D.J. Coffman
Noticas Para Martes, 12 Junio 2007
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 12, 2007 - 09:53
Big thanks to our current sponsors: the Learn To Draw the Human Figure anatomy course, Frank Schnaa's Splace.net, the webcomic Pinky TA, and the FDA-not-approved product Promicin, and all of our Project Wonderful advertisers.
MILESTONES
Schlock Mercenary turns 7 years old today. Congratulations to Howard Tayler; world domination is just around the corner. (Howard's post at his blog here)
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Warren Ellis is running a vote on three webcomics (must have RSS feed to be eligibile) to add to the Engine site.
Mr Myth on D.J. Coffman's Hero By Night:
With the Hero by Night Journals, DJ managed to capture that same sense of background and history, all neatly defined and delineated. Neither the journals nor the comic were able to grab me independantly - one was the shadow of an already finished tale, the story of a hero whose time had already ended, while the other was no different than countless other comics, with a kid finding a magic widget and blundering into superpowers. But together they formed something more than the sum of their parts - a story with a firm sense of past and present, which manages to keep the read all the more interested in the comic’s future.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
- Chapter 1 of The Vanguard is now available in print.
- Cartridge Comics is searching for its biggest fan (It's a contest).
- Draven: The Vampire Chronicle hits 100 pages!
News & Views for Friday, May 11, 2007
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on May 11, 2007 - 12:13
HEADLINES
BUSINESS
- Comic Screw has an article called Digital Distribution that lays out how the comic book industry has helped fuel the rise of file-trading of illegal scans of comics. In the sense that currently there is no legal alternative currently available it's seems to be part of the same puzzle at issue in Joel Fagin's recent article for Comixpedia titled Reinventing Micropayments.
ADVERTISING
- Schlock Mercenary adds Project Wonderful ads. It sounds like the new features at Project Wonderful (like the ability to set a minimum bid price) helped convince Howard Tayler to give it a try. (The Weirdlings webcomic also recently added PW ads)
INTERVIEWS
- Wizard talks to David Willis of Shortpacked.
- Pink Raygun interviews Paige Braddock of Jane's World.
- Daily Cross Hatch has a three part interview with Raina Telgemeier. (part 1, part 2, part 3)
- Gigcast talks to D.J. Coffman.
- Jack Carter interviews Renee Katz of The Nineteenth Century Industrialist.
REVIEWS
- Mr. Myth reviewed Zap! and Abstract Gender.
- Zhi reviewed Zero Hunters.
- Aarin reviewed School Spirit and Bear and Kitten.
- Jack reviewed Annhilicious, Bug Report, and Bear and Kitten.
- Time Well Wasted reviewed Real Life.
- The Ferrett reviewed The Mansion of E. (review links from a Talkaboutcomics post)
DEAD TREES
- Pre-orders for the dead tree collection of David Willis' Shortpacked! end this coming Monday.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
-
T Campbell muses about the high-webcomics-profile of writer/actor
Wesley CrusherWil Wheaton (with copious linkage to webcomic cameos included). - Reinder Dijkhuis incorporates the latest Intertubes meme into some nifty advertising buttons for his comic ROCR.
- Toon Brew reproduces what may well be the first episode of the first webcomic: David Farley’s Doctor Fun. (link from Journalista!)
- Shaenon Garrity observes that the Eisner's Digital Comics category "cruelly and unfairly overlooked this year... Templar, Dicebox, Family Man, [and] Grace...."
- FLEEN's Anne Thalheimer muses on webcomic references in random places in a short column.
- Famed videogame designer, Ron Gilbert, to help out with Penny Arcade's forthcoming videogame.
Pittsburgh Comicon
More details on this weekend's PITTSBURGH COMICON at the website.
D.J. Coffman will be there with his Hero-By-Night series.
WCCA Nominations Out
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 28, 2007 - 14:10
The full list of nominations for the upcoming WCCAs is out - get the list here or click read more (the WCCA site is slow today so I copied it into this post here).
- Half Pixel
- Keenspot
- Aaron Diaz
- Abby Lark
- B. Shur
- Bernie Hou
- Brad Guigar
- Chris Hallbeck
- Christopher Hastings
- D.J. Coffman
- Dale Beran
- Dave Kellett
- Dave Roman
- David Hellman
- David Malki!
