I was a kid, I absolutely devoured all the collected Calvin & Hobbes comics at my library. I even convinced my parents to buy the Sunday newspaper so my sister and I can read the full-color Sunday C&H strips.

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon Gerry Canavan's blog post collecting some Calvin and Hobbes fanart depicting a grown-up Calvin.

Here's a favorite and one for all the dads:

Calvin's daughter looks a little bit like a blonde Susie Derkins, the slimy girl next-door. If you remember, Calvin formed a secret anti-Susie treehouse club called G.R.O.S.S. It stood for Get Rid Of Slimy girlS.

Here's another one of Calvin and Susie all grown-up.

I really like the coloring of this image, but it's a bit sappy for me. The Calvin I know wouldn't blush like that...

And there are a bunch more at Gerry Canavan's blog, some potentially even NSFW.

Lots of comic convention news this week. Conventions are always fun.

San Diego Comic-Con

I was fortunate to have purchased one of the last 4-day passes for San Diego Comic Con. These 4-day passes are now completely sold out after being on sale for less than a week. For those not familiar with SDCC, it is the biggest comic convention of the year. It's a great show for those into comics, toys, video games, and people-watching. It's just a ton of fun. Last year, I met many small press creators as I was evaluating various opportunities for comics online. Last year's show was completely sold out too and I actually had to purchase a Saturday ticket on Craigslist. Most likely, 20% of the tickets bought this week were bought by flippers hoping to make a quick buck on the 4-day passes.

Kids Comic Con

Another convention I'll be attending in 2009 is the Kids Comic Con, organized by Alex Simmons. I'm really looking forward to attending this convention in the Bronx on 4/25. Not only will I be showing off Kidjutsu in person at KCC to all the kids that show up at our booth, I also get a chance to talk to some of the top creators and publishers of kids comics. Hopefully, I can prep a video demo in time for the convention. I should be able to bring some freebies and hold some giveaways for those who show up at the convention.

Mark Mariano, the creator of Happyloo will also be debutting at KCC. He's been hard at work preparing his book debut.

I'll also get to spend some time with my family. I'm originally from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

The Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival

It's not a kids comic convention per se but lots of great British illustrators and writers will be present at the Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival held between 4/24-4/26 at the Upper Norwood Joint Library in London, UK.

The DFC will be represented by some really talented creators like Garen Ewing, Sarah McIntyre, Woodrow Phoenix, Gary Northfield, Emma Vieceli, and Kate Brown.

Kids Read Comics Convention

I just found out about the Kids Read Comics Convention on children's book author Debbie Deisen's blog. Debbie did a great interview with Dan Mishkin who is one of the co-organizers of the event. This event will be held at the Chelsea District Library in Michigan on June 12 and 13.

Their mission statement is very similar to our own kids comics vision statement, but much better written:

They've got my support!

After two months of development, I can now proudly show Kidjutsu to the world. Each page on Kidjutsu is now more polished than before and there are no longer any pages that exude "beta".

For those just discovering Kidjutsu, the site looked completely different two months ago. Here are some screenshots from before:

It is now MUCH better. Marina Neira, the creator of Paleo deserves absolutely all the credit for the aesthetic improvements to Kidjutsu. She graciously designed a new logo and an adorable new mascot for Kidjutsu.

New Features

Other than aesthetic improvements, there are also many feature improvements to the reader and the site:

• Simple fit-to-screen-width zoom feature for the comic reader.
• Bookmarks to keep track of where you are in a comic.
• Simpler dock for navigation - buttons to zoom, enter/exit fullscreen, and bookmark are all at the bottom right of the reader.
• Activation "Play" button for the reader.
• Better SEO-friendly paths to comics.
• Recommendations based on genre + votes.
• Youtube-style recommendations after finishing a comic.
• Share by email and ShareThis widget
• New web design based on header+mascot designed by Marina Neira
• Better browsing of comics on Kidjutsu.
• Signup, login, request password improvements.
• Simple user profiles.

With the majority of must-have features implemented, Kidjutsu is now ready for primetime. If you like the comics on our site or really like what we're doing, please help us spread the word by linking to us on your blog or on your website. If you'd like, you can use one of our kids comics buttons or banners.

In a recession, what's the most economical way to buy physical comics for kids? When I was a kid there was a comic store every 20-30 blocks in Brooklyn. In the late 80s and early 90s, there were still comics at your local deli or newstand. It's now a little bit tougher, but there are still some good options.

