Month: October 2006

I'm going to try and allow for anonymous commenting again – we used to have that and really we only turned it off because of spam issues. This isn't really intended to promote anonymous commenting so much as to make it possible to do so without logging in or even having an account here. I'm hopeful that it will contribute to more discussion on the site, especially in our forums.

If you comment this way you can fill in some information about yourself as part of the comment and moreover click a box to "save" that information in state during your visit to the site. That way you don't have to be actually anonymous.

All non-logged-in commenters will have to fill out one of those captcha thingees to try and keep the spam to a minimum. There may be a few bugs to iron out – please let me know if anything acts weird while using this.

Continue Reading →

What stories are you interested in Comixpedia writing about in the upcoming months? I'm not asking here for comics to review or people to interview, but subjects that we could focus on writing about in-depth. What do you want to read about?

Continue Reading →

A soap opera on tv with a superhero? I just got this joint press release from Marvel and CBS:

Television's longest running show, GUIDING LIGHT, is teaming up with Marvel Comics to produce a very special "Inside the Light" episode unveiling a new super powered character, to be broadcast Wednesday, Nov. 1 on the CBS Television Network.

GUIDING LIGHT'S episode, titled "She's a Marvel," written by headwriter David Kreizman, focuses on mild mannered and harried cop, mother and wife Harley Davidson Cooper, played by Beth Ehlers. Zapped by an electrical current, Cooper finds herself infused with the energy, and is able to channel it, giving her the powers of a superhero — levitation and electricity conduction.

For a special GUIDING LIGHT "She's A Marvel" trailer, visit www.cbs.com/daytime/gl/.

Continue Reading →

A look back at the webcomics website of record:

2005

• Michael Terracciano, creator of Dominic Deegan, leaves Keenspot.
• Sketch Battle's voting controversy continues.

2004

• David Willis ends It's Walky.
• Steve Horton's webcomic Bryceworld starts at Graphic Smash.

2003

• John Barber starts selling two of his webcomics (Vicious Souvenirs and Kicking Hitler to Death) via Bitpass for 35¢ a chapter.
• Sam Logan has a guest week for his webcomic Sam and Fuzzy featuring contributors such as John “Scary Go Round” Allison, Tim “Ctrl+Alt+Del” Buckley, Jeff “Wigu” Rowland, Michael “Orneryboy” Lalonde and others.
• Chris Crosby starts selling political swag at his Blatant Bush website.
• Comixpedia posts webcomics made for Fright Night 5.

Continue Reading →

We've got some cool new sponsors for Comixpedia:

• 8 Films To Die For – A Horror Film Festival
• The book The Physics of Superheroes
• An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories, edited by Ivan Brunetti.

Thanks to all of our continuing sponsors including all of these great webcomics:

• A Pirates Life For Me
• I See You
• Gunnerkrigg Court
• Things Change
• The Flowfield Unity
• Alma Mater
• O''Deer
  

And our other great continuing sponsors!

• King Tractor Press
• Columbia Sportswear
• TBS' Very Funny Ads

Continue Reading →

NEWS

• Ryan North rolls out a new service called Project Wonderful that allows people to auction off sponsor ad spots. You can see it in action at Goats. Another nifty idea from North (who has already created OhNoRobot and RSSpect).

VIEWS

• That wacky Boxjam. Today's Doodle completely gets up in this blog's grill. Midwest comics REPRESENT!!!
• Hockey Zombie parodies Ctrl-Alt-Del. Artistic comment or promotional tactic?

Tis The Season!

• Ah Halloween – the time of the year for webcomics to put their characters in wacky halloween costumes…
• Another Halloween-themed event, this time at Girl-A-Matic: GAM-O-Ween.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Websnark on Questionable Content's meek and mild Martin.
• Former Graphic Smash editor, T Campbell is no one's editor.
• Digital Strips notes that Francesco Marciuliano (current hired hand on the syndicated strip Sally Forth) is going to try to move his webcomic, Medium Large, into newspaper syndication.
• Fleen has a Dumbrella round-up, including an update on R Stevens' battle with the Sith.
• Charley Parker likes Zita The Space Girl.
• Drawn! likes Stuart Immonen and his webcomic, Never As Bad As You Think.