- David Willis
- Emily Horne
- Eric Millikin
- Fred Gallagher
- Howard Tayler
- Jennie Breeden
- Jerry Holkins
- Joey Comeau
- John Allison
- Josh Lesnick
- Kaja Foglio
- Kazu Kibuishi
- Kris Straub
- Michael Lalonde
- Mike Krahulik
- Nicholas Gurewitch
- Paul Southworth
- R.K. Milholland
- Raina Telgemeier
- Ryan North
- Ryan Sias
- Ryan Sohmer
- Sarah Ellerton
- Scott Christian Sava
- Scott Kurtz
- Scott Ramsoomair
- Shaenon K. Garrity
- Spike
- T Campbell
- Tatsuya Ishida
- Terrence Marks
- Tom Siddell
- Zach Weiner
- A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible
- A Softer World
- Girly
- Penny Arcade
- PvP
- Sinfest
- What Birds Know
- Wondermark
- Zebra Girl
News for Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 23, 2007 - 11:24
MAGAZINE
- We've got an interview with the creators of the fantasy webcomic, What Birds Know. Check out the interview - then check out the comic!
- Next month's issue focuses on collectives! If you are part of a collective of webcomics creators and are interested in being part of next month's issue drop me an email at xerexes AT comixpedia DOT com.
INTERVIEWS
- Fleen has an interview with Paul Southworth, creator of Ugly Hill.
- Fleen also recently ran an interview with Wiz Rollins - Rollins pens the D.J. Coffman comic, Yirmumah.
AWARDS
- Journalista! catches the news at website ICv2 that Gene Yang won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults for his graphic novel, American Born Chinese. The Printz Award is given out by the American Library Association.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- A new blog at Time.com, Nerd World, sings the praises of Chris Onstad's Achewood.
- Newsarama takes a look at the webcomics making up the new collective Lunchbox Funnies.
- A write-up in the NYTimes of a movie based on Marjane Satrapi's best-selling and critically praised comic-book memoir, Persepolis. The animated movie, filmed in France (and in French) will be released in America this year. Interestingly, it was animated entirely in France and Satrapi herself directed the film.
News for Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 10, 2007 - 11:01
HEADLINES
- FLEEN is still looking for creators to participate in their statistical analysis project - the deadline is January 31st. This could provide an interesting snapshot of webcomics overall circa end-of-2006 if they can get a statistically significant set of data to work with.
- Sarah Ellerton, creator of Inverloch,took a new system admin job that leaves her less time for to work on the webcomic. She's also comments on her commitment to finishing Inverloch:
I'm going to be up front and honest and say that drawing Inverloch no longer holds the joy for me that it used to. Don't worry, I intend to finish it - I'm so close to the end, after all (which I think is probably part of the problem). I just don't want to hear people bugging me about updates and such. It doesn't help the motivation levels. Anyway, I hope that explains the lack of update regularity lately, as well as my absence from the forums and the dozens of unanswered emails.
IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK?
Dirk Deppey posts the results of his look at the recent "marketing" campaign by Platinum Studios on behalf of its debut title Cowboys & Aliens. So far my reaction would be characterized as "zzzz....".
No disrespect meant there to Journalista! - which should be commended for doing actual solid journalism on this story - but I can't seem to get too worked up about this. In a nutshell, it's fairly clear that Platinum spent money to get C&A into stores and that different stores used that money in different ways (some stores may have used it to give away or deeply discount the books but either allegation doesn't seem to have been confirmed by anyone). This isn't an unheard of practice in other content distribution models, such as books, movies (DVDs), music (CDs), (and even sports (tickets)) where "marketing coops" between publishers and retail outlets are standard practice.
At the end of the day it seems to me that books leaving stores and getting into customers' hands is a sale. (Maybe that's my webcomic perspective speaking though - we start with the idea that getting a reader counts - even if you give the webcomic away for free!) Admittedly it might not be a profitable sale, but still a book getting in front of a reader. And given Platinum's multimedia business strategy that might actually be the primary focus of what Platinum's trying to do. If this offends some idea of "purity" on the sales charts well I'd like to understand what this "purity" meant before Platinum showed up and for starters, I'd like to see some investigation of Marvel and DC to ensure that they're also "pure".
- Gilead also weighs in on the Platinum Studios Cowboys & Aliens best selling comic book-or-not story, although with a webcomic-centric take on things. (Also be sure to update your book marks as Gilead has moved to webcomicker.com)
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
- The Contra Code is a pretty funny send-up of an old Nintendo game and it's legendary "cheat code". It was also recently Joystiq.com's comic of the week.
- Speaking of Platinum Studios, D.J. Coffman's Hero By Night has an 11 page preview up of its forthcoming first comic book issue. The "prequel" webcomic Hero By Night Diaries has been running at Drunk Duck.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Bomb Shelter has a podcast about the recently terminated Webcomics Idol contest.
