Month: March 2003

As Modern Tales subscribers and watchers know, one of our series, Patent Pending, by Jon Rosenberg, has been on hiatus for several months now.

After several long (but friendly) talks with Jon, we’ve decided to remove the series and open up the slot for somebody new. There are lots of people who would like to have their comics featured on Modern Tales, who maybe haven’t reached the level of success that Jon has reached, and it only seems fair to give them a chance. I want to stress that Jon and Modern Tales have made this decision mutually, and that Jon is very much still a part of the Modern Tales “family” — he will remain on our advisory board, and will still and always be a friend.

So, on to the submission stuff. Continue Reading →

John Thomas of CandleLight Press has emailed me an update to the WowComics.com situation.

Just talked with Shiwoo Lee on the phone. He gave me a short history of the Wowcomics project. He helped develop the technology and acted as CEO of the American part of this (originally) Mohenz project. It was spun off into it’s own company late 2001 and shut down shortly after that.

Lee says the reason he left the site up was to ‘attract more investors’. When told that it was impossible to register as a new customer, he didn’t really have an answer. He is sorry that the business didn’t work out. He says that the contents of the Wowcomics offices are stored in his garage. He says he will root through them soon to return discs and such. In the short term, he will delete the books of those who request it. He indicated that he prefers to be contected directly by each company, so here is the contact info for that purpose: Shiwoo Lee — lee@coe.neu.edu

He also has an offer for anyone who’s interested, and I promised to pass it along. He’s looking for someone to run Wowcomics for him. The deal would apparently involve out and out partnership. So if you’re curious, ask him about that too. I’m involved with Unbound Comics now, so I really can’t do it.

I’ll keep checking in with him on the return of discs and the like, and it’s a good idea for all of us to do that.So if you’re passing the word to other publishers who want off Wowcomics, please refer them the the above address and not deletemybooks@hotmail.com — if I do get them, I’ll forward them, though.

Thanks John!!

Continue Reading →

Modern Tales, the leading publisher of subscription-based webcomics, announced this week that New York Press cartoonist Renee French will be producing an original experimental series for its avant-garde online “webcomics anthology” serializer.net.

Renee French is known for her highly textured, visceral, and often surreal comics and stories, beginning with “Grit Bath” published by Fantagraphics Books in 1994. Since then she has published 2 books with mainstream comics publisher Dark Horse, a children’s book called “The Soap Lady” for Top Shelf and “Marbles In My Underpants” published by Oni Press, which is a 200 page collection of her work. Continue Reading →

After a spectacular server crash, Drunk Duck has returned to life. Currently the forums are up and running with the ability to load comics soon to return.

Drunk Duck (www.drunkduck.com) is a free hosting site for comics with a growing member community and tons of webcomic creators. It’s incredibly user friendly and the admins are impressively accessable. Continue Reading →

Ethan Persoff’s webcomic, A Dog and His Elephant won an SXSW Web Award in the “Weird/Extreme” category. ADAHE is published online by Serializer.

In the “Animation/Cartoon” category, Sixsidia was choosen.

The 2003 SXSW Website Competition positions itself on the frontier of innovation, uncovering the best new online creations in over 20 categories. SXSW, (South by Southwest), is a Austin, Texas Based company specializing in conference and festival events for entertainment and related media industry professionals. Since 1987, SXSW has produced the internationally recognized Music and Media Conference & Festival. Continue Reading →

On Pulse, Jen Contino interviews Jamie Robertson. Jamie creates the webcomic Clan of the Cats, a tale of witches and adventure. Continue Reading →