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Joey Manley

News for Thursday, February 8, 2007

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 8, 2007 - 11:17

BUSINESS

CONVENTIONS

DEAD TREES

TECHNOLOGY

AWARDS

If you’re part of the [people who care about these awards], then in doing so, whether you like it or not, you’re subscribing to the reality of these awards; that the majority rules them, and if you want to win, you better get off your ass and do some promotional work. Just because your comic is better than one of the nominees doesn’t mean the world is going to flock to your self-perceived greatness and if you’re the only one who thinks you’re great, then you’re not great, you’re a bit of a narcissist, and I suggest you go for the other option of not caring about awards.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

News For Monday, January 8, 2007

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 8, 2007 - 16:53

MAGAZINE

HEADLINES

BUSINESS

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Rolling After Christmas News Post (UPDATED)

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 26, 2006 - 16:16

Wow - I'm exhausted. Grey skies and a little rain for the day after Christmas. Hope you all have had a happy winter solstice season so far.

NEWS & VIEWS

  • On the heels of Comicne.ws comes Plugg.us which is another digg-clone for comics. There's nothing wrong with comics-focused versions of more popular social networking tools, in fact it's great that this stuff is emerging. But the trick to success with these comic clones is whether or not they garner a critical mass of users (which is the same key to success for the original versions of any social networking site). Comicne.ws came pre-sold to CBR's significant audience, ComicSpace came pre-populated with OnlineComics large directory of webcomics. I'll wait and see with Plugg.us as it doesn't seem to have any similar affiliations to jumpstart it.
  • Joey Manley has been using Alexa to show trends of various webcomics hosting services (here and more recently here). It's a bit tangential to interest in tracking individual webcomics' audience numbers but nevertheless interesting to see how other hosting services match up to the somewhat entrenched coke and pepsi of the market.
  • Writer Caleb Monroe has set up a page intended to be a guide for beginning comic creators.

INTERVIEWS

REVIEW

MILESTONES

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

NOT WEBCOMICS

  • Art Room is an online drawing tool and gallery from the Saatchi Gallery. Holy high-low culture collision Batman!

How To Deal With Corporate Overlords

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 23, 2006 - 15:09

I asked this question earlier this week:

I didn't realize that it was a common practice for comics publishers to own comics journalists, but today's Journalista! also alerted me to the fact that Platinum Studios bought the comics news site Broken Frontier earlier this month. (Similarly, Journalista! and TCJ are owned by publisher Fantagraphics.) I'm sincere in asking: how do such journalists deal with the obvious conflict of interest this presents? Is there a corporate separation that protects the ability of the journalists to cover the news without interference or does the journalist just not cover their owners?

On his blog, T Campbell provided his answer:

Carefully.

News For Tuesday December 19, 2006 (UPDATED)

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 19, 2006 - 12:54

MAGAZINE

  • A smaller December issue then years past but still full of great webcomic recommendations and plenty of opinions to discuss. There's a slight chance we'll have a few more pieces, but I may hold those until January.
  • I just wanted to say thanks and congrats to Kris Straub who has contributed to Comixpedia for a couple years - first with Modern Humor Authority and this year with Checkerboard Nightmare. Kris' plate has gotten considerably more full lately so he won't have time to contribute next year.

    We'll see you in Xanadu, Mr. Straub... They call it Xanadu.

  • If you have a minute please vote for the Roundtable and People of Webcomics articles over at ComicNe.ws - it's a different crowd at CBR and having Comixpedia articles on the front page over there has helped bring some of their readers over here to check out Comixpedia. At this point it only takes about 6 votes to get something on the front page over there so click that little "c" below your posts if you think it might be of interest.

BUSINESS

A warning to those using google ads and placing images near the ads themselves - that appears to be against Google Adsense's new policy:

Can I place small images next to my Google ads?

We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests arelationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn't actually being offered. That's nota good experience for users or advertisers.

