Author: Xaviar Xerexes

NEW and IMPROVED!
Check out our interview with TRACED creator Tracy White, one of the nominees for Best Online Comic at this year’s Ignatz Awards. 

While you’re at it – Rick Marshall also has a great interview with Sam Brown of Exploding Dog. (From our archives – a community interview with Sam from 2004)

And what did I hear on the radio this morning but NPR’s interview with Chris Onstad of Achewood and "The Great Outdoor Fight" – very cool, probably only the second webcomic interview on NPR I can think of in 10 years (Pete Abrams being the other one).

AWARDS
The Harveys were awarded at this past weekend’s Baltimore Comicon and Nicholas Gurewitch won for Perry Bible Fellowship.  (Gurewitch also won a "Special Award for Humor")

CONVENTIONS
CBR has a write-up of last weekend’s Webcomics Panel at the Baltimore Comicon featuring Danielle Corsetto, Scott Sava and the Half Pixel pals.

Tyler Page (of Nothing Better) will be at FALLCON at the Minnesota State fairgrounds next weekend (Oct 4-5).

DEAD TREES
Mitch Clem’s print collection of Nothing Nice To Say comics is out!

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Brigid Alverson rounds up the reactions to the closing up of the DC Minx comics line.

Sean Kleefeld wants you to mashup some comics.

ComicMix has the scoop on Stephen Colbert’s upcoming appearance in a Spiderman comic — I still remember fondly the SNL-Spiderman issue (I have that somewhere; wonder if it’s worth a couple bucks…)

Webcomic Witchfinder pits fantasy webcomics against each other in Deathmatch IV!

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Guess What?  Chickenbutt  The EVIL LEAGUE OF EVIL is recruiting!  Those of you with enough of an attention span to remember Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog from this summer know that it’s not easy to get into Bad Horse league of villians, but much cooler than joining the Henchman’s Union.

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Well I guess it’s news since FLEEN has it posted: the Webcomic Idol contest at Bombshell is returning and they let me return as a judge once again.  The guys at Bombshell do a good job running it and for the most part I think it’s been a great experience for all involved, winners and losers.  I’ll be joined this year at the judges table by DJ Coffman, Brad Guigar and Jim Mahfood.

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Reuben Bolling does a very funny Forrest Gump-like take on the history of comics in a three part series in his comic Tom The Dancing Bug.  Behind the Salon wait-for-an-ad wall but worth the wait. Click here for part 1, part 2 and part 3 of the "history of Doug, an unremarkable cartoon character." 

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Welcome to ComixTalk… may I take your order?  I’ve got an interview with the elusive Pokey the Penguin up and Brigid Alverson talks with Jeremy Ross of TokyoPop about its Manga Pilots program.   You may also want to check out my weekend post chock-filled with links to interesting stories and a new comic worth checking out.  (What exactly is a "chock" and how would you fill it?)

INTERVIEWS
Missed this, but Creative Commons has an interview with Mr. Diesel Sweeties, Rich Stevens.  Back in 2005, ComixTalk held a roundtable on creative commons licenses and comics with T Campbell, Lawrence Lessig, Neeru Paharia, Mia Garlick, JD Frazer, and Cory Doctorow.

ComixMix has an interview with D.J. Coffman, currently working on Flobots. (Folks should also check out D.J.’s very recent post on hosting your webcomic yourself – a short guide to getting started online independently.)

Digital Strips has a short interview with Zach Weiner – of SMBC and Captain Excelsior infamey.

Rick Marshall had a great interview with Jennie Breeden of Devil’s Panties.

Gaming Angel has an interview with Randall Munroe of xkcd and Benjamin Birdie and Kevin Church of The Rack (h/t Journalista!)

LA TIMES interviews Josh Neufeld on his webcomic A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.

Tom Spurgeon had a great interview with Scott McCloud on the new collection of his ZOT! comic.

CBR had a two-part interview with Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak – click for part one and part two.

REVIEWS

Artpatient.com has a review of Chasing the Sunset.

BUSINESS
David Rothman looks at the decline in traffic to Wowio.com but as Dirk Deppey notes, Wowio was essentially off the air for a good chunk of the summer.

AWARDS
I neglected to mention Andrew Wahl won first and third place in the International Cartoon contest at the Homer Davenport Days festival in Oregon earlier this month.  Wahl is a talented cartoonist – check out more of his work here.  Also, I just think it’s cool that a town has an entire festival to celebrate Homer Davenport – an internationally respected and pioneering political cartoonist from the turn of the century.

