Features

Through the Looking Back Glass by Erik Melander

Wednesday White Leave a Comment

"Column? (She said, smiling.)" read the email from the editor, sending me into a deep well of despair over the state of this month's column. These columns are notoriously late, often handed in mere hours before the issue is supposed to go live, much to the chagrin of the editors, I am sure. The reason for this is as much the result of procrastination as hope. Hope that there will be one large news event worth writing about, something meaningful that will tie together the smaller events from the month into something bigger.

In July, a lack of significant events was not the problem. Continue Reading →

Soapbox: Getting the Comics to the People by Kelly J. Cooper

kjc 5 Comments

I was in Japan a couple of weeks ago – mainly in a small part of Tokyo. And one of the places we visited is a little shop in Roppongi, just a few feet down one street from the main intersection. (Like any other big city, Tokyo has neighborhoods that are referred to by name – Ginza, Roppongi, Shinjuku, etc.)

My boyfriend had found the place when he visited (briefly) back in April. So, while wandering around Roppongi (which he wanted me to see because it’s apparently a popular tourist haunt – complete with its own Hard Rock Café – and has a memorable sort of atmosphere) we decided to stop in at the place where he’d seen a sign that said Webcomics in English (surrounded by Japanese). The sign also says Comics and Internet in smaller letters. Continue Reading →

Feeding Snarky by Eric Burns

Wednesday White Leave a Comment

I’ve talked, a few columns back, about Superguy. Superguy was (and still is) a mailing list for amateur fiction, started in the late eighties. Not really ‘fanfiction,’ since the stories and characters were original, but instead a wholesale satire on superheroes, Superguy let people who loved the media, or loved humor, or just loved typing a chance to build an audience, create, experiment, learn the craft of writing, and in general build whole new worlds. Also, there was a supernatural talking fish.
Continue Reading →

Reframing “Comics” by Neil Cohn

kjc 1 Comment

In one of my previous articles for Comixpedia I spoke of the hierarchic structuring of the comic industry and alternative viewpoints to democratize those hierarchies. I asserted that change cannot flow top-down from corporations controlling the industry or from technological innovation, but rather from a reorientation about the conceptions of the medium. This piece explores one way that we as individuals can potentially alter the perception and organization associated with this medium: through vocabulary. People associate with the world greatly through the words they use, and different expressions can largely determine the way in which they relate to concepts. Thus, by reframing the vocabulary associated to "comics" we can alter the perceptions and considerations that they create in our culture. This issue is by no means new to comics, though the approach taken here will develop a deeper and more expansive solution than those proposed in the past. Continue Reading →

Through The Looking Back Glass by Erik Melander

kjc Leave a Comment

Flamewars are certainly fairly common in the small world of webcomics, and this month's column will be devoted to the one that took place at the beginning of June. The instigator was this strip by Penny Arcade, which in turn was a response to this Comixpedia news post. Things soon escalated as more and more people became involved.

Although a public brawl such as this is usually made up of hot air, there are often at least some interesting discussions within it. Continue Reading →