Local Comic Stores

You can buy comics straight from your local comic store if you're fortunate to have one close by. Most shops give 10% discounts for regular customers. Kids comics usually don't sell many copies, so each comic store usually doesn't stock many copies. Unlike books, comics are purchased by stores on a nonreturnable basis.

Parents should setup a "pull" list to ensure they get a monthly copy of their favorite comics like Sonic the Hedgehog, Tiny Titans, Supergirl Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, Simpsons, Futurama, or comics from the Marvel Adventures line.

Online Comic Stores

If you don't have a comic store nearby, you can order comics at an online comic store. Midtown Comics, TFAW, and MyComicShop are respectable online stores to purchase from. For those just interested in kids comics, TFAW has a really good kids-comics-only filter at http://www.tfaw.com/comics/kids.

Online Preorder

If you find that you're ordering the same titles every month, it may make sense to pre-order the comics and buy them at a substantial discount at the Discount Comic Book Service aka DCBS. A lot of the risk in running a comic store is predicting what will sell and what won't. Remember comics bought through Diamond distribution are all nonreturnable! To remove this risk, DCBS only accepts preorders and is able to pass along up to 50% off cover price. The only drawback of preordering is that you will need to know ahead of time what your kid wants and hope they don't change their mind.

I was just going through my RSS feeds and saw the Absolutely Amazing Video Game Remake Wallpapers post at Lifehacker. These are old-school games re-rendered by Mikael Aguirre aka Orioto using advanced photoshop shading, texturing, and airbrush techniques. Absolutely amazing!

Check out this one from Street Fighter II Turbo:

And this one from Sonic the Hedgehog.

Incidentally both of these video games have ongoing comic book series. Udon Entertainment makes a very beautiful Street Fighter II series, parts of which can be read at Crunchyroll. Archie Comics does the Sonic the Hedgehog comic and it's geared toward kids. It'd be super-cool if they re-published the Sonic the Hedgehog comics in a DVD like they did with the older Archie comics. The Archie Comics publisher has a very long history of producing comics for kids and they're the only one who makes sure their comics can be found outside of the comic book and book stores.

Exploring Orioto deviantArt page some more, I noticed that IGN commissioned a Final Fantasy VI wallpaper. I can't wait to see it! That was my favorite game from when I was a kid! Too bad there's no official Final Fantasy manga based on FFVI. There's a ton of back stories in FFVI to work with.

If you like Final Fantasy, check out the Wayrift fan comic set in the world of Final Fantasy IV. I've embedded the Introduction issue into this post.

One of the best comics to come out of the New York Comic Con is The Undersea Adventures of Capt'n Eli. Originally a concept comic book to help promote the Capt'n Eli soda brand. The concept inspired Jay Piscopo to create an all-ages adventure graphic novel series. The story is about Eli, an extraordinary scientifically-minded boy and his adventures in a world of time-travel, robots, lost civilizations, and undersea empires in conflict. Sounds like a more fun version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to me.

While surfing around the Capt'n Eli site, I noticed Jay has done a lot of interactive drawing workshops at schools. He talks about them in this Capt'n Eli School Drawing Demonstration. Here's another workshop at the NYCC Kids Day that Jay did this year. If we had these workshops when I was a kid, my paper UI mockups wouldn't be so horrible...

Almost every day I am reminded that I work for the best comics creators on the Internet. This past week two creators gave us something really special.

Mike Luce spent a few weeks to re-draw some of the earlier pages of Fite!, a comic about a boxing otter. He even gave us an exclusive page to make the ending a little bit more clear for our younger readers. It's a really great story told without any words.

Randy Reynaldo also uploaded two issues of Rob Hanes Adventures to the site. When I popped open the comic to review it for content, I noticed a tagline at the bottom of the comic: "Special Kidjutsu Edition!". That was just soooo cool!

Check out these two great comics below:

I'm a little late on this one, but Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a graphic novel that should be on every adult and kids reading list. The third book in the series came out last month. Check out the huge crowd of kids at the Barnes & Noble waiting to get their books signed by Jeff Kinney.

A few weekends ago, I read the first half of the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid book on Funbrain. I really enjoyed what I've read so far and look forward to reading more. Jeff Kinney is just so accurate in how he describes life as a wimpy kid in middle school. My favorite part so far is when Greg Heffley, the main character, complains about girls falling for the popular kid despite the same popular kid's lack of interest in girls just a year ago. Guys like Greg who have always liked girls don't seem to get a first-mover's advantage...

