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Tim Demeter

Drink and Draw Social Club Milwaukee Holiday Event

Drink and Draw is an event started in Cali by the Reverend Dave Johnson, and since a bunch of satellite chapters have sprung up, including our very own Milwaukee chapter.

We've been doing this for months, but we're putting a real push on the holiday event on Dec 15th. Drink and Draw is exactly what it sounds like, we meet at a bar and we drink and we draw (bring your own art supplies!) and generally have a good time. This isn't an event just for comicers either. If you like to make art, bring your gear to the bar and get in on the good times.

Offline social interaction is good for you, so come join us! More details here:

www.myspace.com/drinkanddrawmke

If you're not in the Milwaukee area, check out the MySpace anyways, as there are chapter springing up all over the place and there's probably one near you.

Geek.Kon in Madison, WI

Geek-Kon is Madison Wisconsin’s own con for all things geek. Our two-day con is striving to provide a gathering place where all geeks can find their own PG-13 geek fun. This free oasis in downtown Madison will provide: Anime and Sci-fi Showings; Gaming of all Flavors; LARPing; an Anime Music Video Contest; Art Showcase; Costume Masquerade; and More!

All-purpose geek, Tim Demeter, will doing a panel at 1PM on Saturday about getting a job in the art and entertainment field and making your way as a freelancer.

SEPTEMBER FEATURE ARTICLES, OCTOBER COVER ART AND TODAY'S NEWS

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 1, 2007 - 08:49

Welcome to October! A big thanks to Spike, creator of Templar, Arizona, for creating this month's cover art. This past weekend we posted the rest of the September issue: interviews with Gisele Lagace and Shayna Marchese; a feature by Grant Thomas examining the integration of text and images with an interesting look at different ways to use speech bubbles; and Michael Payne looks at some great print comics that have moved to embrace the web. More interesting articles are on their way in October...

And in other news...

HEADLINES

MILESTONES

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

  • A recent Big Fat Whale from Brian McFadden on why protesting maybe doesn't always work so well at getting results...

EVENTS

TECHNOLOGY

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

  • Andrew Farrago has an interview with Jason Thompson, the author of Manga: The Complete Guide. Thompson read and reviewed every English-language manga ever released in preparation for his new book. (h/t Dirk Deppey)
  • At The Telegraph, Robert Colvile writes up webcomics with comments from Chris Onstad, Gary Tyrrell and others. (h/t Dirk Deppey)

What Are Your 5 Funniest Webcomics?

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on September 19, 2007 - 10:08

Sid picks his 5 funniest webcomics (link just slightly b/c of cartoon nudity NSFW): Xkcd; Basic Instructions; Wulffmorgenthaler; Ctrl+Alt+Del; and JOHN AND JOHN.

I've read all of those except for John and John and while I've laughed at all of them I'm not sure any of them would make my list for the 5 funniest webcomics. For me those would be the comics that flat out make me laugh the most and the most consistently. What 5 comics would you pick?

Kowabunga: TMNT Goes Webcomic!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on September 12, 2007 - 14:26

Creator Peter Laird writes that Volume 4 of the comic of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be published as a webcomic before being collected in a later print version (Basically TMNT is going the Girl Genius route). The plan seems to be monthly updates ("Each issue will be posted online at the ninjaturtles.com official TMNT website, within a few days (or maybe even hours) of being completed.") Laird writes further:

There are a few reasons for this new approach, mostly related to my work habits. For quite some time, before I took most of the last year off from doing the Vol. 4 comics, I had been getting more and more frustrated by what was required of me, with every issue, to meet the requirements of Diamond Comics, the major comics distributor. This included preparing solicitation material three months in advance for the "Diamond Previews" catalog, along with ads and such. For whatever reason, preparing these materials on this schedule, along with actually getting the book ready to go to the printer by a set deadline, was just really starting to get to me. (Don't get me wrong -- Diamond's system is a fine, reasonable, businesslike approach to distributing comics, and works very well. I just can't deal with it anymore.)

I was also getting frustrated with the time lag between finishing the book and actually seeing it appear before the eyes of the fans, on comic store shelves. It would very often be up to four or five weeks from the time we sent the materials to our printer. Again, not uncommon and completely reasonable -- it takes time to print, bind, trim and ship a comic book.

Entitlement and Derivative Works

Submitted by posiduck on August 20, 2007 - 20:21

I have seen some discussions recently about Eric Von Websnark's suggestion that For Better or For Worse fans appropriate and repurpose the comic. There are some very interesting (and heated) comments going on over at that post, so people should check those out, but I want to talk about entitlement and derivative works.

It's Business, It's Business Time. Part 4: Make Room For Daddy

Submitted by Tim Demeter on August 16, 2007 - 10:02

Shelf space.

Those are the two words that were the bane of the indie comic creator for many a year. Comic shops and spinner racks are only so big, and unless your comic is Spider-Man or Batman, well, you'd have to fight for space.

