Petz told me that when Zuda closed down, he was offered a percentage of what he would have earned on the contract he won last January, despite the fact that he hadn’t produced any work for them yet. “The people at DC I was dealing with and who I’ve since become friends with were (and still are) very supportive,” he said. “So in the end I got some money and more importantly, I was given my rights back. That was the biggest deal. I own War of the Woods 100 percent.”

Andrew and Justin signed with Creators Syndicate because he was exhausted trying to do both the marketing and the artwork of the strip. Since signing with Creators, it has freed up his time so he could focus on other things like their book and animation projects. Andrew suggests anyone going into comics to make sure they create iconic, consistent and relatable characters. He also talked about the 10,000 hour rule: the amount of hours one has to invest into any effort to be really proficient and skilled at it. The notion of wanting your comic on the refrigerator door is an antiquated idea. In today’s world, the equivalent is having your cartoons forwarded through email, posted on Facebook walls. A couple of other things Andrew advocated is that if you can help not be both the artist and the salesman, life will be easier. Selling a cartoon sounds better coming from a third party.

Everything was fine until the city started running out of money in 2007. Suddenly, the city announced that it was going to ignore its own ruling and reclassify us in the higher tax category. Even more incredible is the fact that the new classification was to be imposed retroactively to 2004 with interest and penalties. No explanation was given for the new classification, or for the city’s decision to ignore its 1994 ruling.

Their official position is that the city is not bound by past rulings — only taxpayers are. This is why we have been forced to file a lawsuit. We will let the courts decide whether it is legal for adverse rulings to apply only to taxpayers and not to the city.

Newcombe also mentions that the company is preparing to move out of Los Angeles should court ruling be unfavorable to their business.

iVerse already has over a hundred comic app collections in Apple’s App Store.

“We’re looking for efficiencies,” Garnett said. “We share pagination between the five urban papers and this also reduces the print rights we need to secure in each of those markets.”

Margo Sugrue, National Sales Director for Creators, orchestrated the deal for Creators. “We’re thinking of the newspapers. If the newspapers don’t survive, we don’t survive. Group deals save them money. They don’t have to pay all the different syndicate fees that come with al-a-carte approach.” Sugrue’s approach was to offer Sun Media a “good deal at an attractive rate for one delivery for five major markets.”

The Sun papers have been running Rubes, Strange Brew, Zack Hill, The Barn, Agnes, Daddy’s Home, On a Claire Day, Doug Eat Doug, and Scary Gary for about two weeks now.

While some fans of other comics from other syndicates might be disappointed, Garnett says there hasn’t been any major complaints from readers apart from the few that were anticipated.

Creators Syndicate is launching a new comic service called “RevUp” for online newspapers. The comics are embedded on the paper’s web site with an ad supplied by Creators. The paper keeps any advertising revenue off that page minus the one ad served up by Creators.

The service also includes social features such as ratings, comments, email to a friend.

The service is free to use for newspapers.

When asked why CNS was sold, Copley Press Executive Vice President Harold W. Fuson replied: “We made a decision a few years ago to focus on our flagship — The San Diego Union-Tribune. Copley News Service played a much different role in our company when we had a group of newspapers spread across several states.”

The troubled economy was also a factor — albeit a lesser one, said Fuson. “In an economy like this, you have to be more careful about how you use your resources,” he told E&P. “You have to focus even more sharply on your core business.”

Creators President Richard S. Newcombe said, “Copley sells to many smaller newspapers. That would open new markets for us.”

Here’s another homepage to the comic, although it’s obviously incomplete.

No announcement so far on when this comic will begin appearing in newspapers.