CONVENTIONS
Two East Coast events coming up fast.  First this coming weekend is the Baltimore Comicon (with, as FLEEN notes, the only East Coast appearance of all four How To Make Webcomics authors) The Baltimore Comicon is where the Harvey Awards are presented – Shaenon Garrity has the scoop on a contest to win tickets to the Harvey Awards. 

Next from October 4-5th is my hometown (close enough anyhow) convention, the Small Press Expo (SPX) over in Bethesda, Maryland.  The Ignatz Awards are presented at SPX.  Guests include Bryan Lee O’Malley, James Kochalka, Richard Thompson, Tom Tomorrow, etc!

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Dirk Deppey links to this pretty cool idea — The Superest wherein Kevin Cornell and Matthew Sutter take turns creating superheroes and villains that defeat each other’s creations.  And Tom Spurgeon links to news of a book deal for the site.

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So after wandering the wilds of Arizona last week I thought I’d catch us all up on some things from webcomicland:

First off here’s a post from DJ Coffman any creator looking to do the webcomic thing should read: "Host your own friggin’ webcomic" shows how you can start up a webcomic for almost nothing.

INTERVIEWS
Last week there was a good interview with Gordon McAlpin, the talented creator of Multiplex and a co-host of the Triple Feature movie podcast.  I’ve been reading Multiplex from day one so I don’t really know if it’s underrated or not — either way if you’re not reading it give it a look — it’s a great mix of actual story along with a big box of popcorn movie-related subjects.

BUSINESS
Chcuk Rozakis ask some good questions about how comics publishers will make use of the web.  Is he right that a "perfect" e-reader will be a print-killer?  Is DRM (i.e., copyright protection) going to slow down or stop fans migration to the publishers’ web offerings?

El Santo takes a look at Marvel’s announcement it’s putting original material – comics based on the Hulk and Iron Man movies – up on the web.

CONVENTIONS
Here’s an interview with aka Gabe and Tycho from this year’s PAX about the Penny Arcade empire, including the location (BOSTON!) of next year’s PAX EAST.

COLLECTIVES
The Eyeskream webcomic collective adds three new webcomics to its roster: Little Terrors, Gamer Candy, and Somewhere in SF.

CONTESTS
Roddenberry comics is giving away stuff: a 2009 Roddenberry Comics Calendar, featuring episodes from “Gene’s Journal’ and “Rod Barry,";  a pair of clocks of both “Gene’s Journal” and “Rod & Barry,” and a “Gene’s Journal” journal, ready to keep your most trusted thoughts and memories.  Check out the site for contest details.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Check out the newest bit of robot-goodness: Lovesick Robot.

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As FLEEN reported yesterday, the Ignatz Award nominations have been announced, and the nominations for the Online Comic category are:

• Achewood, Chris Onstad
• Danny Dutch, David King
• Slow Wave, Jesse Reklaw
• Thingpart, Joey Sayers
• Traced, Tracy White

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INTERVIEWS
CBR talks with Danielle Corsetto, the creator of the damn-funny Girls With Slingshots.

REVIEWS
I wrote a recent review of Faith Erin Hicks’ graphic novel Zombies Calling and completely missed some visual storytelling involved in the "infection" and some other bits about the main characters.  Over at the SLG blog, editor Jennifer deGuzman shows me the light!

GIMME THE GIMMICK!
For all I know this will be a really good webcomic.  After all it’s been "more than ten years in development.".  But the press release is stressing that the new comic from Kelly J. Compeau, The Black Tower, is "an ad-supported interactive webcomic series targeted at environmentally conscious teens and adults."  Oh it gets better.  Let me just snip from the press release:

What’s unique about this project is the interactive element, a first in the comics industry. Every issue of "The Black Tower" will be made available online…  with clickable links to product placement advertisers, music videos and YouTube/MySpacetv shorts (live-action extensions of the comic book), Wikipedia pages and internal Black Tower factoid/who’s-who webpages, to help new readers get up-to-speed on what’s going on. There will also be links to fully functional faux websites seen being accessed by characters in the webcomic, and blogs written "in character", with comments posted by devoted fans who choose to play along with the charade. All readers have to do to access these special features (Easter eggs) is roll their mouse over the panel featuring the "Interactive Icon" (the little black & white X in the bottom corner of the pic) and they’ll be taken to a website that may feature the product shown in that panel, or it may take them to a music video for the band featured in that panel, or a character’s MySpace page etc. If the comics do exceptionally well over the first two of its expected six-year run, Compeau hopes to expand "The Black Tower" empire by launching a video game companion, paperback novels, action figures, board games, trading cards, toy props & weapons, posters, calendars, and a clothing & jewelry line, among other things.

In all seriousness, this could be a lot of fun but oy that press release is not helping…

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