Archive - Jun 2007 - Story
June 29th
Summer Of Guest Bloggers II: Live Free, Blog Hard!
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 29, 2007 - 11:48
Cult of the Amateur?
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 29, 2007 - 10:47
An interesting article in the NY Times talking about a new book by Andrsew Keen called The Cult of the Amateur. It sounds like the book covers a lot of territory but one point of interest to webcomics was the notion that free content is killing content:
"What you may not realize is that what is free is actually costing us a fortune,†Mr. Keen writes. “The new winners — Google, YouTube, MySpace, Craigslist, and the hundreds of start-ups hungry for a piece of the Web 2.0 pie — are unlikely to fill the shoes of the industries they are helping to undermine, in terms of products produced, jobs created, revenue generated or benefits conferred. By stealing away our eyeballs, the blogs and wikis are decimating the publishing, music and news-gathering industries that created the original content those Web sites ‘aggregate.’ Our culture is essentially cannibalizing its young, destroying the very sources of the content they crave."
June 28th
Thursday Sicko Journalist News Post
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 28, 2007 - 13:07
I'm not a journalist, but I am sick so please wipe your hands after reading today's post...
LEGAL
- Comics Worth Reading has some links to thoughts on digital piracy of comics. Also earlier this month, a bit on downloading manga and what that might mean for North America.
TECHNOLOGY
- There was a brief blip of attention this month for Adobe's new E-reader thingee. Anyone believe the hype?
INTERVIEWS
- Finding Wonderland interviewed Kazu Kibuishi, Gene Yang and Svetlana Chmakova. Great stuff!
- Short piece on Steve Purcell, the creator of the Eisner-nominated Sam & Max webcomic.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
- Sequel to Rumble Girls: Silky Warrior Tansie is now starting up online: Runaway Lightning Ohmry. (h/t CWR)
- It's probably not negative enough to catch on...
but check out Useful Lies, a new Websnarky-like blog mostly (so far) about webcomics. - The webcomic The Paranormals officially launches.
- I'm not sure if I linked to this review of Multiplex or not. Whatever, I like Multiplex more and more as time goes on for its ability to do movie jokes and build characters and storylines well.
- What is "noir-fu"? The Retriever knows!
HOW-TO
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- The Phoenix has a story on Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, Nicholas Gurewitch of The Perry Bible Fellowship, Dorothy Gambrell of Cat and Girl, and Joey Comeau of A Softer World.
- Think I saw this on Journalista! first - Hope Larson's Kiss sketchbook from MoCCA. Clever idea...
June 27th
Vote For Science Idol Editorial Comic Contest
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 27, 2007 - 21:27
The Union of Concerned Scientists are have a contest to pick the best editorial comic - they're calling it Science Idol. Go check out the finalists and vote for the best one.
Owen Dunne Takes Summer Hiatus
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 27, 2007 - 15:05
Owen Dunne (You Damn Kid and The Beevnicks) posted that he was taking the summer off to recharge. Here's a snippet from his post:
The more time I spend on the Internet, the less creative I feel. Does that make sense?
Makes sense to me. While I enjoy the daily updates that many webcomics creators put out, there's no need to self-enforce a never-ending schedule on yourself. A break, particularly for a comic with a fan base, in many cases is probably going to be a good thing, particularly if it does help the creator re-juice the batteries some.
Congrats to Meghan Murphy
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 27, 2007 - 13:06
100 episodes of Kawaii Not. A hilarious comic with such a simple, iconic art style and Murphy has a great twisted sense of humor (dark but happy!).
It occurred to me that a lot of Kawaii Not comics would make wonderful short animations (like 15 second ones). If ComixTALK had any real pull I'm sure Comedy Central or MTV would be looking into it - right now!
Shock Jocks In Shock Comic
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 27, 2007 - 12:41
Chris Van Gompel of Hockey Zombie cranked out a few comics for a morning shock jock show called TnT. The comics are already breaking FCC rules right and left...
June 26th
Canadian Webcomic Collective: Transmission X
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 26, 2007 - 19:07
Transmission X features Toronto creators: Cameron Stewart, Karl Kerschl, Scott Hepburn, Brenden Fletcher, Arthur Dela Cruz and Ramon Perez. Everyone knows Perez from Butternut Squash and Steward and Dela Cruz have both been previously nominated for Eisners. Looks like a great group. (ht/ the Beat)
RPG World site updates after two years' hiatus
Submitted by Linda Howard Valentine on June 26, 2007 - 19:06
It's been about two years since RPG World last updated, so it's not exactly surprising that by now I'd stopped checking it for new content. This made it all more pleasing recently when my Firefox bookmarks updater told me that the front page had changed!
Temporary Website Design and Transition to ComixTALK
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 26, 2007 - 15:43
First off I'm sick so everyone bust out a little violin for me...
Anyhow I have to throw up a temporary website design because our existing one was incompatible with ComixTalk's recent upgrade to Drupal 5.1. Sometime over the summer I hope to have a great new design that also shows offwell some coming new features. In the meantime if you have any problems with your user account stuff (passwords, logging in, etc) or other stuff this week email me at xerexes AT comixpedia DOT com and I'll investigate as soon as I can (those of you who reported problems over the last week - please try again when you see the new temporary blue website design).
Also if anyone wants to spare a few brain-cycles on CSS wrangling I'll happily take fixes for the many oddities on this temporary design.
