Month: January 2004

Another Comic Watching Piece of Software – This Time for the Mac

Xaviar Xerexes 2 Comments

Distribution of comics doesn’t have to be through websites obviously but there is always a tension between readers and creators with these third party created distribution tools. Journalista! points us to The Comic Burrito which takes a look at Comictastic, a program that grabs webcomics automatically and as TCB notes, would easily allow one to build up a collection of a comic using the Modern Tales business model, like American Elf.

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Bringing Web Comics “Out of the Doghouse”.

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Derrick Fish has been writing and drawing the adventures of his talking dog “Dandy” every day for two years now. Dandy and Company, Fish’s pet project from his grade school days, finds it’s heart in the basic story of a boy and his dog, but turns it on its ear with dashes of high action, animated illustrations and even romance to make a comic strip that's more than just another “Gag-A-Day” snore. Continue Reading →

Wednesday Lazy Blogging

Xaviar Xerexes 1 Comment

Gamers and their Webcomics: Wow.  I think our server is slimy after getting wanged all day by Ctrl-Alt-Del and Little Gamers fans.  Yes we're reviewing gamer and sprite-oriented comics all this month at Comixpedia.  No question comics that incorporate gaming culture can attract a large audience – just look at some of our Most Read lists from last year.  Penny Arcade is consistently at the top of any metric I've come up with so far.The Ctrl-Alt-Del comic – I myself read the review and I didn't come away thinking bad comic but I guess some of the C/A/D fans did.  Most seemed more upset that the review seemed to suggest non-hardcore gamers wouldn't get it.  Reasonable minds can disagree I would hope – I'll admit upfront I haven't read C/A/D myself so I have no opinion o­ne way or the other.  Still it's got a lot of fans so they have to be doing something right.  Also the creator o­n his site very politely urged his fans to be civil in their comments over here.  We do appreciate that.  I'm not sure the noise ratio is all that good in the comments to the review but it is a 180 from what I saw o­n Little Gamers today.I don't get much of the comments to the Little Gamers review at all – not that I don't understand what they're saying but just surprised at how a review provoked such wide ranging discussion…  Anyhow, I can't say I'm surprised at the L/G take o­n the Comixpedia review, with their feet firmly planted in the South Park tradition, such as it is.  All in all I wish we had a lot less of the snaps style comments and a little more actual point/counterpoint discussion but I think it's kind of cool that C/P has gotten to the point where people are taking the reviews here to mean something.UPDATE TO LITTLE GAMER DUDES:  I forgot to mention – NAZI references are really, really lame.  Otherwise I think that today's L/G is the first comic directly about Comixpedia. Continue Reading →

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Tuesday Morning Update

Xaviar Xerexes Leave a Comment

Another solid update from Journalista! Deppey is a o­ne-man newscast for comicsland.

MICROPAYMENTS: Deppey points to a fairly useless article on micropayments from ecommerce times.  Recycled quotes from Scott McCloud (optimist) and Clay Shirky (pessimist) included.  I don't think this is so hard really – if there's a perceived vaule for the price people will pay if it's not too hard to do so.  Same as offline transactions.

Shirky's big mistake is creating a straw man of multiple, piece by piece purchases as if we wanted to buy every little thing separately.  As if I went to the grocery store and paid for each thing when I picked it up. Or per page in a bookstore to be even more ridiculous.  No o­ne is advocating that.  No o­ne (that I'm aware of is even trying to be that boneheaded about it).I think there's a real question of whether people want to buy the equivalent of a comic book (like McCloud's I Can't Stop Thinking) or a magazine subscription (Modern Tales) but really it comes to down to perceived price to value.  A buck a song – yeah that works.  A quarter for a comic, that'll probably also work.  I think we're getting there.

NEW KEENSPOT:  Nicer site layout for the Keenspot site along with less garish logo.  However, now that they're classifying their comics I'm scratching my head.  They've grouped the following comics as “Surreal”: BoxJam's Doodle, Checkerboard Nightmare, Chopping Block, Framed, just another Vice,Men in Hats, and Road Waffles.  Compared to several other Keenspot comics I'm not quite sure what's so surreal about this lot.  BoxJam's Doodle is a rather PG-rated blend of painfully honest-Charlie Brown stories and clever word play.  Chopping Block is a pun-filled horrorfest.  Checkerboard Nightmare and Framed wear their meta-hearts o­n their sleeves but I've never heard meta described as surreal.  The others don't even come close really.  Even beyond the mislabeling here is grouping them together at all.  Sure a Chopping Block fan might like Road Waffles (similar violence content) and Framed fans might go for Checkerboard Nightmare but I'm not seeing much guaranteed cross-over beyond that.

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