Happy Last Week of December!
Whatever your holiday — hope it’s a good one. Posting will be up to you (blogs and the forums) until January. Continue Reading
Month: December 2007
ComixTalk’s People Of Webcomics List For 2007
And now… the fourth annual People Of Webcomics list! I’ll be the first to admit that this list gets harder and harder to compile as the lines between "webcomics" and just plain "comics" blurs harder than a greasy windshield in the middle of a West Texas downpour. Plus as publishing comics on the web and other digital formats becomes more commonplace it gets harder and harder to find those "firsts" that take comics in new directions whether artistic, technical or businesss-oriented.
The Year In Webmanga: Small Changes, Big Plans?
Things were quiet in the world of web manga this year, but there’s plenty brewing beneath the surface.
There weren’t any Big Events, a la Marvel DCU or Zuda, just the established channels chugging along: Netcomics selling chapters of manga online for a quarter a pop, publishers giving it away to build buzz for their print editions, scanlators posting their favorite titles in closed circles, and artists working out new projects online.
But behind the scenes, several publishers are preparing to launch web manga in one form or another.
Five Webcomic Books For the Holidays
Michael Rouse-Deane blogs regularly at Webcomics In Print and has organized several charity efforts involving webcomic creators. Last year he covered his top ten webcomics-to-books of 2006.
This year he presents 5 webcomics-to-books from 2007 that you ought to take a look at. Sort of a gift guide to deadtrees, even if you just get it for yourself!
Platinum Launches SPLASTIK Cartoon Network – Affiliation with Keenspot?
Saw a press release from Platinum Studios this morning (parent company of webcomic site DrunkDuck) announcing launch of SPASTIK (flattering name, that one) which looks to be basically a webtoon site. Interestingly it lists a number of other webcomic-related sites as "affiliates" on its front page, one of which is rival webcomic site Keenspot’s Keentoons site.Â
Rolling Into Tuesday Morning Update
I’m back from India! Happy holidays to all of you (including all of you Pastafarians too!)
COMIXTALK
- Our End-of-the-Year roundtable featuring some of the best comics journalists and bloggers on the Internet is up on the site. It’s a great wide-ranging discussion of good webcomics, interesting business developments and predictions for 2008.
- We’ve got an interiew with Matt Melvin of the uber-popular webcomic Cyanide and Happiness.
- We’re still looking for questions for our upcoming community interview with the members of the Blank Label Comics collective. Post your questions in comments to this thread.
- Don’t forget to check out our advertisers – current sponsors include the Learn to Draw the Human Figure anatomy course, Mary Janice Davidson’s latest book Swimming Without a Net and The Webcomic Beacon podcast.
DEAD TREES AHOY!
- The New York Times has an article on how some webcomics are creating solid sales in print and includes mention of Diary of A Wimpy Kid and Shooting War. Brian Fries, the creator of Mom’s Cancer offers his response to the article. Fies argues that Mom’s Cancer (which is not named in the Times article) was one of the first webcomics to cross-over to print. He could be right (although once he got a print deal he took Mom’s Cancer off the web so his approach was different than these other examples), anyone want to offer a counter-example?
AWARDS
- Instructions on submissions for nominations for the Eisners are here – the deadline is March 14, 2008. For webcomics there is a separate set of instructions:
Entries are also being accepted for the category of best webcomic. This category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2007. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to jackiee@mindspring.com.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
INTERVIEWS
- Pretty interesting interview with Colonel Sweeto himself, Nick Gurewitch.
- CBR has a zaftig interview with Tycho himself, Jerry Holkins.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Gary notes that Brian Warmoth is leaving Wizard magazine. Warmoth did the Cursory Conversations series of interviews with webcomic creators and with his departure I wonder if anyone is still around at Wizard that is interested in webcomics.
- Lots of webcomics show up in Time’s Graphic Novels of 2007 article. One shows up in USA Today’s list.
- Broken Frontier takes a look at Phoenix Requiem, the new webcomic from Sarah Ellerton (creator of Inverloch).
- T Campbell argues for including PostSecret and I Can Haz Cheezburger? within "comics".
- Neil Cohn has an essay on the structure of manga.
Get Happy! An Interview with Matt Melvin of Explosm.net
Think xkcd is the most popular stick figure webcomic around? Don't be so sure – Cyanide and Happiness consistently pulls in similarly large numbers on publicly available sources of data such as Alexa and Compete.
C&H resides on the website explosm.net which features work from creators Matt Melvin, Kris Wilson, Dave McElfatrick and Rob Denbleyker. We recently interviewed one of the four: Matt Melvin about the webcomic, the website and what's next.
The ComixTalk End of 2007 Roundtable
Our third annual virtual round table on the year in webcomics features comments from Gary Tyrrell, Dirk Deppey, Tom Spurgeon, Heidi MacDonald, Brigid Alverson, Derik A Badman, Reinder Dijkhuis, and JT Shea and Scott Gallatin.
Call For Questions For Blank Label Comics
Back in February of this year, we hosted the results of a ComixTalk community interview with the members of the indepedent creators collective, Blank Label Comics. Given that this is an end-of-the-year kind of issue for ComixTalk, I thought it would be great to do another interview with the members of BLC so we could book-end the year between them.
Moreover, although there has been a good deal of press on Halfpixel, the new collective formed by Scott Kurtz and former BLC members Brad Guigar, Dave Kellett and Kris Straub, there is still plenty to catch up on with the six current members of BLC: Howard Tayler, David Willis, Paul Southworth, Paul Taylor, Steve Troop and Greg Dean. Please post your questions here — I’ll collect them on December 21st and send them out for answers with an eye to publishing the full story here in January 2008.
Next Week You’re On Your Own!
Just a heads up that I won’t be posting all next week as I’ll be off in India. Be sure to check out the reader blog posts and the forums for news and discussion.
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