Luke Judge

WITH the success of films such as Spiderman and X-Men, American comic book superheroes have dominated Hollywood in recent years.

But for one Crouch End schoolboy the flashy Marvel Comic characters are no rival for their more humorous British counterparts.

Ten-year-old Zoom has become such as fan of classic comic strips such as the Beano – featuring the likes of Dennis the Menace and Roger the Dodger – he decided to create his own version.

His scribblings produced a cast of equally mischievous characters including the Nutters, a class of unteachable students, Eric and Alex – based on himself and his little brother Ace – and Alfie’s Alien, an extra-terrestrial who lands in a boy’s ear.

Before long his mother, designer Kate Lennard, spotted the potential of his strips and encouraged him to put them together to be published.

Three editions later – the Zoom – is now an established comic with the fourth instalment on the way.

“He’s always been creative from when he was very little and he’s always been drawing and writing stories since the time when he could first hold a pen,” said Ms Lennard.

“He’s also been a big collector of Beano. I bought him a comic and he was really interested in the fact it had been produced since I was 11.

“He likes the old ones and collects any issue from before 2000 because he thinks that’s ancient and he likes the British humour.”

Since its launch last year, the Zoom has enjoyed almost instant success with all 250 copies of its first edition sold out and the second close to selling out.

The Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury has given their backing by stocking a number of issues.

The big Green Bookshop in Haringey has also held a series of parties to mark the publication of each new edition, with the last one attended by local MP Lynne Featherstone.

The copies have a cover price of 39 pence each and come with a collectable badge in the shape of the comic’s logo.

“He makes very little from each one but as parents we’re really happy because it’s teaching him about business,” said Ms Lennard. “He’s on Facebook and has 220 friends on there.”

Despite his youthful success Zoom’s ambitions do not end there, with future hopes to expand into computers and film.

He revealed: “I want to be a game designer or a film director. I’m thinking about doing sci-fi stuff.”

beezer Comics mischievous characters, scribblings

Santa Clara, CA (openPR) 4 October 2010

PlaySpanâ? ¢, the world’s leading solutions for digital asset monetization, social networks, online games and videos, today announced the monetization-as-a-Service A ¢, a seven-layer approach to providing a platform complete form of monetization?? ? ¢ Maasa the stack

MaaS builds on the success of SaaS-based approach to pay-as-a-service model to offer the tool, the costs, increase revenue and reduce online activities.

PlaySpanâ? s MaaS combines a payment gateway with comprehensive payment options with 85 + advanced micropayments, subscriptions and e-commerce capabilities with a dash of insightful analysis and powerful tools for fraud management, which meets all PCI and SAS-70 Hosted Service Web Services open APIs.

firms traditionally their payment and billing operations through a combination of internal software development, integration of third country nationals payment processing, and various third party software products for the underwriting, fraud management and set up systems for electronic commerce, Dona? t fit well and create barriers to innovation and rapid global expansion. Since the cost of increased customer acquisition and retention, more and more sophisticated monetization models are necessary to higher conversion rates and ARPU users pay drive. PlaySpanâ? S UltimatePayâ? ¢ powered platform enables companies Meuse to implement a proven solution quickly and at lower costs while improving the performance and functionality for business intelligence.

â? We have clearly in both the engineering resources and our extensive know-how from more than eleven years in payment and digital goods firm, an investment? Said Karl Mehta, PlaySpanâ? s CEO. ? An ingenious solution MaaS Our addresses and solves all the complex needs of online businesses – large and small. The seven layers of integrated services designed specifically for a comprehensive solution to shop for CEOs and CFOs to stop, designed to take total control of their online revenues and provide rapidly.â scale?

The development of micro-payments and micro-transaction business models and the explosion of social networks require an entirely new way of thinking about how different types of users to monetize at different prices in different phases of the cycle customersâ life? Engagement with what is proposed. PlaySpanâ? S platform enables flexible monetization MaaS 360-degree view of customers who access and use of content between devices, platforms and networks.

â? PlaySpanâ? s UltimatePay and Maas is a comprehensive approach for the next generation of payments. Instead of using 15 different technologies and existing systems, we are now on a common platform to manage the monetization of our games, â? Said Ana Gonzalez, payments and fraud manager Atlus USA. â? We went in less than three weeks and our ability to innovate and expand our reach to a global audience has increased dramatically.â live?

PlaySpanâ? s MaaS gives developers the opportunity to significantly improve their online sales with high conversion rate and higher ARPPUs and the significant improvement in bottom line can be achieved through cost savings. Each layer of the stack Maas plays an important role in achieving these results.

FundingRisk ManagementMicropayment Wallet / SubscriptionsIn optimized app / ACShowcases / MarketsDashboard Analytics / Developer Console

Assistance For more information about PlaySpanâ? s monetization-as-a-service, Download the complete white paper free of charge. PlaySpan also a demonstration of the new service at its annual forum monetization during GDC online 7 October 2010. Please visit the agenda corp.playspan.com/gdc/index.html Show.

PlaySpanâ? ¢ is the worldwide leader in monetization for more than 1,000 online games, social networking and online video. PlaySpan’s patent-pending Monetization-as-a-Service A? ¢ platform allows publishers and developers to generate new revenue and ARPU growth.

PlaySpanâ? s monetization-as-a-Service A? ¢ with the product of Global Payments, UltimatePayâ? ¢ offers more than 85 payment methods worldwide in 180 countries, including credit cards, PayPal, mobile payments and PlaySpanâ? ? s Ultimate Game Card ®, the # 1 selling multi-game prepaid card, available in over 50,000 outlets in North America and a growing list of countries around the world.

PlaySpan is in Silicon Valley with offices in Ohio, Virginia and Mumbai. Investors include Easton Capital, Menlo Ventures, Vodafone Ventures, SoftBank Bodhi Fund, ICT and new TMT Ventures. The company has more than 12 awards in the last 3 years, won was honored by Inc. Magazine as one of the most dynamic companies in the list for 5000 Inc. 2010.

For more information about PlaySpan, visit: corp.playspan.com

Eric GonzalezConsulting />

clear = “all”Firewall Software

beezer Comics conversion rates, engineering resources, santa clara ca

Well if anyone said that a comic book wasn’t good for anything else but reading, they were wrong. A family whose house was being foreclosed found an issue of Action Comics #1 in a box as they were packing up their things. Everyone knows that Action Comics #1 is the ‘holy grail’ of comic books. This was the book that first introduced the world to Superman and its cover is very significant and will be known and recognized forever.

The house had been in the family since the 1950s when the issue was put in the box by the wife’s father. They contacted Stephen Fishler who co-owns Comic Connect and Metropolis Collectibles in New York City. Fishler was hesitant at first because a lot of people that come to him with Action Comics #1 usually have reprints that have no real selling value. But the family was smart and sent a picture message to him and he realized that this issue in fact was the real thing.

Fishler was the one who sold a copy of Action Comics #1 for $1,000,000 back in February and then went on to break that record in March by selling another copy for $1.5 Million. The copy that the family sold was worth $250,000 and was in VG (very good) condition.

Any comic book collector — especially when it comes to Superman comics — would do anything to get their hands on this book. This was the book that started it all for DC Comics as well as superhero comics in general.

I hope this copy of Action Comics #1 finds a good collector or stays in the family because this is a true treasure to behold.

[Source: Asylum]

beezer Comics action comics, asylum, reprints, superhero comics