Month: November 2006

It's been two years since Comixpedia published an update to our Most Read project which tracked the audience shares of webcomics.

It was difficult to determine readership numbers then, it's just as difficult to conduct any kind of "Internet ratings" now. But it's an extremely useful process for Comixpedia as it helps to ensure that we are not overlooking significantly popular webcomics in our coverage (It is not a prerequisite that a webcomic be "popular" to merit coverage. The strength of readership of a particular webcomic, however, is a legitimate tool for deciding what we should write about). If you have suggestions for future efforts in this area feel free to post a comment here.

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NEWS & VIEWS

• This is very interesting to me: Yahoo has inked a partnership with 176 newspapers across the country. Yet another sign that the business of putting daily content on dead tree pulp is in dire need of reinvention.
• Over the weekend, Joey Manley put up a long post about open standards for webcomics software. (Manley posted the same thing at The Engine and the comments there are also interesting) Don't be intimidated by the length of it – a key takeaway from it is that webcomics creators would be well served by a real effort for coders working on webcomics software to agree to some standardized data elements for webcomics. The immediate benefit Manley focuses on is that this would ensure "portability" for creators to easily move between services and/or software (for example moving a comic from Webcomics Nation to Keenspot) – something that is not easy when a comic's archive approach four digits.
• Neil Cohn responds to recent posts on transitions by Derik Badman (Derik's posts are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

BOMB SHELTER IDOL

• I'm doing the guest judge gig for Bomb Shelter Idol (ahem… Yo dawgs!) which just finished the voting for the first round (The voting is the flip of the American Idol method as people are voting to boot a webcomic each week). The first webcomic to leave the island is One Liners. You can vote in the second round here. The judges are posting feedback each week on the contestants here. I put in a plug for Zed Reckoning which shouldn't have gotten as many votes for the boot as it did last week.

REVIEWS

• The Webcomics Examiner returns with a review of three webcomics: Jeepers by Andre Richard, The World of Mr. Toast Gags by Dan Goodsell, and If Nobody Likes Me, Why Am I So Popular? by Edward J. Grug III.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Make Krishna Sadasivam draw outrageous things! 🙂 (Krishna has even graciously offered to do sketches of other webcomic characters)
• Webcomics In Print rounds up the latest in webcomics on dead trees (so I don't have to)!
• From Drawn! comes this link to a lesson plan from the 1960s called Composition: How to Make Pictures. This is a wonderful resource for anyone creating imagery, whether it be illustration, comics, animation, or even photography.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• Sam Costello posted the second story in his horror webcomic anthology, Split Lip. The story "An Old Man, Looking" was written by Costello and drawn by Uruguayan artist Diego Candia.

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I predict: webcomics using the line "with great power comes great responsibility" will abound.

Previous examples: although the phrase is not in this comic itself, Ornery Boy creator Michael Lalonde can't help whipping it out in the commentary below.

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December is traditionally a "year in review" kind of issue at Comixpedia and that's the goal this time around. As we get closer to the end of 2006 it's revealing to look at what folks were writing about webcomics at the end of 2005: The 2005 Webcomics Roundtable.

For the last two years we've also ran a special "25 People Of Webcomics" list article. Here's a link to the 2005 POW List article. Who do you think should be on this year's list? Post a comment with your nominations.

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NEWS

Gene Yang's American Born Chinese did not win the National Book award it was nominated for but in this case it truly was an amazing achievement just to be nominated. (List of winners available here). The Beat has a report with pictures.

COMIXPEDIA

A few new site features if you're interested:

• Keep up with all recent posts from all over the site;
• Find out which Comixpedia stories everyone else is reading;
• Guide pages with different ways to find posts for articles (Magazine), stories (News), blog posts and forum posts;
• See which topic tags are the most frequent with our "tag cloud".

INTERVIEWS

Adam York from The Flowfield Unity posted two interviews to our blogs section:

• Bethan Price, creator of Rasberrry Soda; and
• Jimmy Gardner, creator of Web-O-Vision.

REVIEWS

• In the latest DS podast, Digital Strips guest co-host Reva Sharp reviews Malfunction Junction.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Part 3 of Derik Badman's series on panel transitions. (Part 1, Part 2).
• Part 4 of JohnK's series on composition (written for animation but useful generally).
• Max Riffner checks out the new free version of WebcomicsNation.
• A really late SPX report from the creators of The Dada Detective.

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Boing Boing catches that Transmetropolitan #1 is now available as a free download from DC Comics. (It's a PDF download).

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NEWS & VIEWS

• It looks like a cut of the documentary Adventures Into Digital Comics was shown at the Tel Aviv Film Festival and nominated for Best Documentary there. Has anyone seen this thing yet? They started shooting it before Comixpedia launched (pre-2003) and as far as I can tell from their site and teh internets it's not available to the public yet. The producers state that they began providing private screenings this year (2006) but as they're in California it's not an option for me for geographic reasons. (I'm trying to track down emails for them to ask for a DVD or VHS version but without luck so far. There's always snail mail I guess.)
• Heidi McDonald posts an overview of people looking at comics and the long tail. It seems to be in the air – Joey Manley also recently posted about the prospects for future growth in comics online, starting with setting webcomics' sites higher than print comics itself.

REVIEWS

• Jon Morris (creator of Jeremy) reviews the collected Peanuts from Fantagraphics and Robert Altman's 1980 movie version of Popeye.
• Digital Strips reviews Inverloch.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Journalista! links to Derik Badman's look at the mechanics of panel transitions: part one and part two.
• Shishio passes on from D.J. Coffman's site that Life's A Bluff, the webcomic about poker (that D.J. Coffman was the initial artist on) is now appearing on the World Poker Tour website. Great exposure!
• Shaenon K. Garrity notes that Jason Thompson, creator of the webcomic The Stiff is busy writing a book.
• John K (Ren & Stimpy) goes sorta-Howard Beale on his blog readers and the corporate powers that be.

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Another edition of the webcomics module for the Drupal CMS is out. If anyone gives it a spin let us know how well it works. Discussion about the Drupal webcomics module is welcome at the discussion group here (you should be able to log in at any drupal.org site with your comixpedia user id like this "youruserid@comixpedia.com" and your comixpedia password).

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