Comix Talk

A big thanks to Steve Troop for this month’s cover art depicting a Blank Label Comics board meeting in session… 🙂

I’m also going to plug We The Robots which is a good read with a short archives – it’s office humor but somewhat darker and more complicated then say… Dilbert. Over December, its creator Chris Harding posted a very funny cartoon not really based on the comic although the artwork is very similar. Anyhow if you missed it before you should click read more to see it

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Back in town with a rolling update for Friday (and the weekend). Should be new cover art and articles up on Sunday.

HEADLINES

• If you missed it check out Comics Worth Reading's interview with Chris Crosby over Diamond's rejection of Keenspot's participation in this year's Free Comic Book Day. Crosby's various comics entities have participated in FCBD for several years now so it is surprising that they will not be allowed to participate in this year's event. If the given explanation are true, however, it's just more evidence of how insular the thinking of the monthly comic bookpamphlet industry is by restricting their promotional event to existing direct market titles.

BUSINESS

• Satstu.com has an article on the state of the not-growing newspaper comic strip business. It also has a link to Chicken Wings which is a webcomic aimed at the aviation industry. In 2008 I'm going to predict that if there's enough public interest in something there will be at least one successful webcomic about it. How much public interest in a subject is enough? That's something I hope we can all get a better handle on this year – maybe with actual numbers and demographics.

CONGRATULATIONS

• Congrats to Jeph and Christi on their engagement. And hope everyone caught Jeph's pretty cool little reader-participation holiday comic. My gift to the happy couple is that something happens in Questionable Content this year. I keed, I keed…

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• New Years Day, Goats wrapped up its multi-verse saga with Jon in charge of hell? The first comic in the next storyline is up now… Don't let anyone kid you – combining consistently funny updates with a (somewhat) coherent storyline is hard. Throw in some actual character development – that's ISO 9000 there, baby! Last year, Goats began to hit a stride of humor and unpredictablilty in a just-plain-fun story – let's hope Rosenberg can do it again in 2008.
• A long way off but a firm date in May for the wedding of Brent and Jade should shake things up at PvP. PvP is more sitcom than storyline but every now and then Scott Kurtz successfully mixes up the elements of this long-running strip.
• SMBC is brillant. I love the punchline picture / set-up text jokes (kind of a reverse humor-fu) – here's one of my recent favorites with the added wha! of mixing D&D and sex. Probably too PG-13 to ever fit comfortably in newspapers but somehow it'd be great to sneak this into mid-America's breakfast reading.

COMRADES IN ARMS

• CONGA: The collective network of great artists is a pretty nifty site – not sure if its a collective or just a site spotlighting artists but either way its full of wonderfully cool art.

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I’ve been traveling (and still am until this coming weekend) but I thought I’d drop in to wish all a Happy New Year’s, Three Kings Day and other assorted holidays recent and forthcoming.

I saw a lot of comments on 2007’s POW list — much of it disagreeing with part or all of the article. That’a a feature not a bug folks and I suppose the only disappointing thing is how limited the follow-on discussion was in terms of adding names and discussing what you thought was important and influential in 2007. If there’s not much talk from you about comics at comixtalk then there isn’t that much to comixtalk…

Since I’m only on for a bit I’ll offer up an alternative take from Anne@FLEEN (although prefaced by Anne’s comment that Our People of Webcomics 2007 list struck her as "kind of a weird list" which strikes us as kind of a weird comment. Maybe she’ll add a bit more about her thoughts on 2007 in future posts?) — here’s some of the webcomics she thought worthy of name-checking as we head into 2008: Tom Humberstone’s Vented Spleen; Juan Santapau’s The Secret Knots; Natasha Allegri’s Normal Life; Mike Luce’s Fite!; Israel Sanchez’s Saturday; Kelly Vivanco’s Patches; Box Brown’s Bellen!; Bryant Paul Johnson’s Teaching Baby Paranoia; Matthew Reidsma’s High Maintenance Machine; Karen Ellis’s astounding Planet Karen, and Corey Marie’s Scene Language. That’s an interesting list with minimal overlap to any other end-of-2007 list I’ve read but with a few I personally haven’t actually had a chance to read (including Humberstone, Satapau and Sanchez). Like many other lists I think it’s probably best described as a "best webcomics" list as opposed to the more elusive "it-ness" the POW list tries to capture but not a bad place to start if you’re looking for some new webcomic recommendations.

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Whatever your holiday — hope it’s a good one.  Posting will be up to you (blogs and the forums) until January.  Continue Reading →

Saw a press release from Platinum Studios this morning (parent company of webcomic site DrunkDuck) announcing launch of SPASTIK (flattering name, that one) which looks to be basically a webtoon site.  Interestingly it lists a number of other webcomic-related sites as "affiliates" on its front page, one of which is rival webcomic site Keenspot’s Keentoons site. 

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I’m back from India! Happy holidays to all of you (including all of you Pastafarians too!)

COMIXTALK

• Our End-of-the-Year roundtable featuring some of the best comics journalists and bloggers on the Internet is up on the site. It’s a great wide-ranging discussion of good webcomics, interesting business developments and predictions for 2008.
• We’ve got an interiew with Matt Melvin of the uber-popular webcomic Cyanide and Happiness.
• We’re still looking for questions for our upcoming community interview with the members of the Blank Label Comics collective. Post your questions in comments to this thread.
• Don’t forget to check out our advertisers – current sponsors include the Learn to Draw the Human Figure anatomy course, Mary Janice Davidson’s latest book Swimming Without a Net and The Webcomic Beacon podcast.

DEAD TREES AHOY!

• The New York Times has an article on how some webcomics are creating solid sales in print and includes mention of Diary of A Wimpy Kid and Shooting War. Brian Fries, the creator of Mom’s Cancer offers his response to the article. Fies argues that Mom’s Cancer (which is not named in the Times article) was one of the first webcomics to cross-over to print. He could be right (although once he got a print deal he took Mom’s Cancer off the web so his approach was different than these other examples), anyone want to offer a counter-example?

AWARDS

• Instructions on submissions for nominations for the Eisners are here – the deadline is March 14, 2008. For webcomics there is a separate set of instructions:

  Entries are also being accepted for the category of best webcomic. This category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2007. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to jackiee@mindspring.com.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• Joe Loves Crappy Movies is ADORABLE!!!

INTERVIEWS

• Pretty interesting interview with Colonel Sweeto himself, Nick Gurewitch.
• CBR has a zaftig interview with Tycho himself, Jerry Holkins.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Gary notes that Brian Warmoth is leaving Wizard magazine. Warmoth did the Cursory Conversations series of interviews with webcomic creators and with his departure I wonder if anyone is still around at Wizard that is interested in webcomics.
• Lots of webcomics show up in Time’s Graphic Novels of 2007 article. One shows up in USA Today’s list.
• Broken Frontier takes a look at Phoenix Requiem, the new webcomic from Sarah Ellerton (creator of Inverloch).
• T Campbell argues for including PostSecret and I Can Haz Cheezburger? within "comics".
• Neil Cohn has an essay on the structure of manga.

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