Tokyopop’s Manga Pilot program caused so much controversy that everyone forgot to read the manga. Now they are relaunching with a redesigned website and new features to help creators promote their work — possibly even to other companies.
Pokey the Penguin is a charming surrealist webcomic that celebrated its 10th year anniversary this past February. Pokey wanders around the ARTIC CIRCLE (and not the Antarctic with the rest of his penguin bretheren) with his buddies: Little Girl, Headcheese the Hippo and Mr. Nutty the Snowman.
Justin Pierce reviewed the comic for ComixTalk back in 2003, summarizing things with this pithy statement:
Yes, it's true. I AM POKEY, too. How 'bout you?
All of which got me to thinking, what the world needs now is an interview with Steve Havelka, the alleged creator of Pokey the Penguin. But since the only way I found to contact someone connected with Pokey was the pokey@yellow5.com email address and I got a response from the PENGUIN himself, I figured why not go with that?
So after wandering the wilds of Arizona last week I thought I’d catch us all up on some things from webcomicland:
First off here’s a post from DJ Coffman any creator looking to do the webcomic thing should read: "Host your own friggin’ webcomic" shows how you can start up a webcomic for almost nothing.
INTERVIEWS
Last week there was a good interview with Gordon McAlpin, the talented creator of Multiplex and a co-host of the Triple Feature movie podcast. I’ve been reading Multiplex from day one so I don’t really know if it’s underrated or not — either way if you’re not reading it give it a look — it’s a great mix of actual story along with a big box of popcorn movie-related subjects.
BUSINESS
Chcuk Rozakis ask some good questions about how comics publishers will make use of the web. Is he right that a "perfect" e-reader will be a print-killer? Is DRM (i.e., copyright protection) going to slow down or stop fans migration to the publishers’ web offerings?
El Santo takes a look at Marvel’s announcement it’s putting original material – comics based on the Hulk and Iron Man movies – up on the web.
CONVENTIONS
Here’s an interview with aka Gabe and Tycho from this year’s PAX about the Penny Arcade empire, including the location (BOSTON!) of next year’s PAX EAST.
COLLECTIVES
The Eyeskream webcomic collective adds three new webcomics to its roster: Little Terrors, Gamer Candy, and Somewhere in SF.
CONTESTS
Roddenberry comics is giving away stuff: a 2009 Roddenberry Comics Calendar, featuring episodes from “Gene’s Journal’ and “Rod Barry,"; a pair of clocks of both “Gene’s Journal” and “Rod & Barry,” and a “Gene’s Journal” journal, ready to keep your most trusted thoughts and memories. Check out the site for contest details.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Check out the newest bit of robot-goodness: Lovesick Robot.
As FLEEN reported yesterday, the Ignatz Award nominations have been announced, and the nominations for the Online Comic category are:
Welton Colbert returns to the pages of ComixTalk for a very special day! And we're not telling why it's special! You'll just have to figure it out for yourself – click on for the comic!
INTERVIEWS
CBR talks with Danielle Corsetto, the creator of the damn-funny Girls With Slingshots.
REVIEWS
I wrote a recent review of Faith Erin Hicks’ graphic novel Zombies Calling and completely missed some visual storytelling involved in the "infection" and some other bits about the main characters. Over at the SLG blog, editor Jennifer deGuzman shows me the light!
GIMME THE GIMMICK!
For all I know this will be a really good webcomic. After all it’s been "more than ten years in development.". But the press release is stressing that the new comic from Kelly J. Compeau, The Black Tower, is "an ad-supported interactive webcomic series targeted at environmentally conscious teens and adults." Oh it gets better. Let me just snip from the press release:
What’s unique about this project is the interactive element, a first in the comics industry. Every issue of "The Black Tower" will be made available online… with clickable links to product placement advertisers, music videos and YouTube/MySpacetv shorts (live-action extensions of the comic book), Wikipedia pages and internal Black Tower factoid/who’s-who webpages, to help new readers get up-to-speed on what’s going on. There will also be links to fully functional faux websites seen being accessed by characters in the webcomic, and blogs written "in character", with comments posted by devoted fans who choose to play along with the charade. All readers have to do to access these special features (Easter eggs) is roll their mouse over the panel featuring the "Interactive Icon" (the little black & white X in the bottom corner of the pic) and they’ll be taken to a website that may feature the product shown in that panel, or it may take them to a music video for the band featured in that panel, or a character’s MySpace page etc. If the comics do exceptionally well over the first two of its expected six-year run, Compeau hopes to expand "The Black Tower" empire by launching a video game companion, paperback novels, action figures, board games, trading cards, toy props & weapons, posters, calendars, and a clothing & jewelry line, among other things.
In all seriousness, this could be a lot of fun but oy that press release is not helping…
Dirk Deppey catches all the Platinum news this morning. Deppey describes a now-deleted post on the Investors Hub website (here’s the Platinum discussion forum there if you’re interested) by Platinum COO Brian Altounian that was a pretty inflamatory comment on Platinum’s "relationship" with creator D.J. Coffman. Coffman responded here and later here.
Deppey also links to a Publisher’s Weekly story that focuses in on how book publishers are still happy with the new WOWIO site whereas comic publisher are not. I think that actually speaks volumes to where the two types of publishers are in terms of adapting to the web and incorporating new media into their publishing strategies.
Daniel "Merlin" Goodbrey is one of the artists I know both myself and Frank "Damonk" Cormier were pretty into when ComixTalk launched in 2003. So it’s a bit surprising to me that we’ve had a 5 year lapse in interviewing him. These days Goodbrey has a day job teaching at in the School of Film, Music & Media at the University of Hertfordshire with a focus on Digital Animation. And far from disappearing these past years, Goodbrey has continued to create memorable work on the web and in print as well as continue to experiment with hypercomics and other experimental notions in comics. And not unlike the direction of "webcomics" as a whole, Goodbrey has increasingly blurred the lines between web and print in his creation of comics.
Derik A Badman looks at two webcomics from Top Shelf 2.0, Cave Adventure by Michael DeForge and Ritual of the Savage by Jed McGowan, in this month's Panels & Pictures.
INTERVIEWS
CBR has a good interview with Aaron Diaz of Dreseden Codak. (Comixtalk interviewed Diaz in June of this year; and reviewed Dresden Codak in February.)
CONTESTS
Bomb Shelter notes that its Webcomic Idol contest will start taking submissions on October 1st.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
The LATIMES rounds-up the praise for Josh Neufeld’s A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, a comic I also feel is one of the best of the year.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Journalista! points to this article on what journalists can learn from comics… specifically Scott McCloud’s comic about Google’s Chrome browser.
Recent Comments