Jon Rosenberg

Guest-Starring: Jennifer Rosenberg!

Submitted by bobweiner on November 19, 2008 - 01:00

Today’s toon was sponsored by Jennifer’s husband and long-time reader Dan Greenberg. For Jennifer’s custom ‘toon, Dan wrote:
My wife, Jennifer is a fantastic woman. I could go on and on about her as daughter, wife, mother. But the thing that might most make her a good guest star is her skill at gaining [...]

Jon Rosenberg

Whole Lotta Webcomic Stuff Goin' On

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 8, 2008 - 11:06

MILESTONES
Berke Breathed is bailing on the funny pages again. NPR reports on Opus leaving the newspapers right around this year's election. Breathed says he will focus on children's books. I loved Bloom County growing up but to be honest haven't been that enraptured by the two sequel strips.

BOO!
Sean Kleefeld talks up the horror-themed collective of webcomics, Split Lip.

TOOLS
The US Daily reports on two "comics" creation tools: "My Comic Book Creator" and "Comic Life".

INTERVIEWS

REVIEWS

ComicMix reviews two new print collections of webcomics: Basic Instructions and Nothing Nice To Say.
Art Patient looks at Max and the Gorilla Squad.
This Week in Webcomics looks at Jump Leads.

BUSINESS
Sean Kleefeld muses about why one would buy the book after reading the webcomic? He kind of stumbles onto Jon Rosenberg's greater theory of swag support: have a bunch of physical stuff for a reader to buy...

MOVIE MAYHEM
Reuben Bolling on watching a preview of The Watchmen movie:

It seems that it was the success of director Snyder's "300" that gave him the clout to reject the studio's re-imagining of Watchmen as a War on Terror shoot-'em-up, and go back to the source material. Based on what I saw, it's hard to imagine a fan of the comic book being angry or disappointed that the movie strayed from the comic.

AROUND THE BLOGS AND BACK
Chuck Rozakis has a column at ComicMix sprinkling a little bit of econo-speak over the fact that really good creators of webcomics get a disproportionate number of fans. It is a nice way to put it -- in a world of access to all choices available most people will take the "best" option as opposed to a second or third-rate option and so if you're webcomic is the "best" you're going to collect all the potential fans (Hence the use of "superstar" in his column title). But of course, "best" is going to be somewhat subjective and not all "fans" or "readers" are going to be interested in the same things so it's a bit more complicated. We've also looked at this distribution as a power law (here, here for example) and had some discussion of how the "long tail" of it can still provide opportunities for creators to connect with readers by providing a smaller group of fans exactly what they're looking for.

POLL: Comic Con 2008: The Night

Submitted by Brad Guigar on August 1, 2008 - 00:00

Friday night will go down in Webcomics history as The Night.

For the Halfpixel gang (Scott Kurtz, Kris Straub, his intern Magnolia Porter, Dave Kellett and me), it started with a brilliant idea by Kellett. He figured that, instead of fighting the crowds in the Gaslamp District, we'd pile into his vehicle and drive out to one of his favorite fast food places, The In & Out Burger. For a little more on that, check the second half of Scott's video, embedded below.

So... Comic-Con is Around the Corner

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 16, 2008 - 13:00

Comic-Con 2008 kicks off in San Diego soon -- July 24-27 -- and the web/indy/whatever--comic presence seems to grow bigger each year. If you're going you're already set b/c this thing, as a practical matter, sold out long ago (I think you can still get a hotel room in the next state over...).

Some awesome panels this year include:

VILLARD TO PUBLISH POPULAR WEBCOMIC GOATS

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 11, 2008 - 13:57

Interviews with Jon Rosenberg on his new book deal hot off the presses at FLEEN and ComicMixaLot. Read the full press release below:

Dr. McNinja Meets Blackbeard Jones, Esq

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 20, 2008 - 10:37

DEAD TREES
Bill Watterson is writing the forward to the first book collection of Richard Thompson's Cul-De-Sac comic. Cool!

EVENTS
Chris Hastings will be at the Washington Street Library in Cumberland MD on June 28th at 2 PM to talk Dr. McNinja. Double-plus cool: Dr. McNinja is from a fictional version of Cumberland, MD (one with a Zombie Defense System). (I am totally making a comic called Blackbeard Jones, Esq now...)

INTERVIEWS
Rick Marshall interviews Jon Rosenberg about farm animals and beer.

TOOLS
The Gigcast linked to another make comics tool - this one's call Pikkipi.

Updates from the World O' Webcomics

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 16, 2008 - 16:43

Thanks to our current sponsors: the webcomic Please Rewind, and the Learn to Draw the Human Figure video series. More sponsorships available - CHEAP!

