Archive - Article
April 11th, 2009
A Stray Thought on Digital Comics Hardware
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This article was originally published on webcomics.com in 2008.
When reviewing reader applications for online comics, I was struck by just how much effort Marvel put into solving the problem of presenting vertically oriented comics on a horizontal screen. With multiple layout options, including full page, double page, various zooms, and their elaborate Smart Panels solution, Marvel’s designers might be a bit overly concerned with this problem; after all, most readers don’t get up in arms over vertical scrolls these days. But I do have to admit, it really would be nicer to be able to see a full page of art at a readable size, rather than having to choose between full pages with illegibly small text, or readable text on incomplete pages.
Still, after reviewing five different comics readers, all of which attempt to address this issue to one extent or another, none entirely satisfactorily, I can’t help thinking that the final answer to this issue won’t be new software, but rather new hardware.
April 5th
Three Technologies I'm Just Not that Excited About
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This article was originally published on webcomics.com in 2008.
I love technology. Whether it’s little gadgets like my iPod, or useful applications like Google Calendar, I love all the little tech innovations that make life easier and more fun. The first time I heard about webcomics, I was thrilled. Automated content management? Fantastic! Integration of multi-media elements into webcomics? All over it. Do I want an iPhone or a Kindle? Oh my god, yes. Can I afford them? Not remotely. But I want them nonetheless.
Webcomics Versus eBook Readers
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This article was originally published on webcomics.com in 2008.
Okay, so the Amazon’s Kindle can’t handle images. Neither, for that matter, can Sony’s Portable Reader System, a similar E Ink product that arrived in 2006 but received considerably less buzz. This lack of image support has caused much complaint both within webcomics and in the general market. Obviously, a device without image support is useless to webcomics readers and creators. But the level of disappointment surprised me. It hadn’t occurred to me that webcomics readers were really waiting for a new portable display technology.
RSS Reconsidered
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This article was originally published on webcomics.com in 2008.
Last month I presented a list of webcomics technologies that have failed to ignite my technophilic enthusiasm, despite their popularity or general usefulness. Over the past several weeks, I have given one of those technologies, RSS, a second chance.
April 2nd
Off the Radar: Catching Up with Past Luminaries
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This article was originally published on webcomics.com in 2008.
Webcartoonists disappear every day. Not off the face of the Earth, of course, but certainly out of the collective conscious of the webcomic community. Creators may take a hiatus, or decide to focus on print projects, or complete a well-loved work and move on to something less wildly popular. Or they may simply not bother with self-promotion, so that when the initial buzz surrounding their work calms, they are not active in maintaining the level of attention that was briefly paid to their work. And fickle as the Internet is, it’s easy to go from famous to forgotten at any given moment.
Of course, just because a creator isn’t dominating the critical sites or public discussion forums the way they once did doesn’t mean they’ve stopped working, or publishing, or playing some other role in the comics community. Presented here is a survey of the current projects of four of those creators whom we haven’t heard much about over the past year or two, despite their notable accomplishments of the past.
March 28th
The Old Made New: A Look at the Static Comics of Daniel Merlin Goodbrey
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This article was originally published on webcomics.com in 2008.
“I’ve always felt driven to keep trying new things creatively and experimental web comics just started to feel a little too familiar, y’know? Too safe. I wasn’t going to improve as a creator sticking to that ground.”
–Daniel Merlin Goodbrey
Best known for his impressive formalist experiments, usually featuring Flash interfaces (eventually culminating in his Tarquin Engine), Goodbrey was one of the early pioneers of the new artistic realms that web publishing opened to comics creators (For my thoughts on Goodbrey’s early works, see my contribution to The Webcomics Examiner’s article "Aggressive Experiments"). In the past three years, however, Goodbrey has produced only one of his “hypercomics,” the 24-hour comic Never Shoot the Chronopath, which he published this past December. Most of his efforts these days have gone into more traditional seeming fare: two static humor strips and a longform tale of undead cowboys.
It would be a mistake to think that Goodbrey has given up on pushing himself creatively just because he isn’t inventing wild new interfaces, though. “Experimental” is a relative term, and nothing stymies innovation faster than repeating oneself. And even the most traditional methods can help a creator to break new ground if they’ve never tried those methods before. In fact, the least interesting work that Goodbrey has produced in recent years is the most overtly experimental; “Never Shoot the Chronopath” is an enjoyable little comic, but nothing we haven’t seen Goodbrey do before.
On the other hand, Goodbrey’s Brain Fist, All Knowledge is Strange, and The Rule of Death all incorporate forms and ideas that are new to Goodbrey’s body of work, even if they don’t look so different from the kinds of comics most people read every day.
B. Shur’s New Rocket
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This article was originally published on webcomics.com in 2008.
The old guard of boundary-pushing, technologically-empowered, makers of web-native, interactive, experimental comics have largely moved on to other things. Sure, most of them are still involved in making comics, one way or another. But they’ve left the work of exploring just how much farther technology can take us to the next generation.
Happily, B. Shur has stepped up to continue that work, and is busily taking comics in fascinating new directions.
March 22nd
An Interview with Brian Babendererde, Creator of Soul Chaser Betty
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Brian Babendererde started serializing his comic Soul Chaser Betty on the web in 2001. Later in 2003, it became one of the titles on the Graphic Smash anthology website. Serialization of the comic continued throughout 2004 until the story was finished. I know -- a webcomic adventure tale with a beginning and an end, fully published online within approximately four years. Normally that might take a decade or more! Okay maybe a slight exageration, but it strikes me that Babendererde's initial run on Betty is no small accomplishment, given how many dramatic, longer-form comics run off the rails for long hiatuses before finishing (if ever).
So why are we talking about a webcomic dating from the beginning of the decade? Well in 2007 Bebendererde went back to the comic to redo many of the panels and re-work some of the story, in preparation for publication as a stand-alone graphic novel in print. The book has been available for awhile but more recently Bebendererde placed it in the Diamond monthly catalog making it available to comic book stores. I was interested in talking with Bebendererde about how the new push for the book is going and what it's like to work on a specific comic over the course of almost a decade.
Saturday Morning Webcomics: An interview with Monty & Kelli
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Planet Saturday by Monty Kane bills itself as "adventures in childhood and parenthood" and it is a charming collection of tales of Emory (who is basically a stand-in for Monty), roughly half with him as a child and half with him as an adult, father of a daughter. It in some ways suggests that the comic is really about Monty himself but it doesn't feel biographical as the stories seem to be more universal than uniquely revealing of one person. There's a touch of nostaglia at times, but particularly in the stories with the Emory as father and the daughter Dot it's also very much about two well-drawn characters and their father-daughter relationship. Maybe it's simply because I'm a dad with daughters myself, but I do enjoy these stories.
I got a chance to interview both Monty and his wife Kelli Stevens Kane by email this month about the comic and its first collection in print.
March 14th
You've Got To Chill: An Interview with Leroy Brown of Ice Cubes
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Leroy Brown is the creator of Ice Cubes about a motley crew of characters living within the Artic Circle in Alaska. I had not been previously familiar with Brown's work, but he submitted a design for the February cover art to ComixTALK that I liked and wound up using. It's got a similar set up to Tyler Martin's Wally & Osborne, but beyond updating more regularly the last year (hey now! rim crash... I"ll be here all week folks!), it's just a different animal entirely. The comic is very new (unfortunately the website doesn't currently have a very navigation-friendly set-up but you can get through the archives by clicking on the "strips" category) so it's easy to check out the archives to date.
Read on for my interview with Brown about his comic Ice Cubes.
