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Kris Straub

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.

A Philosophical Discussion On Why You Do What You Do

March 18, 2007 - 22:16 | Sebastian Parsons

Sebastian Parsons is back with another outsider's look at webcomics. In an article published by Comixpedia last year (Diversifiwebcomication: Maximize Your Business Potential) Parsons wrote about business strategies for the budding webcomics entrepreneur. In this article, he looks at webcomics within the larger paradigm of Web 2.0 and offers some thoughts on why we webcomic.

An Interview with Scott Kurtz And Kristofer Straub About New Company And New Projects

March 12, 2007 - 18:45 | Erg

Last week Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub were gracious enough to grant this brand spankin' new Comixpedia front page writer/blogger an email interview about their new partnership. The questions are a bit clumsy, but their answers are interesting and informative. Enjoy!

The Community Interview with Blank Label Comics

March 8, 2007 - 00:59

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

INTERVIEWS

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Trolling, Vandalism and Dragonfiend

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 4, 2007 - 11:45

Wiki Watch

As was noted throughout the week, T Campbell tracked down Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and webcomics-focused Wikipedia editor Dragonfiend for interviews regarding the intersection of webcomic and Wikipedia. Although the interview with Wales is short, the interview with Dragonfiend provides a snapshot of what is probably a pretty typical attitude amongst self-described "wikipedians" towards Wikipedia itself and its role and mission.

One thing that popped out at me, however, was Dragonfiend's reference to a short-lived (now deleted) Comixpedia.org article about which Dragonfiend said:

To give a webcomics-related example, if I'm trying to research webcomics over on a wiki with much more indiscrimnate content policies, like comixpedia.org, I'll find articles like this one on the webcomic [now deleted entry] . Without requiring this topic to be noted by several independent reputable sources, we won't know whether this webcomic is of any importance, or just something that somebody made up one day and posted on the internet.

Here's the thing though - within a minute of looking at that entry I knew it was an example of wiki-vandalism. The supposed external link didn't work. Google.com had no record of the URLs, title, creator or anything about the supposed comic. Within a few more minutes I knew that the user account (unlike Wikipedia, Comixpedia.org does restrict editing to those who sign up for user accounts) had been used solely to create a couple of obnoxious and completely made-up entries. Within a few more minutes after that though (all through the magic of google.com) I knew that this Comixpedia user id was the same as a user id at Wikipedia banned for creating the same kind of entries that the user id created at Comixpedia.org. (Even some of the entries and terms in the entries between Comixpedia.org and Wikipedia were the same!)

What's that prove? Well the first thing it suggests to me is a bit of bad faith on Dragonfiend's part. From picking the most obnoxiously offensive entry s/he could find to picking an entry that was so obviously false it's hard to not to assume Dragonfiend was employing emotional rhetorical tactics simply to make Comixpedia.org (and webcomics generally in her mind) look bad. But since it was so obviously demonstrably false (and one that an active wikipedian like Dragonfiend had additional reason to suspect its status as vandalism) it seems to me that it's an example that backfires on Dragonfiend completely. No one needed "several independent reputable sources," to know this was a made-up entry - it took less then 10 minutes with Google.

I think what her comment proves is that all wikis are susceptible to vandalism - it's one of the weak points in the model. No doubt Wikipedia does not like it when the largest media publications in this country present out of context vandalized entries as examples of Wikipedia "scholarship", and neither does Comixpedia.org.

Thursday News And Blues Round Up (UPDATED)

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 1, 2007 - 13:04

COMIXPEDIA

I want to throw out a thanks to current (and very recent) sponsors of Comixpedia including the movie The Abandoned and the webcomics Zortic, I See You and O''deer. We have three slots available right now on the side bar - cheap! - click here to get more details and order.

INTERVIEWS

TOOLS

  • A new version of Balloonist is out - the Balloonist software creates cartoon speech bubbles. Some of the new features in version 2.0 are: Curved Stems, Ruffle Harmonics, Better Line Break Control, Zoom Control, and well more (click for details). I've never used this software but I've seen it and the creators seemed to have spent much of the effort behind the new version in responding to current users requests.

EVENTS

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

  • I've been meaning to plug the wonderful (relatively) new comic Voids by Shayna Marchese. Today, she posted a Flickr series of photos on how she creates the comic - that's as good a hook as any!
  • The juggernaut that is Richard Stevens III rolls on. He recently discovered a quote of his showing up in Google's quote-a-nator thingee. (more details on the Diesel Sweeties site below the comic) Also is it just me or does the mohawked character in the recent web-DS storyline look a lot like Comixpress proprietor Logan DeAngelis?
  • Frank Frisina, the writer of the poker-themed webcomic Life's A Bluff emailed me that artist Brandon Carr has returned to working on the project.
  • Kris Straub's new/old parody (meta-parody?) gamer comic Insert Cartridge isn't bad. It's just not that cutting as parody really. On the other hand a couple of the jokes, despite Kris' insistence that he's trying to mimic the mediocrity of many comics in the genre, are pretty funny. (UPDATE: I didn't mean and I doubt Kris meant to say that the entire gamer comic genre is mediocre. More that there are many mediocre comics in that genre that are merely aping the tropes of it)

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Thank God It's Blind Date II

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 22, 2007 - 19:33

We've got two more excellent Blind Date II comics for Friday!

We're heading into the home stretch Blind Date II participants! Email me those finished comics by the end of this Sunday, February 25th! The list of creators still yet to report on their "blind date" after the jump (nudge nudge, know what I mean?):

Rolling Thursday Webcomic Thunder (UPDATED)

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 22, 2007 - 11:26

Wiki WatchWIKI WATCH

THE COMIXPEDIA (dot org)

HEADLINES

  • Comics Worth Reading reports on the fate of the Friends of Lulu Empowerment Fund. Short answer: no more fund. Here's an excerpt from information provided by FOL President Shannon Crane concerning the problems surrounding the creation of the fund last year:
    Ronee Bourgeois suggested to our entire board that we start an empowerment fund. We agreed that yes, it would be a wonderful idea. Unfortunately, instead of being patient to let the ENTIRE board come up with guidelines, rules, etc, she announced the new fund to the comics community without the board’s consent. We found ourselves between a rock and a hard place. We did what we could to make it work, and now we find that this is not something that we will pursue any longer.

MILESTONES

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

WCCA Winners?

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 18, 2007 - 11:20

Yesterday at MegaCon was the WCCA ceremony. Anyone there want to post on which winners were announced (nothing's up at the WCCA website yet) and other reactions?

I'm listening to the pre-WCCAs MegaCon podcast from the Gigcast now (mp3 link) - I think they were planning on doing a WCCA podcast but it's not up yet.