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Why Do Online Comics by Iain Hamp

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For about as long as I have been doing online comics, I have wanted to try my hand at a 24-hour comic (please visit this page if you are unfamiliar with the concept).

I loved the idea of it. I thought the challenge seemed like something I would enjoy. Most of all, it seemed like a sort of “trial of passage” event that every comic artist worth their salt and serious about their craft would eventually have to pass through. Finally, in November of 2003, I found an opportunity to do one. Continue Reading →

Obey Your Comic Cravings: Sprite Comics Explained, by Ericka Crouse

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If you look up the definition of sprite in a dictionary, you’ll probably see an entry that tells you that a sprite is a spirit, fairy or elfish-type person. If you google it, you’ll find references to a form of upper-atmosphere lightning discharge being researched by people all over the world, references to a classic Australian car, references to various pieces of software and, of course, references to the soft drink.

So you might not quite understand when someone starts talking about “sprite comics”. Continue Reading →

A Jam Session with Jazz Age Chronicles’ Ted Slampyak

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Ted Slampyak broke into the comics scene in 1989 with The Case of the Beguiling Baroness, published by Caliber Press. This story turned out to be only the first in his stylish adventure series, Jazz Age Chronicles, which followed the blueblood adventurer, Clifton Jennings, and the blue-collar private eye, Ace Mifflin, as they pursued supernatural criminals in 1920s Boston. Soon after, he went on to work on projects like Quantum Leap and Neil Gaiman’s “Mr. Hero”, as well as providing illustration and storyboarding services.

In 2002, he returned to his roots, with The Power of Silas Rourke, a new Jazz Age story, and one of the original strips to run on the Modern Tales sister site, AdventureStrips.com. After the unfortunate demise of AdventureStrips.com, Ted remained with Modern Tales, repurposing his JazzAgeComics.com site as a single-creator subscription site, and the official home for Jazz Age on the web. The current story, No Escape updates weekly (the current strip is always free), with pages from his original Beguiling Baroness story and other extras added to the member section throughout the week.

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Twelve Cartoonists Join Forces to Create Comics from the Void

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They didn’t invent the concept of comic books on the internet and they’re not the first subscription based site online, but twelve popular cartoonists are betting that readers will be willing to pay $15 a year to enjoy their work. They have combined their efforts to put their money where their mouths are.

Beginning in January 2004, PV Comics is planning to serve up six complete stories every month, totaling on average 48 pages of new comics for their readers. With twelve diverse and experienced talents making up their roster, these won’t be any cookie-cutter comic books. Continue Reading →

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A Modest Interview: Damonk Talks with Sean Howard About Copyright and Stuff

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While there are many out there who decry sprite-based webcomics as less than art because they use other people’s original material for their own purposes, there are others – like A Modest Destiny‘s Sean Howard – who actually work hard to not only create their own ORIGINAL pixellated works of comic art, but to also lobby to keep others from stealing said work. Continue Reading →

The History of Online Comics by T Campbell (Part 4)

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Five Horsemen of the New Genesis

In they rode like heralds of the new era. The next fifteen months saw the approach of five sites that would define the webcomics scene for the next three years and remain important parts of it to the present. Call them the Five Horsemen.

The Five Horsemen were each a commercial success… five of the very few such successes online. This made them influential over both the art form of webcomics and its developing commerce. In this chapter, we'll concentrate on their artistic influence; later, we'll pick up the path of webcomics commerce.

Tellingly, each of them began in front of a computer screen. Continue Reading →

Potential ShutDowner Inadvertantly Becomes ShutDownee

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Sean Howard's A Modest Destiny webcomic site was shut down temporarily today, in an odd twist of events brought about through Howard's unhappiness with some Penny Arcade forum-goers.

According to the PA site, Howard had written to the PA boys asking (demanding?) them to crack down on PA forum-goers who were using AMD characters as avatars. Included in this letter was the statement that Howard had already "shut down six web comics that were using his art", thus potentially implying that the same could happen to the PA site, if this alleged copyright infringement was not dealt with quickly.

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