Modern Tales Launch!

Post by **Scott McCloud** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 2:18 pm

I've started a thread at Comicon.com:

http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimate ... 8&t=000646

Feel free to join in or start a discussion here too.

http://www.moderntales.com launches later today, Friday March 1st.

joezabel · Post by **joezabel** » Fri Mar 01, 2002 10:35 pm

Your support and endorsement of Modern Tales really means a lot to us, Scott!:)

I hope everybody will check out the site at http://www.moderntales.com (premiering very late on March 1...)

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Sat Mar 02, 2002 6:43 pm

it's up! it's up! it's up, it's up, it's up!!

just thought i'd let y'all know...

Post by **Greg Stephens** » Mon Mar 04, 2002 1:17 pm

It's up and it's good- All of it, so far, not just Cat's stuff.

BTW, Cat- I really like the background on your page. It was a couple minutes before I noticed the subtle fading animation. One of the very, very few actually good uses for animation in a background graphic.

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Tue Mar 05, 2002 1:38 am

hey, greg, thanks! i've been getting a lot of positive response on the strip so far and i can't wait to post more! i just went to the Hidalgo County museum today in edinburg, texas and bought a few more books about border history/culture/folklore as well as some other resources to add to the bibliography for CUENTOS (and help with my continuing research in writing this story).

Here's some of the stuff i'll be adding soon to the archive portion of my moderntales work (which will only be available to the payin' customers i'm sorry to say):

Bibliography (books used in research for story)

Maps of the area in which the story/cuentos take place

Glossary (for all my non-texmex speaking readers)

i'm also hoping to add an image gallery of some of the best photos my friend Jose Guadalupe Gonzalez has taken that i've used for my backgrounds, an online Loteria game (you'll learn more about loteria later in the strip!), and hopefully some shorter pieces.

of course, this may take some time, but i'll post as much as i can whilst still working on keeping the strip on that strict weekly Friday update schedule!

there's a wallpaper as well... hopefully it'll be up soon, but for those of you that can't wait, email me and i'll shoot you a copy! (there's a preview of it on my site... it's the image in the LATEST section)

rcar · Post by **rcar** » Tue Mar 05, 2002 9:33 am

I suscribed to modern tales the first day it was up. Well worth the price. Everything has been great so far. Scott Kurtz did a great job with his new strip. Really good color. But Cat's stuff is the real pearl. He really takes advantage of the web medium. Always has. But not only beautiful work, but good story telling too. If modern tales dosn't prove that web comics have come into their own, I don't know what will.

Randy Carboni
http://www.mermbut.com

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rcar on 2002-03-05 08:38 ]</font>

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Tue Mar 05, 2002 9:41 pm

why, thank you kind sir!

Post by **Greg Stephens** » Thu Mar 07, 2002 7:23 pm

Attempting to visit Modern Tales at the moment reveals a message that they're over their bandwidth allotment. Ugh. I think it was Scott Kurtz who wrote a "How success could kill your webcomic" rant.

Zubkavich · Post by **Zubkavich** » Thu Mar 07, 2002 11:10 pm

This from Joey Manley, editor of Modern Tales:

Well, we're down right now. Our hosting provider shut us down for excessive bandwidth usage, even though we have plenty of money to pay them. We are buying from a reseller who is part of this community. We like him very much. He's a great guy. But we're not really thrilled with the company whose services he's reselling right now, and are moving to another provider.

The good news is that response to the site has been tremendous. We expected to have 500 members in six months. We've had almost 600 members in six days. The overwhelming majority of these people have paid for the annual subscription. People said nobody wanted to support webcomics creators by paying money out-of-pocket. They were wrong. Our revenues in the first six days have exceeded our projections for the first six months. Modern Tales is here to stay, and so are professional webcomics generally (part of our goal was to succeed monetarily on behalf of our contracted cartoonists -- the other part of out goal was to prove a point). We've proven the point: people will pay for quality comics on the web.

