Spot And The Panda

"Whatever happened to Bryan McNett?"

It's a question experienced webcartoonists ask each other, now and again. It was a question many of them asked their e-mail inboxes as they pounded their desks in frustration.

In one respect the answer is easy: McNett is now a video game developer. He posted to an abortive, eponymous blog in September 2003.

But to the webcomics community, he is as remote as if he had passed to the Great Beyond. Many of today's webcartoonists don't even know who he is. Those webcartoonists who did business with him consider him a failure. Some who knew him had reason to hate him. And because he has never told his side of the story, it's difficult to balance the picture. Yet in his contribution to webcomics history, McNett may be as important as any of his successors, maybe even as important as any of the Five Horsemen.

Online, there are almost no entry barriers to the reporting and punditry market. With the advent of free blogging software, practically anyone can set up a site to report on any subject.

Stickler and Hat-trick, in association with Comixpedia present…

Stickler and Hat-trick at the Keyboard

Matt Shepherd is quite simply the man behind the man-man. An Anglophone living in Quebec, Canada, he was roped up by the Comixpedia crew to become the Special Events editor. From his devious Canadian mind was spawned the latest installment of Fright Night, and the most current machination is the love-infested Blind Date event for the Valentine's period. In this interview, Matt spills the beans on his comic book pasts, and his burning, bilious jealousy of our Editor-in-Chief's things.

A friend summed it up this way: "Achewood is just ... weird," she said. She obviously liked it -- maybe because it is weird, maybe because it's also so familiar.

Dylan Meconis and Bill Mudron talk about webcomics... and chocolate.

What is a Comixpedia feature?

It might be easier to explain what it's NOT.

It's not an interview, although experts and other relevant people might be consulted and quoted.

I've been creating webcomics since 1998. During that time, I've seen the rise of the Livejournal, blogs, forums, guestbooks and chat/tagboards (I had a Livejournal BEFORE they became popular). I've also heard many concerns coming from other webcartoonists about feedback. Instant feedback and detailed feedback. For the budding web cartoonist, this seems the main priority (second only to begging for donations, but that's another rant). Of course, everyone WANTS feedback. It's nice to know that when you're 'speaking', someone is 'listening'.

Out of the deepest, darkest shadowy recesses of the human mind they stumble, shambling horrors dressed in tattered clothing and dripping gobbets of rotting flesh. They are the embodiment of our ancient collective fears of the dark, of death, of what happens after. They are the dead who walk the earth. No, they aren't your in-laws, nor those little identically-dressed girls that try to sell you cookies. They aren't even Pauly Shore.

They are zombies.

"Campbell Campbell Campbell!" the thread screamed at me, flaring a red "angry" face at the top of the message board.

It was late. I was tired and sleep-deprived, and we had just officially begun the War on Terror, but I tried to steel myself for whatever the message might have to say. I tried, but not hard enough.

"I would have thought that the last story would have been enough to get him to put down the pen forever. I guess not."