For what it's worth, I've got a fresh install of DRUPAL on the dev server at home, working up a streamlined version of ComixTALK. Laid out the basic theme (moving to a 2 column layout) and now tackling cleaning up the horror that the tag and category system at ComixTALK has mutated into…. Right now I'm debating whether to port ComixTALK as is to the new server or wait until I get the redo… done.
Non-ZUDA CONTESTS: El Santo reports that John Lustig of Last Kiss is having a contest — write the best dialogue for a comic captioned by Orson Scott Card.
I think I've mentioned it before but whatever compulsion I might have once had to share with you every scrap of webcomic-related stuff… well I ain't feeling it. So it's great that others are taking care of it and this week you can't go wrong with this round up of webcomic reviews, interviews and stories from Brigid Alverson's Paperless Comics.
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE NEW NEW ECONOMY: Tom Spurgeon writes about Julie Larson's decision to move from a deal with Creator's Syndicate to self-syndication. You really can't extrapolate much from a story that includes one newspaper comic (Larson's) and one webcomic (Apokalips) as the basis for discussion. I feel bad for folks like Larson who are stuggling with the double whammy of tectonic shifts in technology and a bum economy. But I also think it's annoying and self-defeating to write about how the Internet is killing everything. The Internet is part of the environment now. It's the least-cost, most effective publishing tool ever invented — when before in history has ANYONE been able to potentially reach EVERYONE on the planet at the minimal costs needed to put up a website? That fact is AWESOME and no one in their right mind would trade it away for preservation of past pratices.
The other thing to keep in mind is that there used to be certain channels of content that we consumed because it was there in a format that required us to read/watch/listen to it on the format's terms. That's going, going, gone. Watch teevee when it's scheduled? Nope, TIVO. Listen to radio live? Nope, not if you don't want to – podcast, iTunes, etc. Read the daily comics in the morning at breakfast? Nope, even newspaper comics are ARCHIVED and available on the web. I can see it in my kids' habits. I used to come to the content in a lot of cases… for my kids all content is a library. They watch/listen/read their favorites — it's RARE that they ever engage with content because it's there. What does that mean? I'd bet a lot of things, but one thing that seems obvious is that FAVORITES will win an even bigger share of whatever new business models sustain creators. If in the past it made sense to appeal to the largest audience possible (which often meant a softening and blanding up of material) to get into the newspaper, I think creators have to understand that's probably a really BAD strategy now.
This weekend, it's the 6th edition of the live art smackdown show: Super Art Fight 6 (read that in Kermit the Frog's excited announcer voice). There's always been a webcomic presence at these events and no exception this time:
Main Event: Michael Bracco (Champion) vs. Jamie Baldwin (Challenger)
#1 Contenders Match: Nick “Ghostfreehood” Borkowicz vs. Garth Graham
Generational Warfare – Rookie vs. Veteran: Kelsey Wailes vs. Jami “Angry Zen Master” Noguchi
4-Way Battle Royale: Chris “Impact” Impink vs. Joe Dunn vs. Bryan Prindiville vs. Chelsea Grose
I think I’ve officially run out of stupid headlines for daily blog posts… thank you to everyone who gave me advice about webhosts and website software this week.
SKIP THE BORING SITE NEWS IF YOU WANT: My work to fix my hosting and design and angst issues continues apace (well not the angst issues) and I'll be trying out another host for ComixTalk starting sometime this week (just need a block of time to do the move). The two other things I'm angsting about are (1) new design/functionality decisions and (2) whether to switch from Drupal to Wordpress.
It's a holiday in the U.S. and the kind of day that I would hope the rest of the world can, if not celebrate, acknowledge happily. (Which puts it in a different category than celebrating more nationalistic – George Washington – or controversial – Cristos Columbus – figures from history). I wonder if India has a Mahatma Gandhi day? Apparently they do – one for his birth and one for his death.
Haiti. Wow, it's a good thing I don't play a pretend-actual-news journalist on the Internet because I don't think I could find the words to write adequately about the situation there. It's an immense tragedy. If you can afford to donate something Doctors Without Borders is a group that was one of the first in and does a tremendous amount of good.