Kinney's got a lot more of these honest moments in his book. And they're what makes the book so popular. What's great is that more and more reluctant readers are now discovering the joys of reading because of this book. It's an especially huge achievement given how hard it is nowadays to hook kids with the Internet and video games consuming 15-20 hours a week.

In addition to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Funbrain has a lot of other great comics for kids to read. For example, Tyler Martin's Wally and Osborne comic strip is syndicated on the site by its previous title "On the Rocks". What's cool about this webcomic is that it only uses a handful of colors in every strip. Another comic on Funbrain is the uber-cute Silent Kimbly by Ryan Sias. Both of these creators are part of the Lunchbox Funnies, all-ages comics collective. Overall, Funbrain is a great site for kids. Kudos to the manager/editor at Funbrain who gave the go-ahead to run the Diary of A Wimpy Kid diary entries in 2004!

Dirk Deppey who writes the daily Journalista blog for The Comics Journal totally nails it in his commentary about digital comics announcements from New York Comic Con 2009.

"Three new things that won’t change comics forever

Everybody’s convinced that digital comics will save the media, but how? Will it be an iPhone application? How about the new Kindle? Marvel’s latest Clutch Cargo adaptation, starring that oh-so-popular Spider-Woman, perhaps?

Try “none of the above.” Where comics are concerned, all three possibilities are solutions to problems that consumers don’t yet actually consider to be problems. Put simply, to the extent that online comics have grown in popularity it’s because of content, not the delivery system, and they’ve tended not to be tied to one proprietary system or another. The success of cellphone manga in Japan is due to a pre-existing fanbase being given the opportunity to download popular titles for which they already have a craving, on devices that everyone owns. All of the above pretenders to the downloadable-comics throne suffer massively in this regard: UClick may have Bone and the Ninja Turtles, but how many children have iPhones? Those are toys for older, wealthier consumers. Likewise, the limited catalog of titles in Marvel’s initiative don’t include current comics, the one thing that they could offer that would attract readers in massive numbers, due to a desire not to be tarred and feathered by retailers, and so the most popular source for new digital comics remains BitTorrent. And the Kindle is only just beginning to look feasible as a platform for anything other than text, and its relative rarity in the marketplace doesn’t exactly make it look like an attractive option.

Given all that, your Web browser remains the technology most likely to facilitate an online readership. Wake me up if that changes any time soon..."

Have you noticed? We have a new header!

Marina Neira did an awesome job designing the logo and mascot for Kidjutsu. Just these two elements make the site so much more vibrant! To the left is a full body glamour shot of our little ninja fox.

You can also check out Marina's webcomic Paleo on Kidjutsu.

Triggered by Diamond's order minimum increase, my last post discussed the cost structures of the digital comics platforms built by the top three comics publishers. I concluded that the most cost-effective business model is to pursue a strategic alliance with another media company that understands how to build large online communities. Crunchyroll and Myspace are two companies who are good at what they do.

Of course, not every publisher is in a strategic position to convince media companies to build custom sites for the publisher's content. Nor can many pay $50k a month to roll their own custom solution like Zuda Comics. In this blog post, I'll evaluate some of the existing options out there.

ComicPress and ComicPress Manager

My favorite alternative is actually a favorite of many webcomickers. It's the ComicPress and the ComicPress Manager plugin for WordPress. Tyler Martin and John Bintz have done an excellent job making their software easy-to-use. The technical expertise required to run such a site is relatively minimal and there are a lot of tutorials on the web. Tyler also runs a webcomics consulting business and he's actually themed a lot of very popular webcomics using ComicPress. The only downside is that you will need to arrange your comic like a webcomic. It's not necessarily a bad thing as many comic fans are well-acquainted with the quirks of webcomics systems.

What's nice about ComicPress is that you can start slow and release pages of a single series onto the web, a page at a time. You can even do it with the most basic ComicPress installation. Most people only really care about the content; the theme and webdesign is just the wrapping paper. By giving people new content every few days and buying cheap ads at Project Wonderful, a publisher can very quickly build a loyal fan-base numbering in the thousands. Then you can try to cross-sell books and merchandise from your online store or printed books on one of the print-on-demand publishers. The most important thing to do is to keep tabs on conversion rates to see what can be improved.

