Life in Links for Friday, July 13, 2007

HEADLINES

REVIEWS

DEAD TREES

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

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Tuesday News & Blues

COMIXMEDIA UPDATE:  I'm still working on the site(s) upgrade. Current plan is to have this site rebranded as COMIXTALK by the beginning of July. I'll have another site called COMIXMEDIA as an umbrella site for comics-related projects I'm working on. The upgrade here went well except the current "theme" for the site is creating some problems so I need to get the site moved to a new theme pronto (current plan is to simply update the current theme to Drupal 5.1 specs)

Guest Bloggers Wanted: Interested in blogging about (web)comics on ComixTalk in July or August? Drop me a note at xerexes AT comixpedia DOT com

BUSINESS
Todd Allen breaks another piece of the story about DC Comics plans for the web. DC Comics' new online editor is Kwanza Johnson (who according to Allen had a similar job with Marvel back in 2000?!) Allen predicts a "big" 4th quarter roll-out of webcomics from DC.

Mike Strang posted about his unhappy experience working for Platinum on a work-for-hire contract and others (T Campbell) chimed in with comments. Joey Manley compared work-for-hire to sticking your hand in a meat grinder. My own personal opinion is that authors should keep their copyrights and that creativity and business are both better off under those circumstances. But in movies, television, music and especially comic books, work-for-hire arrangements have been used forever and are still being used. So long as you know what you're getting into I don't see anything inherently evil about it. Just be clear on the concept – work-for-hire means all of your creative work becomes someone else's property. (REMINDER: if you comment at ComixTalk please try to be civil and respectful of others.)

INTERVIEWS
T Campbell interviews Aaron Williams, creator of Nodwick, PS238, Full Frontal Nerdity, co-writer on Truth, Justin, and the American Way.

Jane Irwin interviewed Templar, AZ creator Spike about webcomics and "effectively whoring your way to higher pageviews." You can read the interview here.

Shaenon Garrity interviewed Rob Vollmar who writes the comic Inanna’s Tears (drawn by mpMann).

Lynn Lau interviewed Katie Shanahan creator of the off-the-wall journal comic Shrub Monkeys.

Finding Wonderland talks to American Born Chinese author Gene Yang. (link from Journalista!)

DEAD TREES: Life Meter Vol. 2 will debut at MOCCA. Life Meter is an anthology of video game- inspired comics, featuring stories and art by Bannister, Joel Carroll, Raina Telgemeier, Steve Hamaker, Jake Parker, Jeffrey Rowland, Queenie Chan, and many, many more.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE: I saw some plugs for Boxcar Astronaut and it is indeed a cute comic (it reminds me a bit of the syndicated Red Rover comic strip).

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
FLEEN speculates on whether Elfquest creators Wendy and Richard Pini will follow the path of Phil and Kaja Foglio to the web.

At the Webcomicker blog, Gilead writes about Dominic Deegan:

If there’s one thing I like about Dominic Deegan, it’s that the storylines move forward progressively. The comic tends to have storylines which are fairly self-contained, with a specific villian or villians wreaking havoc with a specific set of goals and a specific set of heroes undergoing a specific set of actions in order to thwart said villians. But instead of each storyline coming around the full circle and leaving the heroes in basically the same place as they were when they started in classic comic book “and so the world was saved once again, and John D and Suzy Q were able to return to their normal lives” fashion, the characters in Dominic Deegan mature and grow from their experiences, and with each storyline move progressively closer to the “happily ever after.”

Joystiq readers pick their favorite comic.

Odd factoid of the day – according to this blog post, VG Cats creator Scott Ramsoomair used to babysit this guy.

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Growing Comics

Some interesting articles recently on the biz of comics. First Journalista! points out that the website ICv2 recently estimated the entire Direct Market has retail sales of about $650 million last year (ICv2 is a pretty reliable source for numbers on comic book and graphic novel sales). Joey Manley writes "$650 million? Sorry. I’m just not that impressed." Compared to the total market for books it is a pretty small number.

Tom Spurgeon has a short post musing on the issues confronting the different facets of the comics-on-print publishing business. And at CBR, Todd Allen has a column which compares different sales channels for comics: Direct Market, Bookstores, Online Stories, Direct-To-Consumer.

Not a lot to add myself today except some speculation. I'd guess that a large percentage of the $650 million number for Direct Market retail sales is of the superhero genre. I'd find it hard to believe that there's much, if any, room for growth in that genre in comics as it's been so completely exploited by DC and Marvel over the years, so let's guess $500 million in sales as a ceiling for what is still often referred to as "mainstream" comic books. That's only one genre though – if publishers of comic books could develop other genres into at least $100 million plus categories, well, then you'd have a roadmap for the overall growth of comics. Start with popular genres in terms of sales of books and movies that have not been exploited by comics. You're not going to sell these new genre comics through the Direct Market (at least not primarily) but smart, innovative publishers could do it through a combination of bookstores and digital sales.

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News & Views for Friday, May 11, 2007

HEADLINES

BUSINESS

ADVERTISING

INTERVIEWS

REVIEWS

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AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

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Errant Story Donation Drive

Michael Poe, creator of Errant Story, and his girlfriend(wife?) are experiencing some financial trouble that they hope to deal with by doing a donation drive.

For those of you who missed the thread on the forum, Poe and I are facing some rather serious financial difficulties at the moment. This is largely because this month we have a lot of single-time expenses associated with running the comic, that the comic has not brought in sufficient income to cover. This is not something minor. In fact, what with various last-minute expenses and taxes and advance payments for conventions and the like (a breakdown of most of the payments needed can be found here), we have to pay out well over $10,000 this month!!

Read on for quotation madness.

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Lost in Translation?

Jerry Holkins: Jerry Holkins aka Tycho.So Penny Arcade has licensed their… stuff to a developer to make a Penny Arcade video game. Penny Arcade just gets bigger and bigger every year. I wouldn't be surprised now by anything they try to cross over into.

However, it led me to this recent Little Gamers' comic. I think although it's fuzzy that one of the Little Gamers guys decided Comixpedia was the most evil thing in webcomics back in 2004. Or something. I know we did give them a less then perfect review at one point and many, many, many of their fans told us to "sux th3r c0xors" (ah yes, the old days of anonymous comments here… don't miss that!) But what exactly is this one about? Is it that Comixpedia is all about money? (And if so why don't I have any of it!) They also mention Scott McCloud – maybe it's all about micropayments! Dunno really – what do you all think?

Anyhow, I think this is the third Little Gamers comic to mention Comixpedia – thanks for the publicity guys!

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Working for the Wednesday News Update

Zoinks reports that Will Turner and Daver Reynold will soon be launching a new webcomic called Reynard City using a pay-per-download business model.

The Webcomics Examiner reviews Hold My Life by Dale Ingram.

The Webcomicker reviews a bunch of webcomic books from Goats, Dinosaur Comics, Silent Kimbly, and Schlock Mercenary.

Blank Label Comics is having a contest — the winner will receive a signed book from every BLC member that currently has a book out. The drawing will be open until 11:59 PM on Thursday, June 8 and the winner will be announced this Friday. To enter, just send an e-mail with your name and mailing address to drawing@blanklabelcomics.com.

A nice post from Debbie Ridpath Oni on writing journals – she includes a lot of links to good resources on writing.

Tom Spurgeron points to an interesting thread at Warren Ellis' Engine forums on starting up a comic book shop.

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