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Michael Jantze

PCW at 11: A look back at PC Weenies in The NORM

Submitted by bobweiner on October 20, 2009 - 16:14

Continuing a look back at 11 years of publishing The PC Weenies, I want to reflect on the very first time my work appeared in print within the pages of a comic book. Specifically, the one shown below:

PCW in NORM

I met cartoonist Michael Jantze in 2004 when I was a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I remember the day quite vividly. It was a rainy afternoon outside and after two back-to-back studio classes I was feeling tired, and was driving home. I almost didn’t go to see Michael speak…

But then, something compelled me.

New Book coming out

Submitted by Steve Troop on September 30, 2009 - 12:09

I found this while surfing today. I thought maybe you guys might want to check it out…
Nevin Martell has a book coming out called Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip. Here’s the abridged version of the summary that I found on The Comics Curmudgeon:

Weekend Webcomics Wrapup

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 29, 2009 - 11:05

I hope everyone had a good week - I was mostly offline, enjoying the beach.  I got back to discover a new Jellaby comic from Kean Soo.  One of the best kid-friendly comics out there and always a pleasure to see a new one online.

It was also fun to see ComixTalk included in Ataraxi Theater's "webcomic merit badges" it posted this week -- one of them is the "Eye of Xerexes" -- awarded for drawing a cover to ComixTalk.  And there were a lot of other good links you might want to catch up on:

INTERVIEWS
CBR had a good interview with Jon Rosenberg of Goats.
An interview with Brian McFadden of the topical webcomic Big Fat Whale.
The Daily Cross Hatch has the first part of its interview with Jordan Crane.

MILESTONES
Andrew Farago finishes the first huge arc of his webcomic William Bazillion.

BUSINESS
Former syndicated newspaper comic creator Michael Jantze announced he was starting up a new webcomic titled Rave On.  Why is this interesting in an era of many former print comic folks launching webcomics?  One, Jantze was an early defector from print, taking his comic The Norm to a pay-to-read model online.  I have not kept up with how that has gone for Jantze after some initial reporting, but perhaps it has gone well enough because he is using another pay-to-read model for this new webcomic Rave On.  Should be worth following up on.

DEAD TREES
A preview of the upcoming Act-I-Vate print collection.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Webcomic -- Sixteen Miles to Merricks by Barnaby Ward.
Art -- Robbi Rodriguez.

DESIGN
Brigid Alverson offers her thoughts on webcomic website design.

TOOLS
Comicrank looks like it might be an interesting twist on the comic ranking site model.

Tuesday Mean Random Stories About Webcomics... Doesn't It?

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 26, 2008 - 10:42

INTERVIEWS
Wizard is doing webcomic stuff again - an interview with Tom Siddell of Gunnerkrigg Court, John Allison of Scary Go Round, a roundtable with a pretty cool cast of creators (from ComicCon).

Laura Hudson who works for the magazine Comic Foundry has a blog with some good webcomic-related posts.  Most recently she interviewed Leigh Walton of Top Shelf 2.0, and Rantz Hosely of the Long Box Project.

CONVENTIONS

Ted the Robot asks how many books he should bring to this year's SPX.  Good question -- surely there's some collective common sense advice out there on this?

STRETCHING COMICS?
Michael Jantze of the webcomic The Norm tries creating an "audio comic".  I guess it's for people too lazy to read the words themselves?

GREATER F-WAD THEORY OF THE INTERNET
So the Daily Cartoonists hits a civility crisis.  I can relate having had it rip through Comixpedia/ComixTalk in earlier years.  It's hard to come up with "rules" for conversation but you can kind of tell when a place is working and when it's starting to deteriorate.  The sad thing is it really always seems to be a small number of people who either like to pretend to be or probably really are borderline psychotic that cause the most damage to a site.  </soapbox>

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Rob Balder's Partially Clips gets a shout out from blogger and biologist PZ Myers.

This Week in Webcomics is a pretty cool new blog you might want to bookmark.

Brandon J. Carr has a new project with David These Stories Are True - check it out.

I love John Allison's take on Batman.

Webcomic News & Views for May 19, 2008

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on May 19, 2008 - 09:27

New column from Derik Badman - this month he reviews the comic Parade (With Fireworks).

Also a big thanks to our current sponsors: the Laugh Factory, the Learn to Draw course, the new children's novel Chessie Bligh and the webcomic The Asylumantics.

WEBCOMICS PORTAL LAUNCHES
Top Shelf's webcomic portal is live.

HOW TO MAKE WEBCOMICS SELLS OUT
Scott Kurtz writes that the initial press run of How To Make Webcomics is (almost) sold out. 

AROUND THE WORLD IN 4 BLOGS
Alan Gardner reports that Michael Jantze, the creator of the The Norm has an animation short “Mr. Lux: At Your Service” in the Short Film Corner at this year’s Festival de Cannes.

Randall Monroe (xkcd) invents midnight underwater speed chess.  "A nice feature is the naturally-enforced clock.  You have as much time per move as you have air in your lungs."

Fabricari writes about spring cleaning and I guess I missed his post that he was selling off - cheap! - copies of his graphic novel Fabricari: Ad Hoc.

Happy birthday to Brandon J. Carr.

WonderCon 2008

Submitted by Andrew Farago on February 25, 2008 - 04:36

I survived my eighth WonderCon, and actually had myself a pretty good time despite the overbooking and overworking that goes into this thing every year. I'll be doing a big write-up for Animation World Network in the very near future, and I'll post about that here when the time comes, but here are my quick impressions of the show:

Cartoon Art Museum Cartoonist in Residence

Submitted by Shaenon Garrity on December 14, 2007 - 14:07

It had to happen one of these days...

January Cartoonist-In-Residence: Shaenon K. Garrity
For Immediate Release
Contact: Andrew Farago, 415-227-8666 ext. 314
Images available upon request

Saturday, January 19th, 2008 from 1pm to 3pm
Free and open to the public

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling (Update) On a Thursday!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 1, 2007 - 15:00

Welcome to November. We have a cover this month from Debbie Ridpath Ohi who creates a great webcomic on writing called Will Write For Chocolate. No particular theme this month but a lot of good interesting articles are on tap. In December, we will venture into "wrapping up the year that was" territory - stay tuned for more details on that later this month.

HEADLINES

BUSINESS

  • Steven Grant tries to apply lessons of the music industry to the comics biz. It's a good think piece and points out the way comics creators can bypass the "labels" like musicisians are doing, but annoyingly Grant knows more about examples of this "new entrepreneurship" in the music industry then he does in his own industry. Grant should at least be aware of the comics equivalents of unsigned new bands - webcomics - and how they use merchandise and other ancilliary activities (sketches, guest shots, downloads) to make money while giving away the comic for free. He could have also pointed to some established professionals ditching their labels to go indy - like Phil and Kaja Foglio or Michael Jantze.

INTERVIEWS

MILESTONES

TECHNOLOGY

CONTESTS

  • I need to start handing these Karas the Revelation DVDs out faster! Gimme (in the comments) the phrase that pays to be the next winner.

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?

The Year in Webcomic News

December 15, 2005 - 18:03 | Erik Melander

A whole year of webcomic news wrapped up in a pretty package with cookies and milk commentary provided by Comixpedia contributors: Alexander Danner, Ping Teo, Kristofer Straub, T Campbell and Phil Kahn.