Let's All Go To The Movies

Journalista has a significant section today on Scott Rosenberg and Platinum Studios called "Meet the new Scott Rosenberg, the same as the old Scott Rosenberg." (A side note: Rosenberg was included in our People Of Webcomics list this year.) Obviously anyone who has followed Rosenberg in the news this year knows at this point he's been around comics in various ventures for quite some time. A chief, recurring, criticism seems to be that Rosenberg is interesting in comics properties solely for their potential to be licensed to filmmakers and that he does not actual perform the basic publishing function of a comics publisher.

I can't comment too much because I haven't done my homework on this subject, but it does strike me as odd that when numerous creators are abandoning the monthly comic book format for webcomics (albeit with a goal to collection in a graphic novel) that there is an expectation that Platinum would want to vigorously compete in the direct market. It also seems odd to criticize Platinum for using a creator-for-hire approach on its first comic book, Cowboy & Aliens -- isn't that the standard model for the majority of the industry (you know, DC and Marvel)? Deppey reports that a deal from 2004 may require Platinum to put out comic books in order to comply with the deal - to the extent that Platinum is treating such publication as an expense rather than a profit center, I'd think the most obvious question is what does that say about the health of the direct market?

If this is of interest, there's lot more on the topic at Journalista! today.

NEWS ABOUT COMICS NEWS SITES

I didn't realize that it was a common practice for comics publishers to own comics journalists, but today's Journalista! also alerted me to the fact that Platinum Studios bought the comics news site Broken Frontiers earlier this month. (Similarly, Journalista! and TCJ are owned by publisher Fantagraphics.) I'm sincere in asking how do such journalists deal with the obvious conflict of interest this presents? Is there a corporate separation that protects the ability of the journalists to cover the news without interference or does the journalist just not cover their owners?

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

If you haven't been reading ICE by Faith Erin Hicks get over there and check it out (the archives aren't that long). I'm not sure I like the black & white as much as the earlier coloring but that's only as a comparative matter - both periods of the comic are amazing. If you have been reading, the current scene is getting particularly tense as major plots points are revealed.

NOT COMICS

Joe Barbera passed away. I thought this guy's name meant animation when I was a kid.

Around The World in 80 BLOGS

Comixpedia's People Of Webcomics List For 2006

December 18, 2006 - 12:07

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.

It'll Be a Blue Webcomic Without $%*#! You

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 18, 2006 - 10:41

MAGAZINE

  • Check out the End of 2006 Roundtable with 10 comics-savvy writers covering the year in webcomics. A few more articles should be up soon (I'm editing as fast as I can!) - possibly even today.

INTERVIEWS

REVIEWS

DEAD TREES

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

WCN API Group Started

Submitted by Joey Manley on December 17, 2006 - 11:47

So I'm thinking I'd like to develop a WCN API, allowing external developers to play in the WCN sandbox. Goals:

1. Inbound publishing hooks, so that developers of third-party content management or content creation systems can allow their users, on the "inbound" side, to publish content directly to WCN (in the same way that many third-party word processing tools can now publish directly to WordPress). I've been studying up on the WordPress API, so I think I can, all by myself, make this happen from within any content authoring tool that can publish to WordPress.

The Comixpedia End of 2006 Roundtable

December 16, 2006 - 23:33 | Xaviar Xerexes

Our second annual virtual round table on the year in webcomics features comments from Eric Millikin, Daku, Gilead Pellaeon, Mike Russell, Lewis Powell, Alexander Danner, Eric Burns, Michael Rouse-Deane, Johanna Draper Carlson and Gary Tyrrell.

Damn, I Wish I Was Your Webcomic

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 14, 2006 - 10:28

DEAD TREES

INTERVIEWS

CONSERVATIVE COMICS

  • Ted Rall defends the recently arrested creator of Mallard Fillmore, Bruce Tinsley.
  • Dirk Deppey wonders aloud (look under "digital comics" section) if the recent nearly nude shot of a character in Chris Muir’s webcomic Day by Day would offend readers of conservative blogs where the strip is syndicated.
  • I missed that Line Item Veto went on hiatus.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

NOT WEBCOMICS