Kidjutsu

If the comics are rated PG-13 or less, Kidjutsu is another good choice. Besides being very easy to use, our comic book reader is also especially tailored for standard tall comic books. One of our favorite features is that embeddability of the comic reader. Check out our reader in action below or on Mark McKenna's Banana-Tail site. You can also read the Banana-Tail illustrated childrens book series on Kidjutsu.

For those interested in using our service, you can contact me at brian@kidjutsu.com. Just include a link to your comic and I'll send you more information about our service and our plans for sharing profit.

Time and Experimentation

No matter how much or how little you spend, it always takes time to get a website going. That doesn't mean publishers should wait though. The earlier you start the better position you will be in two or three years down the road.

I have only covered a subset of the possibilities and I expect a lot of exploration to happen in the next 2-3 years. I believe most of the innovation will come from creators and small publishers. After all, these are the people who are scrappy enough to survive tough markets like the comic book market in its current state.

Also see the Digital Comics Platforms Part I blog entry.

Small publishers better dust off those digital distribution business plans. Diamond Distributors is raising their order minimums to $2500 from $1500. According to Johanna from Comics Worth Reading, publishers need to sell 66% more books to reach the order minimum to sell in the direct market. With one recessionary tactic, Diamond has chopped off a long-tail of small press books.

We're all aware of the great opportunities for distributing comics on the web. Unfortunately, no one yet has succeeded at building a delivery system workable for small publishers. Most small publishers are now faced with cobbling together a strategy to drive visitors to their websites in order to convert them into customers. Cost of course is half of any business plan. In the first part of this series, I'm going to analyze the costs of building the existing digital comics systems. After framing the costs, we'll discuss cheaper alternatives in the second part.

Marvel's Secret Project

At one end, we have Marvel allocating $10M for the next generation Marvel digital comics system. We may get a sneak peak from Marvel at New York Comic-con in February as they are running a panel called MARVEL Digital Comics and Beyond! My guess is that they'll try to keep the project under $5M and leave the rest for a huge marketing campaign.

Zuda Comics Case Study

Now consider DC's Zuda Comics as a case study. The site was built by a team of IBM consultants. IBM did a great job with the actual site. Built on the Drupal open source content management system, it was totally re-themed to not look like a typical Drupal site. There are also a lot of built-in social features. The site's performance was horrendous in July last year, but they have definitely made some significant performance improvements since then. The site is now quite zippy. It might even have a small advantage over the Kidjutsu comic reader in the latency of the first image load.

The team consisted of two lead technologists, Mike Martin and Bill Shaouy and at least 4 other IBMers. Here are some pics of the team . The project took about a year according to Mike Martin. I would estimate the total engineering salaries to be about $500k for the year. Bill and Mike spent all year prototyping and architecting the system. The other four engineers were mustered to implement the site in the final 4-5 month stretch. Consulting companies with the reputation of IBM typically mark-up their costs by 2-3x to come up with their consulting fees. With marketing efforts and server costs, the project probably cost DC at least $2M to complete. That doesn't include the DC Online web developers that helped and the Drupal sub-contractors they hired.

Software tends to only last four years before a major overhaul is needed to keep up with the changing landscape. Amortized over the next 4 years, the Zuda project costs DC about $42k a month. Maintenance costs including the salary for the lone Zuda editor are probably another $8k a month. This total cost of $50k a month to run Zuda is a significant hurdle for most publishers.

Partnership Model

For well-established small publishers, a good option is to partner with a bigger site with an established audience. Myspace Dark Horse Presents is an example of the biggest such partnership. UDON Entertainment and Crunchyroll recently partnered to bring Street Fighter comics to the anime-streaming site as the Udon Combo.

The out-of-pocket costs for these deals are usually minimal for the publishers. Their partners bring technical and internet marketing expertise, so all the publisher has to do is provide the content. Of course, there is an opportunity cost for a publisher to partner instead of rolling their own systems, but those are definitely offset by the increased chance of success that expertise brings. In general, these are usually very good deals to make for publishers. More eyeballs tend to translate to more customers buying merchandise and graphic novels.

I would highly recommend pursuing strategic deals with established websites. Trade content for eyeballs, but always make sure to provide readers a way to get to your own website or online store. These deals don't come around often though. As always, go into any deal with eyes wide open.

In this part of the series, I've covered the cost structures of the online strategies for the top 3 publishers. In part II, I'll discuss other cheaper alternatives that are open to small publishers looking to get on the web.

