Comix Talk for Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Freak Angels by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield

It's day 4 of Snowapalooza in Washington DC.  I consider this a trial run for if I ever decided to move to Canada and so far… I don't think I'd make it.  But being snow-bound has been great for catching up on comics.  I also wanted to flag a few features at ComixTalk — the calendar of comic events is available here, but you can also add it a number of other calendar programs and I'm always interested in co-maintainers.  In fact I'd be very happy to see other blogs and sites join me in maintaining it and embedding it on their sites too. I also set up a hub page for the four webcomic titles that have run at ComixTalk over its 8 year history – click to discover work from Ryan Estrada, Kris Straub and Bryant Paul Johnson.

Awards:  The Webcomics List, a hybrid tracking, popularity and news site for webcomics had a forum-organized awards program this year.  It felt a lot like the old WCCAs. This Week in Webcomics covers the resultsGunnerkrigg Court won the nod for Best Comic and Moon Town won for Best New Comic.  Coyote has a review of Moon Town here.

iWebcomics: So I'm kind of already burnt out on the iPad hype.  I want to wait until the thing is available to think more about it.  Others are though: Erik Larsen has an essay about it and Gizmodo salivated over how comics will look on the tablet device.

Dead Trees: Tyler Page talks numbers, costs and quality for taking the Print-On-Demand route for volume 2 of his Nothing Better webcomic.  And starting this week, for a couple of months, Gordon McAlpin is working full time on Multiplex — and, the Multiplex: Book 1 print collection.  This is all due to the funding he raised for the book through a Kickstarter drive.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

  • The recent rock concert contest storyline at Ornery Boy has been great – both funny and Michael Lalonde has done an awesome job with animating key panels.  If you're going to do a flash comic than use it!  Ornery Boy makes great use of Flash's capabilities.
  • It's a been awhile since I've linked to Freak AngelsThings are happening again in the storyline and although I'm a bit annoyed that after a few years we still don't really understand the full logic of the "package" of the freak angels and their world, it's a hell of a comic.  I'll also just flag again that what Avatar is doing here seems like a pretty good model for a publisher-creator relationship in the webcomic world.  I'm not sure I've seen anyone else quite match it yet.
  • The latest issue of Dark Horse Presents is out with webcomics from Graham Annable and others.

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Comix Talk for February 1, 2010

Child's Play CharityGood morning world. The Cranky Old Gnome blog offers an essay on webcomics called "Critiquing Free Content". (h/t Paperless Comics):

It got me wondering–to what extent can free content like a webcomic be criticized?  How much does the audience have a right to expect from the artist, and when do they cross that line?

iWebcomics: Paperless Comics has more reactions to the iPad announcement last week.

INTERVIEWS: Growly Beast has an interview with Gitte Tang Jensen of B.I.B.L.E. and Forbidden Planet has an interview with Daniel "Merlin" Goodbrey and his collaborator Sean Azzopardi on their comic Necessary Monsters.

VIDEO GAMES, VIDEO GAMES, VIDEO GAMES: Congrats – the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards are honoring Jerry, Mike and Robert of Penny Arcade, Inc. with an  Ambassador Award for their Child's Play Charity work.

AWARDS: SPACE handed out some awards and Ryan Dow won in the webcomics category for Introspective Comics.

REVIEWS: Delos reviews Urban Jungle by David Willborn, "a gag comic which mostly covers cubicle humor but also has geek humor, tech humor, animal humor, pokes fun at comics and talks about issues and culture without being preachy."

JUSTIFY MY HYPE: Sailor Twain or the Mermaid in the Hudson by Mark Siegel. (h/t Scott McCloud); and David Lasky draws the ULTIMATE GRAPHIC NOVEL (in six panels).

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Comix Talk for January 29, 2010

Whew, made it to Friday.  Sometime next week a new version of ComixTalk at the new server will emerge — it won't be perfect but mostly what I need this year.  And it should mean the end of me starting posts writing about Drupal and CSS…

I got a fever, and the only prescription… is more AXE COP! You've all read Axe Cop, haven't you?  If I didn't know it was for real I might have thought Kris Straub was behind it…  Coupling really funny and well-done art with scripts from his 5 year old brother Malachai, artist Ethan Nicolle has created something that is a gimmick but I swear I laughed the whole time I was reading it. 

iWEBCOMICS: Paperless Comics has a nice round up of webcomic commenting on the iPad announcement.  I'm not going to think too hard about it until the damn thing is actually in the store, but even though it's not perfect I'm kind of leaning towards getting an iPad right now.  (I wonder if I can write it off as a business expense for this site?)

