Comix Talk

Here's some interesting stuff from the many Firefox tabs still open on my screen this weekend:

BUSINESS
Comics Worth Reading reports that the first edition of the long-running British anthology 2000 AD is now downloadable for free at Drivethrucomics.com

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Tiny Kittens has this crazy collage-like style that reminds me of the art in classic Golden kids books.  Some or all of its creators had a hand in the now-defunct webcomic Combustible Orange.

I "heart" Tapes looks interesting – I think I saw a link to it from Anders Loves Maria.

MILESTONES
Kris Straub hits 1000 episodes of Starslip.  Congrats!

Dave Kellet, with the help of his readers, tries to nail down when Sheldon first went online.

LEFT A NICE CORPSE – UPDATED
A new "feature-ette" I'll repeat whenever I'm out of other ideas: webcomics that died too young.  For now most of the ones I'm thinking about were really good comics that for whatever reason the creators abandoned before they found their audience (and most likely before webcomics as a whole began to really take off).  The first one is an old favorite of mine titled Waiting For Bob which went on hiatus in 2002, seemingly to return but simply hasn't.  No explanation of why the series completely stopped and yet someone seems to have taken care to keep the site up and running.  I'm sure I'm missing something (and I suppose I really should do some "reporting" here.) on the why but I'm more interested in the "what if" — I think Waiting For Bob by Doug Shepard (current website? Talked with the real Doug via twitter and that website isn't him.  My apologies Doug!) and Katrin Salyers, which probably had a decent audience for its time, was a bit ahead of its time in that I think today much more of its likely fanbase is online and comfortable with reading webcomics.  It had three interesting characters, was not overly reliant on "tech" references and definitely had some drama mixed with the jokes.  I really think it would do well today.

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CONVENTIONS
Rich Stevens and Meredith Gran will be representin’ the Colonies at this year’s UK Webcomix Thing which takes place this weekend.

AWARDS
Today is the last day for submitting a Harvey Award nomination ballot.  The professionalism requirement is a bit squishy but given that the Harveys have selected PvP creator Scott Kurtz to host the awards presentation, this program is probably going to be even more friendly to indie and web comic creator participation than ever.

WRITING
Over at Kung Fu Monkey, John Rogers applies the corporate-review technique known as a "360 Review" to developing characters.  Having had to go through a few of those full circle thingees, I can see how that might help in filling out a character.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Beaver & Steve creator James Turner has been involved with a kids-comics portal called The DFC.  It appears this month that The DFC is defunct but many (all?) of its creators have banded together to form a new site called Super Comics Adventures Squad.  Looks promising – there was good stuff going on so it’s nice to see it will continue.  (h/t Journalista!)

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Webcomicstock Cleanup
It can’t be anything like the utter mess left by the original Woodstockers, could it?  (let alone the Gen-Xy Woodstock ’98 crowd).  For another recap and photos of the event ten years from now you’ll say you were at even if you weren’t – visit Gary over at Fleen (you have to click the links in the post to see the photos).  Digital Strips was there too and recorded some panels and did a lot of interviews (audio) that they’re posting this week.  Finally, Publisher’s Weekly has another writeup of NEWW.

TECHNOLOGY
Honestly – do you like "motion comics" or not?  Or does it depend on how and how well they’re done.  The Unofficial Apple blog has a story on the Watchmen "motion comic" and Scott McCloud chimes in on his displeasure with the trend.  I haven’t seen the Watchmen one so I don’t know much about it and whether it’s similar or not to other efforts like those on Clickwheel.  (Speaking of Scott McCloud – there’s a new interview with him up here – in what is actually not all that novel anymore, the interviewer has formatted the interview with McCloud to look like one of McCloud’s infinite canvas comics.

IF YOU CAN MAKE IT HERE

Ben Driscoll of Daisy Owl quit the day job last Friday to work full time on his webcomic:

I have officially, as of Friday, left my job to do Daisy Owl full time. Thanks so much for reading the comic, for helping out with signed strips, and for just being awesome in general. I hope to do this for a long, long time, and you guys make it possible. Holy crap. – Ben

Daisy Owl is supported by signed strips and donations. Also, a painting of Mr. Owl is for up for auction, check it out >

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Monday morning – two new interviews for you to check out: Monty Kane of Planet Saturday and Brian Babendererde of Soul Chaser Betty.  Also check out our current sponsor, the webcomic Null Knowledge.

AWARDS
Dude! Howard Tayler received a HUGO nomination for a storyline of Schlock Mercenary titled "The Body Politic".  Dude.  Congrats Howard!  UPDATE: Hey, overlooked that Phil and Kaja Foglio also get a nomination – for Girl Genius, Volume 8 and the storyline "Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones".  Dude and Dudette!!  Congrats are in order to all of the nominees.

Also, Kate Beaton received a nod in the "Best Emerging Talent" category of the Doug Wright Awards for her otherwise untitled History Comics.  Congrats Kate!

INTERVIEWS
CBR has an interview with Rene Engström of Anders Loves Maria.

Newsarama interviews Joe Dunn of Joe Loves Crappy Movies.

Here It Is! Blog interviews David Malki! of Wondermark. (h/t Journalista!)

BUSINESS
Surprisingly — to me — a relatively new strip that originally started on Comics Sherpa, The Argyle Sweater, hit 200 newspapers.

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Rob and Elliot!

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By all accounts so far a rousing success and you gotta hand it to Meredith Gran for organizing things so well.  A great photoset on flikr here and Rick Marshall’s write-up here.

Since I didn’t get to go this year, I really hope she’s up for organzing another edition next year.

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Also, just for the record – I bought (for about $12 bucks) the Operation Anchorage expansion to Fallout 3.  I really liked Fallout 3, but Operation Anchorage was not really worth it.  It’s short (maybe 3 or 4 hours tops) and it’s very linear — do a mission, do another one.  Completely unlike the open-ended environment of the original game.  And the whole “simulator but you can die” bit was pretty unbelievable as a story.  I’m really hoping the next expansion stories are LOTS better.  (The next one is “The Pitt” – coming this month actually).

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