Also see the Digital Comics Platforms Part II blog entry.

I want to welcome all the new creators to Kidjutsu. It's very exciting to have so many talented individuals as part of the team. Welcome aboard!

For those not keeping track, we had a surge of creators join us in the last two weeks. Because so many have uploaded their kid-friendly comics to the site, many of them did not get a chance to be listed very long in our Recently Uploaded Comics section.

To give them more time in the spotlight, I've created this new reading list for January. In chronological order of upload, here are the twenty new comics from our newest members:

• Pilli Adventure by Algeya - a girl and his calavera doll ex-boyfriend.
• Sailor Ranko by Rebecca Heineman, Allison Decker, and Joseph Fanning - a hilarious doujinshi manga.
• Orchard Heroes by Gary Hsu - Appleman and team against Moldman
• The Science of SIX by Chuck Brown, YK Man, and the folks at 803Studios - Six kids with superhuman abilities raised by a ruthless organization above the law.
• Rangers! by Lanin D. Thomasma - an all-ages space-faring tale of a corps of rangers. An all-ages webcomic.
• Paleo by Marina Neira - An alien girl crash lands on prehistory Earth and meets a cave-boy and his pet dinosaur. A new all-ages webcomic.
• Lint by Colby Purcell - Comic adventures of a band of warriors into the Twisty Mountains.
• The Battle of Dovecote Crest by Bridget Underwood and Hailey Bachrach - the story of a group of Civil War re-enactors.
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Bwillet - a girl finds a ring at a museum, evil is unleashed, and she must train under a dead magician. An all-ages manga webcomic.
• The Ongoing Adventures of Rocket Llama by Alex and Nick Langley and the Rocket Llama Team - Hijinks and fun for all ages reminiscent of Platinum Age, Golden Age, and Silver Age comics and cartoons for kids. An all-ages comic
• Picpak Dog by Kim Belding - an awesome comic strip about a big pink dog and a small blue cat. An all-ages comic strip.
• Runway by Alayna "Syas" Cabral - colorful, trendy adventures of a 13-year-old fashion designer.
• The Witch of Nothing by Robert Arthur Smith - two siblings venture to the land of nothing and partner with a witch to save Nothing from an evil wizard. An all-ages DuckParade comic.
• Northwood Meadows , The Adventures of Sniffy , and Soup Hero by Andy Chang - wacky tales including balling animals, a crazy cat, and a soup chef super-hero with girl trouble.
• School Spirit by Daniel VanderWerff - an Austrialian webcomic about primary school children and the spooks they meet in a nearby cemetary. An all-ages webcomic with a HUGE archive.
• The Far End Chronicles by Miha Rinne - an all-ages fantasy comic about a mechanical girl living in an alien world. An all-ages comic book.
• Li'l Mell by Shaenon Garrity and Neil Babra - the recent Adjustment storyline about Mell and her friend Sergio.
• Wayrift by Aywren and Syntyche - a fantasy online mange about a band of misfits seeking self-truth, friendship, and a long-lost family.
• Nossus by Becky Knoth - a story of friends and betrayal in a another world.

I logged into Club Penguin yesterday to see what kids are doing in their spare time. Disney's Club Penguin is surprisingly simple, but also very confusing. It's almost impossible for me to follow any of the conversations that are blipping in and out on the screen. I still don't know what happens if you miss a comment. Maybe it doesn't matter.

I ended up spending 15-20 minutes trying to win a sled race without much luck. I think it's time to retire my once respectable video gaming skills. The closest I got was second place after 10 attempts. If you ram into a single log, you're in last place...

Afterwards, I did a search on google for "Club Penguin comics" and found this comic:

How appropriate! There's a whole bunch of these comics on the Club Penguin site. Maybe they'll be interested in submitting their comics for kids on Kidjutsu.

I've been following The Beat's Annual Yearend Survey, 2009 Edition set of articles. It's always cool when you get the top industry experts together to reflect on the past year and make predictions on what will happen in 2009. Check out Comic Industry Annual Yearend Survey Part I, Part II, and Part III.

There's a lot of worries about the health of the comic book industry but some are hopeful that a digital comics solution will surface in 2009. 2009 seems too early to me. Websites take time to launch, solicit feedback, iterate, and grow. For someone to do this in one year is highly unlikely. If this were to come true, it would have to be a company that already exists. Anyone have any idea where this website might be? What is this LongBox Project that Laura Hudson mentions in Part III? I visited longbox.com last year in July. It's literally still a question mark to me...

