Reporting Live…. From Your Mom!

Don’t forget to check out Comixpedia’s interviews with Tom Brazelton (Theater Hopper) and Gordon McAlpin (Multiplex).

Elsewhere around the internets Gilead reviews a webcomic called Killer Robots from Space.

Combustible Orange joins the new collective Bomb Shelter Comics. This is shaping up to be a great group of webcomics.

Webcomics In Print blog talks about the latest book from the webcomic Bob The Squirrel

Gary Tyrrell writes more about IndieKarma, the so-called "noclick" alternative to micropayments. 

And in notwebcomics dept: the Drawn blog catches that Bibi has compiled a collection of links to vintage animated shorts in the public domain.  They include 27 Betty Boop cartoons, 11 Felix the Cat cartoons, and 3 Krazy Kat cartoons.

Continue Reading

Dykes To Subscribe To?

Alison Bechdel, creator of Dykes To Watch Out For posts in her blog about the possibility of charging readers a modest subscription fee to receive the comics via email as soon as they’re done.  Bechdel would delay posting them on the web for a month or so.  And if that’s not enough she offers an alternative idea:

Hey, and what about this? The email version could be like HBO. I could leave all the swear words in, and perhaps even have occasional frontal nudity. Instead of the #@&*’s and artful drapery that I employ in the newspaper version.

There was a lot of discussion from fans in the comments there.  I wonder what Comixpedia readers think of this idea.  Surely someone has tried this already – has it worked for anyone?

Continue Reading

LA Times Story On Newspaper Comics Crisis

Nothing new in this piece about an upcoming panel on newspaper comics but it’s a bit… galling to hear a bunch of established cartoonists quoted as saying nothing new is every going to be any good.  I guess I’m specifically reacting to this quote from Cathy Guisewite:

 

To me a strip should run forever because it’s a classic.  They have meaning to me, and no new newspaper strip is going to earn that place in my heart.

 

Leaving aside lots of additional snark I could write about this piece, a few thoughts on the neverending story of the newspaper comic "crisis".  Of course newspaper comics are in trouble – the entire newspaper business while still generating profits every year is not growing.  Many newspaper companies though are starting to get the fact that they’re in the news business – not the newspaper business.  Either they are trying to adapt or they’re planning on squeezing as much cash as possible out of the papers until they die.

Webcomics are still a messy and chaotic place but it is growing.  Maybe we’ll never have a Calvin & Hobbes again in terms of sheer audience but that’s no different then most mediums – we’ll never have a M*A*S*H-size audience for most television shows again either.  That doesn’t mean we won’t have television, or comics, that is as good or better but with so many more choices around the audience will by definition be smaller.

Continue Reading

Wednesday’s Webcomic Is Full of Woe

Very cool news!  Kean Soo’s Eisner-nominated Jellaby will be published by Disney’s Hyperion Books.

The deadline for voting in this year’s Eagle awards is May 7, 2006.  The nominees for favorite web-based comic are: Ctrl+Alt+DelQuestionable Content, and Supernatural Law.

A webcomics collective I hadn’t heard about before is Pens and Tales.  Go check out some of its members.

Paul Gadzikowski’s Arthur, King of Time and Space hit the 700 episode mark this month.

Making Light blog writes about fan fiction.

And do R. Stevens’ recent Grampa Mac strips remind you of a certain Comixpedia cover from 2004? Don’t answer that!

Continue Reading

Tuesday’s Webcomic Is Full Of Grace

Paul O’Brien at NinthArt writes about product placement in comics.  Of course he’s talking about placing other people’s products in the work, not creating products out of the work, like Jeph’s Bomb the Blogosphere t-shirt.

There’s a new blog about webcomics in print.  Wow – it’s getting to where there’s so many webcomic blogs that you almost have to focus on a niche now.  This blogger, Mike Hull, Mike Rouse-Deane has some good entries so far – check it out.

Aleph reviews 5ideways by K. Fuhr (Boy Meets Boy, etc).

I think this guy is basically saying, "graphic n0v3ls are teh c001!" but in any event it’s a short read.

Notwebcomics, but hey it’s R. Crumb – a loooong interview with Terry Zwigoff that focuses a lot on his experience shooting the documentary on R. Crumb some years back.  Apparently a special edition DVD is coming out. 

Warren Ellis posted the script to Fell #1 in case you want to see what a script looks like. 

I don’t even know what this webcomic is about but how can you go wrong with a title like "Pre-history of the Wang." 

Continue Reading

Sunday News Roundup

Ferrett has a report of the first day of Penguicon.

Indy Propaganda reviews Dr. McNinja, and The Webcomiker reviews Starslip Crisis.

Jamie Hernandez has a new comic starting today in the New York Times’ The Funny Pages part of its weekly magazine.  

John Allison responds to Lore Sjoberg‘s article on webcomics’ reliance on t-shirt sales.

And in notwebcomics news now you can have a Comics Speech Balloon phone too!

Continue Reading

Wednesday News

Debbie Ridpath Ohi has another great post, this one about useful online tools for freelance writers who work from home many of which will be useful to webcomic creators as well.  She also has another update to her webcomic Will Write For Chocolate.

Joe Zabel has a review of the fantasy webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court.

This blog is solely devoted to examining how "each and every day a comic strip abuses the use of the silent second-to-last panel.  If you like snarky commentary on newspaper strips – this should go on your reading list.

Ryan North reports that he is taking pre-orders for a Dinosaur Comics book.  The book entitled Your Whole Family Is Made Out Of Meat has a clever cover.  The pre-orders are at Quack Media which I’ve never heard of but is apparently coming soon!

The Webcomics List reports that it has new webcomic wallpaper for your mobile phone available.  Check them out here.

Continue Reading

Creating Webcomics Coverage

A couple of good blog posts on why different flavors of comics get different types of coverage.  One last week from The Beat, and one this weekend from The Comics Reporter.

It’d be interesting to talk about coverage of webcomics.  Outside of a few dedicated websites like Comixpedia there are varying levels of coverage.  Some more general comics websites do cover webcomics (noticeably The Comics Reporter and The Pulse) while others seem to ignore them.  Coverage in the more general press seems to remain hit or miss with a very rare "hey there are comics on the web!" article in a national publication and more frequent "hey there’s a local dude putting his comics on the web" in local or college publications.

Why isn’t there more coverage?  There’s almost no "machine" for publicity in webcomics.  One of the things I would imagine that publishers like Wirepop, Keenspot and MT would do for their artists is promotion, but given the extremely lean staffing available I think it’s hard for even them to do a lot more than individual artists can do on their own.

Comics as a whole are pretty far down on the celebrity scale so you definitely have to work harder to get coverage.  Obviously good work will get noticed but there’s no question that a certain level of press interest will always be driven by notoriety.  I wouldn’t pretend to be an expert on how to approach this problem myself but maybe through all of our collective input we can generate some good ideas.

Continue Reading