Skip to main content

Archive - 2008 - Story

January 6th

Webcomic Creator Exercises Right To Vote

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 6, 2008 - 18:10

Tom Brazelton of Theater Hopper writes about voting in the Iowa caucus this week. I think it's nuts that we basically give roughly 300,000 people (200,000 Democrats and about 100,000 Republicans participated) in Iowa so much sway over who the nominees are going to be but it's good to see at least one webcomic creator exercising their civic responsibilities.

Anyone else getting involved in the year-long circus that is the American presidential election? Anyone simply making comics about it?

January 5th

Hate Song to Return With New Artist

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 5, 2008 - 13:42

I don't know how popular Hate Song was, but it had a good stretch back there with a mix of odd characters and aggressive humor.  It returns January 21st with new artist KC Green.

Saturday Interlude

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 5, 2008 - 11:57

A big thanks to Steve Troop for this month's cover art depicting a Blank Label Comics board meeting in session... :)

I'm also going to plug We The Robots which is a good read with a short archives - it's office humor but somewhat darker and more complicated then say... Dilbert. Over December, its creator Chris Harding posted a very funny cartoon not really based on the comic although the artwork is very similar. Anyhow if you missed it before you should click read more to see it

January 4th

The March of the Webcomics

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 4, 2008 - 12:49

Back in town with a rolling update for Friday (and the weekend). Should be new cover art and articles up on Sunday.

HEADLINES

BUSINESS

  • Satstu.com has an article on the state of the not-growing newspaper comic strip business. It also has a link to Chicken Wings which is a webcomic aimed at the aviation industry. In 2008 I'm going to predict that if there's enough public interest in something there will be at least one successful webcomic about it. How much public interest in a subject is enough? That's something I hope we can all get a better handle on this year - maybe with actual numbers and demographics.

CONGRATULATIONS

  • Congrats to Jeph and Christi on their engagement. And hope everyone caught Jeph's pretty cool little reader-participation holiday comic. My gift to the happy couple is that something happens in Questionable Content this year. I keed, I keed...

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

  • New Years Day, Goats wrapped up its multi-verse saga with Jon in charge of hell? The first comic in the next storyline is up now... Don't let anyone kid you - combining consistently funny updates with a (somewhat) coherent storyline is hard. Throw in some actual character development - that's ISO 9000 there, baby! Last year, Goats began to hit a stride of humor and unpredictablilty in a just-plain-fun story - let's hope Rosenberg can do it again in 2008.
  • A long way off but a firm date in May for the wedding of Brent and Jade should shake things up at PvP. PvP is more sitcom than storyline but every now and then Scott Kurtz successfully mixes up the elements of this long-running strip.
  • SMBC is brillant. I love the punchline picture / set-up text jokes (kind of a reverse humor-fu) - here's one of my recent favorites with the added wha! of mixing D&D and sex. Probably too PG-13 to ever fit comfortably in newspapers but somehow it'd be great to sneak this into mid-America's breakfast reading.

COMRADES IN ARMS

January 2nd

Happy New Years

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 2, 2008 - 14:49

I've been traveling (and still am until this coming weekend) but I thought I'd drop in to wish all a Happy New Year's, Three Kings Day and other assorted holidays recent and forthcoming.

I saw a lot of comments on 2007's POW list -- much of it disagreeing with part or all of the article. That'a a feature not a bug folks and I suppose the only disappointing thing is how limited the follow-on discussion was in terms of adding names and discussing what you thought was important and influential in 2007. If there's not much talk from you about comics at comixtalk then there isn't that much to comixtalk...

Since I'm only on for a bit I'll offer up an alternative take from Anne@FLEEN (although prefaced by Anne's comment that Our People of Webcomics 2007 list struck her as "kind of a weird list" which strikes us as kind of a weird comment. Maybe she'll add a bit more about her thoughts on 2007 in future posts?) -- here's some of the webcomics she thought worthy of name-checking as we head into 2008: Tom Humberstone’s Vented Spleen; Juan Santapau’s The Secret Knots; Natasha Allegri’s Normal Life; Mike Luce’s Fite!; Israel Sanchez’s Saturday; Kelly Vivanco’s Patches; Box Brown’s Bellen!; Bryant Paul Johnson's Teaching Baby Paranoia; Matthew Reidsma’s High Maintenance Machine; Karen Ellis’s astounding Planet Karen, and Corey Marie's Scene Language. That's an interesting list with minimal overlap to any other end-of-2007 list I've read but with a few I personally haven't actually had a chance to read (including Humberstone, Satapau and Sanchez). Like many other lists I think it's probably best described as a "best webcomics" list as opposed to the more elusive "it-ness" the POW list tries to capture but not a bad place to start if you're looking for some new webcomic recommendations.