It doesn't help that running a comic shop is no fast track to fabulous wealth and their owners have to invest carefully, no matter how much they love the more progressive components of the industry.

Well, with the new indie community existing largely online, guess what? Shelf space isn't something you need to worry about any more, and that, friends, is a good thing. Here, look what I can do:

What is love? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more!

And that total waste of your time was hugely important for a lot of reasons!

It’s Business, It’s Business Time. Part 3: Longform Comics Need to Man-Up

Submitted by Tim Demeter on August 15, 2007 - 12:35

I was never a fan of newspaper comics. Calvin and Hobbes may have been the first comic I ever read, but once it ended, that was it for me, everything else seemed formulaic and contrived to me with no room for any real artistry. That may or may not be true, but it’s how I feel.

Now, comic BOOKS, that’s another story. Just as Calvin and Hobbes was ending I began devouring X-Men, and Spider-Man and Batman, and it’s where my love of comic comes from, what originally inspired me to make a career out of comics.

Those are the kind of comics I love and the kind of comics I want make, but they’re not dominating the web.

Monday

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 13, 2007 - 12:22

This week's guest blogger is Tim Demeter who does way too many cool things for me to list 'em. Needless to say I'm grateful for him to take sometime out of his busy schedule to guest blog for the site again (he helped out last summer as well).

BUSINESS

  • Gary Tyrell at FLEEN has a good post on DC Comics Zudacomics project. Zudacomics is DC's webcomic portal for new stuff from creators - not it's "putting DC comic books on the web" site, which oddly enough DC hasn't gotten around to creating yet. Apparently DC must think that the music industry's Internet strategy is awesome as it and Marvel appear to be following large parts of it - although not yet suing large numbers of their customers so good on them for that bit of common sense. Is it just me or is the huge rise in scanlation trading online (scanlation is the direct equivalent of ripping CDs into mp3s) at least somewhat the fault of DC and Marvel for failing to put their immense catalog of material online in any meaningful way for consumers? Sort of related here is Joey Manley's recent post spelling out his view that Modern Tales as a subscription site was a success, but one limited by the subscription site model. Manley links to a post about Zudacomics and cracks wise that:
    It’s interesting and illuminating to see the “mainstream” comics community try to get a grip on how the digital distribution of comics can be monetized. Sometimes, it literally feels like they’re repeating every business idea that took the webcomics community by storm over the past ten years, and in exactly the same order, only to discard each in turn (as did we, for the most part) and move on to the next.

    I'm interested of course in any comics publishers' projects involving digital distribution of comics. It's the future of all media, not just comics and the sooner comics sorts out how to survive the intertubes the better for comics. Anyhow back to Gary's post and zudamania. I think DC's insistence on a 4:3 format for comics isn't going to be a problem for people willing to get into bed with Zudacomics in the first place. The 4:3 ratio is probably equally useful to Zuda to make their site slicker and more consistent for readers as it is to any print spin-offs Zuda pursues. But I definitely think Gary's point that a successful Zuda might benefit some non-Zuda creators more than anyone actually on Zuda to be pretty insightful and likely correct.

INTERVIEWS

DEAD TREES

  • Journalista! points to this Publisher Weekly post on Amazon's new self-publishing program:
    Through Project Vine, readers with a history of posting accurate and helpful book reviews are being invited to receive advance copies for review purposes. And, through CreateSpace, a division of the company that already provides CD- and DVD-on-demand services, Amazon has added book publishing options.

REVIEWS

TRANSITIONS

  • Newsarama is reporting that Mike Wieringo passed away this Sunday of a sudden heart attack. Wieringo wasn't that much older than me (he was 44) and he's also one of the few names in comic book land I was familar with before I got into all this webcomics. By all accounts not only was he very talented but a tremendously nice guy. He had a blog and I imagine there will be some info on memorials there.

SWAG

NOT WEBCOMICS

  • Sometimes superhero movies are cool, sometimes they are ridiculous. Sometimes they're just a muddled mess where the director/writer/whatever can't figure out what kind of movie they're making. Time Nerd World blogger Lev Grossman posts about the planned Thor movie and I have to agree with his doubts about the direction Marvel supposedly is taking with it. The main reason I'm linking to this NerdWorld post though is to harp on the planned The Incredible Hulk movie which is being touted as a "re-do" of the Ang Lee movie (and not a sequel). I'm not sure how I'd script it because I don't think you'd want to make a movie too crowded with Marvel Universe characters but wouldn't you rather see a new Hulk movie along the lines of this "World War Hulk" comic book mini-series Grossman blogs about than another origin story? The Hulk is a big scary ambiguous bad guy (sort of like the Terminator character in T2) that blows stuff up. Make that movie without any pretense to being something else and you'd probably have the summer hit Marvel wants.

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?