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Mohammad F. Haque

Time for the 4th Annual Webcomic Holiday Postcard Fundraiser

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 7, 2009 - 10:13

Time for the 4th Annual "Webcomic Holiday Postcard Fundraiser" - a charity event that sells packs of holiday postcards (featuring original art by webcomic artists) and all the proceeds go to Child's Play.  Some of the webcomic artists featured this year include Scott Ramsoomair, VGCats and Super Effective, Steve Napierski, Dueling Analogs, and Mohammad Haque, AppleGeeks.

DRAFT List of 100 Greatest Webcomics: Comedy and Drama

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 22, 2009 - 14:50

Last year I posted a couple times (Previous posts on this "research" project were here and here) about a possible article on "ComixTALK's 100 Greatest Webcomics" which would be something like the American Film Institute's list of the greatest movies of the last 100 years.

A recurring comment to the previous two posts was what is the criteria for this.  I'm always a little hesitant to give too much guidance when part of the point of asking this kind of thing out loud is to listen to the resulting discussion of what everyone else thinks the criteria should be.  For the AFI list judges picked films based on criteria such as Critical Recognition, Major Award Winner, Popularity Over Time, Historical Significance, and Cultural Impact.

That sounds about right to me.  We've got a round decade plus a year or two of webcomics to look at it.  Critical reception (both from peers and critics), and popularity are both relevant to thinking about the impact of a webcomic.  WCCA awards are somewhat indicative of what peers were impressed with in a given year and more recently awards like the Eisners and Ignatzs have recoginized webcomics.  Historical significance and cultural impact are a little harder to pin down but various "firsts" in webcomics are important and comics like Penny Arcade have had a much wider impact on popular culture than most comics do these days (put aside the legacy superheros of comics -- what other "new" comic, let alone webcomic, in the last decade has had a wide cultural impact?)

Another thing AFI did that might be useful here to help sort through the vast numbers of webcomics one could talk about is to also think about categories or genres of work.  Just as a simple matter of numbers if a webcomic isn't one of the best of a larger type of story -- or frankly, so startlingly unique it's hard to categorize -- then it's hard to imagine it's one of the 100 Greatest...

So to move things along I'm listing another "draft" of titles submitted by the crowds but this time I've tried to break them up into drama and comedy so as to help avoid complete apples to oranges comparisons.  In doing that I've realized (1) it's hard in many cases to decide; and (2) there are probably more comedic than drama on the list so far.  I think it would make sense to whittle down the two lists to 75 each so as the final list is no more than 3/4 of one type or the other.  Of course we could further do genre type lists but for now this was enough work on my part.

So -- your assignment (if you choose to play):

  1. Name the comic you're talking about (you're also welcome to nominate ones not on the list -- I KNOW there are many I haven't even thought about yet -- it takes time to review all of the corners of the web)
  2. Tell me where on one the two lists (comedy and drama) it should be (you could give a range of slots if you're not sure). (If you think I've got a drama on the comedy list or vice-versa let me know!  I'm not "done" - this is fairly dashed off still at this point)
  3. Tell me why!  Referencing awards, critics, historical achievements, strengths and weaknesses of the works are all really helpful!

November 14th DRAFT version of 100 Greatest Webcomics List

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 13, 2008 - 21:02

This is an update to a previous post here, thanks for the cumulative suggestions on that thread.  JUST so we're clear - this is open-sourced to everyone research for a possible article to appear next month at ComixTalk.  I don't endorse the list or the order at all; at this point I've tried to include all of the suggestions I've gotten and I also went through all of the comics ComixTalk has ever reviewed and pulled quite a few titles.

We're at the point where it'll be most helpful if you tell me comics you think should go on the list, where (what number approximately) and which comic should get bumped.  If you just want to change the order you can do that to but there'll be another post before the month's through asking for help with that.  

Katsucon!

WHAT: Washington DC's big ol' anime/manga convention: Katsucon.
WHERE: Omni Shoreham Hotel 2500 Calvert St Nw, Washington, DC 20008, US
WHO: some excellent guests including:

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?

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

Butterfly P.I. – An Interview with the Other Richard Stevens

November 14, 2005 - 00:00 | Al Schroeder

Peb Casey, Butterfly Detective is the tale of the one honest butterfly in a city of spiders, what would happen if Philip Marlowe mated with a Monarch butterfly. This is Peb's story – or rather, the story of the person who created him.

Disposable Parts Anthology Book Premieres At Mocca

Submitted by Josh Mirman on June 5, 2005 - 10:40

bagochips's new anthology comic book, Disposable Parts has been released to preorders, and will be premiering at MoCCa Art Festival next weekend, on June 11th.

Disposable Parts will also be available at Comic-Con in July and Otakon in August.

Meet the Apple Geeks (Webcomics Not Computers)

May 9, 2005 - 00:00

One of the most popular comics these days is a webcomic called Applegeeks by Mohammad F. Haque and Ananth Panagariya, which has, among other things, a female robot named Eve (who destroys alternative/inferior OS) and a main character who talks to squirrels. Graced with beautiful art and excellent writing, it's an example of collaboration at its finest. The two creators were kind enough to grant us an interview.

Disposable Parts Anthology

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 28, 2005 - 11:56

This looks interesting. Disposable Parts is an anthology centered around robots; here's some (but not all) of the webcomic artists planning to participate:

Brian Carroll of Instant Classic
Brian Clevinger of 8-bit Theatre
Meredith Gran of Skirting Danger
Aaron Farber of Men In Hats
Mohammad "Hawk" Haque of Applegeeks
Ian Jones-Quartey of RPG-World
David McGuire of How To Art
Josh Mirman of Punks and Nerds
Jeff Rowland of WIGU
Jon Rosenberg of Goats

The book is scheduled to come out in Spring or Summer of this year and you can already pre-order it.