I thought it might be fun to learn how to put together a video and put it up on YouTube. So I picked out a scene from one of my Buster Keaton shorts that I liked, clipped it down to size with Microsoft’s Movie Maker (which came free with Vista) and added a little bit of dialogue to the begining and end of the clip talking about the new Addictive Comics site.

I didn’t really have much hope for the video. It was mainly a learning exercise.

But it has done remarkably well…for itself. Even though I thought he was probably almost unknown by the general public, Buster Keaton is a surprisingly popular subject on YouTube (based on the views of some of the other Keaton clips) and my little clip has gotten 340 views as of today.

However, it has not done quite so well for Addictive Comics. The video has produced only 2 click-throughs (visits to our site by “clicking” the link on YouTube) – one each to Addictive Comics and The Rookie.

This is not a problem. As I said this was mainly an exercise to learn how to put up a video. Scott and I plan on making and using videos extensively in the future and we need to become familiar with all aspects of them.

Here is the clip for you if you would like to watch it.  Let us know what you think. 

Mark

Yesterday we asked you to send us your ideas for comic series and stories you would like to see on Addictive Comics.  We talked about the “Immediacy of the Internet” that allows us to experiment with pretty much anything we like. 

But there’s more to it than that.  To really compete with the big offline comic boys, we have to set ourselves apart.  We need to experiment with whatever strikes our fancy and not be afraid to fail.  Or course, the goal is not to fail but to catch lightning in a bottle.  To find the sweet spot that no one else is hitting. 

The ability to fail and move on so quickly makes it possible to find that sweet spot fast.  It has not always been that way.  In the past (and still today in the Offline World) a simple bad marketing decision could take several years to discover and cost millions of dollars.

Bad Business Decisions & Famously Wrong Quotes 

Here are a few bad decisions from the world of business that have become famous — and are humourous in hindsight.  Some people learned from their mistakes and moved on (Bill Gates.)  Some, sadly, faded into virtual obsurity (Decca).

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” — Bill Gates, 1981

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try to find oil? You’re crazy.” -– Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859

“But what … is it good for?” — Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” –Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” –David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.  (I hope he fired all of them. — Mark)

“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” — A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.[FedEx])

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895

“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” — Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre. 

“I’m just glad it will be Clark Gable falling on his face and not Gary Cooper” -– Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in “Gone With the Wind”

And my three favorites:

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” –Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.  Pwned!

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” — Western Union internal memo, 1876. (CLICK HERE to read more of this very interesting memo — which includes Bell’s “idiotic” idea of having a phone in every city in America!)   Alexander Bell offered the patent for the Telephone to Western Union in 1876 for $100,000.  They decined.  The telephone patent has been estimated as the most valuable patent of all time.  Bell’s Company, AT&T, later aquired Western Union.  Special Note — In 1971 AT&T turned down an offer to own the Internet.  Oh well. 

“So we went to Atari and said, “Hey we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.” And they said, “No”. So then we went to Hewlett Packard and they said, “Hey, we don’t need you; you haven’t even got through college yet.” -– Apple Computer Co–Founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in he and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.  HP recovered nicely (though not quite as nicely, I suspect, as they would have if they’d listened to Jobs) but where is Atari today?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

So we asked you to please send us ideas for comics that you would like to see.  A Webcomic will probably NOT be the next telephone or Apple Mac, nor are we the Beatle’s, but we have no reason not to take a chance and every reason to.

Mark

PS - Couldn’t find quotes for these two, but they are interesting…

In 1933 Coca-Cola declined an opportunity to buy it’s then-bankrupt and insignificant rival Pepsi - Cola

In 1999, Excite declined the opportunity to buy Google for $1 million.  It’s possible that ANY quote on this mistake from Excite would be quite unprintable.

In this post I have a question you won’t be able to answer and a request you won’t want to miss.

You Will Not Be Able to Answer This Question

Here it is, give it a try:

Can a Detective Webcomic succeed?

