Rich Stevens
Jingle Bells, Man-Man Smells...
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 7, 2006 - 10:45
NEWS & VIEWS
- Rich Stevens predicts successful launch of Diesel Sweeties in newspapers this January and requests help with letters to editors to push his syndication efforts over the top.
- Reinder has some thoughts on the increasing overlap in webcomic sites' ambitions. He compares the growth of Webcomics Nation and Online Comics (which just launched Comic Space). I'd probably add The Webcomics List and Ryan North as other ambitious folks in the "webcomics services" space who could potentially put together the "blogger/flickr/youtube" of webcomics.
MILESTONES
- Thomas Dye ends Newshounds. The complete epic lasted from ran from 1997 to 2006 (roughly 9 years of comics!).
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Alien Loves Predator don't need no water...
- Websnark likes Andy Weir’s new webcomic Cheshire Crossing.
- FLEEN likes Ryan Armand’s webcomic Minus.
Justify My Hype
- Go go check check out out Man Man -- the the merriest merriest superhero superhero comic comic evah! evah!
Winter McCloud Interview With Rich Stevens
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 29, 2006 - 07:55
Winter McCloud interviews Rich Stevens (Diesel Sweeties). Each "winterview" is a videocast interview conducted by Scott McCloud's daughter Winter and edited by his older daughter Sky.
End of 2006 Coming Soon
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 17, 2006 - 12:39
December is traditionally a "year in review" kind of issue at Comixpedia and that's the goal this time around. As we get closer to the end of 2006 it's revealing to look at what folks were writing about webcomics at the end of 2005: The 2005 Webcomics Roundtable.
For the last two years we've also ran a special "25 People Of Webcomics" list article. Here's a link to the 2005 POW List article. Who do you think should be on this year's list? Post a comment with your nominations.
Thursday
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 9, 2006 - 12:40
It's been an exhausting week but all worth it! Let's get back to the webcomics!
NEWS & VIEWS
Neil Cohn checks out what's available in "comics making" software and concludes: they all suck. (Never having used any of them myself I don't have an opinion to offer on them.)
EVENTS
- Don't forget! - Monkey Day is coming next month. Get those banana-infused webcomics ready!
INTERVIEWS
- I may have linked to this before but Sequential Tart has three webcomic-related interviews this month: Gene Yang, Batton Lash, and Onezumi.
REVIEWS
- Sequential Tart reviews three webcomics this month: Elf N' Troll, Gun Street Girl and Aegis.
- The Onion's AV Club reviews the year's best comics (link from Journalista!)
DEAD TREES
- 24 Hour Comics Day is putting out a book collecting work from this year's event.
- Sequential Tart does the Webcomics-In-Print thing and talks about its favorites webcomics on dead trees.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Wax Intellectual catches that Les McClaine's adventure comic, Jonny Crossbones, has put up its archives for a month at a time. WI calls it "a great story with fabulous artwork in the style of Herge..."
- FLEEN beats the bandwagon for R. Stevens' Diesel Sweeties effort to invade a newspaper comics page near you.
- The Onion's AV Club has a two parter series on serialization in comic books - could be informative to webcomics as well. Here's part one and part two (link from JOURNALISTA!)
- You Damn Kids' Owen Dunne has a podcast called Radio Broadcast Company which recreates an old-timey radio show but with a modern sensibility.
- It's like a commercial for webcomics toys. Goats creator Jon Rosenberg links to fan comic Diablo and the Necronomicon.
- Shocking new photos of the Englishman, John Allison!
Thursday Newsin' To The Beat
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 26, 2006 - 10:50
NEWS
- Ryan North rolls out a new service called Project Wonderful that allows people to auction off sponsor ad spots. You can see it in action at Goats. Another nifty idea from North (who has already created OhNoRobot and RSSpect).
VIEWS
- That wacky Boxjam. Today's Doodle completely gets up in this blog's grill. Midwest comics REPRESENT!!!
- Hockey Zombie parodies Ctrl-Alt-Del. Artistic comment or promotional tactic?
Tis The Season!
- Ah Halloween - the time of the year for webcomics to put their characters in wacky halloween costumes...
- Another Halloween-themed event, this time at Girl-A-Matic: GAM-O-Ween.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Websnark on Questionable Content's meek and mild Martin.
- Former Graphic Smash editor, T Campbell is no one's editor.
- Digital Strips notes that Francesco Marciuliano (current hired hand on the syndicated strip Sally Forth) is going to try to move his webcomic, Medium Large, into newspaper syndication.
- Fleen has a Dumbrella round-up, including an update on R Stevens' battle with the Sith.
- Charley Parker likes Zita The Space Girl.
- Drawn! likes Stuart Immonen and his webcomic, Never As Bad As You Think.
