Author: Xaviar Xerexes

I can't recall if I posted to this at the time or not but it's still a good refresher for anyone wanting to make a go at it in webcomics this year.  Last August, Howard Tayler gave a great talk about his webcomic Schlock Mercenary and how he's made it into a full time business.  It's a good talk – not just about Howard himself, but going through how the Internet has disrupted the existing newspaper comic strip model.

Slightly related update: Jeff Jarvis accumulates the depressing statistics of 2008 for the newspaper bidniz here – which only serves to reinforce Howard's point that chasing newspaper syndication is like catching a ride on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.

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NPR does a story on Penny Arcade (this is a couple days old but I just listened to it this morning) which does a decent job of capturing the comic although interesting it doesn't mention Robert Khoo's role in their business success.  Contrary to other reports though NPR did cover a webcomic before – it had an interview with Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance way back in 1998.

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New Webcomic Hosting Site?

Webcomic Planet is still in beta but it is up and worth checking out.  Free hosting with wordpress plus the comicpress theme is a great idea plus its owners include Tyler Martin the creator of the comicpress theme as well as Philip Hofer of Frumph.net and John Bintz.

BEST OF 2008

Derik Badman had a short list of recommended best of 2008 webcomics.

El Santo notes that voting for the 2008 Weblog Awards starts this Monday — there is a comic strip category that includes several webcomics (well they're all "web" comics but several are independent comics on the web)

And Happy Birthday To Me!

Sadly I've been sick all week and missed out on most of my plans for celebrating holidays and such but this past Friday was my birthday.   Apparently I'm semi-prominent enough to get a mention on The Comics Reporter (of course I did send in my birthdate to Tom, but regardless, thanks!) — it's all downhill in comics for me now! 🙂

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Well I hope you had a marvelous New Year’s Eve and whenever you wake up today in glorious 2009 make a few resolutions to make some comics and read some comics.  Expand your horizons.  Buy a new comic or some hep swag from your favorite artist.  Chip in a few bucks when someone taking the risk of making comics all the time hits a roadbump.  Have fun.  Take your wacom outside sometimes (Vitamin D is necessary you know…)…

Anyhow here’s the traditional day in ComixTalk type post I do when I don’t have any new ideas (and I’m curious if I ever did).  More posting (hopefully) beginning next Monday, January 5th.

2008

• Comixtalk user albone announced the launch of his webcomic Rival Angels which follows the story of Sabrina ‘Ultragirl’ Mancini as she looks to aspire to greatness in the world of pro wrestling. And still updating consistently a year later in 2009!
• Narbonic creator Shaenon K. Garrity returned to daily webcomic-making with the new comic Skin Horse created with co-writer Jeffrey Channing Wells.  One year later I’d have to say that I’m really enjoying it and it has filled the hole in my reading left my the end of her earlier effort Narbonic. 

2007

• Comixtalk user Brinkerhoff celebrated the first year of his webcomic Brinkerhoff.
• The comics industry jobs site http://comicjobz.com/ launched.  Currently the site is static with a page announcing "Relaunching in 2009!" 

2006

• Ozy and Millie creator D.C. Simpson has signed to bring his popular, critically-acclaimed comic strip Ozy and Millie back to Keenspot after being away for nearly three years.
• Remember Blamination! Despite the slapdash nature of these flash animations I really thought they were funny as heck: here’s a link to one of the last ones: Kurtz and Straub Deliver PvP Alive!
  

2005

• Uncle Ghastly made his New Year’s webcomic resolutions.  That reminds me I have to make some of my own for 2009 (although I kept almost none of them for 2008).

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What a year!  Well while I’m shivering through the flu this New Year’s Eve I hope some of you out there will celebrate the ringing in of 2009 right.  If it’s not obvious already I decided to skip any big year-end lists or articles in 2008; I just didn’t think I could do them justice this year.

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Actually I have nothing much to add to this — Wikipedia standards for inclusion actually seem to continue to evolve, imperfectly but generally in the right direction.  Webcomics continue to get added, edited and sometimes put up for deletion.  This post seems to be a good overview of keeping an entry on Wikipedia up in the face of efforts to delete (it was inspired by this Fall’s discussion to delete the entry for Something Positive).

And while officially I have nothing to do with it anymore, Comixpedia.org seems to be chugging along nicely as a place to put wiki-like entries on webcomics.  Since they don’t delete anything at Comixpedia.org you can always start an entry there and then copy/paste with one at Wikipedia (they both share the GNU license so such sharing is 100% legal).

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It’ll be reallly sloooow posting at ComixTalk until next year.  Hope you all have a nice couple of weeks whatever holidays you may be celebrating!

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Still awfully relevant and interesting – the short-lived The Webcomics Reader column at ComixTalk.  Kelly Cooper wrote four articles in 2006 taking a fresh and down-to-earth look at critical analysis of comics.  Don’t be put off by the word "critical" and "analysis" — these are four lively and fun articles that anyone who enjoys comics and wants to know more about how to talk about what why they like comics should read. 

BONUS: Impress your friends at holiday parties with your new-found comics wonkery! 

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Sean Kleefeld is one of the few new comics bloggers I check out regularly.  His recent piece on comics fandom is interesting – here’s an excerpt:

But what Understanding Comics has showed me — a point which I didn’t realize before — was that I had been a fan of superheroes whose exploits were frequently delivered in comic book form, and not comics themselves. It was quite a revelation for me at the time (you might say it was like I was struck by a bolt of lightning) and it marked a very clear turn for me to actively seek out good comics not just good superhero stories presented within comics.

In my research at the time, I was discovering, too, that many fans experienced similar transitions. Not necessarily from reading McCloud, but from reading some comic that suddenly opened their eyes to the possibilities beyond what they had been reading. Not everyone experiences it, naturally, and those that don’t are the ones who primarily read superhero books and don’t care for "art comix".

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Great quote from Spike posted by FLEEN:

Did you know that, with a 1% cover price share and assuming the books are equal in cost, a Zuda book would have to sell 10,000 copies to make the creator what I would selling 100 copies of Templar? And that’s assuming there are no penalties in the payout for deep discount/damaged/give-away books, and the payout isn’t be split in half between a writer and an artist or something.

There's a good discussion at FLEEN in the comments.  Here's my question though — no matter how good Spike is at DIY (and she is good) shouldn't ZUDA be able to do better?  Otherwise what the heck is ZUDA adding to the value chain?  It's just another flavor of the question I feel like I've been asking all year — given all of the DIY tools available to a comics creator, what role is there for a publisher/agent/manager kind of entity?  I think there is one for a company built around doing really well and efficiently the kind of business and marketing things that someone should be able to do for the new breed of comics creator but I'm not sure I've seen it yet.

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