Keenspot
Keenspot Gets WICKEDPOWERED
Submitted by Chris Crosby on December 19, 2006 - 04:00
Webcomics publisher Keenspot Entertainment has teamed with handheld laser developer Wicked Lasers to produce an original branded webcomic series called WICKEDPOWERED. As one part of a major sponsorship agreement spanning the entire Keenspot network (and which also includes exclusive sponsorship of the Keenspot header bar and a minimum number of Leaderboard banner adviews per month), Keenspot will produce a new comic installment three times each week.
WICKEDPOWERED, a full color sci-fi comedy adventure by the creative team of Keenspot's SORE THUMBS, follows the adventures of a laser-wielding all-girl SWAT team sent back in time by Wicked Lasers' future counterpart to stop a time-tossed alien threat from destroying humanity.
"WICKEDPOWERED is transparently inspired by '80s cartoons, which were almost always toy advertisements disguised as entertainment," said Chris Crosby, co-writer of WICKEDPOWERED and co-CEO of Keenspot. "In spite of that, those shows managed to win the hearts of a generation with their earnest fun and awesome cheesiness. While Wicked's lasers definitely aren't toys (though they're certainly as fun), we're attempting to do the same sort of thing for an older audience that's into webcomics. It's just fun!"
Comixpedia's People Of Webcomics List For 2006
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.
- Act-I-Vate
- Boxcar Comics
- Drunk Duck
- Girlamatic
- Keenspot
- Brian Fies
- Brian Moore
- Chris Crosby
- Chris Onstad
- D.C. Simpson
- D.J. Coffman
- Dale Beran
- Dave Roman
- David Hellman
- Dorothy Gambrell
- Eric Burns
- Eric Millikin
- Fred Gallagher
- Fred Grisolm
- Gene Yang
- Gordon McAlpin
- Jason Little
- Jeph Jacques
- Jerry Holkins
- Joe Dunn
- Joey Manley
- Jon Rosenberg
- Kazu Kibuishi
- Kris Straub
- Lark Pien
- Mike Krahulik
- Mitch Clem
- Neil Babra
- Nicholas Gurewitch
- Owen Dunne
- R.K. Milholland
- Randall Munroe
- Rich Stevens
- Rob Balder
- Ryan North
- Scott Kurtz
- Shaenon K. Garrity
- Spike
- T Campbell
- Ted Rall
- Thomas K. Dye
- Tim Demeter
- Tom Brazelton
- Tom Siddell
- Tyler Martin
- Warren Ellis
- Wes Molebash
- Zach Miller
- A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible
- Achewood
- Cat and Girl
- Penny Arcade
- PvP
- Sinfest
- xkcd
- Yirmumah
- You Damn
- People of Webcomics
It'll Be a Blue Webcomic Without $%*#! You
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 18, 2006 - 10:41
MAGAZINE
- Check out the End of 2006 Roundtable with 10 comics-savvy writers covering the year in webcomics. A few more articles should be up soon (I'm editing as fast as I can!) - possibly even today.
INTERVIEWS
- The Comics Reporter interviews the creator of Narbonic and other webcomics, Shaenon Garrity. Really, really good interview. Interesting question at the end where Garrity muses on where she'll be five years from now. I think she's overlooking the webcomic/newspaper hybrid that Rich Stevens' Diesel Sweeties may be cracking open and that would seem well-suited to Garrity's combination of writing and artistic skills.
REVIEWS
- Digital Strips reviews some of the free webcomics published on Netcomics.com (Netcomics is the english-language affiliate of Korean manwha publisher, E-comix).
DEAD TREES
- Webcomics In Print posts one last book roundup for the year. (Don't forget to check out the Year In Print round-up in our December issue)
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Eric Burns posts the "pilot script" for ComicSense.com, a television show about webcomics - look for it around, oh I'll put my money on 2016. Actually it's a self-described parody of West Wing/Studio 60 creator Aaron Sorkin's style and since everyone reading this post knows webcomics, I can safely say - it's marvelously funny.
- From Fleen: Jennie Breeden is selling a deck of The Devil's Panties cards.
- Wow - 2 years and a 100 podcasts from Digital Strips. Congratulation to Daku (and the now-departed Zampson).
- Drawn! points to a tutorial by Les McClaine (creator of Johnny Crossbones).
