michaelwhitney's blog
Demographics Study Monthly
Submitted by michaelwhitney on July 1, 2004 - 13:04
Exclaim Magazine -- apparently a Canadian youth (Youth! YOUTH!) rag -- did a brief article on PVP recently.
They also dropped some links to Butternut Squash, Return to Sender and White Ninja with brief, unintentionally hilarious summaries.
Their "Return to Sender" link is wrong. Oh well. They're young! For youth! They can make mistakes!
Chris Bishop's webcomics blog
Submitted by michaelwhitney on June 29, 2004 - 02:46
Chris Bishop, the creator of Her!, has a new blog code-named "Double Agent" that focuses on webcomics.
From the site:
Double Agent is a site where I can review webcomics, comment on trends and experiment with ideas and techniques. I've wanted to do this for a while. It was important that I keep it separate from my webcomic HER! - although my experiences doing that strip since 1998 and exclusively on the web since 2001 would definitely influence my views. That is why I decided to call this site Double Agent. I'm sort of playing both sides - creator and analyst.
He's already posted interviews with Michael Lalonde, Joycelyn Yik and Michael Zole. Bishop is a talented illustrator, web designer and webcomicker. This should be a great site to watch.
It's A Wonderful Life
Submitted by michaelwhitney on June 25, 2004 - 13:33
I'm officially amazed: After only two days, Goats is already halfway to their first goal, with a current total of more than $5,000.
It looks like they'll be able to pay back crotchety old Mr. Potter after all. Remember, Jon: no strip is a failure that has friends.
Sun-Times: Webcomics acting like the RIAA
Submitted by michaelwhitney on June 23, 2004 - 12:50
The Chicago Sun-Times ran an opinion piece on the Comictastic program yesterday. Comictastic is a comic "ripper" that grabs comics from their sites without the advertising, T-shirt offers, etc. and saves them on the user's hard drive.
Pre-Order FLIGHT
Submitted by michaelwhitney on June 23, 2004 - 12:15
The Flight Anthology is available for pre-order on Amazon.
The anthology features original short stories on the "flight" theme drawn by several accomplished Webcomickers and then stained on flattened trees.
You can see a preview of the book, including Derek Kirk Kim's offering, in the conventional electronic format.
Goats holds out a hat
Submitted by michaelwhitney on June 22, 2004 - 20:14
It's now solidly in danger of becoming a trend. Goats is the latest webcomic to solicit donations to get the creators out of dire financial straits so that they can keep making comics. On the site, Jon explains:
Basically what Phillip and I have been doing for the last couple of years is "building the business". For those of you who play RPGs, it's kinda like leveling up your character. We've been reinvesting all the money we've made over the last seven years into the business, expanding our line of merchandise, dabbling with advertising and that sort of thing. We haven't paid ourselves one thin dime in all this time.
Like Randal Milholland, they've promised to increase their update frequency if they make their goals.
John Byrne, Webcomicker
Submitted by michaelwhitney on June 22, 2004 - 16:11
John Byrne is trying his hand at a webcomic. Well, it's published on the Web. As he says, it's a print comic that he's sliced up to post.
Still... thanks to the speed of Web-delivered comics, we should only have to wait a few weeks before someone else rewrites the continuity to make the characters less powerful and give them more human foibles.
The Art of Adult
Submitted by michaelwhitney on June 15, 2004 - 14:56
In checking out Hard's livejournal to catch up on the latest controversies, I noticed that he recently posted a little bit about his digital process. I love seeing that kind of information in the same way I loved those cheesy Star Wars TV specials where they showed the special effects guys blowing up Tie Fighter models. I like to know how they did that. Every webcomic should post a page with pens, paper, inks, Illustrator, CorelDRAW, PhotoShop, etc ... especially if the final look makes it hard to guess.
Whatever else it's done, the recent salvo of "Sexy Losers" reviews ('Pedia, Tart, Examiner) have given me a new respect for the artists of adult comics. Other strips can approximate anatomy. They can draw three fingers, hide limb joints or show everyone three-quarters view ... but not porn. If porn artists are good, they're great, and if they're bad, they're horrible.
Recently, In Print...
Submitted by michaelwhitney on May 12, 2004 - 13:36
Am I the only one who noticed the strange letter from Derek Kirk Kim in the back of Optic Nerve #9? Surely not.
Kirk Kim apologizes to Optic Nerve creator Adrian Tomine for distributing his high school year book picture on the Internet.
The Alt. Weekly Exception?
Submitted by michaelwhitney on April 6, 2004 - 12:22
My newest comic habit is Tiny Sepuku, which I may have even found through Comixpedia, but I can't recall now. TS is an advice comic that manages to be borderline enlightening -- well, moreso than "Dear Abby" -- as well as funny. It's a unique concept as far as I can tell. (Plugging "advice comic strip" into Google returns a really depressing list of Web pages about how many strips a submission editor wants paperclipped to the SASE.)
This would be a fantastic format for the Web and is probably being done in corners I don't know about. Please enlighten me if you know of others. The reader interaction is reminiscent of Pathetic Geek Stories, which only set up a Web site in recent months. Both strips are made possible by email submissions. Both are also newspaper strips from alt-weeklies.
Did we say newspaper strips were dead? Maybe we meant the syndicates.
