Archive - Dec 3, 2008
Is It Funny Today?
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 3, 2008 - 16:41
I have often noodled over ideas (and code) to do a site like Is It Funny Today? (although I tended to think more broadly about "is it good recently") -- so I'm pretty excited to see this site up and running. There are more details on this site -- how to find comics and how to vote on them -- I will let you know more about what I think after trying it out.
Comic Foundry Magazine Closing Doors
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 3, 2008 - 15:45
Tim Leong wrote yesterday that the upcoming fifth issue of Comic Foundry will be the magazine's last. He's not really clear on why he's shutting things down other than to say he doesn't have enough time to devote to the magazine anymore. I don't really know where he got the funding for the magazine from -- if he did it all on his own then it's pretty successful that they got to issue five. The magazine biz ain't easy. While I don't think I was ever convinced that the magazine was as revolutionary as Leong often described it, he did bring a modern magazine design sensibility to comics journalism that I just don't really see in any other publication focused on comics.
UPDATE: Laura Hudson was Leong's right hand woman at CF and she writes on her blog that the decision to cease publication was not financial. Leong said this too and apparently he has a full time job at Complex magazine that is the reason he doesn't have time for CF anymore. I don't really get this -- if you can't make a living from doing something that is essentially a full-time job (editor-in-chief of a full-blown magazine such as CF) than isn't that financial? I don't mean to make a big deal of it; comics is a tough business, comics journalism that much tougher (If I paid myself even minimum wage for the work I've done on Comixtalk I would not even be breaking even over its lifetime) so it's not unusual to struggle financially -- which is why it seems odd they both felt the need to argue to the contrary.
