John Allison

News For Monday, January 29, 2007 (UPDATED)

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 29, 2007 - 11:07

Wow - it was a huge weekend for webcomics!

AWARDS

The WCCA nominations are out (full list here). Webcomic creators can vote for their choice up until February 11th. This year, the awards are to be announced at MegaCon in Florida on February 19th.
We also started a discussion on the weekend on which new comics from 2006 that didn't get a nomination for Outstanding Newcomer might have deserved one. Tell us what you think here.
DAJB points out that the U.K.'s Eagle Awards are upon us again, and that they have a category for webcomics.
The Comics Reporter notes that new at this year's Joe Shuster awards will be the Oustanding Canadian Web Comic Creator Award. The Shuster awards take place June 9th. Submission for nominations are open.
Talk About Comics points to a report that the short film Everything Will Be OK directed by Don Hertzfeldt and based on his webcomic Anesthetics, won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival.
The National Cartoonist Society is accepting nominations for it awards. Nominations are due by February 23rd. Apparently, you do not need to be an NCS member to be eligible for an NCS award. However, they do not have an award for webcomics nor do they seem to consider publication online as part of their criteria for qualified nominations. I wonder when that will change...

EVENTS

I posted the Blind Date II pairings this weekend. If you forgot to sign up and want to participate I will try to facilitate additional pairings on a rolling basis today. Go to the thread and post a comment if you want to join up.

MAGAZINE

Grant Thomas writes about putting a webcomic into print and discusses some of the differences between the print-on-demand and the do-it-yourself approaches.
Xaviar Xerexes presents a look at Big Panda, a webcomics host and portal from the mists of history with comments from a long list of creators, including Chris Crosby and Darren "Gav" Bleuel, John Allison, Eight, John Robey, Josh Lesnick, David Willis and more.

BUSINESS

MSNBC is replacing Fox Trot (and possibly The Boondocks) with new comics. They're conducting a poll on it. This is MSNBC's webcomic lineup we're talking about - probably a pretty high-profile placement (I don't have any actual data on traffic though). Unfortunately it appears they are only considering work from Uclick! - probably because of an exclusivity term in a contract.

HOW-TO

Bryant Paul Johnson posted a very useful "how to" on how he makes his webcomic Teaching Baby Paranoia.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Bid to Win a Guest-Star Appearance in PC Weenies #1000.
Love is Psychosexual wraps up on Adultwebcomics.
Speaking of adult webcomics, check out the almost but not quite SFW (so far) There's Always Porn by Bob Sugar and Wiz Rollins.
Webcomics In Print presents its weekly round-up of webcomics in print.
Comics Worth Reading flags the release of the second Penny & Aggie book.
The Comics Reporter points to a Washington Post story on Suicide Rabbit, a webcomic popular in China.
T Campbell urges webcomics creators to vote responsibly.
The Blank Label Comics group snagged nine WCCA nominations.

Comments

Biggie Panda: Old Skool Webcomics

January 28, 2007 - 23:03 | Xaviar Xerexes

One way to think of the history of webcomics is as the big bang of comics. At the beginning there were far fewer webcomic creators and they were (virtually) clustered together much more tightly (hence all the wistful talk of "webcomic community") and then, if the inflationary webcomicology theory is correct, those early webcomic exploded into the universe of comics online we have today.

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).

Nominees for 2007 WCCAs

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 25, 2007 - 10:18

The WCCA nominations are dribbling out today:

OUTSTANDING COMIC FINALISTS:

Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio
Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell
Narbonic by Shaenon Garrity
Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch
Scary Go Round by John Allison
Templar Arizona by Spike

OUTSTANDING NEWCOMER FINALISTS:

Aldus Maycombe by Janine Harper
Breakdown by Elizabeth A
Lackadaisy by Tracey J. Butler
Out There by R C Monroe
The Broken Mirror by Elanor Cooper and JJ Naas
What Birds Know by Emelie Friberg and Mattias Thorelli

That is a really strong group of candidates for Outstanding Comic, including last year's Outstanding Newcomer winner (Gunnerkrigg Court). I haven't read all of the nominees for Outstanding Newcomer for this year - that's probably just more evidence of how many webcomics there are now...