INTERVIEW: A really nice interview with Kean Soo, creator of the all ages comic Jellaby (and before that his journal comic at keaner.net)

REVIEWS: Tom Spurgeon has a glowing review of Kazu Kibuishi's book, Copper.  Copper has long been one of my favorite comics and I really do want to get a copy of the paper version at some point.  Missed it but earlier this month, Sean Kleefeld reviewed another all ages title — the prose/comics hybrid book Malice.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Seth Godin read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and thought it was… about marketing?

Over at Panel & Pixel forums, there's some information and discussion of how intellectual property rights in the U.S. work when a writer and artist collaborate. And another Panel & Pixel post covers creating model sheets for characters for your comic.

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Comix Talk for Thursday, January 28, 2010

Heropotamus by Josh Alves

I'm on the twitters sometimes if you're interested in smaller, faster updates (also to be honest, I don't always remember to post here what I've tweeted). 

iWebcomics: iPad? While it doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well as the Jesus Tablet, it'll do.  My quick reaction?  I think this should be an excellent consumer device for consuming media; I don't love the content-type control Apple has asserted over it's app store and I think any potential reasons for such control are much less defensible for a device such as this.  I also don't like Apple's failure to support Flash – this device should be open to complementary programs to the traditional browser environment.  I'll grant you that version 2 in another year will probably be a better deal but I think this product meets my imaginary expectations for a webcomics tablet.  Not sure still about the pricing but at least it's better than the pre-announcement rumors.  As far as comic apps for the iPad, it looks like Comixology got the first press release out the door.

Code: Brad Hawkins posts some details on what will be in version 2.5 of stripShow, which is a add-on to WordPress to run webcomics.  I can't remember exactly now, but the birth of the first version of stripShow either predates or is pretty close in time to ComicPress and has also continued to evolve – can't wait to see the new version. 

Act-I-Vation Nation: Paul DeBenedetto interviewed comics/webcomic auteur Dean Haspiel last year at the Baltimore Comicon; he just posted the video though:

Around the World in 80 Blogs

A lot of Zuda news at Robot6: an interview with Josh Alves, creator of the webcomic Araknid Kid (started at Zuda, finished at Sugary Serials) and the new webcomic, Heropotamus; and interviews with all of the creators in the January edition of Zuda (aka Webcomic Powerball).

Check out Growly Beast – a blog with a growing collection of interviews with comics creators including  Diana Stoneman of Sweet and Sour Grapes; and Kory Bing of Skin Deep.

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Comix Talk for Wednesday, January 27, 2010

So today is the Second Coming?  The rumored debut of Apple's oversized iPod has sent the newspaper business into a tizzy but it is potentially VERY interesting to the world of comics.  I doubt the first generation of it (if it exists!) will be affordable enough but eventually this could become a serious platform for comics.  IF IF IF IF….

In non-rapturous news of the day, congrats to Ben Costa for winning a Xeric Grant for Shi Long Pang. I look forward to buying that book! (h/t Paperless Comics)  And in a true spirit of public service, Gary reads Platinum Comics Licensing's press release to decipher the latest business plan: "an in-house version of CafePress."

INTERVIEW: Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots.

REVIEW: Delos reviews Insert Comic by Zack Holmes.

And how about some links to fill-out your morning read — here's the list of webcomics the readers of the Washington Post nominated for its Comics Riffs poll on "Best Webcomic of the Decade": "Devil's Panties" ; "Devin Crane" ; "Eric Monster Millikin" ; "Girl Genius" ; "Girls With Slingshots" ; "Hark! A Vagrant" ; "Jesus and Mo" ; "Kevin and Kell" ; "Least I Could Do" ; "Navy Bean" ; "The New Adventures of Queen Victoria" ; "Order of the Stick" ; "Penny Arcade" ; "Perry Bible Fellowship" ; "Pibgorn" ; "PvP" ; "Questionable Content" ; "Red String" ; "Schlock Mercenary" ; "Sinfest" ; "UserFriendly.Org" ; and "xkcd."

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A Survey of Digital Comics Readers

This article was originally published on webcomics.com in 2008.

Every few years, a traditional comics publisher makes a renewed plunge into the webcomics market. And each time they do, they feel the need to introduce some “revolutionary” new piece of comics presentation software, as if this is what some purely hypothetical online comics industry has been waiting for. “Finally,” we are meant to exclaim, “we can actually read comics online!”

Given how the vast majority of webcomics do just fine as a succession of image files on web pages, it is a curious phenomenon.

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