Month: March 2006
Marvel’s Ultimate Underwear Perverts and DC’s Crisis of Infinite Lawyers
UPDATE: The LA Times has an editorial criticizing Marvel’s use of it’s "superhero" trademark (jointly held with DC since 1981) and points to a potential showdown with Sega as one way this trademark might go away.
UPDATE2: This story has legs right now – I just heard a bit on NPR about Hero Happy Hour’s battle with Marvel and DC over the "superhero" trademark.
Just my opinion, but this apparent effort to trademark the term "superhero" would be ridiculous on its face (the term is so generic at this point it’s not tied to a specific product – like kleenix or aspirin) but the fact that it’s an attempt by the two largest publishers of comic books to the direct market, Marvel and DC, to co-own it as a trademark… well it just stinks of collusion, monopoly, anti-trust violations and again, just a completely ridiculous idea.
But Marvel and DC will throw their lawyers around and many folks will not want to risk fighting the battle. I agree with BoingBOING on this one – we should start referring to Marvel and DC characters as underwear perverts until Marvel and DC back off of this utterly stupid effort to trademark "superhero".
Monday News Update
Is anyone else really happy that Sluggy Freelance has finally moved on from its Oceans Unmoving storyline? That's the first time Pete Abrams has completely lost me with the strip. I kind of like the new shockjock characters too.
MILESTONES
- I missed this, but Stephen Crowley has ended his Loxie & Zoot series about a nudist colony. For fans of these characters though, there'll be another series, The Bare Pit, featuring some of the same characters. Crowley is also the creator of the superheroics series, Magellan.
- Tom Spurgeon notes that Jeff Mallett's Frazz is nearing the five year anniversary mark. Frazz is reportedly in about 150 newspapers.
MARKETING: Martiza Campos notes the recent First and Last post on CRFH!!! on her livejournal. One other interesting tidbit from that thread is Campos note that she picked up a 1000 extra readers from her most recent Keenspot box. Even for a relatively big strip like CRFH!!! I think that's a fairly large number and it shows how powerful the Keenspot network is.
CRAFT: H.S. Kim, creator of Kung Fool X and Kill Harry has a page full of art criticism and some video tutorials on drawing – definitely worth checking out.
NOT WEBCOMICS: Tom Truszkowski of Station V3 is talking about record-collecting and drew some sketches of his characters with 45s.
Expressive Dialogue, Part Two: Stammers, Accents, and Affectations
This month, Alexander Danner looks further at expressive dialogue by examining how to effectively use stammers, accents, and affectations. Um, well… I, uh… you know what? I think you ought to just go read the article.
Herzog The Vile
Your reading assignment for Friday morning is a fairly new webcomic – Herzog The Vile.
I haven’t been this impressed with a new webcomic discovery in quite awhile. Creators Stevan Zivadinovic and Daniel Morgan have crafted a simple storyline with a demon lawyer and surrounded it with absolutely stunning and inventive art and layout. (The art reminds one a little of A Lesson Is Learned but just a little) All presented on a website that is well-designed to extend the sense of the comic throughout the site.
Read the strip from the beginning then go check out the letters to Herzog.
First and Last: A Look At The Evolution of CRFH!!!
Maritza Campos has been making College Roomies From Hell!!! since 1999. She's progressed considerably in her approach to both the artwork and the stories driving CRFH!!! Here's one of the very first ones and one from earlier this year.
Thank You to Our Current Advertisers
A big thank you to our current advertisers: the webcomics Bitter Enders and Onezumi Dot Com; the hosting and automation service, Webcomics Nation; and The Webcomics List which provides updates and profiles for over 6000 webcomics.
Quick Thursday News
Joey Manley resurrects Graphic Novel Review, this time with himself as sole editor/contributor.
Spike updates her Sims2-generated comic, Playing With Dolls. Not that I’m trying to drum up purient interest in Spike’s comic, but NSFW warning: there’s full frontal pixelated nudity in it.
I missed it but Lore points out that the Penny Arcade duo now have a podcast of sorts.
And apparently the ancient dotcomboom animation site Icebox has freed it Superhero Roommate series. If you never saw this, it’s pretty funny in a low-budget sort of way. Continue Reading
Patrick Farley: I Will Finish Mother Of All Bombs!
Patrick Farley drops in his blog that he is working on the graphic novel Mother Of All Bombs that he started work on in January 2005. The political comic features artworks from Justine Shaw (creator of Nowhere Girl).
Farley has posted a few panels from the work-in-progress.
cat garza Presents: MC Sancho Swift and the Ultimate
It’s the month of music in webcomics. And cat garza, who has already been doing some great webcomics with music embedded into them has crafted one for the pages of Comixpedia. (So just to make it absolutely clear – music will be playing when you click through to the comic.)
To check out more of cat garza’s work go to his website, Magic Inkwell.
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