- Joey Manley has started a discussion group on creating an API for Webcomics Nation. An API would allow third-party developers to write code that could work with the WCN code to do interesting things.
- Keenspot working with sponsor Wicked Lasers debuts a new webcomic called Wicked Powered created by Chris Crosby and Owen Gieni (the team behind Sore Thumbs). This may be the first sponsor co-owned/created webcomic. I'm all in favor of exploring new ways to make money from making comics so while it's too early to tell what this means, kudos to Crosby and Keenspot for pursuing the opportunity.
The Comixpedia End of 2006 Roundtable
|
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.
- Act-I-Vate
- Bomb Shelter
- Chemistry Set
- Dayfree Press
- Drunk Duck
- Girlamatic
- Keenspot
- Pants Press
- SpinZone
- Alexander Danner
- B. Shur
- Bill Barnes
- Chris Jones
- Chris Onstad
- Dave Roman
- David Willis
- Dorothy Gambrell
- Dylan Meconis
- Eric Burns
- Eric Millikin
- Jason Little
- Jeffrey Rowland
- Jenn Manley Lee
- Jennie Breeden
- Jerry Holkins
- Joey Manley
- John Allison
- Jon Rosenberg
- Justin Pierce
- Kris Straub
- Mike Krahulik
- Mike Russell
- Neil Babra
- Patrick Farley
- Raina Telgemeier
- Randall Munroe
- Rich Stevens
- Ryan North
- Ryan Sohmer
- Scott Kurtz
- Scott McCloud
- Shaenon K. Garrity
- Spike
- T Campbell
- Ted Rall
- Tim Demeter
- Tyler Martin
- Warren Ellis
- Zach Miller
- Achewood
- Cat and Girl
- Girly
- Goats
- Penny Arcade
- PvP
- What Birds Know
- WIGU
- Wondermark
- xkcd
- You Damn
- Features
Webcomics Creator Publishes Novel
Submitted by PhilKahn on December 6, 2006 - 19:01
Webcomics author/artist James L. Grant (Two Lumps, Flem Comics) has just published a novel entitled "On the Banks of Lethe." Anyone who reads his LiveJournal has been treated to the man's thoughts through the process of writing to publishing. Here's a summary...
"One day Charles receives a voicemail from a frantic woman who notes all the time they spent together when they were younger. She's coming to Dallas to be with him; and she still loves him. Charles has no idea who she is. This is a story of memory, betrayal, trust, two pennies and a dead man."
Now available on Amazon.
Webcomics: A United Front Against Wikipedia
Submitted by Sean C on December 1, 2006 - 15:52
Given all the recent fuss over Wikipedia’s history of blatant dismissal of the webcomics medium, I feel the need to express the following, and I think all webcomic creators, both superstar and little guys, should take this to heart.
"Why do we even care about this?"
We do not need Wikipedia.
Monday News Carousel
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 20, 2006 - 10:56
NEWS & VIEWS
- This is very interesting to me: Yahoo has inked a partnership with 176 newspapers across the country. Yet another sign that the business of putting daily content on dead tree pulp is in dire need of reinvention.
- Over the weekend, Joey Manley put up a long post about open standards for webcomics software. (Manley posted the same thing at The Engine and the comments there are also interesting) Don't be intimidated by the length of it - a key takeaway from it is that webcomics creators would be well served by a real effort for coders working on webcomics software to agree to some standardized data elements for webcomics. The immediate benefit Manley focuses on is that this would ensure "portability" for creators to easily move between services and/or software (for example moving a comic from Webcomics Nation to Keenspot) - something that is not easy when a comic's archive approach four digits.
- Neil Cohn responds to recent posts on transitions by Derik Badman (Derik's posts are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).
BOMB SHELTER IDOL
- I'm doing the guest judge gig for Bomb Shelter Idol (ahem... Yo dawgs!) which just finished the voting for the first round (The voting is the flip of the American Idol method as people are voting to boot a webcomic each week). The first webcomic to leave the island is One Liners. You can vote in the second round here. The judges are posting feedback each week on the contestants here. I put in a plug for Zed Reckoning which shouldn't have gotten as many votes for the boot as it did last week.
REVIEWS
- The Webcomics Examiner returns with a review of three webcomics: Jeepers by Andre Richard, The World of Mr. Toast Gags by Dan Goodsell, and If Nobody Likes Me, Why Am I So Popular? by Edward J. Grug III.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Make Krishna Sadasivam draw outrageous things! :) (Krishna has even graciously offered to do sketches of other webcomic characters)
- Webcomics In Print rounds up the latest in webcomics on dead trees (so I don't have to)!