My favorite "The Economics of Webcomics" author, Todd Allen wonders what Marvel is up to with their $10 million dollar project:
"What will be the biggest story in comics in 2009? What Marvel does with the $10 million they’ve put aside for digital. Mind you, they’re already doing paid download in Europe with cellphones as the platform. While Marvel’s officially expecting to reap the rewards in 2010, by Q4 we have a chance of seeing 1) expansion of the digital subscription program, 2) shorter waits from print to digital, 3) some form of paid, single-issue downloads. If the downloads are in Europe, you can consider it in field-testing for the U.S."

Does anyone have any screenshots of this subscription program in the EU?

I'm not going to provide any predictions for 2009. I just hope Marvel will give us a sneak peak to their project sooner rather than later to solicit feedback from the fans. After all, these are the people who are going to buy Marvel's product. In the meantime, I'll continue to build Kidjutsu - Comics for Kids into a viable alternative to kids flash games. Sorry, did I mention that I went to the library today and saw rows of kids just playing mindless flash games on the computer? That's the subject of another post.

Without further ado, today's featured kid-friendly comic is the very cerebral Womble by my new friend fluffy, who is a software engineer in the Bay Area too!

Do you enjoy the comics on Kidjutsu? Want to show the world? You can now embed Kidjutsu comics in your blog posts and webpages. I encourage all readers and creators to put our Kidjutsu comic reader in their blog posts when referring to any of the Kidjutsu kids comics. Just embed the comic--like how you would embed a Youtube video--by clicking the HTML code in the embed input box as shown in the screenshot below.

When the comic thumbnail of the embedded reader is clicked, the reader will open in fullscreen like it does on the Kidjutsu site. Eventually, we'll implement a little icon or small animation to make it immediately obvious to the reader that the thumbnail is active.

To demonstrate the embeddable reader, I've embedded three comics below. They are: Dandy & Company by Derrick Fish, Catalyst by Esther Chuah, and Wings of Wishes by Christina Suh

Last week, I wrote about the recent price hikes from Marvel. I see three outcomes from Marvel's price hikes with DC likely to follow suit.

More readers will wait for the collected graphic novel.

Although I much prefer the monthly pamphlets, there are irrefutable advantages to waiting for the graphic novel. They're cheaper and can be ordered from Amazon. You can wait for reviews by bloggers or peers. In the early 90s, I spent way too much of my allowance on comic books that I didn't enjoy. The internet now allows us to be much more informed consumers.

Finally, thanks to many librarians across the country, you can also check out graphic novels from the library. It's truly amazing how quickly comics are shelved in my local library. Kudos to the librarians.

There is a real opportunity for digital distribution.

Kidjutsu is just one of many options for reading digital comics online. There are a number of very successful webcomics that have grown into successful businesses. Check out Penny Arcade and Girl Genius just to name a few. Webcomics are free to readers. They support themselves using merchandising and online advertising. A lot of the comics on Kidjutsu are also webcomics with merchandising strategies. For example, Sarah Ellerton, creator of Inverloch and Phoenix Requiem is accepting pre-orders of a limited edition Jonas statue for her Phoenix Requiem fans.

Even Marvel and DC are bringing comics to the web with their respective Digital Comics Unlimited and Zuda Comics projects. Marvel is spending $10M over the next few years to bulk out their digital offerings. Dark Horse has also partnered with Myspace with their Dark Horse Presents project.

Local comic stores will find it even harder to stay afloat.

In the 90s, there was a local comic store every 1/2 mile in Brooklyn. Now there's only a handful. Price hikes in a deep recession will drive some consumers away. They'll substitute monthly comics with digital comics or other forms of entertainment. My best advice for the LCS is to focus on selling the total experience. Figure out a way to improve conversions for higher margin merchandise.

Happy Holidays from the Kidjutsu family!

This hilarious Christmas card is brought to you by Scott Wright and his Team Spectacular webcomic. Check out Team Spectacular's heartwarming story of two superhero parents and their first child, Morgan in Micro Preemie Power. Last month, Scott graciously uploaded the comic Micro Preemie Power to Kidjutsu for our readers to enjoy. Scott's newest Change storyline takes sympathy weight gain to new superhero heights.

