Rich Stevens
Hand Drawn Pixel T-Shirts
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 14, 2007 - 16:38
R Stevens made a video of him drawing Red Robot on a pre-pixelated t-shirt - nice idea for conventions but will he wash out?
Reinventing Micropayments
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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 & Views for May 4, 2007 UPDATED
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on May 4, 2007 - 10:28
HEADLINES
- Filed under WTF?!: Boing Boing reports (linking to a Rich Stevens post) on Matt Boyd's termination from work as a result of misunderstood conversations about guns. Boyd's comic, Three Panel Soul featured a storyline about this weird, unfortunate experience (a storyline which I originally thought was fiction - a smart parody of our current attitudes towards guns and incidents like the massacre at Virginia Tech). UPDATE: Fleen has an interview with Boyd today.
EVENTS
- Don't forget this Saturday's (tomorrow) big events: Online Comics Day 2007 and Free Comic Book Day 2007.
COMIXPEDIA
- Another big thanks to April cover artist Michael Lalonde. Be sure to go check out Orneryboy if you're not already reading it. You should also delve into the Comixpedia archives to check out Welton Colbert's awesome interview with Lalonde from 2005.
INTERVIEWS
- Webcomics-In-Print has an interview with Ryan Estrada, creator of the comic Welton Colbert and currently working on videos for his Ryan Estrada Expeditions.
- Sequential Tart has an interview with Rich Stevens, the creator of the web and newspaper comic, Diesel Sweeties.
- Panels and Pixels interviews American Elf creator James Kochalka (link from Journalista!)
- The Pulse's Jennifer Contino interviews Fishtown creator Kevin Colden. (link from Journalista!)
- The Pulse's Steve Ahlquist talks to the 2007 Eisner Award judges: Chris Reilly, Whitney Matheson, Jeff VanderMeer and James Sime. (link from Journalista!)
REVIEWS
- Talkaboutcomics links to lots of reviews of webcomics across the blog-o-bog.
- Comixpedia reviewed a couple of sci-fi comics for April: S.S.D.D. and Uku.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
- Joey Manley ponders the nomenclature of "webcomics""versus "comics", prompted by someone's description of Dilbert as a webcomic. It's best not to get too hung up on nomenclature. As comics as a medium (not as a genre/format) have gotten (slightly) more visibility in America we can all talk about "comics" at that level. But that doesn't mean the term "webcomic" won't continue to be useful, just as "comic book" and "comic strip" (and more recently "graphic novel") have been used and useful for many years. Given the growth of comics on the web versus every other format though I won't be surprised if most people will begin to use comic and webcomic much more interchangeably. (Manley also links to a Google trends graph of the use of the word "webcomic(s)".)
NOT COMICS
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- The webcomics newspaper Zoinks plans to put out a new issue this June. Advertising spots are still available for it.
- Talkaboutcomics wraps up some rumbling about how Microsoft's forthcoming Silverfish code (meant to be a competitor to Flash) can be used to present webcomics, sort of like Flash can be used to present webcomics...
Interview with Steven Cloud
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on April 25, 2007 - 10:24
The Webcomics In Print blog interviews Steven L. Cloud, the creator of Boy on a Stick and Slither. Cloud recently signed a web-syndication deal with United Media and Boy on a Stick and Slither debuts today on comics.com.
Cloud is a member of the Dumbrella group. Another Dumbrella member, Rich Stevens, (Diesel Sweeties) previously signed a syndication deal with United Media.
Tuesday Mixed Links
Submitted by Erik Melander on April 17, 2007 - 08:09
BUSINESS
- Related to last weeks post about the flurry of business related blogposts by Joey Manley, SLG publishing's livejournal has a roundup of links in response to SLG president Dan Vado's interview at Newsarama about their digital comics store Eyemelt.com.
INTERVIEWS
- The Daily Crosshatch has put up the second part of their interview with Raina Telgemeier.
- The Comics Reporter interviews K Thor Jensen about the completion of his autobiographical comic Red Eye, Black Eye, which was originally serialized at Serializer.net.
MISCELLANEA
- Blogpost by R Stevens entitled Thinking! Hard! About the How and Why of Making Webcomics.
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.
- Blank Label Comics
- Chemistry Set
- Dayfree Press
- Dumbrella
- SpinZone
- The Nice
- Adrian Ramos
- Ben Bittner
- Bryant Paul Johnson
- Dave Roman
- Fred Grisolm
- Howard Tayler
- Jeffrey Rowland
- Jeph Jacques
- John Allison
- Jon Morris
- Jon Rosenberg
- Josh Lesnick
- Kris Straub
- Krishna Sadasivam
- Maritza Campos
- Matt Shepherd
- Mitch Clem
- Nate Piekos
- Patrick Farley
- Paul Taylor
- Raina Telgemeier
- Ramon Perez
- Randall Munroe
- Rich Stevens
- Ryan Estrada
- Scott Kurtz
- Scott McCloud
- Shaenon K. Garrity
- Spike
- Steve Harrison
- T Campbell
- Terrence Marks
- Tim Demeter
- Tyler Martin
- Warren Ellis
- This Olde Haus
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
- FLEEN interviews Jennie Breeden, creator of The Devil's Panties.