- From Drawn! comes this link to a lesson plan from the 1960s called Composition: How to Make Pictures. This is a wonderful resource for anyone creating imagery, whether it be illustration, comics, animation, or even photography.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
- Sam Costello posted the second story in his horror webcomic anthology, Split Lip. The story "An Old Man, Looking" was written by Costello and drawn by Uruguayan artist Diego Candia.
Monday Monday...
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 13, 2006 - 11:20
Joey Manley announced that WebcomicsNation now offers a free service offering the same core functionality as the pay service. Leaving business issues aside, I think this is a great thing as the WebcomicsNation tool set is very useful. Scanning reactions to this I noticed Journalista! today praised the move, but found this quote curious: "I mention all of this because of the potential for this initiative to create the one thing that webcomics have pretty much lacked up until now: a central gathering point." What Dirk is describing is Big Panda circa 1999, Keenspot/space circa 2001. They were the online gathering points. What happened? Webcomics got bigger.
Gabe posted the cover to the forthcoming Penny Arcade book, "Birds Are Weird" (along with some of the preliminary sketchwork).
Basic Instructions by Scott Meyer is pretty funny (sort of a non-political Tom The Dancing Bug). There was a Digg entry for it recently. It only got 3 Diggs and so it didn't make the front page (most comics don't get "dugg" much from what I've seen) but Google picked up the Digg.com entry for it (presumably because Digg.com has a great page rank in the Google algorithm). So there might be a value to posting to Digg even without much hope of making the front page of Digg.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
- Long time webcomics creator (Todd and Penguin, Taking Up Space) has a new comic called Girl and Monster.
- Menace Club - someone remixed Dennis the Menace comics with Fight Club dialogue. Funny as hell (a little creepy too...) See it before the lawyers attack!
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Webcomics In Print has another great update on current webcomic book titles.
- FLEEN has an interview with Kristin Lindsay, director of the Penny Arcade-founded charity, Child's Play.
- Journalista! catches a profile of creator Ethan Lee (Single Asian Female) in AsianWeek.
- Lots of people are pointing to this NY Times piece on Dark Horse, a fairly successful independent comic book publisher.
- Obdormio praises Adrian Ramos' Count Your Sheep.
Friday News Blip and Thanks to Our Sponsors
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 10, 2006 - 11:34
New Sponsor! Transformers The Movie. How cool is that? We also want to thank continuing sponsors 8 Films To Die For, My Favorite Mirror, and the webcomics A Pirate's Life For Me, I See You, The Flow Field Unity, O''Deer, Gunnerkrigg Court, Alma Mater, and King Tractor Press.
NEWS
- Digital Strips latest podcast covers the newly revamped webcomics site, Pixel Strips.
- Jeffrey Rowland states that he will be doing some new WIGU comics which he describes as "'prequel' comics kind of. Before the madness set in." He is also going to scale Overcompensating back to 3 days a week.
- Pat Loika launches webcomic, HoCal, about the hotel industry at the Silent Devil website.
- Chris Crosby notes that Keenspot is a silver sponsor for this year's edition of the Child's Play charity created by Penny Arcade. It's great to see Keenspot step up and support a great cause.
- A very brief article this time, but The Comic Book Bin website threatens to "journey back to the early history of web comics. Where did they come from? What were these proto-web comics like and who created them? We’ll track the growth of the medium and it’s relationship to the technology that spawned it." I'm curious as to what they decide to cover.
INTERVIEWS
- Jennifer Contino interviews Raina Telgemeier about her Babysitter's Club graphic novels.
NOT WEBCOMICS
- The trailer for Spidey 3 drops. Lots of quick cuts so hard to tell really. But it does look like they may run the risk of Batman 2 disease on it - which if you remember is the second Tim Burton Batman movie where he crammed in to much (unresolved) story and characters for a two hour movie.
Keenspot a silver sponsor of Child's Play charity
Submitted by Chris Crosby on November 9, 2006 - 22:26
Keenspot is proud to announce that they are serving as a silver sponsor of the Child's Play charity. Child's Play has sent over a million dollars in toys, games, and cash to the sick kids in children's hospitals around the world.
