Dark Horse and MySpace have teamed up to bring back Dark Horse Presents the comic company’s long-running anthology which had ended in September 2000. Started in 1986, Dark Horse Presents was the first comic published by Dark Horse, and was notably the first appearance of Concrete and the Sin City stories.

The inaugural issue is spectacular, but not groundbreaking as far as the creators go. Future issues, available exclusively on MySpace for the first week of every month, “will include a mix from both established, successful, comic creators as well as talented amateurs.” In this first issue, definitely check out Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon on Sugarshock, and Ron Marz and Luke Ross on Samurai: Heaven and Earth. The other two comics are also good, but, I mean, Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon…swoon.

DC is also entering the webcomics business with Zuda Comics, set to go live in October 2007. Unlike Dark Horse Presents, Zuda Comics will be entirely user generated, with anyone able to submit a sample of their comic. Then, each month, voters will decide the month’s best comics, and the winners will be given a one-year contract to publish their comic on Zuda. The exact contract is still unreleased, but according to DC president and publisher, Paul Levitz, “The copyright for each comic submitted to Zuda will be owned by its creator. DC will publish the winning/chosen comics under fairly conventional publishing agreements: initial payments for the work that is done, with royalties from revenues based on other uses, such as books, merchandise and movies/television shows.”

Zuda is a pretty great win/win situation. Some lucky creators get their comic published by DC (albeit through an online imprint), and DC gets a bunch of comics they know people will like (and, assumedly, a ton of ad traffic). And Dark Horse Presents isn’t too shabby either. Much more conventional than Zuda, it is still bound to showcase a lot of unknown creators, just as the original series did. (And it’s free!)

A fine time for the little guy, I’d say.

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>