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Scott Kurtz

News for Thursday, February 1, 2007

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 1, 2007 - 11:34

We made it to February! Huzzah! This month marks 4 years of Comixpedia.

HEADLINES

The big topics of the week seem to be Wikipedia and WCCAs.

MILESTONES

INTERVIEWS

REVIEWS

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Biggie Panda: Old Skool Webcomics

January 28, 2007 - 23:03 | Xaviar Xerexes

One way to think of the history of webcomics is as the big bang of comics. At the beginning there were far fewer webcomic creators and they were (virtually) clustered together much more tightly (hence all the wistful talk of "webcomic community") and then, if the inflationary webcomicology theory is correct, those early webcomic exploded into the universe of comics online we have today.

WCCA Nominations Out

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 28, 2007 - 14:10

The full list of nominations for the upcoming WCCAs is out - get the list here or click read more (the WCCA site is slow today so I copied it into this post here).

 

News For Thursday, January 25, 2007

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 25, 2007 - 11:12

AWARDS

  • The new schedule for the WCCAs means the nominations will be released this week. I've posted the nominees for Best Comic and Best Newcomer in the post below. It does feel odd to call these the 2007 WCCAs though as they are aimed at recognizing webcomics published in 2006.

BUSINESS

Dead Trees

  • Boing Boing blog had a good post on the latest Doonesbury book, Heckuva Job, Bushie! I've been trying to include more coverage of comic strips in Comixpedia as all of them are online and some of their creators, including Gerry Trudeau, are very web-savvy.
  • Blogger and Sci-Fi author Cory Doctorow released his latest book, Overclocked, under a creative commons license (he always does this actually) and Martin Cendreda made a mini-comic of one of the stories called "Printcrime". It's available for download here.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

Late for Monday, Early for Tuesday News

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 16, 2007 - 00:21

More articles uploaded to the January issue of Comixpedia Magazine: an interview with Tyler Martin, creator of Wally & Osborne and another installment of Full Story Highlights which features completed webcomics. Don't forget to check out last week's articles: an interview with Foxy Lollop creator Mike Lacroix, Jon Morris' Plea for Hand-Lettering comic and 24 Hour Pixel People interviews King Arthur.

And now on to the news & views!

HEADLINES

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Kurtz to Amend and Peers: Join Me And Together We Will Rule The Galaxy!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 12, 2007 - 12:14

Interestingly enough, Scott Kurtz's recent post concerning a need to for established newspaper syndicate cartoonists (Bill Amend is specifically mentioned in part because of his alleged savvy to technology and the web) to work with webcomic creators to revive comic strips has been widely picked up by comic news sites.

Kurtz's post itself is long on description of the current situation, but vague on the proposed solution. I myself originally zeroed in on one of Kurtz's comments on the failure of his past efforts to get PvP syndicated (and acknowledging new efforts to get into newspapers). Certainly comics in all of its legacy forms (newspaper strips, monthly "books") is headed for changes or irrelevancy and it's always interesting to try and imagine how to bring a better future about. Something practical may actually come about from such discussions. So let me be clear - this is a good,and necessary discussion for comics and I'm glad that Kurtz used his platform to get people talking about it

Such a discussion has to be broader than Scott Kurtz though simply because as a public figure (based on his public comments) he can be a polarizing figure. Yes, Kurtz is talented and yes, PvP is an enjoyable read that frankly should be an easy sell to newspapers, but Kurtz does have a bit of a history of talking first, and smoothing it out later. This thread over at the Daily Cartoonist - home turf for newspaper creators - is an example of my point. It's a thread that is getting bogged down in discussion of other comments by Kurtz instead of the webcomics-meets-comic strips idea that's purportedly the whole point.

I'm not suggesting Scott Kurtz stop being himself - it's great that he says what he thinks (if for no other reason than to give me something to write about!) but if his heart is in the right place here (which given Kurtz's obvious love for comics I'm betting it is) then he should work to get other prominent webcomic creators involved. If Kurtz is the sole or primary webcomic "face" involved -- I fear we won't have a very productive discussion.

News For Thursday, January 11, 2007

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 11, 2007 - 11:49

INTERVIEWS

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

  • Random Assembly: Samatha Allen has really improved her art chops since this webcomics started. She also knows how to frame a joke or a bit well. I'm not sure the fairly random, slice-of-life nature of this webcomic is the best vehicle for her but (especially from 2006 on) it's a good read.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Comixpedia's People Of Webcomics List For 2006

December 18, 2006 - 12:07

It's the third annual Comixpedia People Of Webcomics List. This was the hardest one yet to compile. There's a lot of webcomics and a lot of people doing interesting things in and around webcomics. This list, as in past years, is an odd effort to compare apples and oranges: artistic achievement, audience popularity, technical achievement, business savvy, news-making impact all go into the mix.

The Comixpedia End of 2006 Roundtable

December 16, 2006 - 23:33 | Xaviar Xerexes

Our second annual virtual round table on the year in webcomics features comments from Eric Millikin, Daku, Gilead Pellaeon, Mike Russell, Lewis Powell, Alexander Danner, Eric Burns, Michael Rouse-Deane, Johanna Draper Carlson and Gary Tyrrell.

Web Versus Newsprint Drama... Again!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 15, 2006 - 18:34

The Daily Cartoonist is a good blog, but clearly a good chunk of its audience is fairly clueless about webcomics and the web as a distribution/publication system. A short but sweet post about R. Stevens impending launch of Diesel Sweeties in newspapers is met with the kind of whiny, defensive reaction I haven't seen since Wiley versus Scott Kurtz until Rich Stevens himself shows up and leads the counterattack:

I won’t argue the rest of your points, but there’s a million or more people doing looking at my comics every month without any kind of major media backing. When you can say that about your own stuff, you can make blanket dismissals of six and a half years worth of comics.

After that a much more interesting discussion continues. The Daily Cartoonist also promises an interview with Ted Rall on Diesel Sweeties and webcomics-to-syndication coming soon.