Some pundits claim that every comic that is released is pirated almost immediately and posted for free somewhere in the vast thicket of BitTorrent sites, IRC channels, and cheesy websites that make up the underside of the comics iceberg. But is that a bad thing?

It seems wrong, but it's true; giving a comic away online can be good for sales.  Look no further than Megatokyo, which is the best selling global manga of all time, even though the entire comic is available online for free. And just last year, Phil and Kaija Foglio decided to stop printing floppy comics and put Girl Genius online, a move that saved them money and apparently increased sales of their trade paperbacks as well.

While this may be a good choice for a creator, it's still unusual for a publisher to put entire volumes of a comic online for free.  Seven Seas is the exception: From the very beginning, they have published their works as webcomics before releasing them in print form in order to build demand for the print versions. Curious about how they make money on a product they are giving away for free, I e-mailed Adam Arnold, their senior editor and webmaster as well as the writer of Aoi House, and peppered him with questions about how they turn webcomics into money.

I've known T Campbell for a number of years now and we used to kid that he's the hardest working man in webcomics but there's definitely a kernal of truth to that.  This guy writes a lot of webcomics and than he goes out and writes about webcomics as well.  And although he's no longer local to my neck of Virginia and no longer writes for ComixTALK  I thought it would make a good interview to catch up with him as we barrel on into 2008. 

If you haven't run into T before, well, his webcomic projects include Fans, Penny and Aggie, Search Engine Funnies, Rip and Teri, and Cool Cat Studio.  He's got another one out just now called Sketchies (with co-writer Phil Kahn and art ist Ryan Estrada).  He wrote for ComixTALK before writing for other sites as well as turning his History of Online Comics series into a book.  He also spent a number of years editing the action webcomic anthology site Graphic Smash.

This month, Derik A Badman offers some quotes and comments on the idea of defining "comics" and why we should stop bothering. A brief detour from looking at individual comics to the idea of "comics" as a whole.

Cat Garza is the man.  He's got this inventive, imaginative art style that both references classic comic styles of old, but brings a new twist on it.  He has experimented with mashing up music and comics.  He's also been making webcomics before we called them webcomics.  Scott McCloud pointed to him as a pioneer in this world of 0s and 1s we inhabit (McCloud has consistently linked to cat on his website). 

Most recently he's living in Comics Town USA and working on a new comic The Year of the Rat. You can find the Year of the Rat comics at his site The Magic Inkwell and older comics and music at his webcomicsnation site.  I caught up with cat in an interview over email this month.

In this installment of his series on exploring the definition of "comics", Patric Lewandowski looks at Audience Experience, the second of his four criteria for determing "What is a comic?"

Lewandowski explains how this criteria is unique as it has less to do with the creator and instead explores the idea that a comic must be experienced by the audience in a very particular way in the work’s original published iteration.

Larry "El Santo" Cruz takes a look at Aaron Diaz's too-surreal-for-you webcomic, Dresden Codak.

So you've sent your materials to a publisher or agent, you've waited politely for the prescribed amount of time, and finally a letter from them shows up in your mailbox.

Chances are you've been rejected.

This time, Dr. Haus lowers his expectations and tries to avoid taking too many cheap shots as he tries to review the action-packed comic Marilith without a smarmy narrative or outright mentioning the bosoms, melons, balloons, large persuasive tools, Holy Grail, Man-Disarmer breasts the artists saw fit to draw on most of the adult female cast members.

Will he succeed this time? Read it and find out.