The June issue continues here at ComixTalk: an Interview with the creator of SPQR Blues -- Carol "Klio" Burrell; an interview with Faith Erin Hicks who just won the Joe Shuster award for Canada's Favorite Comic Book Creator, an interview with Dylan Meconis, the creator of Family Man; and Dr. Haus reviews Gun Baby.

TOOLS
Digital Strips blogs about the release of Jerry Stephens' new webcomic management system - BitArtist. If anyone gets a chance to test this out please let us know what you think of it.

WRITING
Howard Tayler's podcast Writing Excuses covers plot twists.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Jim Zub has written a story for the Pop Gun 2 anthology with artwork by Chris Stevens. It looks awesome!

Could it be? Is Caleb coming back to webcomics?

Funny -- Webcomic Warrior Action Figures!

THAT'S HOLLYWOOD JAKE
Lots of superhero movie casting rumors at Blog@Newsarama including this interesting bit that Robert Downey Jr. is in negotiations to star in DreamWorks/Universal’s Cowboys & Aliens, based on the Platinum Studios graphic novel by by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley, from an idea by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg.

Comments

Your Own Personal Webcomic

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 30, 2008 - 10:15

DEAD TREES

This is exciting - the very good webcomic North World by Lars Brown has been signed to Oni Press for a new in-print graphic novel featuring an original story: North World, Book 1: The Epic of Conrad.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Kelly (creator of Nymph) has a good, short overview of making a webcomic, from character design to scripting to putting it online.
Brigid flagged that the Eyeskream collective is looking for new members -- submission information is here.
Alexander Danner posts part 2 of his look at webcomic "reader interfaces" on the various new publisher-driven sites (like Marvel, Zuda, etc) (part 1 here).
Comics Worth Reading has an interview with Bill Williams, comic creator and publisher on his experience with Wowio, the webcomic download service (not Williams has books available on Wowio but otherwise doesn't seem to have any role with Wowio).

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

I'm not sure the world needs another "lego-for-art" webcomic but I really liked this strip of Ally the Webcomic -- maybe I'll put this on my tombstone.
Jon Rosenberg has fun with Dave Kellett's Sheldon.

Comments

The March of the Webcomics

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 4, 2008 - 12:49

Back in town with a rolling update for Friday (and the weekend). Should be new cover art and articles up on Sunday.

HEADLINES

If you missed it check out Comics Worth Reading's interview with Chris Crosby over Diamond's rejection of Keenspot's participation in this year's Free Comic Book Day. Crosby's various comics entities have participated in FCBD for several years now so it is surprising that they will not be allowed to participate in this year's event. If the given explanation are true, however, it's just more evidence of how insular the thinking of the monthly comic ~~book~~pamphlet industry is by restricting their promotional event to existing direct market titles.

BUSINESS

Satstu.com has an article on the state of the not-growing newspaper comic strip business. It also has a link to Chicken Wings which is a webcomic aimed at the aviation industry. In 2008 I'm going to predict that if there's enough public interest in something there will be at least one successful webcomic about it. How much public interest in a subject is enough? That's something I hope we can all get a better handle on this year - maybe with actual numbers and demographics.

CONGRATULATIONS

Congrats to Jeph and Christi on their engagement. And hope everyone caught Jeph's pretty cool little reader-participation holiday comic. My gift to the happy couple is that something happens in Questionable Content this year. I keed, I keed...

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

New Years Day, Goats wrapped up its multi-verse saga with Jon in charge of hell? The first comic in the next storyline is up now... Don't let anyone kid you - combining consistently funny updates with a (somewhat) coherent storyline is hard. Throw in some actual character development - that's ISO 9000 there, baby! Last year, Goats began to hit a stride of humor and unpredictablilty in a just-plain-fun story - let's hope Rosenberg can do it again in 2008.
A long way off but a firm date in May for the wedding of Brent and Jade should shake things up at PvP. PvP is more sitcom than storyline but every now and then Scott Kurtz successfully mixes up the elements of this long-running strip.
SMBC is brillant. I love the punchline picture / set-up text jokes (kind of a reverse humor-fu) - here's one of my recent favorites with the added wha! of mixing D&D and sex. Probably too PG-13 to ever fit comfortably in newspapers but somehow it'd be great to sneak this into mid-America's breakfast reading.

COMRADES IN ARMS

CONGA: The collective network of great artists is a pretty nifty site - not sure if its a collective or just a site spotlighting artists but either way its full of wonderfully cool art.

Comments

ComixTalk's People Of Webcomics List For 2007

December 20, 2007 - 13:31

And now... the fourth annual People Of Webcomics list! I'll be the first to admit that this list gets harder and harder to compile as the lines between "webcomics" and just plain "comics" blurs harder than a greasy windshield in the middle of a West Texas downpour. Plus as publishing comics on the web and other digital formats becomes more commonplace it gets harder and harder to find those "firsts" that take comics in new directions whether artistic, technical or businesss-oriented.