UPDATE: We have an interview with the creators of What Birds Know in this month's magazine - click here to read.

Comments

Thursday, December 28th News & Views

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 28, 2006 - 11:07

HEADLINES

Entertainment Weekly posts its "best of" graphic novels for 2006.
An interview with Alison Bechdel who received a high honor in the December 17 issue of Time magazine: her graphic memoir Fun Home was named the best book of 2006.

DEAD TREES

John Allison shows how he reworked some strips from Scary Go Round for inclusion in the next book collection.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Ambrosia Digicomics founder Wesley Green wrote a couple of posts on digital distribution of comics earlier this month: the first one covers file formats and the second one covers making the file available on the internets.
Kris Straub ponders the path of politeness on the intertubes.
Drawn! flags the latest interwebs meme: redoing the redesign of the Archie characters.
Drawn! also has a link to Chris Butcher's interesting review of the covers to various editions of Jeff Smith's Bone series.
National ~~Politboro~~ Public Radio interviews Stupendous Stan Lee.
Fi-Sci science fiction website is running webcomics - apply for it here if you're interested. They are already posting GAAK there.

Comments

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

Wizard interviews John Allison, creator of Scary Go Round.
The WordBalloon podcast has an interview with Steven Bryant, creator of Athena Voltaire.

REVIEW

The Digital Strips podcast has a review of Butterfly by Dean Trippe.

MILESTONES

Minimalist Stick Figure Theater reaches number 600.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

I can't tell whether Chris Crosby's Sore Thumbs spin-off project, Cecania's Private Party is a webcomic or a porn site. Time will tell I guess...
Aeire and Chris Daily are teaming up for a new webcomic project debuting sometime next year. Check out a few preliminary sketches here.

NOT WEBCOMICS

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

Comments

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.

Thursday

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 9, 2006 - 12:40

It's been an exhausting week but all worth it! Let's get back to the webcomics!

NEWS & VIEWS

Neil Cohn checks out what's available in "comics making" software and concludes: they all suck. (Never having used any of them myself I don't have an opinion to offer on them.)

EVENTS

Don't forget! - Monkey Day is coming next month. Get those banana-infused webcomics ready!

INTERVIEWS

I may have linked to this before but Sequential Tart has three webcomic-related interviews this month: Gene Yang, Batton Lash, and Onezumi.

REVIEWS

Sequential Tart reviews three webcomics this month: Elf N' Troll, Gun Street Girl and Aegis.
The Onion's AV Club reviews the year's best comics (link from Journalista!)

DEAD TREES

24 Hour Comics Day is putting out a book collecting work from this year's event.
Sequential Tart does the Webcomics-In-Print thing and talks about its favorites webcomics on dead trees.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Wax Intellectual catches that Les McClaine's adventure comic, Jonny Crossbones, has put up its archives for a month at a time. WI calls it "a great story with fabulous artwork in the style of Herge..."
FLEEN beats the bandwagon for R. Stevens' Diesel Sweeties effort to invade a newspaper comics page near you.
The Onion's AV Club has a two parter series on serialization in comic books - could be informative to webcomics as well. Here's part one and part two (link from JOURNALISTA!)
You Damn Kids' Owen Dunne has a podcast called Radio Broadcast Company which recreates an old-timey radio show but with a modern sensibility.
It's like a commercial for webcomics toys. Goats creator Jon Rosenberg links to fan comic Diablo and the Necronomicon.
Shocking new photos of the Englishman, John Allison!

Comments

This Date In Comixpedia - October 27th

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 27, 2006 - 03:01

A look back at the webcomics website of record:

2005

2004

2003

Comments

Lancaster Comics Festival

The first annual Lancaster Comics Convention which will take place in the Ashton Memorial in the grounds of Williamson Park on October 28th 2006.

Scheduled to attend are Ali Graham, Liz Greenfield, John Allison and James Turner.

Read more

News For Monday, January 29, 2007 (UPDATED)

Biggie Panda: Old Skool Webcomics

WCCA Nominations Out

Nominees for 2007 WCCAs

Thursday, December 28th News & Views

Rolling After Christmas News Post (UPDATED)

The Comixpedia End of 2006 Roundtable

Thursday

This Date In Comixpedia - October 27th

Lancaster Comics Festival

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