- T Campbell has posted audio interviews with 3 creators: Evil Inc creator Brad Guigar; Chris Hastings of Dr. McNinja; and Andrea L. Peterson of No Rest For the Wicked.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- It's great to see non-webcomics critics discovering Sinfest: Journalista! linked to one today and Comics Worth Reading recently declared Sinfest "My New Favorite Webcomic". If there's any webcomic that should be in the daily newpaper right now I'd nominate Sinfest. Sure, many of the strips in the archives would not work on the newspaper page but creator Tatsuya Ishida has shown the ability to work within PG limitations. If Ishida could get a deal like R. Stevens' has with Diesel Sweeties there's no question Sinfest could be a huge success in the newspapers.
- Comics212 catches Comic Book Resources columnist Rich Johnson using a piece of Jim Zubkavich artwork as part of a story on a supposedly in-the-works animated Shazam! series. Trouble is that Zubkavich's artwork is simply an illustration he posted on his LiveJournal recently.
- The Daily Cross Hatch has an interview with Bone creator and Captain Marvel artist/writer Jeff Smith.
- Is FLEEN insinuating that Michael Bay is plagiarizing Jon Rosenberg's Goats? I'm a fairly big fan of Goats but I don't think Rosenberg is going to be able to sue anyone for copying ideas like ancient prophecies, end-of-the-world scenarios or even multiple dimensions. But man I would totally pay to see a Rosenberg-scripted movie.
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
- Here's a great opportunity (and a clever idea for a book): Howard Tayler is planning to publish the 2000-01 run of Schlock Mercenary in a book and he's put out a public call for guest art to include in the book. I hope he gets a wide range of interest on this - I'd love to see some of the Schlock characters done well in different styles.
- Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub announce a more formal creative relationship (including Straub relocating to Dallas, TX). Help them pick a name for their new partnership here. (Also I missed that PvP character Skull has a blog now...)
- Good question from R. Stevens and a good discussion in the comments there: "In a webcomic, each page of comics read is a 'pageview'. In a comic book, each page of comics read is a 'pageview'.... Has the webcomics readership outgrown the American comic book market?"
INTERVIEWS
- Daily Cross Hatch blog interviews Perry Bible Fellowship creator Nicholas Gurewitch.
- Bookslut interviews Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel. (both interviews caught by Journalista!)
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
- Mike Russell is rerunning his CulturePulp comics at his WebcomicsNation site. Most of these have appeared before in the newspaper, but not on the web in one convenient location like this - worth checking out - funny, insightful journalism in comic form.
- The Comics Reporter likes Lukewarm Tales.
- The Webcomicker likes the second episode of the animated PvP series. In contrast to pre-premeire complaints from PvP fans, Gilead says the voice actor behind the character Skull is the star of the production.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- FLEEN reports that You Damn Kid! creator Owen Dunne has redone his website(s) and created a video based on his Beevnicks comic.
- The For Better or For Worse "Hybrid" idea apparently came from Universal Press Synidicate which convinced creator Lynn Johnston to go with it rather than simply hanging it up later this year.
- FLIGHT reports on the lineup for Flight, Vol. 4. Also, Kazu Kibuishi posted cover art for the series at his website.
- The Comics Reporter points to a discussion at Comics Worth Reading on this year's Free Comic Book Day (May 5th).
- Over at TalkAboutComics is a post about a movie coming out with the same name (and apparently very similar content) as an existing Serializer comic. Creator Scott Ewen (the comic is Flight of the Living Dead) seems pretty stoic about it.
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
- McKenzee and Ursula Vernon got "namechecked" by the Indy Weekly in an article on the North Carolina comics scene. It's a well-done article.
- An interview with Traci Spencer, creator of the the fantasy/adventure comic Compass published on Girl-A-Matic.
- An interview with the Marvelous Patric at ComicBloc.
- Thomas Nickel writes that he interviewed David Lloyd of V for Vendetta and Kickback-fame about his first very own graphic novel Kickback. The interview can be found here.
- Belated link - but Brigid has a good interview up at Digital Strips with Wendy Pini, the creator of Elfquest, who announced at the New York Comicon, that in conjunction with publisher Go! Comi, Pini would be creating a three-volume, full color manga, The Masque of the Red Death, based on the Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name. The comic will be published first as a webcomic before collection in print volumes.
- Digital Strips also has an interview up with Gabe Strine, the creator of Brinkerhoff.
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
- The date for 24 Hour Comics Day 2007 is Saturday, October 20th. If you're interested in being or recruiting a host for this event you can get more details here on what hosts are required to agree to.
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
- The Joystiq blog names Fanboys Online as its webcomic of the week.
- Dani Draws has a list of 101 projects an artist can take on between assignments. A lot of them would make good exercises to kickstart creative juices if you're feeling uninspired.
An Interview with Rich Stevens
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 18, 2007 - 12:41
An interview with Rich Stevens on the newspaper-style Diesel Sweeties launch with good details on the syndication deal itself. Also Stevens recommends his Dumbrella compadres as other plausible newspaper candidates. I don't know about that actually - I'd like to see all of them in my newspaper but in terms of whether I think we will see them, well I could see BOASAS in newspapers, but I'm not sure about the others.
The question for today: what webcomics do you think could be most successfully translated into successful newspaper comic strips?