Hosting and Coding Geekery. If you're not just a webcomics geek but have educated opinions on webhosting, wordpress or drupal I would really like to talk to you. My current hosting at media temple is not working for ComixTALK. I have been trying to sort out plans for the new year for hosting and whether to switch CMSs but I feel overwhelmed. I had some good conversations on twitter and im last night but what I really need is just more advice — the Internet is CONFUSING when you ask what is best on these questions. Email me at xerexes AT gmail DOT com or twitter to xerexes or gchat to xerexes or just add a comment to this post here. Once I get all this squared away I have some ideas about redoing the theme here at ComixTALK.
Webcomics. Oh you probably came here this morning to read about comics presented in pixelated form, didn't you? First things first – the switch to using RSS feeds in Google Reader for my daily webcomics "page" is a success. It's much more convenient. If you want me to check out YOUR webcomic send it to me (see above) somehow and I will! I can't write about it if I haven't read it 🙂
Comixtalk did a year-end roundtable in December 2009, in which they spoke to not less than eight people. Between the eight of them, roughly five billion webcomics are mentioned over the course of the round-table. So: be sure to check those out…
Joystiq's weekly webcomic roundup seems to be a bit of an institution now for gaming comics. Is there anything like it for other subjects Movie comics? Celebrity comics? New and opinion sites? I don't offer a practical plan for convincing a successful site in a subject area to add a webcomic roundup but I think it would be worth working on. (If you're a smaller site linked to by Joystiq — how much of a bump are you getting from the exposure?)
At the end of this month, Ryan North's Project Wonderful is going to add geotargeting to it's service – here Ryan explains more about the benefits of this feature. I used a mix of PW, Blog Ads and ComicSpace's Ad service Webcomics World over the last year and if I had to keep one I'd stick with PW right now.
El Santo reviews Dead Winter, a zombie webcomic. 4 Stars and he compares it favorably to Jenny Romanchuk’s Zombie Hunters and Bobby Crosby's Last Blood.
Has everyone seen The Fantastic Mr Fox? I want to but haven't yet. Did see a wonderful exhibit on it at the Cartoon Museum and spotted this acceptance speech at the National Board of Review ceremony (via Drawn!)
State of the ComixTALK update
Working on a Wordpress-powered version of the site on a development server. Had out the MySQL book last night trying to write queries for moving over a few of the tables from Drupal to Wordpress.
Webcomics.com Update
I got a press release from Brad Guigar this morning announcing that subscribers to Webcomics.com are eligible to get tables in the Webcomics Pavilion area of the Chicago's Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2) for a special creators' discount of 15%. According to Brad that's a total savings of $60 – which is pretty nice (and more than the annual $30 subscription fee to the site btw). This is very smart — if Brad can leverage the new community he's building for partnerships and other promotions than that certainly adds a lot of value to joining that site.
Wow- the first full week of 2010 at ComixTalk and I'm still surprised how much folks are talking about webcomics.com's and keenspot's recent announcements. I think with the struggling ad market we may see another year of tremendous experimentation as folks try out old and new business ideas alike. I wonder about the "swag" market — a recent tweet about the amount of postage bought by Topatoco last year reminded me how little we know about trends in that area. Sure we hear from individual cartoonists when they do well or not but I don't think anyone has an idea of whether collective sales of comics-related t-shirts, stickets, etc is going up or down over time.
Last another site note: I'm definitely going to a new site design, probably timed to moving to a new host; ideally within this month. In the meantime partially inspired by the video of Lark Pien's Small Destructions installation I saw, I'm using the "cover" art slot here and changing it often (call it not-quite-daily). I hope folks like some of them or at least don't mind. We had 83 cover artists (give or take – some were collaborations) over 7 years and I finally thought I'd like to take my own turn at it.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Be sure to check out Christopher Baldwin's new webcomic Spacetrawler.
Boing Boing reports that the first two volumes of Wizzywig, Ed Piskor's graphic memoir of the early days of the BBS/hacking/phreaking scene, have been posted online.
Here's a fairly short review: Rice Boy is a good comic and you should read it. I actually think the book version might be preferrable to the webcomic as it's a hefty story that lends itself to sitting down for a long stretch with it.
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