Comix Talk

Shades of xkcd! Wellington Grey arguably doesn't create comics so much as flowcharts, but whatever, they're often extremely funny and remarkably insightful. A few favorites include:

• Science Vs. Faith
• Slashdot
• What Would Richard Feynman Do?

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INTERVIEWS

• Broken Frontier has an audio interview with Narbonic creator and Modern Tales editor Shaenon Garrity.

AWARDS

• The Comics Reporter covers the Xeric grant winners for this year.

DEAD TREES

• Webcomics In Print covers D. Richard Scannell's book For the Hermits.

REVIEWS

• Broken Frontier looks at Bobby Crosby's and Remy Mokhtar's Marry Me.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Scott Kurtz points out the new revamped Image Comics website. Pretty cool and a good reminder that they do have online comics posted there.
• Bookslut has an interview with this year's Eisner awards judges.
• Journalista! notes that the 28th Yomiuri International Cartoon Contest is open for submissions.
• 9 Chickweed Lane creator Brooke McEldowney announced that Pibgorn (recently departed from Comics.com) will take up residence at Gocomics.com, beginning May 14. (Link from Journalista!)
• Reinder Dijkhuis writes a post called Reconceptualising Micropayments about Joel Fagin's Reinventing Micropayments article at Comixpedia.
• Broken Frontier has a nice write-up of the triple comics holiday that was May 5th: Cartoonists' Day, FCBD and Webcomics Awareness Online Comics Day.

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INTERVIEWS

• Animation Insider interviews webcomic creator Chris Moujaes (Coz/Effect and Battlegate).

COMICS CONVERGENCE

• I'm not sure what this story has to do with comics but it is interesting: book publishers are rethinking the value of audiobooks — in particular this article is about an author who rushed out the audiobook well in advance of the hardback in order to capitalize on an Oprah Winfrey Show appearance.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Eric Millikin has an interesting request: Any good books for a webcomics class?
• Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum, releases a comic they created about and for the Book Expo America convention as a pdf.
• Derik Badman on non-plot-based narrative in comics.
• Neil Cohn writes about the concept of "coercion" in language (with comics used as examples). Coercion seems to be related to the McCloud concept of "closure" (which McCloud discusses in his book Understanding Comics).
• Jon Lee's favorite webcomic is xkcd.

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Alan Gardner wrote just this past Friday that the Universal Press Syndicate has partnered with the print-on-demand company Lulu.com to launch a storefront in efforts to create a new way to produce and distribute their books. The first comics-to-books from Lulu.com will be Karen Montague-Reyes’ Clear Blue Water, J.C. Duffy’s The Fusco Brothers, and Real Life Adventures by Lance Aldrich and Gary Wise.

I'm not sure this means a whole lot in the grand scheme of comics convergence but I suspect this is a good fit for a syndicate's less popular features to get into print. I won't be surprised if the other syndicates ink similar deals.

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COMIXPEDIA

Be sure to refresh your browser to see our brand new cover from the talented Gisele Lagace, currently handling art on the webcomic Penny & Aggie. May is our "all ages" issue and we should have a number of reviews of all ages webcomics this month. Our weekend update, however, includes a review of a decidedly not-all ages webcomic, Journey to Mt. Moriah which officially wraps up our April issue and to kick off the May issue, a new piece from Joel Fagin titled Reinventing Micropayments.

MILESTONES

• Man Man, the saga of a man with all the powers of the average man (because he was bitten by a radioactive man, natch) will hit 1000 strips this May 18th.

REVIEWS

• The Damn Good Comics blog reviews Zap!. (The blog is a good source of webcomic reviews: past ones include The Wings of Change, Rêveillerie, and Indavo.)

AWARDS

• Max Riffner’s Quick Step won the 2007 Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics. (link from Comics Worth Reading blog)

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• Dave Wright's webcomic Todd and Penguin is back.
• The Boids, a new webcomic by Steve Campbell and Larry Merrill takes flight today!
• The webcomic G.A.A.K. gears up to deal with an alien armada plotting to invade the Earth!
• The finale of Chapter 3 of Draven: The Vampire Chronicle is up!

NOT WEBCOMICS

• I saw Hot Fuzz last Friday (funny! if not quite as good as Shaun of the Dead). Spidey 3 made a HUGE amount of money despite mixed buzz. Not sure when I'll see it though… What movies are you definitely planning on seeing this summer?

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Go get your free comic books! I stopped by the Big Planet store in Georgetown which was not only a nice store but was letting folks pick up 10 of the free comic books each. That seems awfully generous compared to other stores I've checked out in past years.

It's also Online Comics Day or as I still think of it — Webcomics Awareness Day. Either way go check it out!

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HEADLINES

• Filed under WTF?!: Boing Boing reports (linking to a Rich Stevens post) on Matt Boyd's termination from work as a result of misunderstood conversations about guns. Boyd's comic, Three Panel Soul featured a storyline about this weird, unfortunate experience (a storyline which I originally thought was fiction – a smart parody of our current attitudes towards guns and incidents like the massacre at Virginia Tech). UPDATE: Fleen has an interview with Boyd today.

EVENTS

• Don't forget this Saturday's (tomorrow) big events: Online Comics Day 2007 and Free Comic Book Day 2007.

COMIXPEDIA

• Another big thanks to April cover artist Michael Lalonde. Be sure to go check out Orneryboy if you're not already reading it. You should also delve into the Comixpedia archives to check out Welton Colbert's awesome interview with Lalonde from 2005.

INTERVIEWS

• Webcomics-In-Print has an interview with Ryan Estrada, creator of the comic Welton Colbert and currently working on videos for his Ryan Estrada Expeditions.
• Sequential Tart has an interview with Rich Stevens, the creator of the web and newspaper comic, Diesel Sweeties.
• Panels and Pixels interviews American Elf creator James Kochalka (link from Journalista!)
• The Pulse's Jennifer Contino interviews Fishtown creator Kevin Colden. (link from Journalista!)
• The Pulse's Steve Ahlquist talks to the 2007 Eisner Award judges: Chris Reilly, Whitney Matheson, Jeff VanderMeer and James Sime. (link from Journalista!)

REVIEWS

• Talkaboutcomics links to lots of reviews of webcomics across the blog-o-bog.
• Comixpedia reviewed a couple of sci-fi comics for April: S.S.D.D. and Uku.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

• Joey Manley ponders the nomenclature of "webcomics""versus "comics", prompted by someone's description of Dilbert as a webcomic. It's best not to get too hung up on nomenclature. As comics as a medium (not as a genre/format) have gotten (slightly) more visibility in America we can all talk about "comics" at that level. But that doesn't mean the term "webcomic" won't continue to be useful, just as "comic book" and "comic strip" (and more recently "graphic novel") have been used and useful for many years. Given the growth of comics on the web versus every other format though I won't be surprised if most people will begin to use comic and webcomic much more interchangeably. (Manley also links to a Google trends graph of the use of the word "webcomic(s)".)

NOT COMICS

• Actor/Writer Wil Wheaton will preach to the masses at Penny Arcade's PAX 2007 convention.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• The webcomics newspaper Zoinks plans to put out a new issue this June. Advertising spots are still available for it.
• Talkaboutcomics wraps up some rumbling about how Microsoft's forthcoming Silverfish code (meant to be a competitor to Flash) can be used to present webcomics, sort of like Flash can be used to present webcomics…

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Webcomics in Print is all about adventure! This week we interview adventurer himself Ryan Estrada. We also review Dangnabbit and it wouldn't be the same without our Monday Book News. Continue Reading →