I just wanted to post that Tim Broderick's The Road Less Traveled series about the entire process of bringing his webcomic Cash & Carry to print via a traditional publisher is coming to a close. 

While we may have one more Cash & Carry-related article later this year we've now published 7 articles detailing Tim's work from pitching the book, to getting the contract, and selling it to the readers.  I really think this is a valuable series for any creator to read and it was a real service for Tim to write all of this down for other creators to learn from his experience.  Click here to see a listing of all of the articles.

This week’s Writing Excuses is one of our very best episodes to date (if not our flat-out best.) We discuss magic in fiction, and specifically we cover rules-based magic systems, their strengths, weaknesses, and where to use them.

It’s one of those podcasts which makes me want to write fantasy books when I listen to it. That is saying a lot.

Well -- lots more details on the new Comicspace venture owned in part by Josh Roberts and Joey Manley.  Complete with a cartoon of the dynamic duo, the Comicspace media kit has details on the ventures sites, their audience ("hipster geeks"), their technology partners such as Netomat for mobile phones and some surprising "options" such as custom ads from comicspace creators.  It also lists the overall audience for the network of sites as 4 million unique visitors. 

Interesting read!

Andrew Farago, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum, chronicler of William Bazillion, and my sweetie, is 32 today! Birthday wishes can be directed to andrewfarago at hotmail.com.

Happy birthday!

COMIXTALK

I have no idea what that headline means.  I'm recuperating from knee surgery (!) right now which means extra-loopy posts for you.  We're starting up our May issue which in part will include coverage of the Eisner-nominated comics in the Digital Comic category. First off check out our interview with Clay and Hampton Yount, the creators of Rob and Elliot.

And also a big thanks to our current advertisers: The Laugh Factory and the Learn to Draw the Human Figure anatomy course.  UPDATE - also thanks to new sponsor - the webcomic The Asylumantics.

Last - it's still in beta but if you'd like to have your outside blog posts automatically appear at ComixTalk (the "no need to retype the hype" feature) post a comment here or email me with your comixtalk account and the URL of your outside blog.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

Oh nos! Trouble in Orneryland?

From Diesel Sweeties: a well-executed but unoriginal joke about the unoriginality of loads of gamer comics.

Least I Could Do takes a swipe at a few other predictable webcomic creator cliches - here, here and here (link from Journalista!)

I can't remember now, but somehow I stumbled onto Spanish language comic Oseano which looks good but I'll need a translation (or more practice on my spanish) to follow.

What COMICS JUST STARTED in 2008 would you HIGHLY recommend?  Let me know!

INTERVIEWS

The Scienteers have an interview with Nicholas Doan, writer and co-creator of Pray For Death.

REVIEWS

WordBalloons has a review of Alexis Fajardo's Kid Beowulf.  Fajardo got his start in webcomics in the early years - it's good to see his work is still out there.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

The Daily Cartoonist accidently links to Dave Kellett's two year old interview with FLEEN but the comments are interesting including Kellett's own update on his thoughts on syndicates.

Episode 23 - Newspaper Style Webcomics:   Mark Savary joins Fes, Tanya, and Aaron to talk about Newspaper Style Webcomics; as well as touch on newspapers comics in general. We also talk again with Michael Rouse-Deane of the Guest Strip Project, which is benefiting the Make-a-Wish International Foundation.

Mark Savary also talks a bit about minimalist comics while reviewing Pixipets. Plus the weekly Strip Fight Ringside Update! No milestones listed to us for this week.

Tyler Martin has been updating his Wordpress theme for comics - Comicpress - to take full advantage of the latest update to the Wordpress software and the result -- Comicpress 2.5 -- is almost out.  If you want to poke around at the latest (and probably last) beta click over to the Comicpress forum here.

I saw this post earlier this week that Newsarama is going to reboot itself with a move from vBulletin to Pluck.  Two things of interest to me I guess:  one I forgot that Newsarama is part of the Imaginova media empire now (wonder how that's working out?) and two I wonder if the Pluck platform is any good?