Author: Xaviar Xerexes

Two great pieces of news on the webcomics front today:

A new Girlamatic webcomics anthology site is up and rocking.  It's nice to see this site back with a burst of energy.  The site looks freshly redesigned and it sounds like it's got new code under the hood (maybe more details on that front will come out later).

Patrick Farley is working on re-publishing his webcomic work.  He lost the domain e-sheep at some point this decade and with it all of his previously published webcomic work disappeared.  He's starting putting up work (it sounds like it will take him quite some time to go through all of his old files) at electricsheepcomix.com which has a great throw-back design right now.  I don't actually see any links to comics there yet but keep an eye on it this month (and I'll let you know when I see completed stories up too).

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I can’t believe tomorrow is August.  Here’s a preview of next month’s cover art from cat garza.

And some interesting stories around the web today:

Techdirt talks to musician Jill Sobule who has embraced a model for her career that won’t seem all that strange to many webcomic creators.

NPR reports that Tim Hamilton of ACT-I-VATE is doing a comic adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic Farenheit 451.

An interview with Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots. (h/t to Journalista!)

Art Babble is a portal for videos on the web about art.  Looks very cool…

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SPAM Update: We use Mollom — which up until this recent disaster of spam had worked very well (Mollom has a module for Drupal and a plug-in for Wordpress).  Apparently it started treating a lot of "spam" as "ham" (what Mollom calls "not spam") recently.  Still trying to sort out why.  Besides spammers sucking on principle, the cleanup and investigating is time I really don’t have to spare.  And yesterday Google told me it was dropping ComixTalk from its news program because of "spammy content" (which had to have been about the recent outbreak as otherwise we’ve had a good track record for a couple years now.  I’ve written to ask for them to reconsider the decision but still… thanks sucky spammers!

Anyhow I’m going to see what happens with opening up posting new talk posts from existing registered users again. However, I’m not going to open up new user registrations yet.

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Al Schroeder and several other creators of superhero-themed webcomic have been running a months’ long cross-over story called The CROSSOVERLORD.  the planning and plotting for this must have been immense. The characters involved in The Crossoverlord comic include Mechagical Girl Lisa A.N.T., DASIEN, Dead Debbie of INDEFENSIBLE POSITIONS, the WCCA-award-winning GREEN AVENGER, LIGHTBRINGER, and MINDMISTRESS.

Al wrote in that today there’s a big reveal in the ongoing story for THE CROSSOVERLORD so it’s a good time to dig into the archives and catch up if you’re not already reading.

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NYC Graphic Novelists reports that ACT-i-VATE is putting out a print collection of works from creators from the anthology site titled The ACT-I-VATE Primer (the comics will be new material) (ACT-I-VATE press release here).  I am betting this will be a dang impressive book.

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NEWSPAPERS: An interview with Lincoln Peirce (his family notoriously rebelling against the i before e except after c rule) the creator of the long-running Big Nate.

GRAPHIC NOVELS: An interview with Shaun Tan, creator of various excellent graphic novels, including Tales From Outer Suburbia (reviewed at Comixtalk here).

WEBCOMICS: An interview with Josh Neufeld, creator of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge and an interview with Marty Nozzarella, creator of Mere Mortal.

ANTHOLOGIES: An interview with Diana McQueen, the new editor of the anthology comics site Girlamatic.

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Our normal defense shields against spam seemed to have failed over the last 24 hours and I spent too much time cleaning spam out of the database this morning.  For now I’ve locked down new user registrations and new talk posts until I get a chance to investigate the causes of the breakdown.

In the meantime, if you’ve got a hot tip on a webcomic story email me at xerexes AT gmail DOT com and I’ll post it for you.

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Fleen reported on and confirmed via Keenspot CEO Chris Crosby that John Troutman is no longer on Keenspot:

John Troutman’s Keenspot membership has been terminated, but we have no comment on the matter otherwise and wish John the best of luck.

I have no information on this at all although I’ve asked John for comment and will report that if he is willing to do so.  I guess I’m a little surprised by the story as I can’t recall a time when Keenspot has essentially fired someone. 

Background on John can be found at Wikipedia and Comicspace.

UPDATE
A reply from John Troutman:

Though I believe my membership was terminated unjustly and through no fault of my own, I suspect I’ll be much better off without Keenspot, whose management I never really saw eye-to-eye with.  All my friends have had great success as indie webcomics, so I can only hope to follow in their footsteps.

Disclosure! I have known John online at least (I don’t think we’ve ever met in person) for many years now.

In addition to his initial statement to FLEEN, Chris Crosby added the following in a comment over there:

OK, I’ll admit, the only reason we fired John Troutman was so we would be mentioned on Fleen. It’s the same reason Fox fired the cast of FUTURAMA.

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TOOLS
Webcomics.com has a post on a webcomics new plug-in for Wordpress.  In the comments is a link to a comparison of this new approach to the more well-known Comicpress theme and other tools for using Wordpress for webcomics.

COPYRIGHT
I forgot to post about David Rees’ run-in with Jamba Juice which produced some ads with comics that look almost 100% like Rees’ Get Your War On.  So check out these two Boing Boing posts (Cory’s not (c) violation but evil; and Xeni’s Rees’ calls for boycott) for the story.

DEAD TREES
Daily Cartoonist reports on a  group of cartoonists is working on a newspaper style comics page that will be sold online.

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A few stories from the corner of copyright and catastrophe:

Amazon is getting a lot of grief over its ability to mess with content on your Kindle – the recent deletion of 1984 books being the main flash point.  I would think comics, with its history of hysteria and censorship from the government, would think carefully about this kind of blowback from DRM (digital rights management) schemes.

The A.P. is planning to try and charge for "illegal use" of its articles.  Other people call this "fair use" so I’m a bit dubious as to A.P.’s plans.  Also following the A.P.’s logic they may owes all of the subjects of their articles money for appropriating their news…

Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, has a new book out called Free about new business models involving free stuff.  Definitely of interest to webcomic business-minded folks.  And not so surprisingly — you can read Free for free.

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