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T Campbell

Writing Fan Characters: the Stereotype Examined by T Campbell

July 4, 2004 - 23:00 | T Campbell

Say, did you know science-fiction fans like Star Trek more than they probably should?

Not only that, but Republicans are unconcerned about the poor, gay men are stylish, and Italian men are good lovers! It's true! And those are only the first few revelations you can get from sampling our pop culture!

Call for Questions for the Mad Scientist of Webcomics: Shaenon Garrity

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 4, 2004 - 19:00

Shaenon Garrity, the creator of Narbonic, L'il Mel, and More Fun has agreed to take questions from the readers of Comixpedia.

We'll take questions through Friday, July 16th. The top ten questions will be sent to Garrity for her reply.

Cool Tools for the Webcomic Jet Set

June 27, 2004 - 23:00 | Xaviar Xerexes

Creators make webcomics. Cool tools make the webcomic community go round. Here's to the geeks, the code monkeys, and the computer science students who come up with ingenious hacks to help creators automate publishing and fans find a webcomic's latest update.

I - Finders, Keepers!

A History of Features at Comixpedia

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 25, 2004 - 12:06

I took a look this morning at all of the feature stories Comixpedia has run since it launched almost 18 months ago. Why are some features relatively well-read and others attract lower numbers of clicks from readers? I thought it would be informative to find out which features in fact readers had clicked on a lot to read.

T Campbell's very first feature on the Business of Webcomics, garnered over 2000 views.

Eric Millikin's comic on Ready.gov also got almost 2000 views (1800 or so).

One of the most popular features ever on the site was Shaenon Garrity's Stop Drawing Bad Manga! which has had about 10,000 views.

T Campbell's History of Webcomics has always drawn a respectible number of readers but Part 4 had almost 4000 views, it's highest number in the series. T Campbell's mostly widely read contribution to the site, however, was Strips' Ends which had over 12000 reads. (I think this is the highest "views" number for a feature on Comixpedia)

Sean Barrett's piece about college comics and online comics about college also received almost 4000 views.

About the third installment of our short-lived Measuring the Webcomic Audience series, people started paying attention. In September of last year, over 10,000 people checked out the list. In November about 5000 checked out version 0.4 of the list. (The original editorial I wrote for this series also got over 3000 views)

More recently, Emmanuella Grinberg's article on nudity in webcomics got almost 2500 views.

It's impossible to know for sure how well-read our January features were because of our server issues that month.

What does all this mean? Hard to tell. There are a lot of really good articles published near the beginning of our run that I suspect have low numbers simply because our overall audience was much smaller than. Our daily audience to the site is now consistently over 5000 or so page views (that's not an average, that's basically the floor). Not much in comparison to popular webcomics but much more than the 1000 or so daily page views we had when we started.

There is also the randomness of who links to a feature. That tends to make a huge difference as well. Is there anything to be gained from the topics covered? The articles above seem to dissimilar to me to gain much understanding into what Comixpedia readers might want to see in the future but if you have some thoughts please post comments below.

WCCA 2004 Finalists Posted

Submitted by Dedos on June 21, 2004 - 16:55

The finalists for the 2004 Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards have been posted. With this milestone, the polls are now open for all registered web cartoonists (registration information can be found here) to determine this year's winners. The fight for Outstanding Newcomer looks very interesting with Count Your Sheep, Questionable Content, Skirting Danger, and Sore Thumbs all vying for the title.

(Full List of Nominees Below)

Writer's Best Friend? The Editor's Role in Webcomics by Alexander Danner

June 20, 2004 - 23:00 | Alexander Danner

As everyone knows, chief among the benefits of producing an independent webcomic is the freedom from any sort of editorial input or criticism. In the absence of the editor's stifling presence, a comics creator can maintain a pure artistic vision, and is thereby free to reach his or her full potential.

That seems to be the prevailing opinion, anyway. That editors might actually have useful skills and services to offer is a little-considered possibility.

Historical Romance Comic Crossover Pictures!

Submitted by Phalanx on June 15, 2004 - 12:30

The Historical Romance Comic Crossover (organized by Gloria Manderfield of Night and Day) paired up webcomic artists to create a crossover picture of their characters posing as historical couples. The submisssions are in and you can view the crossover webcomics at the official website.

Read on for the list of paired-up participants.

History of Online Comics, Pt. 7: The Beginnings of a "Modern" Age? by T Campbell

June 13, 2004 - 21:00 | T Campbell

Conventional wisdom held, as late as 2001, that the only sustainable economic models for online comics were ad-based. Either the comic carried advertising in some fashion, or it was itself an advertisement for its own merchandise. "Pay-to-read" models were mostly based upon speculation and mostly spectacularly unsuccessful. Even Scott McCloud found his position as comics pundit threatened over his endorsement of "micropayments".

Tycho of Penny Arcade was one of several cartoonists who took McCloud to task for it: "This guy's take on human nature is spun from pure fancy. He imagines that other people – in fact, that everyone-- would gladly pay for things if given the chance to do so. That is demonstrably, empirically false-- most especially so on the Internet, and most damningly so where content is concerned." They eventually mended fences, but the point of wisdom had been made.

However, Joey Manley was never much for listening to conventional wisdom.

Damonkey Business by Damonk

June 13, 2004 - 21:00 | Frank "Damonk" Cormier

Eggheads Anonymous

We've all become eggheads.

Geek Women: Your Little Standards-Compliant Fantasy

June 6, 2004 - 21:00 | Wednesday White

"Any female[...] has had to work ten times as hard as her male counterpart to be accepted in their organization. She will be more able, will react quicker, and will generally be much more dangerous. Kill her first." -- Starr, "One Man's War," Preacher

Girl geeks may never have had it better, but that doesn't mean we're altogether finished yet.