Skip to main content

Jon Rosenberg

I Don't Like Mondays

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 15, 2007 - 09:17

AWARDS 

  • In a bit of a surprise (to me at least) Papercutter #6 edited by Alec Longstreth won Outstanding Debut in the Ignatz Awards (A surprise not because Longstreth's book didn't deserve to win but because very famous cartoonist Bill Griffith had a book nominated in this category: Zippy: Walk a Mile in My Mu-Mu). Chris Onstad won the Outstanding Online Comic for Achewood.  The full list of awards are available here in simple text form, all on one page (please someone at the WCCAs use this format for releasing your list of winners next time).

INTERVIEWS

TECHNOLOGY

  • Joey Manley has a big post on questions and comments on tailoring stats for webcomic creators in the next generation of his hosting service WebcomicsNation. I still need to read it a bit more carefully but if you're interested in stats or WCN you should probably give it a look.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Platinum Studios finally unveils the comic they squeezed creator Mike Strang out for!

Submitted by strangq on October 2, 2007 - 01:04

Hello Comic Book Creators,

My name is Mike Strang and a few months ago I posted a controversial blog here about how my dealings with Platinum Studios Comics over my creation Weird Adventures in Unemployment and how they removed me from it.

also detailed in a great article by Heidi Macdonald here... 

 http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2007/06/20/breaking-work-for-hire-is-bad/

Monday

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 13, 2007 - 12:22

This week's guest blogger is Tim Demeter who does way too many cool things for me to list 'em. Needless to say I'm grateful for him to take sometime out of his busy schedule to guest blog for the site again (he helped out last summer as well).

BUSINESS

  • Gary Tyrell at FLEEN has a good post on DC Comics Zudacomics project. Zudacomics is DC's webcomic portal for new stuff from creators - not it's "putting DC comic books on the web" site, which oddly enough DC hasn't gotten around to creating yet. Apparently DC must think that the music industry's Internet strategy is awesome as it and Marvel appear to be following large parts of it - although not yet suing large numbers of their customers so good on them for that bit of common sense. Is it just me or is the huge rise in scanlation trading online (scanlation is the direct equivalent of ripping CDs into mp3s) at least somewhat the fault of DC and Marvel for failing to put their immense catalog of material online in any meaningful way for consumers? Sort of related here is Joey Manley's recent post spelling out his view that Modern Tales as a subscription site was a success, but one limited by the subscription site model. Manley links to a post about Zudacomics and cracks wise that:
    It’s interesting and illuminating to see the “mainstream” comics community try to get a grip on how the digital distribution of comics can be monetized. Sometimes, it literally feels like they’re repeating every business idea that took the webcomics community by storm over the past ten years, and in exactly the same order, only to discard each in turn (as did we, for the most part) and move on to the next.

    I'm interested of course in any comics publishers' projects involving digital distribution of comics. It's the future of all media, not just comics and the sooner comics sorts out how to survive the intertubes the better for comics. Anyhow back to Gary's post and zudamania. I think DC's insistence on a 4:3 format for comics isn't going to be a problem for people willing to get into bed with Zudacomics in the first place. The 4:3 ratio is probably equally useful to Zuda to make their site slicker and more consistent for readers as it is to any print spin-offs Zuda pursues. But I definitely think Gary's point that a successful Zuda might benefit some non-Zuda creators more than anyone actually on Zuda to be pretty insightful and likely correct.

INTERVIEWS

DEAD TREES

  • Journalista! points to this Publisher Weekly post on Amazon's new self-publishing program:
    Through Project Vine, readers with a history of posting accurate and helpful book reviews are being invited to receive advance copies for review purposes. And, through CreateSpace, a division of the company that already provides CD- and DVD-on-demand services, Amazon has added book publishing options.

REVIEWS

TRANSITIONS

  • Newsarama is reporting that Mike Wieringo passed away this Sunday of a sudden heart attack. Wieringo wasn't that much older than me (he was 44) and he's also one of the few names in comic book land I was familar with before I got into all this webcomics. By all accounts not only was he very talented but a tremendously nice guy. He had a blog and I imagine there will be some info on memorials there.

