Business

Broken Saints is the Sundance Film Festival Award-winning and critically-acclaimed groundbreaking Web epic.

Now the techno-spiritual saga is available on DVD with completely revamped art and effects, a 5.1 Dolby Surround remix of the entire series (including optional VOICE NARRATION from industry pros including William B Davis (THE X FILES), Kirby Morrow (DRAGONBALL Z), David Kaye (BEAST WARS), Michael Dobson (TRANSFORMERS ARMADA), and Emmy Award Winner Janyse Jaud) and over 4 HOURS of additional features including Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes, documentaries, Fan Films, Concept Galleries, and Slideshows. Continue Reading →

The storming of the traditional syndication comicstrip kingdom by the webcomic Visigoths storyline that kicked off with Scott “PvP” Kurtz’s announcement at San Diego and continued with Keenspot starting up “KeenSyndicate” enters a new, well snarkier, phase.

Kicking off things is Tuesday’s installment of Wiley’s Non Sequitur, a strip widely enough available that most Americans have probably heard of even if it’s not in their newspaper. Although it is a straightforward gag, anyone who has read Wiley’s comments regarding Kurtz’s efforts to place PvP in newspapers can’t help but assume that Wiley also meant today’s strip as a dig at Kurtz and webcomics generally. Kurtz himself comments on it today as does Eric Burns.

This is also a good excuse to link to Tom Spurgeon’s essay on these issues, posted just this Sunday. Update: I forgot to include this other Websnark entry on this issue which is also quite a good read. Continue Reading →

An update on recent fundraising drives around webcomicland.

Greg Dean is currently raising money to buy new servers for his popular webcomic Real Life.

Joe England of Zebra Girl is about 1/3 of the way to the stated goal of his fundraiser and Michael Jantze of The Norm is more than 1/2 way to his January 1st goal..

Desmond Seah of Bigger Than Cheeses is not actually very close to his stated goal of 50 trillion dollars, but we wish him luck anyway.

And finally, from the success stories file, Jamie Robertson announced that enough fans had signed up for a Clan of the Cats membership that he could continue to devote the time to making the webcomic. Continue Reading →

Penny and Aggie, the new strip from Legace and Campbell abruptly ended their Modern Tales run recently to move the work to Comics Sherpa and to more aggressively pursue a newspaper syndicate deal.

In contrast to novel approaches to selling comics in the newspaper space from Scott Kurtz and Keenspot, T Campbell explains why he is interested in the more traditional syndication model for Penny and Aggie. Continue Reading →

The press release from TokyoPoP announces the start of the fifth Rising Stars of Manga competition. Deadline is February 15, 2005. Aspiring artists and writers are encouraged to submit their 15-to-20-page manga-along with completed entry forms-to TOKYOPOP for the chance to join the next generation of nationally published manga-ka. A handful of talented winners will score cash prizes and have their winning entries presented in the next Rising Stars anthology, to be published in Summer 2005.

This year’s installment will add a brand-new People’s Choice on-line component where the top 20 finalists will have their entire entries posted on the TOKYOPOP website and judged by the fans. Continue Reading →

Dog Complex by Dave Johnson has been signed to a syndication contract by Universal Press’ U-Comics page. More details at Johnson’s site. Continue Reading →

Remember when Scott Kurtz made the announcement that he would be working to get PVP into newspapers?

Well it looks like PVP has taken its first beachhead in the land of newspapers comics. After publishing an article about Scott Kurtz last week, the Kansas City Star appears to have taken on the PVP strip for its PREVIEW entertainment section of the paper.

(Click read more to see a scan of PVP in the KC Star) Continue Reading →

In a recent article, the journal Editor and Publisher highlights Comic Sherpa as a tool to getting noticed by more people and possibly publishers. The Sherpa is a listing service whereby creators can submit their works for $9.95 a month (or $99.00 a year) for the privilege on being posted alongside an established professional syndication site, uComics.com, beside such classics as Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes. Continue Reading →

As an alternative to joining an established print comic syndicate, Scott Kurtz announced a new plan to offer the archives of PvP free to newspapers.

People are buzzing with this announcement, and the ramifications it will entail to the future of newspaper comics and syndication. Read some of the reactions over at ToonTalk from such established cartoonists such as Wiley Miller (of Non Sequitur).

Continue Reading →

According to a recent Newsweek article, newspapers are trying to put the squeeze on the funny pages once again. Due to media company consolidation, the companies that publish the newspapers now have enough clout to place demands on the cartoon syndicates, or force them to suffer over $100,000.00 in losses resulting from cancelled business. Continue Reading →