It’s a simple little question but not you, nor I, nor anyone else can answer it. 

Why? 

Simple, it has no answer.  Or rather, the answer has not been written yet. 

So much depends upon variables such as the creators, the story, the site, the promotion and many more.  I won’t get into all of them but it’s easy to imagine that any one of them can determine whether a webcomic succeeds or fails. 

But that is the great thing about the internet — failure does not hurt you.  At least not much.  Of course, I am not talking about the spectacular flame-outs of the Dot-Com Bubble Era, like Pets.com and PeaPod that lost millions of dollars for their investors.  I am referring to the unique “immediacy” of the Internet that allows us to try almost anything today and move on tomorrow if it fails.

The Advantage We Have Over Marvel

Addictive Comics, and Webcomics in general, have several advantages over their huge counterparts in the physical world — Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image.  The main two are expenses and speed. 

In the “offline world” it is very expensive and time-consuming to produce and distribute a comicbook.  This makes it difficult and scary for the publishers to commit to any radical concepts.  Money and jobs are on the line.  And it could be months, even years, before you know whether you have guessed right and have a hit or guess wrong and have a flop.

Of course, this leads to “safe” publishing.  Go with what works.  Which brings us back to the question…

Can a Detective Webcomic succeed?  How about a SciFi Webcomic?  Romance?  Sports?  Adventure?

We don’t know — but we have no reason not to try and find out — and every reason to.

Which, of course, leads us to…

The Simple Request

Here it is:

What would you like to see on Addictive Comics?

That’s it.  You let us know.  We are looking to build something special here and we are competing with the big “offline” boys for your time. 

And failure does not scare us because we have the immediacy of the Internet on our side.

Nothing…and we mean NOTHING…is too far out.  Do you have a “dream comic” you’ve always wanted to see?

How about a western?

Would you read a World War Two comic?

Or get really creative — a Hill-Billy Romance/Revenge Epic?  A tale set in King Authur’s Court? 

How about a Detective Comic/Recipe Book?  (Actually, we already have that one in the works.)  

Remember — the worst that can happen if we make your idea is that it doesn’t really work out and we have to stop.  At least you’ll get a few pages of your dream comic.

Please write to us today.  Leave comments below or send emails to addictivecomics@gmail.com

NOTHING is too far out!  Try us.

Mark

I know that most of you are familiar with Scott Sigler (that’s him in the corner) and his work. But there may be a few people who stumble on this site (poor souls) who have never heard of him.  So I figured it would be a good idea to give you a bio.  Besides — cutting and pasting the idiot’s own words from his site made this a really easy post for me. 

See ya tomorrow.

Mark 

Scott is the author of INFECTED, a major hardcover thriller from Crown Publishing. He landed his book deal by giving away multiple novels as free, serialized podcasts that generated a large online following and saw over 4 million downloads of the individual episodes.

Scott reinvented book publishing when he released EARTHCORE as the world’s first “podcast-only” novel. Released in twenty weekly episodes, EARTHCORE harkened back to the days of serialized radio fiction and picked up 10,000 subscribers along the way.

His next podcast novel, ANCESTOR, drew 30,000 listeners and saw 700,000 episodes downloaded by fans. The buzz caused Sirius Satellite to pick up the novel, making it the first audiobook serialized on the satellite network. When ANCESTOR was released in print from a small independent publisher, it hit #7 overall on Amazon.com despite no marketing, no advertising and no media coverage.

Scott’s innovative use of technology puts him at the forefront of modern-day publishing, and has garnered brand-name exposure among hundreds of thousands of fiction fans and technology buffs. He’s been covered in the New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher’s Weekly, The Huffington Post, Business Week and Fangoria.

Michigan native, Scott lives in San Francisco with his wife Jody and their two dogs, Mookie and Emma.

