Archive - Mar 27, 2006
Google Buys Sketch Up?
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 27, 2006 - 17:56
Marvel's Ultimate Underwear Perverts and DC's Crisis of Infinite Lawyers
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 27, 2006 - 13:28
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
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 27, 2006 - 10:52
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.
