Christopher Baldwin’s Little Dee got a nice writeup alongside the classics of newspaper comics in a review of recent book collections by Douglas Wolk in the Washington Post Book World section. (unfortunately you need to log-in to see Washington Post articles, check bug-me-not.com for possible existing log-in info)
Little Dee is on the web at http://www.littledee.net/Â
This is a list of links to useful articles on tools, resources and know-how about webcomics. Worth bookmarking for future reference.
While you’re at it check out links to some similar articles recently posted in our forums.
Just doesn’t seem to be a heck of a lot of news this week… anyhow, there will definitely be some new articles up on ComixTalk this weekend so stay tuned for that.
THEORY
ART
CONVENTIONS
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
So I got a few comics in the mail over the holidays. I have a PO Box address listed on the site you can send comics to for us to review. Although our primary focus is always going to be on digital media, well comics is comics, so I’m happy to take a look at whatever comes in over the transom. I can’t promise a full-blown review of everything but I’ll write something about whatever comes in.
So one of the things I got in was Runner’s Paradox by Steve Peters. (Peters is decidedly not really webcomics at all, but he does have a website for his label Awakening Comics). Peters sent me both the comic book (a 28 page color floppy) and a soundtrack to the comic called Paradox.
Music follows webcomics again. Here’s a good summary from TechDirt of the recent "name your own price" download offer for a Saul Williams album spearheaded by musician Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails, etc) which follows the earlier one by the band Radiohead. Very similar issues – what’s the value of "free"; what’s a reasonable expectation of conversion to "purchases" from a "free" offering (which seems very similar to recent discussions at FLEEN about how many and how much a webcomic creator can make based on their fanbase) and just how an independent artist charts his or her own course in this crazy mixed-up world of tubes and dump trucks…
Alan Gardner blogs about the newspaper comic space and is a good read if you’re interested in that business and those comics. Recently he posted his "review of 2007" which is a nice snapshot of the big stories of 2007 in that area. The Comics Reporter also posted an interview it did with Gardner which is an interesting read. One quote from that interview that is highly relevant to the comics on the web in 2008:
SPURGEON: Do you feel there’s still work to be done to prepare comic syndication for the increasingly on-line presence of daily newspapers?
GARDNER: In some regards, I wonder what work has been done. The big three syndicates have their own online presence with subscription services, but why they have product offerings to compete with newspapers instead of support them, I haven’t figured that one out. I don’t know when they will launch, but I know two of the syndicates, Universal and United both have significant upgrades to their web sites that will roll out in 2008. I’ve seen Universal’s and it has more community features like tagging and commenting. Again, the syndicates are investing to in make their own sites destination spots, but how that helps their cartoonists get into more papers or online papers where they make money, we’ll just have to see.
In the first installment of a series of articles examing the definition of "comic", Patric Lewandowski looked at existing efforts to define the nature of comics and proposed that another approach is needed. In the second installment Lewandowski set out the four criteria that he proposed to use in his examination of a new definition for comics.
In this article, Lewandowski focuses in on the first of his four criteria: the intent of the creator. What does this criteria mean? How is it defined? Why do we need it?
In this month's Panels & Pictures, Derik A Badman takes a close look at "Murder Dreams", a short comic from 1954 drawn by B. Krigstein.
Tom Brazelton of Theater Hopper writes about voting in the Iowa caucus this week. I think it’s nuts that we basically give roughly 300,000 people (200,000 Democrats and about 100,000 Republicans participated) in Iowa so much sway over who the nominees are going to be but it’s good to see at least one webcomic creator exercising their civic responsibilities.
Anyone else getting involved in the year-long circus that is the American presidential election? Anyone simply making comics about it?
Recent Comments