Winterview with J-Ro
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 24, 2006 - 09:03
I watched Winter McCloud's interview with Jeffrey Rowland (Overcompensating, Wigu) last night - it is pretty damn funny. First of all Rowland is already funny as hell in his own way but it's all sort of twisted sideways by forcing him to behave a bit because of the presence of 11 year old Winter McCloud.
It's not that long either (Sky McCloud is doing a great job of editing these down to the good stuff) - you should definitely check it out. And the next one to be posted is with Rich Stevens (Diesel Sweeties).
News and Views for Monday, October 23rd
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 23, 2006 - 10:27
COMIXPEDIA MAGAZINE
Don't miss our latest review, column and interview posted this weekend.
NEWS
Journalista! looks at Rich Stevens' cease and desist letter from LucasFilm and advises "Let go of your feelings, Clango..."
Keenspot picks up Out There by R.C. Monroe. Monroe had been using Keenspot's Comicgenesis service previously.
Another SPX con report - this one from the Playground Ghosts collective - I stopped by their table more than once, they were very friendly and having fun which is a pretty good strategy for a con. (Most, if not all, of the SPX reports on the web are linked to here by The Comics Reporter.)
INTERVIEWS
The Washington Post has a long interview with Gerry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury. It focuses a lot on the recent storyline with the character B.D. losing a leg in Iraq.
Winter McCloud interviews Jeffrey Rowland, creator of Overcompensating (This is a videocast). (Speaking of the McCloud clan here's a story on Scott McCloud's visit to the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont.)
CBC Montreal interviewed Matt Forsythe, creator of Ojingogo. Here's an MP3 of the interview.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
In Print has a round-up of the latest book news.
Derik Badman reviews Scott McCloud's Making Comics.
Flight links to an article on self-publishing, which includes advice from several Canadian authors and artists — including Halifax-based Hope Larson. (Speaking of which The Comics Reporter posted an interview with Larson this weekend.)
Lucas Sends Stevens Cease and Desist Letter
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 22, 2006 - 09:11
Diesel Sweeties creator Rich Stevens posted a letter he received from LucasFilm Ltd requesting that he cease and desist (magic lawyer words) from selling several t-shirts that play off of Star Wars references (or at least might play off of Star Wars references). (Fleen posted a short comment on it.) Assuming arguendo (another favorite lawyer word) that Stevens is riffing off of Star Wars references in these t-shirts, so what? The questions are going to be about trademark, copyright and defenses such as fair use (including parody).
Unfortunately the reality is also that unless Stevens gets some pro bono (laywerly way of saying "free") assistance it's unlikely he's going to want to even get near the tar pit that would be litigation with a big corporation. I'm not sure what groups would be interested: CBLDF? EFF? Others? A good place to start might be The Chilling Effects website which is a useful guide to understanding your rights and the law related to these types of cease and desist letters.
I Went to SPX and All I Got Was This MATH IS DELICIOUS! T-shirt
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After a summer spent away from Comixpedia and comics too, it was great to catch up with all kinds of comics and creators at the Small Press Expo (aka SPX) this weekend. I caught some panels, bought some books and chatted with a lot of webcomic-friendly creators including Jeph Jacques and Danielle Corsetto.
The Gathering... of the News!
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 12, 2006 - 10:22
Finally, the impending return of Serializer - the art comic outpost in the Modern Tales kingdom - is near (Eric says end of October). This would be the last of the MT sites to return after server crash/upgrade issues. A partial list of the artists on the roster for the relaunch include:
- Nick Bertozzi, Drop Ceiling
- Patrick Farley, Apocamon: The Final Judgement
- Matt Feazell, Amazing Cynical Man!
- Renée French, micrographica
- Merlin Goodbrey & Douglas Noble, The Rule of Death
- Tom Hart, Hutch Owen
- Eric Millikin, Fetus-X
- Casey Sorrow, Feral Calf
- Joda Thayer, Few and Far Between
MOST READ
Joystiq, a popular videogame blog has a weekly poll on its readers favorite webcomics. Naturally these are all gamer webcomics but I was surprised to see in the most recent poll that Press Start To Play is essentially tied with Penny Arcade in popularity and another webcomic I hadn't read before, Fanboys In Love, was in third place.
CONVENTIONS
SPX Update: Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content) will be sharing a table with Malki (Wondermark). Fred Grisolm (Hate Song) also will be there.
BUSINESS
Andy Bell (Creatures In My Head) is having a launch party for his Zliks toys on Friday 13th in New York City.
Good news at the Fortress of Dumbrellatude: R Stevens is looking for help with his t-shirt n' swag shipping empire.
Exciting tasks include folding t-shirts, filling orders, counting things, moderate computer use and discussing the paranormal at length. Perks include being away from the general public and occasional free goodies. Also, money.
MISC...
We're closing in on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and like others I am thinking about giving it a try this year...
Funny, but this was exactly like a lot of my sports practices as a kid. Only for baseball...
