Comix Talk for December 21, 2010

I will be looking for guest bloggers in January — if blogging about comics and computers (or just comics) sounds interesting, drop me an email (xerexes AT gmail) or a tweet (xerexes).

MILESTONE: Dean Haspiel has a great tribute comic to Harvey Pekar who passed away this year. (h/t Mike Rhode).

AWARDS: MTV Splashpage posts its best of 2010 including Best Webcomic, Best New Webcomic and Best Webcomic Book.

INTERVIEW: Laura Hudson has an interview with creator Mark Waid on leaving Boom Studios and his digital-first approach to future work

COMICS PRESS:  TCJ, the cranky old hipster uncle of comics criticism announces a couple of changes: Dirk Deppey is leaving and presumably the all-encompassing comics link blog Journalista! will end tomorrow.  That is sad although Deppey's tweetstream is pretty upbeat about it all. I really appreciated Deppey's work. Journalista! in both of its incarnations was one of the first blogs from old-school comics journalism to take webcomics seriously.  And it was complete as hell – there was very little he missed.

Also I saw news that TCJ will be launching a new blog called The Panelists which will feature among others, former ComixTalk contributor Derik Badman.  I'm really excited for Derik – from almost the get-go of reading and posting his contributions here, I've thought TCJ would be lucky to have him writing for them.  Despite my little dig at TCJ above it is the place to go for rigorous, in-depth writing on comic – academic but still accessible.

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Best Webcomic Hosting Options?

ComixTalk will have a couple of quiet weeks to end the year.  Posting will be sporadic while I hibernate (and possibly plan for new things to try on this site next year).  In the meantime, read the ComixTalk 2010 Roundtable article; vote on how you read and track webcomics; and write up a post about how your decade (around 2000-2010) in webcomics and let me know so I can add it to this post.

Also it's been awhile since we've had a useful discussion on webhosting for webcomics.  I really lucked out this year finding Orange Fort — it's been a pretty uneventful year for me hosting-wise (which is what you want!) (I don't know if OF is taking on new clients but I would highly recommend them if they are).  I also still have a Dreamhost account which actually works just fine (although I've had issues with Drupal on Dreamhost in the past) but I use it really more for backup and experimenting.  So what recommendations would you give for webhosting?  Has your host been awesome?  Awesomely bad?

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Comix Talk for Friday, December 17, 2010

If you haven't checked out the ComixTalk End of the Year webcomic journalists of the roundtable discussion — well go read it already!  Some webcomic folks smarter than I all weigh in with thoughts on 2010 (and heck if nothing else a lot of good webcomic suggestions to check out).

Today? Well Ryan Estrada writes about webcomics made into movies — he counts Diary of a Wimpy Kid among them.

REVIEWS: Tangents reviews Faith Erin Hicks The Adventures of Superhero Girl and El Santo reviews Tiny Kitten Teeth.

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The ComixTalk 2010 Roundtable

For this year's roundtable we talked about favorite and new webcomics from 2010, the impact of the iPad and other digital devices, the changes in the comics industry landscape, awards for webcomics and much more about the state of digital comics in 2010.  I'm joined by Brigid Alverson, Larry Cruz, Lauren Davis, Brian Heater, Heidi MacDonald, Rick Marshall and Gary Tyrrell.  

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Just a tiny bit of Comix Talk

Okay I'm this… …close to wrapping up the ComixTalk 2010 Roundtable article which features a rollicking discussion between Gary Tyrrell, Larry Cruz, Heidi MacDonald, Rick Marshall, Brigid Alverson, Lauren Davis and Brian Heater.  This is easily my favorite article of the year for Comix Talk and I think everyone will enjoy this year's edition.

GIFTAPALOOZA:  If you're looking for some holiday gift suggestions check out this good list of great female comics creators from the Jezebel blog.

MILESTONES: Troop 142, the 2010 Ignatz Award Winner for Outstanding Online Comic, has finished serialization — you can read the whole story online. A print edition is due Fall 2011. (h/t CWR)

NOT WEBCOMICS: The Comic Riffs blog interviews Edmund Earle the guy who made the Booboo Kills Yogi "alternate ending" for the movie — modeled after the movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. (h/t ComicsDC)

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Comix Talk for Tuesday, December 14, 2010

I started messing with Drupal 7 over at another URL I have – anyone else a Drupal nerd and want to talk release candidates?  

BUSINESS: Dorothy Gambrell, the creator of Cat and Girl, is probably the most transparent person in comics — here's another edition of "how much money I've made this year" in pretty chart form.

iWEBCOMICS: Over at Robot6 they report that according to Apple three of the top five selling book apps for the iPad are from comiXology: Marvel Comics, Comics (their multi-publisher reader), and DC Comics.

INTERVIEW: Newsarama interviews Gordon McAlpin of the webcomic Multiplex.

HYPITY HYPE HYPE: This Bad Machinery today is really good. John Allison really gets something true about that middle school age and yet it still feels John Allison-y.  When Allison shifted between Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery I thought it was a bit jarring mainly because Allison's sensibility to me is pretty rooted in being a young adult (and even the teenagers in SGR fit in there). I've never not enjoyed Bad Machinery — it's just not always felt fully Allison-y too me.

WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE: This Penny Arcade comic reminds me of my brief time playing role-playing games in the middle school years — I remember the first game I played — the DM was a bit of a sadistic little prick and he vindictively killed off players during the game.  I DM'd a game myself that year which I recalled annoyed the other DM quite a bit as I guess he thought you weren't allowed to just start DM'ing without more time playing.  I also played The Shadow in a game based on superheroes (can't remember what that game was called though) – which was interesting because the other people in the game had no clue about the character so I could argue for almost god-like abilities as the game went along.

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COMIX TALK FOR MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY

I'm in kind of a world wide mixed wrestling NASCAR mood this morning (already thrown a couple chairs down the hallway) but let's see if comics soothes the savage beast.

PEOPLE THAT LIKE PEOPLE: Laura Hudson has an interview with Nick Gurewitch of  Perry Bible Fellowship fame and Michael Fiffe over at The Beat has a really good profile on artist/creator Kyle Baker.

AWARDS: Time to send in nominations for next year's EISNERS.  Seriously wouldn't it be great to have lots of worthy nominations from webcomics for every Eisner category?  

CONVENTION 'VENTION WHAT'S YOUR INTENTION: The Beat reports that the Stumptown Comics convention in Portland, Oregon will "curate" the list of exhibitors due to the huge demand for tables.

FREE MONEY: The Drawn blog with this timely reminder for aspiring comics-making students — don't forget that the deadline for the Jay Kennedy Scholarship is December 15th. More details at the National Cartoonists Society Foundation.

DEAD TREES: Fleen flags the forthcoming book edition of Evan Dahm's Order of Tales Book 3: The Tower of Smoke.  Pre-ordering now in effect.

MILESTONE: The comedy webcomic Troops of Doom reaches 300 episodes this week. TOD uses GI Joe, Star Wars, Lego and other toys for props. The webcomic is running a contest where readers can have an a recurring character in the comic named after them.  

TOOLS: I think I saw Spike link to this on Twitter this morning – a great website for working with colors together: Color Scheme Designer.

BLOGGITY-BLOG BLOG: Covered has a post just like the one I put up last week – links to like-minded "cover song" comics blogs. Another blog in this vein that is often quite good is the Comic Social Club.

Guest Comicking: The Daily Cross Hatch with another "guest comic" – this one from Erich Fletschinger.  I kind of like the idea of a blog about comics having "guest comics" — anyone interested in doing something for ComixTalk?  Maybe I'll try to create a recurring thing next year…

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