SWAG

NOT WEBCOMICS

  • Sometimes superhero movies are cool, sometimes they are ridiculous. Sometimes they're just a muddled mess where the director/writer/whatever can't figure out what kind of movie they're making. Time Nerd World blogger Lev Grossman posts about the planned Thor movie and I have to agree with his doubts about the direction Marvel supposedly is taking with it. The main reason I'm linking to this NerdWorld post though is to harp on the planned The Incredible Hulk movie which is being touted as a "re-do" of the Ang Lee movie (and not a sequel). I'm not sure how I'd script it because I don't think you'd want to make a movie too crowded with Marvel Universe characters but wouldn't you rather see a new Hulk movie along the lines of this "World War Hulk" comic book mini-series Grossman blogs about than another origin story? The Hulk is a big scary ambiguous bad guy (sort of like the Terminator character in T2) that blows stuff up. Make that movie without any pretense to being something else and you'd probably have the summer hit Marvel wants.

Updates On Entries in the Ill-Fated Webcomic Directory Project?

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 24, 2007 - 14:31

I built a "library" of webcomics and creators back in the fall of 2005 which I put into beta before realizing it was too much editorial work to deal with and the same information could be better provided through the community edited webcomic wiki - COMIXPEDIA.

Nevertheless looking back on the assortment of names collected (some from me, some sent in from you) I wonder if anyone has any significant updates on these creators 18 months later. Maybe we should interview some of them?

Never sign a Work For Hire contract with Platinum Studios!

Submitted by strangq on June 18, 2007 - 17:43

Stay away from Platinum Studios and any Work for Hire contracts if you feel attached to your creations. I feel as though I signed my soul over in a deal with the devil.
My name is Mike Strang and I wrote a comic book for them a horror spoof entitled WEIRD ADVENTURES IN UNEMPLOYMENT...

Reinventing Micropayments

May 7, 2007 - 00:30 | Joel Fagin

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.

News for Thursday, April 19, 2007 (UPDATED)

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on April 19, 2007 - 09:20

NEWS

REVIEWS

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

  • Ali Graham's new webcomic Afterstrife (love that name) has finished its first chapter and is in the midst of a week of guest comics before the next chapter begins. The comic features the adventures of two young recently-dead characters in their afterlife, but for such a potentially ominous setting, it's been surprisingly funny so far. Afterstrife is a nice evolution of Graham's writing and art chops from his previous work and well worth checking out.
  • Turtle Vs. Bunny by Joe Dunn (with the help of the votes of millions!). Have y'all already seen this? A very cool, interactive spin on the classic fable of the tortoise and the hare, Dunn's TVB lets readers decide whether Turtle or Bunny will come out on top that week.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Monday Morning News

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 26, 2007 - 12:09

**ahem** cheap advertising available...

HEADLINES

Continuing rumbles over how to turn the CBR/CBZ file format into the mp3 of comics, this time from Modern Tales publisher and WebcomicsNation owner Joey Manley:

All I need is RSS-with-enclosure subscribability — a CBR reader that acts just like a podcast catcher, in short, only snagging .CBR or .CBZ files, instead of .MP3’s.

I can’t take credit for this idea. take a look at this thread started by the well-known comics writer Warren Ellis almost two years ago. “TIVO for comics,” he calls the idea. That pretty much sums it up.

INTERVIEWS

DIGITAL FORMATS

SPRITE: The UnComic

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

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.

Welcome to the Webcomicdome!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 20, 2007 - 11:40

Busy news week already - don't forget to check out all of the articles from March's Short Story Issue (and we added some articles to February's Webcomic Collectives Issue this month as well). Next month's issue will cover science fiction themes - if you are interested in writing for the magazine drop me an email (xerexes AT comixpedia DOT com).

INTERVIEWS

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS