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Scott Ramsoomair

June 2006 Cover Art by Scott Ramsoomair

June 14, 2006 - 14:44


Cover art by Scott Ramsoomair

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.

VG Cats by Scott Ramsoomair

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.  

2008 Shuster Award Nominees

Submitted by The Administrator on April 10, 2008 - 19:33

The Shusters honor Canadian comics and their creators - click here for this year's nominees.  The Outstanding Webcomic Creators nominees are:

WCCA 2008 Nominees Are Out

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 5, 2008 - 11:00

The nominees for this year's WCCAs were released this past Sunday (sadly without any fanfare, or press release... again). But lots of interesting choices (and good links to comics!):

OUTSTANDING COMIC FINALISTS:
Achewood by Chris Onstaad
Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio
Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell
Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch
The Phoenix Requiem by Sarah Ellerton

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?

Tuesday News & Blues

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 19, 2007 - 10:10

COMIXMEDIA UPDATE:  I'm still working on the site(s) upgrade. Current plan is to have this site rebranded as COMIXTALK by the beginning of July. I'll have another site called COMIXMEDIA as an umbrella site for comics-related projects I'm working on. The upgrade here went well except the current "theme" for the site is creating some problems so I need to get the site moved to a new theme pronto (current plan is to simply update the current theme to Drupal 5.1 specs)

Guest Bloggers Wanted: Interested in blogging about (web)comics on ComixTalk in July or August? Drop me a note at xerexes AT comixpedia DOT com

BUSINESS
Todd Allen breaks another piece of the story about DC Comics plans for the web. DC Comics' new online editor is Kwanza Johnson (who according to Allen had a similar job with Marvel back in 2000?!) Allen predicts a "big" 4th quarter roll-out of webcomics from DC.

Mike Strang posted about his unhappy experience working for Platinum on a work-for-hire contract and others (T Campbell) chimed in with comments. Joey Manley compared work-for-hire to sticking your hand in a meat grinder. My own personal opinion is that authors should keep their copyrights and that creativity and business are both better off under those circumstances. But in movies, television, music and especially comic books, work-for-hire arrangements have been used forever and are still being used. So long as you know what you're getting into I don't see anything inherently evil about it. Just be clear on the concept - work-for-hire means all of your creative work becomes someone else's property. (REMINDER: if you comment at ComixTalk please try to be civil and respectful of others.)

INTERVIEWS
T Campbell interviews Aaron Williams, creator of Nodwick, PS238, Full Frontal Nerdity, co-writer on Truth, Justin, and the American Way.

Jane Irwin interviewed Templar, AZ creator Spike about webcomics and "effectively whoring your way to higher pageviews." You can read the interview here.

Shaenon Garrity interviewed Rob Vollmar who writes the comic Inanna’s Tears (drawn by mpMann).

Lynn Lau interviewed Katie Shanahan creator of the off-the-wall journal comic Shrub Monkeys.

Finding Wonderland talks to American Born Chinese author Gene Yang. (link from Journalista!)

DEAD TREES: Life Meter Vol. 2 will debut at MOCCA. Life Meter is an anthology of video game- inspired comics, featuring stories and art by Bannister, Joel Carroll, Raina Telgemeier, Steve Hamaker, Jake Parker, Jeffrey Rowland, Queenie Chan, and many, many more.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE: I saw some plugs for Boxcar Astronaut and it is indeed a cute comic (it reminds me a bit of the syndicated Red Rover comic strip).

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
FLEEN speculates on whether Elfquest creators Wendy and Richard Pini will follow the path of Phil and Kaja Foglio to the web.

At the Webcomicker blog, Gilead writes about Dominic Deegan:

If there’s one thing I like about Dominic Deegan, it’s that the storylines move forward progressively. The comic tends to have storylines which are fairly self-contained, with a specific villian or villians wreaking havoc with a specific set of goals and a specific set of heroes undergoing a specific set of actions in order to thwart said villians. But instead of each storyline coming around the full circle and leaving the heroes in basically the same place as they were when they started in classic comic book “and so the world was saved once again, and John D and Suzy Q were able to return to their normal lives” fashion, the characters in Dominic Deegan mature and grow from their experiences, and with each storyline move progressively closer to the “happily ever after.”

Joystiq readers pick their favorite comic.

Odd factoid of the day - according to this blog post, VG Cats creator Scott Ramsoomair used to babysit this guy.

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).