Brad Hawkins’ stripShow is a plug-in for Wordpress that makes it uber-webcomic friendly. Along with Tyler Martin’s Comicpress theme, it’s the other long-running project to adapt Wordpress for webcomics. Now he’s got another Beta version of what will be stripShow 2.0 out — download it, check it out and let Brad know about any bugs you find or other feedback.
The comics educator, podcast creator and webcomics cartoonist Jeremy Mullins has passed away, according to several alumni and those of an awareness of that program. He died on Saturday from multiple injuries while climbing in the Catskills near Kaaterskill Falls. Mullins held an MFA from the sequential art department at Savannah College Of Art And Design (SCAD), where he won an outstanding thesis award in 2005 for his "Digital Delivery and the Empowerment of the Sequential Artist" and where he would teach.
From Australia comes a link to a webcomic adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses titled Ulysses Seen. Creator Robert Berry is still at the beginning and it looks like the adaption will be serially published – you can start reading it here.
Shaping up to be an interesting week in comics:
MILESTONES
Jason Little’s Motel Art Improvement Service wrapped up today. It was a very well done sequel to the first Bee story. The somewhat sudden ending is still surprising to me but the middle three panels of the last installment are masterfully done.
BUSINESS
D.J. Coffman writes about warning signs that Diamond may be in trouble and speculates on it’s implications for the future of the direct market for comic books.
REVIEWS
Johnanna Carlson writes a negative review of Jon Rosenberg’s new Goats book and then the two of them exchange polite remarks in the comments. Always nice to see a little civility on the Internets. I haven’t read the book so I can’t offer a contrasting view I’d like to offer up a quote from Carlson’s review that was meant critcally, but that I think is actually a pretty good way of describing Goats positively:
The point seems to be the dialogue more than the events. The characters talk a lot. The art is serviceable but not particularly attractive, and it’s often pretty static
That’s always been the case with Goats – even more recently when the comic has had actual plot and science fiction trappings. Rosenberg is the Kevin Smith of webcartoonists.
INTERVIEWS
An interview with Amy Pearson of the comic Mathema which started off on Zuda but now appears on Pearson’s own site.
CRAFT
Matt Madden recently offered up an exercise in comic improvisation you might want to take a crack at.
James Turner’s been posting some great stuff on his Live Journal. The latest is "Misunderstanding Comics" with the return of everyone’s favorite beaver and lizard comedy duo.
The Daily Cartoonist has a list of the comics published on GoComics.com with the most subscribers. In this case "subscribe" means people who have signed up for an account with GoComics.com and than have clicked subscribed to individual comics so updates show up on their personalized GoComics.com portal. More of a "favorites" list then a full readership count.
I’m going to quibble with the statement that only one of the comics on the list is a "webcomic" — they’re all available on GoComics.com! I think the point Alan is really making is that only one of the comics, We The Robots, (and ironically WTRs is on indefinite hiatus as of this month) is not represented by a newspaper comics syndicate. I’ll also add that a full half of the list is represented by the newspaper syndicate Universal Press – which corporately is in the same ownership family as GoComics.com.
Another review of the Kindle-DX in the NY Times today. Even though I’ve been reading webcomics for more than a decade now, I don’t think I’ve seriously thought that I would someday be carrying around an electronic book from which I would read comics. For some reason it just hasn’t felt or seemed imminent – and with good reason as the technology is still not all the way there yet. But this year? I’m starting to get used to the idea that it’s going to happen.
Sink into my big sofa-chair with a full season of Erfworld or Goats or Paradigm Shift? (just to throw out a few titles) – yeah, that would work.
AWARDS
Brigid Alverson has an article on whether the Eisner’s Digital Comics category is really considering the ‘web-iness" of the comics in selecting it’s nominees. I agree with the sense that web or digital categories seems to group nominees that have little else to do with each other (and given the increasing scope of web publishing of comics we’re almost to the day when every comic in theory will be eligible for a "webcomic" category) and people ought to be thinking more about refining these things. I don’t have a specific bit of advice to throw out just yet but it’s worth chewing on.
MOCKERY
Dean’s Comic Booth is chock-full of abuse of — sometimes hilariously — copyright comic content. I don’t want to pass judgement on whether it’s fair use or not but it is a heck of a funny concept — for the most part messing with just the last panel but sometimes a whole lot more. Puts comics like Beatle Bailey and Blondie in a whole new light…
EMPLOYMENT
Penny Arcade, Inc. is looking for a Merchandise Manager:
Do you like folding shirts? Excellent.
Publishers Weekly’s Laura Hudson scores an interview with Tatsuya Ishida, the creator of Sinfest. Ishida is a brilliant cartoonist and Sinfest has always been a shining example of quality comics on the web. Hudson’s right about Ishida being a mystery — this is probably the only interview I’ve ever seen with him.
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