Marvel Comics recently hiked the cover price of a traditional 32-page print comic to $3.99 per issue. When I was a kid, comics used to cost $1.00. It went up to $1.95 before I lost track in high school. These price increases are actually somewhat inline with inflation in general, but it's a bit hard to swallow with all the various forms of free entertainment out there.

It totally sounds like the bean-counters are hard at work at the House of Ideas. It's basic economics. They recognize that comic collecting is a habit and the demand from collectors for comic books is relatively inelastic. Therefore the potential loss in sales is more than offset by the additional $1 in profit. Capitalism at its best.

At some point, even the most hardcore collectors may give up. As many marketers are aware, a lost customer is extremely hard to get back. Since no one in the ecosystem is successfully replenishing the supply of readers, the comic industry will shrink further.

In a very interesting blog post, Aaron Albert calculates the entertainment cost per minute of a comic.. At $3.99 cover price, the "ECPM" value of a comic is $0.27. To put that into perspective, the "ECPM" for a movie is $0.11 and the "ECPM" for a video game is $0.05-$0.07. A World of Warcraft (WoW) subscription by comparison costs 2/10 of a penny per minute. That's cheap! No wonder Club Penguin and Runescape are such huge successes. Kids love them and they're extremely cost-effective.

Let's actually take it one step further. Compare $0.27 to the cost of the latest episode of The Office on Hulu or yesterday's episode of Star Wars: Clone Wars or the newest Kidjutsu comic, Serenian Century by Ruina (read right-to-left).

All have great "ECPM" value. Personally, I can't wait for chapter 2 of Serenian Century. I hope Ruina reveals more of the history of the war and what actually happened to brother Divanis (deviantArt print).

Christmas is a week away and we're knee-deep in a recession. How about giving your favorite niece or nephew an inexpensive graphic novel instead of another mind-numbing video game this Christmas? If you like the idea, I highly recommend giving Kazu Kibuishi's all-ages appropriate Amulet, Book One: The Stonekeeper to a child next week.

It's about a girl Emily and her brother who get sucked into another world. Their mother is captured by a octopus-crab?! creature and they must save her. Along the way they make friends with cute robots and get pursued by a dark prince intent on overthrowing his father. The last scene has a haunting house transform into a mountain-climbing robot. It's a lot of fun! If the kids liked any of Hayao Miyazaki's movies like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, or Howl's Moving Castle, they'll definitely like Amulet.

Kazu Kibuishi is also the editor of the Harvey Award-winning comic anthology Flight. I recently had the good fortune to spend an afternoon sampling stories from Flight Volumes 4 and 5 at the library. I really enjoyed them and will probably pick up all five volumes at Wondercon this year.

Kibuishi and his team are actually working hard on the second volume. All-ages comics like Amulet are a huge undertaking with contributions from many creators. The commitment of so much time and energy to one's work is very admirable. So many webcomics creators churn out page after page week after week while holding down a full-time job. It's really an honor to get to work with such dedicated individuals.

Christmas is a week away and we're knee-deep in a recession. How about giving your favorite niece or nephew an inexpensive graphic novel instead of another mind-numbing video game this Christmas? If you like the idea, I highly recommend giving Kazu Kibuishi's all-ages appropriate Amulet, Book One: The Stonekeeper to a child next week.

It's about a girl Emily and her brother who get sucked into another world. Their mother is captured by a octopus-crab?! creature and they must save her. Along the way they make friends with cute robots and get pursued by a dark prince intent on overthrowing his father. The last scene has a haunting house transform into a mountain-climbing robot. It's a lot of fun! If the kids liked any of Hayao Miyazaki's movies like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, or Howl's Moving Castle, they'll definitely like Amulet.

Kazu Kibuishi is also the editor of the Harvey Award-winning comic anthology Flight. I recently had the good fortune to spend an afternoon sampling stories from Flight Volumes 4 and 5 at the library. I really enjoyed them and will probably pick up all five volumes at Wondercon this year.

Kibuishi and his team are actually working hard on the second volume. All-ages comics like Amulet are a huge undertaking with contributions from many creators. The commitment of so much time and energy to one's work is very admirable. So many webcomics creators churn out page after page week after week while holding down a full-time job. It's really an honor to get to work with such dedicated individuals.

Do you use del.icio.us or StumbleUpon? You can now share Kidjutsu comics with friends using these great services and others by clicking on the little icons right below the comic. Kidjutsu and our creators are working hard to post great kids comics to the site. Readers, help us spread the word by adding Kidjutsu to your social bookmarks!