- FLEEN interviews Ben Stirling, who writes and draws Patrick Grey, Online.
- Gone With The Blastwave goes on hiatus as its creator, Kimmo Lemetti, goes into service for 6-12 months with the Finland Defense Forces. Lemetti also indicates he's ready to put out a book based on the first 32 pages of the webcomic. Let's all hope Lemetti's time in the military is nothing like GWTB.
- Be sure to check out Unityflow's sprite comic on "spriteness".
Comixpedia's People Of Webcomics List For 2006
It's the third annual Comixpedia People Of Webcomics List. This was the hardest one yet to compile. There's a lot of webcomics and a lot of people doing interesting things in and around webcomics. This list, as in past years, is an odd effort to compare apples and oranges: artistic achievement, audience popularity, technical achievement, business savvy, news-making impact all go into the mix.
- Act-I-Vate
- Boxcar Comics
- Drunk Duck
- Girlamatic
- Keenspot
- Brian Fies
- Brian Moore
- Chris Crosby
- Chris Onstad
- D.C. Simpson
- D.J. Coffman
- Dale Beran
- Dave Roman
- David Hellman
- Dorothy Gambrell
- Eric Burns
- Eric Millikin
- Fred Gallagher
- Fred Grisolm
- Gene Yang
- Gordon McAlpin
- Jason Little
- Jeph Jacques
- Jerry Holkins
- Joe Dunn
- Joey Manley
- Jon Rosenberg
- Kazu Kibuishi
- Kris Straub
- Lark Pien
- Mike Krahulik
- Mitch Clem
- Neil Babra
- Nicholas Gurewitch
- Owen Dunne
- R.K. Milholland
- Randall Munroe
- Rich Stevens
- Rob Balder
- Ryan North
- Scott Kurtz
- Shaenon K. Garrity
- Spike
- T Campbell
- Ted Rall
- Thomas K. Dye
- Tim Demeter
- Tom Brazelton
- Tom Siddell
- Tyler Martin
- Warren Ellis
- Wes Molebash
- Zach Miller
- A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible
- Achewood
- Cat and Girl
- Penny Arcade
- PvP
- Sinfest
- xkcd
- Yirmumah
- You Damn
- People of Webcomics
Rolling Thursday News
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 16, 2006 - 11:25
NEWS & VIEWS
- It looks like a cut of the documentary Adventures Into Digital Comics was shown at the Tel Aviv Film Festival and nominated for Best Documentary there. Has anyone seen this thing yet? They started shooting it before Comixpedia launched (pre-2003) and as far as I can tell from their site and teh internets it's not available to the public yet. The producers state that they began providing private screenings this year (2006) but as they're in California it's not an option for me for geographic reasons. (I'm trying to track down emails for them to ask for a DVD or VHS version but without luck so far. There's always snail mail I guess.)
- Heidi McDonald posts an overview of people looking at comics and the long tail. It seems to be in the air - Joey Manley also recently posted about the prospects for future growth in comics online, starting with setting webcomics' sites higher than print comics itself.
REVIEWS
- Jon Morris (creator of Jeremy) reviews the collected Peanuts from Fantagraphics and Robert Altman's 1980 movie version of Popeye.
- Digital Strips reviews Inverloch.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Journalista! links to Derik Badman's look at the mechanics of panel transitions: part one and part two.
- Shishio passes on from D.J. Coffman's site that Life's A Bluff, the webcomic about poker (that D.J. Coffman was the initial artist on) is now appearing on the World Poker Tour website. Great exposure!
- Shaenon K. Garrity notes that Jason Thompson, creator of the webcomic The Stiff is busy writing a book.
- John K (Ren & Stimpy) goes sorta-Howard Beale on his blog readers and the corporate powers that be.
Ante Up For a Round of Webcomics: Life's A Bluff and +EV
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This month I review two new webcomics focused on poker, primarily online poker, but all types of poker. One is +EV by Bobby Crosby and Tiger Claw and the other is Life's A Bluff by Frank Frisina and Brandon J Carr.
Pearls Before Yirmumah
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 20, 2006 - 21:20
A guest comic at Yirmumah mashes up D.J. Coffman's current storyline with the now somewhat distant coincidence between a Yirmumah strip and a Pearls Before Swine strip. Here's an old comic with D.J.'s take on that coincidence - not sure if PBS creator Stephan Pastis ever commented on it.
