Author: Xaviar Xerexes

When Portland webcomic artist Evan Nichols announced the posting of "500 episodes of ‘Ask Dr. Eldritch,’ all on schedule and without poop jokes," it immediately triggered a surprising firestorm of response.  At the center of the controversy is Comic #60, which some claim contradicts this assertion.  "The Eater of All says he’s going to pupate, and Trevor the Troll replies that he doesn’t do bathroom humor," said one Fan, who spoke on condition of anonymity.  "If that’s not a poop joke, what is?" 

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Hope everyone is having a good 2009 so far.  I’m looking for good new stuff to read online – if you want to share a recommendation with me, leave a comment on it below.  Thanks!

And here’s some newsy stuff:

INTERVIEWS
Really good interview with Karl Kerschl, the creator of The Abominable Charles Christopher. (h/t Journalisa!)

ZUDA is putting some of its webcomic winners in print… finally!  In an interview with the creators of The Black Cherry Bombshells, there is mention that Bayou and High Moon are coming first and that The Black Cherry Bombshells should follow in 2010.

FREE AS IN FREE
Sean Kleefeld (who I still think of as a print comics guy for whatever reason) has a post titled "Wait – You Still BUY Comics? How TwenCen!" pointing out all of the free comics you can get on the web (handy if you can’t afford to buy comics in print anymore).

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Instructables has a how-to for making "quick and easy webcomics".

The How To Get Your Food Spit In blog has a recurring photo-webcomic that’s pretty funny.  Don’t criticize it though or it’ll spit in your browser…

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I’m passing on an email from the create-comics-in-your-browser site Comicbrush about fixes and updates to the site:

I am writing with news about Comicbrush.

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Tom Spurgeon reports that Dark Horse may or may not be pulling a book version of Planet Beer from cartoonist Brian Sendelbach.  Sendelbach apparently sent out an email asking for pre-orders to avert a pull of the book (scheduled for March) by Dark Horse.  Dark Horse in its response doesn’t seem to agree exactly. 

Sendelbach’s comic is called Smell of Steve and appears online and in some weeklies.  I have no idea about Dark Horse pulling books or whatnot but whatever email Sendelbach wrote was brilliant P.R. — he’s got mentions of the coming book in The Comics Reporter and other sites — plus a solid plug from Internet Jesus himself.

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Another webcomic creator hits the Googleplex – I finally got to watch through this and it was interesting to hear Chris Onstad talk about his work and the flexibility of the web.

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ADVERTS
Let's stick with the advertising theme this week.  I may have been too harsh on BlogAds yesterday – I lowered the prices and had a new ad submitted within hours.  Hmm…   Anyhow, new features for the Project Wonderful advertising platoform — categories for publishers ad boxes and infinite bids for advertisers.

MILESTONES
The Reboot webcomic is over.  I know nothing about any incarnation of Reboot so someone else will have to tell us if the webcomic did justice to the cartoon or whether there's a big screen remake with Eddie Murphy coming out next year.

NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT
Lyle Masaki has an overview of webcomics with gay themes and characters.  It's a good article which covers a number of really good comics out there. (h/t El Journalista!)

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Shelly from Scary Go Round meets Dr McNinja as drawn by SGR boy genius creator John Allison.

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I suspect it’s going to be a lousy time for ads in the near term.  Less money spent on them; less readers clicking on them (on the idea everyone is spending less).

I saw a decent thread on various ad systems over at webcomics.com — I’m really curious about how January shakes out for creators running ads.  I’m currently using Joey Manley’s new advertising platform – Webcomics World – but it’s too soon to provide any feedback on it yet.  Previously I used a combination of Blog Ads, Project Wonderful and Google Ads.  Google ads have never worked for me, PW has always been a small amount (but consistent) and Blog Ads used to be pretty good but declined severely over 2008.

NOTE: I grabbed this link from the webcomics.com thread – Tony Piro wrote up an overview of many ad networks – a little out of date but still, a pretty useful overview.  One other new network you might also investigate is from Six Apart (they own typepad and moveable type) – I have not used it but did consider it last year.

ADVERT: Thinking about blogads I just lowered slashed the price on the blogad spot here at ComixTALK (it appears at the top of the left hand column).

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Does anyone want to do some cover art for ComixTalk for January (like this month)?  Email me at xerexes AT gmail DOT com.

INTERVIEWS

Newsarama has an interview with Raina Telgemeier who is working on a graphic novel version of her webcomic-in-progress Smile.  Raina and her husband Dave Roman are two of the nicest (and talentest) folks in comics. (h/t Journalista!)

The Washington Post has an interview with Tom Rickard, the creator of the comic strip Brewster Rockit.  I didn’t realize this started back in 2004, it is a better than average strip in terms of what’s in the Post’s comic pages.

Achewood creator Chris Onstad visits the Googleplex – click for a video of an interview with him there for Google’s Authors At Lunch series.  (h/t Journalista!)

Following up on FLEEN’s mention of the NPR story on Penny Arcade, a commenter lists several other webcomic stories NPR has covered: Achewood, Sluggy Freelance, Erfworld, Questionable Content, Megatokyo, Cyanide & Happiness.

TOOLS

Brian Fies, the creator of the web/comic Mom’s Cancer has REALLY good advice on dpi requirements (72, 300, 600, 1200, etc) when scanning. (h/t Journalista!)

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

In their weekly podcast, the Halfpixel crew talks about 2008 and looks ahead to 2009.

Scott Kurtz announced some changes to his other webcomic Ding! — he took back the art chores from Paul Southworth and is now soliciting stories from players of the game World Of Warcraft to tell in the comic.  I think the format change is interesting, but I’ll miss Southworth’s take on the art.

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Wow – lots of awesome MC Frontalot news (links lifted from FLEEN.com) including this Matt Boyd conducted interview with the MC himself.  But the main deal being winners of the video contest Frontalot ran for his new song Wallflowers (which is a heck of a catchy song).  Amongst the fan-submitted videos the winner was a stop-motion one which looks like it took a lot of work and really how much can you complain about toys dancing on top of a Merlin-game style floor.  But as far as concepts go I loved the one from fuzzy gerdes that took last runner-up.  I kind of think you could do a lot more visual funny with it then these guys did but I loved the low key style.  Quoting the MC himself, “Honorable Mention goes to: fuzzy gerdes who took the central idea of the song and did not let go of it.”

MC Frontalot – Wallflowers from Fuzzy Gerdes on Vimeo.

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