Continue Reading →

COMIXPEDIA LAND

The new managed server can't handled the load of all of Comixpedia Land. So I've turned the top list at comixpedia.net off (I warned via email all of the top list comics earlier this week). For at least this week, comixpedia.net is NOT going to work (later I'll redirect it to comixpedia.com). I'd like to have a "portal" to webcomics-type of site to round out the news at dot com and the wiki at dot org, but for my own sanity it'll have to wait until another day. Luckily there are lots of good top lists and portal-like sites already out there (feel free to post suggestions in the comments).

NEWS & VIEWS

• Gene Yang is interviewed by SF Gate: It may come as a surprise to you that one of the most powerful and entertaining works of literature to be published this year is a comic book. But it shouldn't. Jeff Yang talks to Gene Yang, creator of American Born Chinese, the first comic book to be nominated for the greatest honor in American literature.

• Lea Hernandez has handed out her Women Webcomicker Grants for 2006. The recipients are: Kit White, Ann Kennedy, and Julia Claire Begley.
• Two relatively new creator collectives I should mention: Cornstalker and Koala Wallop. If you read Comixpedia and you're part of a collective (or just starting one) set up a joint news feed (either get all your members to post there or pull the individual members feeds to a joint feed there) and send me the URL. I know it's relative easy to pull and combine individual news feeds with Drupal and the Cartoonists With Attitude's site did it with Wordpress.
• Grant Thomas has a new website with links to all of his comics.

Tis The Season

• Boxjam wants everyone (especially Chicago-ers) to check out a horror movie show that shows all the classic public domain horror movies. So go checkity-check!
• Besides Fright Night and Boo! there's also a keenspace Comicgenesis Halloween event.

RESOURCES

• Not sure if I've linked to before but Dafont is a great font resource (most are free).
• There's an extensive website devoted to cataloguing webcomic cameos and crossovers.
• I can't remember where I found this link but someone scanned in a ton of comic book covers that are now available for your perusal.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

I had no idea Scott Adams (Dilbert) could no longer speak because of a rare condition called Spasmodic Dysphonia but he couldn't. Now, however, apparently he's better. (Link from The Comics Reporter)

Continue Reading →

boot_error is known for being just a webcomic but today released its first push into the animation side with a small episode featuring Panda and Brooke.

The animation, just under 2 minutes, is available to download. Currently creator Ivan Pope is looking to see about making more, that's if people like it!

Also Webcomics in Print has finally finished their Top 10 Creative and Charismatic Creations from a Webcomic World with their final top 5. To see what appeared from 6-10, have a look here!

Continue Reading →

As someone who has worked (not always successfully) to maintain a healthy community dynamic at Comixpedia, good articles on community-building sometimes strike me as interesting. They may not be for you, so forewarned and all that…

Mark Pesce wanders through USENET to Wikipedia to talk about the tension between community and schism, authority and anarchy. It's an interesting, well-written post.

UPDATE: Here's another interesting piece on the eternal debate: Is our wikipedians learning?

Continue Reading →

Eric Millikin writes that Serializer.net relaunched today! New comics today include:

• Jen Sorensen's "Slowpoke”
• Rick Smith and Tania Menesse's “Shuck Stripped”
• Spike's “Templar, Arizona”
• Eric Millikin's “Fetus-X”
• Tom Hart's “Hutch Owen”
• Ryan North's “Dinosaur Comics”

Here is a full list of all the wonderful artists contributing to Serializer. It includes Patrick Farley with "Apocamon," Renee French with "micrographica," Sam Henderson with "The Magic Whistle," and Emily Horne and Joey Comeau with "A Softer World."

Publisher’s Weekly refers to many of serializer’s artists as “art comics favorites” and “critical darlings.” London’s Sunday Times has called serializer “high art,” and The New York Times thought some of our comics were “Well drawn and funny.” The Comics Journal found some Serializer comics to be “daring, entertainingly perverse” while The Guardian found artwork on serializer that “threatens to seriously tamper with one’s smug equilibrium.”

Continue Reading →