Howard Tayler
Webcomic Coloring Book
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 13, 2007 - 09:41
[This sounds like an idea for Lunchbox Funnies...]
Howard Tayler has a coloring book based on his webcomic, Schlock Mercenary and he's giving it to anyone who makes a Paypal donation of any size. The book is 22 pages long and includes a maze, a matching game, and a word-search suitable for grown-ups with twisted minds.
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.
Reinventing Micropayments
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Just as Bitpass bit the dust and Scott McCloud decided the right number for The Right Number was free, Joel Fagin offers another look at how to make micropayments work for webcomics -- by examining iTunes, the most successful micropayments system in history.
Appreciation and Analysis of Webcomic Artists
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 27, 2007 - 11:17
One of the types of features I'd like to run more of are the sort of appreciation and analysis of an artist/writer that Shaenon Garrity gave to Jason Shiga back in our February 2003 issue. Besides giving me an excuse to link to an article that is still a good read, I'd like to ask folks to suggest the names of creators who you'd like to see Comixpedia write up in this kind of a profile.
Updating the Feed Lists
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 22, 2007 - 10:03
When we switched to Drupal one of the nice things I was able to set up was pulling in the RSS feeds of other sites to Comixpedia. That way we do less "link" blogging here but you can still get a sense of what's going on in webcomicland from the syndicated headlines.
- Blank Label Comics
- Chemistry Set
- Dayfree Press
- Dumbrella
- SpinZone
- The Nice
- Adrian Ramos
- Ben Bittner
- Bryant Paul Johnson
- Dave Roman
- Fred Grisolm
- Howard Tayler
- Jeffrey Rowland
- Jeph Jacques
- John Allison
- Jon Morris
- Jon Rosenberg
- Josh Lesnick
- Kris Straub
- Krishna Sadasivam
- Maritza Campos
- Matt Shepherd
- Mitch Clem
- Nate Piekos
- Patrick Farley
- Paul Taylor
- Raina Telgemeier
- Ramon Perez
- Randall Munroe
- Rich Stevens
- Ryan Estrada
- Scott Kurtz
- Scott McCloud
- Shaenon K. Garrity
- Spike
- Steve Harrison
- T Campbell
- Terrence Marks
- Tim Demeter
- Tyler Martin
- Warren Ellis
- This Olde Haus
The Community Interview with Blank Label Comics
We canvased Comixpedia's readers for the most probing questions to send to Blank Label Comics. Questions so tough it took them almost a month to answer! Read on for how Blank Label Comics plans to conquer independent comics...
Wikipedia-Free News & Views For Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 7, 2007 - 11:13
Before I get to today's news & views -- don't forget we had three new articles published in the magazine this week:
- Terrence Marks interviews married creators, Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier. This is actually the first in a series of five such interviews we'll be publishing this month.
- New columnist Brigid Alverson covers five short story web manga this month in Small Packages.
- Bryant Paul Johnson returns with another installment of his historically accurate series at Comixpedia: The Antecedent.
- And of course a big thanks to Meghan Murphy of Kawaii Not for doing this month's cover art.
HEADLINES
- Here's a great opportunity (and a clever idea for a book): Howard Tayler is planning to publish the 2000-01 run of Schlock Mercenary in a book and he's put out a public call for guest art to include in the book. I hope he gets a wide range of interest on this - I'd love to see some of the Schlock characters done well in different styles.
- Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub announce a more formal creative relationship (including Straub relocating to Dallas, TX). Help them pick a name for their new partnership here. (Also I missed that PvP character Skull has a blog now...)
- Good question from R. Stevens and a good discussion in the comments there: "In a webcomic, each page of comics read is a 'pageview'. In a comic book, each page of comics read is a 'pageview'.... Has the webcomics readership outgrown the American comic book market?"
INTERVIEWS
- Daily Cross Hatch blog interviews Perry Bible Fellowship creator Nicholas Gurewitch.
- Bookslut interviews Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel. (both interviews caught by Journalista!)
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
- Mike Russell is rerunning his CulturePulp comics at his WebcomicsNation site. Most of these have appeared before in the newspaper, but not on the web in one convenient location like this - worth checking out - funny, insightful journalism in comic form.
- The Comics Reporter likes Lukewarm Tales.
- The Webcomicker likes the second episode of the animated PvP series. In contrast to pre-premeire complaints from PvP fans, Gilead says the voice actor behind the character Skull is the star of the production.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- FLEEN reports that You Damn Kid! creator Owen Dunne has redone his website(s) and created a video based on his Beevnicks comic.
- The For Better or For Worse "Hybrid" idea apparently came from Universal Press Synidicate which convinced creator Lynn Johnston to go with it rather than simply hanging it up later this year.
- FLIGHT reports on the lineup for Flight, Vol. 4. Also, Kazu Kibuishi posted cover art for the series at his website.
- The Comics Reporter points to a discussion at Comics Worth Reading on this year's Free Comic Book Day (May 5th).
- Over at TalkAboutComics is a post about a movie coming out with the same name (and apparently very similar content) as an existing Serializer comic. Creator Scott Ewen (the comic is Flight of the Living Dead) seems pretty stoic about it.
Life, The Universe, and Everything XXV
Submitted by Splintered1 on February 23, 2007 - 11:26
Life, the Universe, and Everything has come to an end. Okay, I don't mean that quite like it sounds. My life carries on. The universe continues expanding. And everything is still... well, pretty much where we left it. But the Science-Fiction and Fantasy symposium called Life, the Universe, and Everything has ended, and I'm kind of sad about that.
Questions for February's Community Interview with Blank Label Comics
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 9, 2007 - 12:21
UPDATE: TODAY'S THE LAST DAY TO ASK QUESTIONS - POST YOUR QUESTIONS FOR THE CREATORS OF BLANK LABEL COMICS IN A COMMENT BELOW.
For next month's Comixpedia magazine issue focusing on collectives we'll be conducting a community interview with Blank Label Comics. On hand to answer your questions will be BLC members: Brad J. Guigar (Evil Inc., Courting Disaster); Howard Tayler (Schlock Mercenary); Dave Kellett (Sheldon); Kristofer Straub (Starslip Crisis); Paul Southworth (Ugly Hill); Paul Taylor (Wapsi Square); Steve Troop (Melonpool); David Willis (It's Walky!, Shortpacked!); and Greg Dean (Real Life).
If you have a question for Blank Label Comics post it as a comment to this thread. On Friday, February 9th, we'll take the top ten questions and send them on to BLC for answers (which we'll post later in February).
