Features

Revenge of Kung Fool by HyungKim Sun

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The Webcomic Blues

I got those webcomic blues, pretty baby,
And I got those webcomic blues.

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Got me a comic strip, it be on the net.
Got me a comic strip, it be on the net.
Free for everybody, ain’t helpin’ my debt.

Can’t draw for nuthin’, no one seems to mind.
Can’t draw for nuthin’, no one seems to mind.
Four panels, punch-line, jus’ another grind.

Feel like a junkie, always needing hits.
Feel like a junkie, always needing hits. Continue Reading →

Time For Webcomics To Hop on the Hollywood Hobbyhorse?

Xaviar Xerexes 10 Comments

Underground. Edgy. Raw. Inventive. Independent. Webcomics have all of that and more. That said, the following may seem like an absurd question, but it needs to be asked: are webcomics having an impact on mainstream popular culture? When do we get to pay 8 dollars to watch Sluggy Freelance II: The Search for Oasis or an animated Fanciest Froglin on the big screen, or flip the channel to Mad Science with Doctor Helen Narbon on the television?
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Makeshift Musings and Comic Book Bliss by Jim Zubkavich

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Physical Connections In The Electronic World

Summer is here and the convention season is upon us. It’s time to strain and pull ourselves away from our computers and hopefully make some sort of real human contact with the people that we’ve learned about through e-mails, forum posts and web pages. These are webcomics and comic communities bringing people with similar interests together, and showing quite clearly that most costumes look ridiculous on the average human being.
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Art and Narrative: A Regular Eisenstein, Or Something…

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A Regular Eisenstein, Or Something…

That comics and film have much in common is pretty much a given. The bond they share as mediums of visual communication is strong, and over the years there has been a great deal of cross-pollination between the two artforms. I’m not talking about comic adaptations of films or films based on comic books – although there certainly are a lot of those these days – but rather the nuts and bolts that hold the two mediums together. Continue Reading →

Ready.gov Made My Skin Turn Blue by Eric Millikin

Xaviar Xerexes 12 Comments

Eric Millikin is the son of a laid-off auto worker, grew up in a trailer park and has an IQ around 150. He is also one-half of the creative team behind Fetus-X, currently published on Serializer.net. In this feature, Millikin examines the recent launch of the Homeland Security Department’s Ready.gov site and how the federal government may already be using webcomics to control your brain. Please click the "read more" link below to read "Ready.gov Made My Skin Turn Blue."

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Measuring the Webcomic Audience

Xaviar Xerexes 17 Comments

Let's cut to the chase. Quantity does not necessarily equal quality. Of course, it does not necessarily preclude quality, either. In fact, some might argue that 50,000,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong. It's certainly a well-worn question in every medium of popular entertainment: "how'd you do last night, kid?"

In almost every other medium there's an established mechanism for counting the audience and providing information on what the audience is watching or buying or reading or clicking on. So why not a bestsellers' list for webcomics, an Arbitron system focused on our particular universe? Regardless of whether we love, like, hate, or are indifferent to the most popular webcomics being produced today, it is information that ought to be available to the interested members of the reading public. It could provide some clues as to where the online audience is today versus six months versus two years from now. It could help to keep score of the growth (or decline) of our overall webcomic reader audience. Continue Reading →

What the Hell Happened to Comic Books for a Quarter?

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We Lived in a Shoebox in the Middle of the Road.

As a kid I remember stepping up to counter at Clark’s news-stand, with my nickels and dimes and the latest issue of Hot Stuff or Detective Comics, and breathing in deep the sweet, rich smell of pipe tobacco. Comics belonged to kids then, and I didn’t know a single soul who kept their issues in mylar bags with backboards. Continue Reading →

All I Got For Free Comic Book Day Was the Creeps

Xaviar Xerexes 10 Comments

I haven’t been in a comic book store in years. Years! In fact, the last time I actively bought, read and collected comic books was back in the mid-eighties. Don’t get me wrong. I love the comic medium. I’ve never stopped reading comic strips. Comic strips in the daily newspaper, the weekly alternative rag (you know the freebie paper with the sex ads and Red Meat inside?), and my school newspapers eventually led me to webcomics, and finally re-peaked my interest in what I had been missing all these years from comic book-land.

For whatever reason, last year’s first annual Free Comic Book Day didn’t draw me in, but this year? This year I was ready. As you might gather from the title of this piece, however, I won’t be counting the days until the third annual FCBD. Continue Reading →