Are you a webcomics reader? Can you write?

For this year's WCCAs, Gisele and I are putting together a quick salute to the webcomics that ended in the year of 2005.

Consulting Comixpedia.org, I find Comiccollage, Queen of Wands, Fans, Dewclaw, Roomies, Modern Humor Authority, Greystone Inn, As If, 2214, Okay Pants, The Starship Destiny, Paper Eleven, Acid Reflux, Men In Hats, Carried by The Wind, Surreal U, High School Changed Me, Skirting Danger, Vigilante, Ho!, Mixed Myth, Kota's World, Sex Puppies, Avant-Garde Comics (maybe the shortest lifespan of any webcomic on record), Purple Pussy, Iharthdarth, Jamie and Nick, Legend of Anime Bunny, Lick My Jesus, Sorry For The Inconvenience. And I remember Saga of the Ram.

And three sorta-entries that have returned from the grave, or threaten to: A Modest Destiny, Checkerboard Nightmare and WIGU.

I know I'm blanking on something really OBVIOUS. (Early 2006 doesn't count.)

Clickwheel will be commissioning (i.e. paying for) work from creators.

The company's always going to serve adapted, creator-owned webcomics, but for some of our upcoming plans, it needs a few properties we can call our own. Clickwheel's already taken steps to commission a few pieces which I'll tell you about in the coming weeks. Sometimes the idea would come from the creator, sometimes from Clickwheel itself. And yeah, this is pay-per-panel. The $5 per panel generally breaks down to $2 for writing and $3 for art in the case of teamwork.

This is still in the planning stages, but interested parties can contact T Campbell, the commissioning editor.

Sluggy Freelance

What's the common theme?
Bunnies? Pop spoofs? Zo&#235? Slugs?
Freelancing? Nope. Fun.

Comixpedia recently reported the death of Selena Ulrich, AKA Kitsune, an avid fan of several webcomics and a promising cartoonist in her own right.

I realized that the picture that kept coming back to me was that of the character "Selena" named after her in Cool Cat Studio, and while that rendition pleased her, I was more interested in getting to know the real her.

Her own strip, C.Ulture Shocked, seemed a good place to start. I'd checked it out before, but not in a couple of years. The homepage still bears the mark of her last, hastily-dashed-off update, but she thoughtfully described the first couple of years' worth of material in her archive page, and if you only have time to read one, her last story, showcasing the disabled Carla pulling off a somewhat successful kidnapping, is a hoot. Prickly and megalomaniacal, Carla definitely feels like a part of the Kitsune that was. (Note: Later stories were drawn by Jo Wilson.)

Selena had done some fan art for Everything Jake, Clan of the Cats and most impressively, five other strips simultaneously.

She also leaves us a few Buffy fanfic. This one, proceeding from Season 3, is particularly sobering just now, as Buffy confronts friends' absences.

It helps.

A little.