Month: July 2008

WOWIO is back up – comics available for download and now — reading online.  I’ll post my reactions tomorrow probably.

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Tomorrow the beta for the new version of the webcomics toplist site Buzzcomix begins.  If you have an existing account at Buzzcomix and want to get in on the beta I’m handing out beta codes to the first 100 respondents.  Shoot me an email at xerexes AT gmail DOT com.

I’m working on an interview with Buzzcomix creator Andrew "mneonix08" Gomez that I hope to have up on the site later this month.  Click read more to see an excerpt from our conversation:

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CONVENTIONS
Rick Marshall writes up his Comic Con experiences for ComicMix.

TOOLS
Newsarama interviews Clickwheel Editor In Chief Tim Demter about the new Clickwheel Comics Reader.  The reader is available for free from the Apple App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

DEAD TREES
Garfield WIthout Garfield gets a book deal with Ballantine.  I’m actually shocked that Garfield creator Jim Davis is letting this go forward (and wondering if he is getting a cut of anything) but he’s already on record as being a big fan of the comic so it’s pretty cool that he seems to have signed off on this as well.

BUSINESS
Ted Rall offers some thoughts on saving the newspaper business.  I don’t always agree with Rall but I’ve always been a fan of his uncompromising viewpoint he offers in his comics.  But I don’t know what he’s thinking about with advice to newspapers like: don’t be on the web; and charge more for the web than for the print version.  Doesn’t he remember that young people don’t buy the print version of newspapers?  Does he want to accelerate the implosion of the current newspaper business?

Here’s a thought.  Before the web, it made sense to combine everything a city newspaper did into one business.  But today, why aren’t people more seriously questioning the validity of combining (1) an ad agency; (2) content creation; and (3) a printer as a single business?  Maybe that just doesn’t make sense anymore?

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
FLEEN approvingly points to The System, an unusual comic using a limited set of icons (like the men’s room symbol!) for imagery.  It is definitely worth a read.

I had no idea that Rich Stevens sells Diesel Sweeties socks.

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I don’t think I’d actually like to know what it feels like to get punched everywhere all at once.
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The New Belfry Webcomics Index has a list of its most subscribed comics:

1. Better Days
2. Sabrina Online
3. FreeFall
4. Faux Pas
5. Jack
6. Peter is the Wolf
7. VG Cats
8. Kevin & Kell
9. Dan & Mab’s Furry Adventures
10. Twokinds
11. Ozy & Millie
12. Catena
13. Girl Genius
14. Tales of the Questor
15. Dungeons & Denizens
16. El Goonish Shive
17. The Suburban Jungle
18. A Doemain of Our Own
19. Pawn
20. Penny Arcade
21. Nip & Tuck
22. Dominic Deegan
23. Vinci & Arty
24. Goblin Hollow
25. Shayla the Pink Mouse

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 Webcomicsnation.com tracks the most popular comics hosted on its service:

1. Templar, Arizona by Spike
2. Narbonic By Shaenon K. Garrity
3. The Non-Adventures of Wonderella by Justin Pierce
4. Narbonic: Director’s Cut By Shaenon K. Garrity
5. The Bare Pit by Noodtoonist
6. Carpe Diem by Graveyard Greg
7. Bellen! by box brown
8. Surviving Mars By Brian Daniel
9. Paradigm Shift By Dirk I. Tiede
10. Year One By M.Parkinson
11. Venus in Points Alice Hunt
12. Neil Lisst
13. Supernatural Law by Batton Lash
14. Maxwell the Demon by Tonia Walden
15. Family Man by Dylan Meconis
16. Elvenbaath Written and Illustrated by Dotty
17. Nothing Better by tyler page
18. Freak U. By A. Prosser
19. Naoko Muragama: Video Game Champion By Shaun Henderson
20. Breakfast of the Gods Book One: The Last Good Morning By Brendan Douglas Jones
21. DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary By Erika Moen
22. The Front By Jerzy Drozd
23. REVVVelations Written and colored by Stan Yan, Illustrated by Jolyon Yates
24. Smithson Written by Shaenon Garrity, Art by Robert Stevenson, Brian Moore, and Roger Langridge
25. Pint of Ink Illustrated Amusements by Dee Hews

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The current top 25 Popular Comics at Onlinecomics.net (A comic’s popularity is based on a mixture of how many Onlinecomics.net members have posted praise for the comic, and how many members have added the comic to their favorites):

1. The Way to Your Heart
   
2. Inverloch
   
3. Earthsong
   
4. Satisfied?
   
5. The Phoenix Requiem
   
6. Pandect
   
7. Vampirates
   
8. Directions of Destiny
   
9. Red String
   
10. Misfile
    
11. Strays
    
12. Menage a 3
    
13. Alpha Luna
    
14. Breath
    
15. No Rest For The Wicked
    
16. Incarnadyne Tears
    
17. Xylia
    
18. Flipside
    
19. Be Mine
    
20. Lackadaisy
    
21. The Dusk
    
22. They Walk on the Ceiling
    
23. Ebony Box
    
24. Arcana 
25. White Noise

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ALT COMIX PAPER DEBUTS IN DC
A new all comics monthly called Bash is debuting in Washington DC this August 1st.

INTERVIEWS
Dave Ferraro reviews Demons of Sherwood by Robert Tinnell and Bo Hampton. (h/t Journalista!)

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Pop Candy Twitter Comics — comics based on Pop Candy columnist Whitney Metheson’s twitter posts.  Cool interface too. (h/t Journalista!)

TOOLS
Cartoon Snap has a story on how to read comics on your iPhone 3G. (h/t Journalista!)

Amazon now has a program (Checkout by Amazon) for other websites to use Amazon’s one-click ordering system.  It looks like it’s meant to be a competitor to Google Checkout and to some extent, Paypal.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Snarkoleptics are a bit put off by the recent parody of Family Circus in PvP calling it "childishly mean-spirited".  I don’t know if it’s all that mean-spirited — parodying Family Circus has a longer history on the web than the more recent plethora of Garfield mashups.  From the Dysfunctional Family Circus to the Nietzsche Family Circus.

Hey Webcomic Finds is back.  Author Ping Teo wrote a column at ComixTalk in the early years and her blog was a fun way to find new webcomics.

John "Scary Go Round" Allison posts a sketch page of his character Shelley.

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Where did that crazy machine come from?
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 The Webcomics List is practically a webcomics institution at this point.  In addition to keeping track of webcomic updates, it has an active forum and syndicates news from ComixTalk.  Here’s a list of the highest ranked comics there:

1. Level 99
2. Ctrl+Alt+Delete
3. Questionable Content
4. VG Cats
5. Penny Arcade
6. Menage a 3
   
7. The Order of the Stick
   
8. Dueling Analogs
   
9. xkcd
   
10. Girl Genius
    
11. Dominic Deegan
    
12. Misfile
    
13. Sinfest
    
14. Least I Could Do
    
15. PVP
    
16. Punch an’ Pie
    
17. MegaTokyo
    
18. Looking for Group
    
19. El Goonish Shive
    
20. 8-bit Theatre
    
21. TwoKinds
    
22. Something Positive
    
23. Peter is the Wolf
    
24. Apple Geeks
    
25. Gunnerkrigg Court

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