I am of the opinion that all webtoonist wannabes could greatly improve their skills if only they took ONE stroll up and down the aisles of the San Diego Comic-Con's Artists' Alley.

The first thing a reader notices about Phil Cho’s Skinny Panda is that it’s about a skinny panda. That may seem self-evident, but in the webcomic business, where success or failure may depend solely upon whether or not the title of a strip is sufficiently catchy to impel a potential reader to click on a link, it is unusual to find one that presents itself so literally.

A few years ago, I got tricked on a message board.

Someone posted a question attributed to Edgar Allen Poe asking whether writers need to know their topic. I weighed in that, yes, writers need to do their research or readers will not buy into their stories.

Later, it was pointed out that Poe was out to prove that, no, you don't need to have intimate experience of something to write about it and promptly described how it would feel to die from hanging – obviously something he hadn't experienced first-hand.

I didn't have a reply to that then, but I do now:

Picture it in your mind's eye: the Artist, alone in her drafty garret studio, isolated from friends, family, the ten thousand distractions of the everyday world, the better to concentrate on her struggle with the ineffable. Breathing deeply, she takes up pen or paintbrush, chisel or keyboard, to seek out all on her own the elusive fruits of her solitary labor – her Art.

It's a persistent image. Downright iconic. It's pretty much how we think of artists doing art. It's also a load of malarkey.

Illiad started User Friendly, a webcomic about a small Internet Service Provider and its friendly staff in November, 1997. User Friendly grew to be one of the first truly popular webcomics garnering a large audience and allowing its creator to quit his day job. In fact, Illiad took User Friendly Media, Inc., public on the CDNX in 1999. Today, User Friendly is still one of the most widely-read webcomics.

This summer there have been a lot of movies coming out in the theater that I am looking forward to seeing.

In about six months.

Where I live, movie tickets are now $8.50, or $6.50 with a student discount or at a matinee showing. So depending on circumstances, my wife and I pay between $13-$17 to go see a movie. For that price, we will also get the pleasure of seeing 10-20 minutes of commercials before our actual film begins.

Finding Your Professional Membership Card

A quote’s been bandied around the comic industry that makes me smirk “I don’t have fans, just people after my job.”

All right, kids, history lesson time.

In 1954, child psychologist Fredric Wertham published his book Seduction of the Innocent, which puts the blame for everything from juvenile crime to athlete's foot squarely on the doorstep of the local boogieman: comic books. This was not entirely a new thing at the time: there had been numerous statements from 'experts' on the degenerate nature of comics in varying medical journals, newspapers, street corners for years prior. But Seduction was the biggest, most organized attack yet on the industry. It was enormously popular. The public began howling for standards and decency in comics, and so the industry decided to muzzle itself before the federales beat them to it.

Held in Honolulu, Hawaii, in the year 200X, the TenKay Commotion is the hottest Dance Dance Revolution tournament around. With 24 teams of competitors and some of the most prestigious judges around, not to mention the TenKay Commotion Mix, a collection of all the DDR mixes so far, TenKay promises to be hot.

And indeed it is; blazing onto the scene is The 10K Commotion, a relatively new manga-styled webcomic from Yukon Makoto. Updating weekly, but in batches of about ten pages each week, it has already built up a huge following and an archive stretching to eighty pages (at the time of this writing) – two chapters out of a planned eleven.

So. Are you ready?

Have you ever met a woman who absolutely drives you nuts? Who knows just what to do and which buttons to push to completely upset your way of life, your plans and your peace of mind. Imagine that she's your enemy. Or worse yet, imagine that you are her enemy and she's after you. She can outthink you; she can anticipate your next move; she can outfight you; and she never plays fair.

She is more than a pain in the butt to you; she's worse than a bitch; She’s A Nightmare that just won't go away.