We also now have over 35 kids comics titles on Kidjutsu. Our amazing growth over the last 3 weeks made us reorganize the comics on the site. The listing of all titles can now be found on the Browse Comics page. We now feature a random 5 comics on the homepage, which rotates every 30 minutes on cache expiration. Eventually we will sample the comics using a fair algorithm that takes into account the number of votes each comic has received.

Do you use del.icio.us or StumbleUpon? You can now share Kidjutsu comics with friends using these great services and others by clicking on the little icons right below the comic. Kidjutsu and our creators are working hard to post great kids comics to the site. Readers, help us spread the word by adding Kidjutsu to your social bookmarks!

We also now have over 35 kids comics titles on Kidjutsu. Our amazing growth over the last 3 weeks made us reorganize the comics on the site. The listing of all titles can now be found on the Browse Comics page. We now feature a random 5 comics on the homepage, which rotates every 30 minutes on cache expiration. Eventually we will sample the comics using a fair algorithm that takes into account the number of votes each comic has received.

Welcome! I am Brian, the founder of Kidjutsu, pronounced [kid-joot-soo]. For those who just browsed here, Kidjutsu is a kids comics website that lets kids read, discover, and share comics. We are a site geared toward kids, tweens, teens, and the big kid in all of us. At Kidjutsu, kids can read kid-friendly age-appropriate comics from popular comics and webcomics creators using our high resolution comic reader. The reader even has a fullscreen mode, which makes the experience very fluid.

When I set out to build Kidjutsu - Comics for Kids, I set two goals for the site:
1) Introduce kids to comics, and

2) Build a sustainable revenue model for creators with a life-long passion for kids comics.

As many parents, teachers, and librarians are discovering, kids comics are a good way to get kids to read. The comic book medium over the years has strayed from its original audience of kids as publishers catered to existing readers instead of investing to attract new readers. This choice by the publishers combined with higher costs of print has made comics totally inaccessible to kids today. By building an ad-supported site, we hope to provide an easily accessible supplement to the children's books and all-ages graphic novels that kids are already reading. As we grow, we will focus heavily on child-appropriateness, parental filters, and most importantly being a gateway to the imagination. We already have one of the largest assortments of all-ages comics for kids on the web.

Kidjutsu opened to the public shortly before Thanksgiving of 2008 with over 60 comics from 15 creators. Another 15 comics creators have joined since then and more join every day. From day one, Kidjutsu has formed an equitable partnership with creators to further the primary goal of introducing kids to comics. The success of the site is as much a result of these creators' hard work as it is the software development we do in the background.

Enough about us, you should read some comics on Kidjutsu. Just pick a comic and go!

Welcome! I am Brian, the founder of Kidjutsu, pronounced [kid-joot-soo]. For those who just browsed here, Kidjutsu is a kids comics website that lets kids read, discover, and share comics. We are a site geared toward kids, tweens, teens, and the big kid in all of us. At Kidjutsu, kids can read kid-friendly age-appropriate comics from popular comics and webcomics creators using our high resolution comic reader. The reader even has a fullscreen mode, which makes the experience very fluid.

When I set out to build Kidjutsu - Comics for Kids, I set two goals for the site:
1) Introduce kids to comics, and

2) Build a sustainable revenue model for creators with a life-long passion for kids comics.

As many parents, teachers, and librarians are discovering, kids comics are a good way to get kids to read. The comic book medium over the years has strayed from its original audience of kids as publishers catered to existing readers instead of investing to attract new readers. This choice by the publishers combined with higher costs of print has made comics totally inaccessible to kids today. By building an ad-supported site, we hope to provide an easily accessible supplement to the children's books and all-ages graphic novels that kids are already reading. As we grow, we will focus heavily on child-appropriateness, parental filters, and most importantly being a gateway to the imagination. We already have one of the largest assortments of all-ages comics for kids on the web.

Kidjutsu opened to the public shortly before Thanksgiving of 2008 with over 60 comics from 15 creators. Another 15 comics creators have joined since then and more join every day. From day one, Kidjutsu has formed an equitable partnership with creators to further the primary goal of introducing kids to comics. The success of the site is as much a result of these creators' hard work as it is the software development we do in the background.

Enough about us, you should read some comics on Kidjutsu. Just pick a comic and go!