Comix Talk

I’m working on updating the 2007 News Stories story when I can find time today (January through March is largely done at this point) so I doubt I’ll get around to a news post. Be sure to check out the lastest reader blog posts though!

One of the stories I want to dig into more (but obviously haven’t yet) is ongoing web versus comic book publisher saga, most recently visible in Marvel’s decision to put some of its comics on the web. Here’s a round-up of recent stories on Marvel DCU:

• Colleen Doran writes about signing up for the Marvel DCU service. It’s not quite seamless yet.
• E Onlines takes a look at Marvel’s DCU offering.
• CBR interviewed Marvel DCU publisher Dan Buckley.

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AWARDS

• The judges for next year’s Eisner awards have been named. They are Bookazine Company pop-culture category director John Davis; comics and prose writer Paul Di Filippo; California retailer Atom! Freeman; Entertainment Weekly writer Jeff Jensen; and California librarian Eva Volin. (h/t Journalista!)

INTERVIEWS

• An interview with Lisa Jonte, comics creator and editor of Girlamatic.

WARREN ELLIS

• Does anyone know when Warren Ellis’ upcoming Freak Angels is going to debut? UPDATE: Wow – that was almost psychic – Warren Ellis in a post to his email list this morning said the webcomic would launch in February 2008.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• The Comics Reporter reviews a recent Cul-De-Sac comic. This new/old strip by Washington Post illustrator Richard Thompson is quite good. Thompson brings to the comic years of experience creating comics for the Washington Post Sunday magazine. (You can read it online here.)
• Journalista! points to a review of the new Marvel DCU comics service in the LA Times.
• There is one of those "let’s pretend we’re not telling anyone about our million dollar web campaign" kind of marketing campaign going on for the next Batman movie.
• Ryan Estrada has a story running on the Penny and Aggie webcomic site.

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Rolling Monday news update…

HEADLINES

• Dirk Deppey has a good roundup of recent steps by DC and Marvel to try and crack down on file-sharing of scans of their monthly comic books. It’s their right to do so of course under the current copyright laws, but both companies are still not offering legal alternatives for consumers to obtain their current material in a digital format. Carrot and stick usually work better than just the stick.

BSC Webcomic Idol 2.0

• The voting was over last night but it may still be going (I just voted). In any event, current results have and Templar, AZ won with 60% of the vote to 40% for Lucid TV. This is the second year of this event and all things considered it seemed to go pretty well. Hopefully it drew some more attention to some worthwhile comics.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• Anne@FLEEN plugs We The Robots and after giving it a read I’d have to agree. Creator Chris Harding also recently appeared on the Half Pixel Webcomics Weekly Podcast.

DEAD TREES

• Comics Worth Reading has a review of HeavyInk.com which aims to be "both Amazon and Facebook for comics".

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Neil Cohn writes about recent research on eye movement across the comic page. The research shows that for an average of 8.5 panels per page, there are an average of 20.3 fixations. Most of their study focused on panels that were skipped over for one reason or another. Two types of changes to the page showed significant effects in decreasing the rates that they were skipped: balloon position and panel layout.

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BSC WEBCOMICS IDOL 2.0

• This week was the final round (maybe something to tweak next year to avoid having it during the week of Thanksgiving) and it all ends tonight at midnight (pretty sure about that anyhow). It’s down to Templar, AZ and Lucid TV – both well done comics in every aspect and good examples of work that is thriving on the web that might not have found their audience without the web. Go vote and check out both comics if you’re not already reading them.

WEBSITE WONDERLAND

• Scott Kurtz redid his pvponline.com site — this time working with Tyler Martin and his comicpress theme for Wordpress. If you’ve got a webcomic site you ought to check out Wordpress+comicpress as a solution. Wordpress is possibly the most popular piece of blogging software around (so it’s not going away) and Tyler has made it work well for webcomics with the custom comicpress theme. All of it open source and free.

INTERVIEWS

• Wizard interviews Mike Hankins, the creator of the webcomic Dorm Dorks.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• The Nixonomicron… that’s classic! Check out this Non-Adventure of Wonderella.
• A one-stop shop for all things Shaenon K. Garrity – shaenon.com. Cool!
• I really like the in-panel animation Michael Lalonde has been using in the recent Ornery Boy storyline.

WIKI WATCH

• The entry for ComixTalk is still up at Wikipedia so if you’re at all wiki-inclined what would help it would be adding any citations to Comixpedia or ComixTalk from other media (preferrably in print as that’s Wikipedia’s bias).
• My advice to all webcomics is still to start an entry at Comixpedia.org and let it evolve organically there for a good chunk of time (especially if you’re just starting out) so that you have a very solid article with citations ready to port to Wikipedia if and when your webcomic is getting enough attention that it might be considered "notable" at Wikipedia. My opinion is that debates at wikipedia over notability and deletion in a lot of cases have much more to do with the actual state of the article on Wikipedia than the subject of the article itself.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• This comic (translated from Korean to "This Is Game") about a daughter and mother’s experience playing Animal Crossing is a moving comic that a lot of folks seems to be linking to.