Scott is responsible for many inventions, including podcasting, the Internet, and the internal combustion engine. And trees, those were his. Okay, so he worked with Al Gore on the Internet, but Scott did most of the work. He made his first podcast in 1978. It is a well-known fact that he has podcast every Sunday, without fail, since that time (with the exception of Super Bowl Sundays, which Scott claims as the ultimate holy day).

Scott is 6-foot-10, can juggle four kittens and can hop on one leg for, like, over 10 minutes without falling over. That’s rad. Don’t lie to me, you know it’s rad, you just don’t want to look uncool in front of your friends. Fine, Mister Cool Guy, go ahead and act disinterested.

We know you’ll be back.

Scott is off on A Super-Secret Mission of Death™ – or SMOD for short — so not much is going on with the Rookie Webcomic.  This is not a problem.  We knew the SMOD was coming and planned for it.  What we didn’t plan on was KimCads leaking our Super Secret Location™ to the world — Read about it HERE.  Curse you KimCads!   Now I cannot sit around all day and watch Springer (the former mayor of a city very close to my hometown, by the way.) 

You can read about the SMOD at Scott’s Site —  HERE   But don’t expect much information.  It wouldn’t be very ”super-secret“ if he told everyone, now would it?   

Hell, I’ll just go ahead and tell you what he says so you can save yourself a trip:

I am not at liberty to discuss this mission at the moment. Preparing for this SMOD™ is taking up all of my time, and there may be more of a delay before NOCTURNAL continues again. On a sweetness scale of 1 to 10, this SMOD is about a 7. General Siglerisimo has no other details at this time.

Secret Missions? General Siglerisimo? Is this guy for real?

By the way, I know what the Super-Secret Mission of Death™ really is — but I ain’t telling!  Muwa-ha-ha-ha (that’s suppose to be an evil laugh.  It’s really hard to spell.)

I will tell you two things about it:

1. It is way cooler than the 7 of 10 Scott gave it.  I’d say at least a 9.

2. No one on any site I have read has guessed correctly what it is.  Of course, I spend 90% of my time on WetHillBillyGirlsInDaisyDukes.com so I may have missed it.

(note - I made that website up for comic effect.  There isn’t one.  I checked.  But now that I have given someone the idea, there probably will be by the time you read this, so — you’re welcome.)

Before I really get in trouble, let’s end this post with a drawing of mine.  Most of you who haven’t been living under a rock for the past 3 years know all about General Siglerisimo (jeeze) but most of you have never heard of me.  There are very good reasons for that.  The main one of which is that I have never done anything on the web of particular noteworthyness.

But that’s all about to change with The Rookie and Addictive Comics!  Yeah, baby.

But back to the picture — this is the first drawing I ever sold on Ebay.  It’s Susan Storm, the Invisible Girl, from the Fantastic Four.  This was drawn pre-Jessica Alba. 

Enjoy and please leave a comment and let me know what you think.  

We Have a Leak!

As I explained on the first page of the Webcomic, one of our good friends, Kim (who goes by “KimCads” and won’t tell anyone why), decided to “help us out” by Social Bookmarking our new site. This led another friend, Tommy, to “jump the gun” with a short video we asked him to post for us.

Unfortunately The Rookie Webcomic is FAR from ready.

But Scott and I hate those annoying “under construction” pages that you see from time to time, so we decided the best thing to do was to explain what happened and leave the site up. Besides we need it up and running to keep testing it. So anyone who stumbles upon it is now, by default, one of our “beta testers”.

The Rookie Blog

The Rookie Blog was slated to start about a month before the comic went “live” but with the leak we decided to push this up also.

Until the comic is ready to come out we will be updating you on the progress and (hopefully) discussing with you what you would like to see and what changes we can make.

After the launch of The Rookie we plan to continue updating the blog with bits of “behind the scenes” information and posts that maybe don’t fit on the regular site.

That’s where we stand at this point. Look for updates to the blog everyday or so and occassional updates to the Comic as we near the “Go Live” date.

Mark