But, frankly, I'm still embarrassed that this has happened, and promise you that I will do everything in my power -- financially, and in terms of elbow grease -- to make sure that it doesn't happen again. I should have listened more closely to Darren and Chris. I always knew we'd have to upgrade to a dedicated server. I didn't expect it to happen so quickly.

The problem is being corrected. We are in the process of a major upgrade. It should take between 24-48 hours for this upgrade to be complete.

Hopefully, we'll never have to send another message like this one again. Growing pains and all. Thanks for your patience.

Joey Manley and the Modern Tales Team

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Sun Mar 10, 2002 10:59 pm

just thought i'd post a note here that we're back up and stuff. also, there's another episode of CUENTOS up.

cat

Tim Mallos · Post by **Tim Mallos** » Mon Mar 11, 2002 1:28 pm

I get more excited about CUENTOS with each installment!
Thank you for making cool web comics!

Tim

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Tue Mar 12, 2002 9:09 am

wow! thanks, tim! i get more excited, too!

i can't wait to add the maps, glossary, and bibliography... should help give ppl perspective on the setting for this story [and the stories within the story].

new r stevens and kurtz stuff at moderntales 2day!!!!! whoo hooo!!!!!!

Post by **Greg Stephens** » Tue Mar 12, 2002 12:57 pm

R. Stevens just rocks all over the place, but I'm finding Scott Kurtz's "Wedlock" has a nice edge to it that PvP doesn't. Now, I'm not one of those people who automatically thinks that art is better when it's more "raw" or "honest". I think that more people need to realize that all art- especially popular music- is artiface. But it's nice to see Kurtz tackle something that seems a bit more personal than PvP.

(I was briefly confused with "R. Stevens" and "Cat Garza" and almost typed "Cat Stevens"...)

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Tue Mar 12, 2002 2:07 pm

cat stevens. like i haven't heard THAT one before...

yeah, i'm pleased as punch to see scott doing something very personal and aesthetically different from PVP. not that i needed proof that kurtz was a "real artist" or anything, but WEDLOCK definitely portrays a more personal vision which is the kind of thing i'm always more attracted to in a person's comics. "what does this say about the artist" type stuff....

J. W. Cornelius · Post by **J. W. Cornelius** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 5:20 am

At least your name is memorable, Cat. I say it's worth all the teasing.
I'm still waiting to hear back from ModernTales. They told me to wait right here and they'd be back to pay the check. hhmmmm....

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 9:14 am

man, i don't know how i've missed your work j.w. guess i just don't put in enough surfing time!

your work is WONDERFUL, man!

Post by **Greg Stephens** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 12:39 pm

I notice in a Comicon thread that right now http://www.deep-purple.com directs readers to Modern Tales' site instead. Now there's a way of finding new readers that I hadn't thought of!

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 12:47 pm

too bad it's an accident

Post by **Greg Stephens** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 1:00 pm

Right now I'm working out how to get http://www.rollingstone.com to redirect here...

J. W. Cornelius · Post by **J. W. Cornelius** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 1:38 pm

Now wouldn't that be nice.
How about ebay?
Of course I'd settle for spawn.com.
How's it going, Cat!

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 2:24 pm

hey, j.w.!

so, um, some of us moderntales artists have been doing fan art for each other over the last couple days. i'll post mine here and hopefully the other guys will post of their own accord. thought you guys might want to see this...

***URL REMOVED***

J. W. Cornelius · Post by **J. W. Cornelius** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 2:29 pm

Is that a hint hint?;)
http://www.mooneytheturtle.com/scrapbook.html
I want some of that action.
Of course, I'm not MT at the moment.

catgarza · Post by **catgarza** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 2:46 pm

wow. mooney smokes more kill than i do! amazing...

J. W. Cornelius · Post by **J. W. Cornelius** » Wed Mar 13, 2002 2:52 pm

It's just a youthful indiscretion.

Zwol.org

Modern Tales Launch!

moderntales back up

Very cool!

heh

Rockin'

kurtz's aesthetic vision

mooney and stuff

yeah...

stonerturtle