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Frontpage posting will be light (as in almost nonexistent) this week so keep your eyes peeled for interesting updates in the reader blogs and the forums. It’s up to… you!

HEADLINES

• Von Allan has decided to publish his graphic novel, the road to god knows on Girlamatic.com. The press release states it will start on December 3rd, running four time a week. Girlamatic closed its most recent round of submissions in early November – I wonder if we’ll see an announcement of more additions to the site in the near future.
• Time to get ready for the annual Monkey Day webcomics festival! Check out the details here.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• Tom Spurgeon reviews Set to Sea by Drew Weing. This is a great comic and one I actually look forward to buying in print someday.
• Gunbaby was in the BSC Webcomic Idol contest but didn’t last long enough. It’s a good comic that seems very promising even as it is less then perfect. Wonderful art (reminds me a bit of Alpha Shade) but sometimes static shots kill the momentum. Interesting story ideas but sudden uncued scene and perspective jumps could be handled a bit better. Creators Matt and Gabe White have talent though – you get the sense that they could get a lot better. I’d definitely give the archives a read.
• Kate Beaton is funny!

MOST READ

• T Campbell takes a second swing at compiling webcomic audience numbers from Alexa and Compete.

DEAD TREES… For me!

• I’m playing around with a book swap service called Book Mooch. Potentially cool, although it’s pretty weak in the graphic novel side of things right now… You can check out what I’m willing to trade through a widget on my home page here.

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BUSINESS

• Todd Allen has a good overview of recent digital online efforts: comparing Marvel’s Digital Comics Unlimited to iTunes and Rhapsody, and then wondering why Zuda and Comic Mix are not maximizing their potential ad revenue.

INTERVIEWS

• Tom Spurgeon has an interesting interview with Rick Marshall, the recently fired former online editor of Wizard. Marshall takes a lot of credit for Wizard’s recent online attention to independent webcomics which seems to be continuing through the efforts of staff writer Brian Warmoth.
• Comicgate has a good interview with Dirk Wood, the marketing director for Dark Horse. There’s a bit in there about Dark Horse’s webcomics on MySpace. Like Marvel’s DCU, Wood seems to think that online readers want webcomics to "feel" like reading a comic book. This is, to say the least, wrong. At best, interfaces like this evoke a nostalgia or a "that’s cool" feeling for a few days, but then quickly become annoying. If comics can learn anything from the foibles of the music industry, it’s that consumers in the intertubes era want maximum flexibility with their content. And there’s also this (sadly) accurate description of the direct market demographic (emphasis added): "Whether it’s a ten-year-old girl going into a book store or a 40-year-old man going into a comic shop or toystore."

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Marvel Digitalcats Ho! announcement… check.

Marvel website crash… check.

Waking up the morning after… check:

• Slashdot commenters discuss the announcement.
• ComixMix wonders if Marvel will pull materials from its online initiative if they prove too popular.
• The Beat says now we can clear out some of the boxes in the attic.

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I have been utterly lame at giving feedback this year during the BSC Webcomic Idol contest. And at this point it’s down to three comics:

• Lucid TV: an utterly brutal but often funny comic about what, dear god!, I hope is an unrealistic portrayal of most doctors.
• Templar, Arizona: which is about a town and a cast of characters and is hugely enjoyable to read. Blame Thank creator Spike for not making it so simple I can actually explain it in a sentence.
• Simulated Comic Product: I’m less familiar with this one but I’ve laughed at the recent ones I’ve checked out.

Vote, read. It’s all good!

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HEADLINES

• Dirk Deppey links to Marvel Comics new webcomic effort — Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited as well as a USA Today story on the new site. The bottom line — the site will feature 2,500 comics (nothing more recent than 6 months old though) for $9.99 a month, or $4.99 a month if you’re willing to commit for a year. Aren’t these guys about 4 years late to the subscription model? Still it’ll be interesting to see how it does and who becomes its audience (existing fans or newcomers to Marvel stories).

ADVERTIZING

• Sodaware reviews several ad platforms including Project Wonderful.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• Reinder Dijkhuis brings back from hiatus his comic Invasion which will resume on November 21, on his Chronicles of the Witch Queen site.

AROUND TEH WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Randall Munroe entertains the masses at Carnegie Mellon.
• New dope track from KRiS-ONE at Halfpixel.com.
• Congratulations to Fred Gallagher of Megatokyo on becoming a dad.
• Neil Cohn writes about how using repurposed art for comics doesn’t work well.
• The Moderate Voice blog names xkcd as it’s top webcomic for 2007.  Click here for their top 10 list. (h/t Tom Spurgeon)

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Sorry to post about Wikipedia again. I made the mistake of checking on the deletion thread there this morning (I blame Dirk Deppey for linking to it in Journalista! this morning and reminding me of it) and I see another mischaracterization of ComixTalk by the Wikipedia user Dragonfiend.

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