Milestones

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Tuesday Lunch Hour News Roundup

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Bomb Shelter Comics is having a contest – to enter you need be a member of their forums and send in your version of the BSC logo. Winners get a Leftville t-shirt.

Clickwheel has a post on the "sound of art" which considers the question of music in comics. Didn't we have an issue on that recently? 🙂

Sparkneedle archives are now free (formerly only available to Girlamatic subscribers).

Digital Strips looks at the rotating cast of artists on the webcomic Pet Professional. Are there really four artists on that strip now? Wow…

It's been one year since the founding of Blank Label Comics.

New Peter Bagge webcomic on the "war on drugs" at Reason magazine. Cranky middle-age libertarian goodness!

Kris Straub is working on a second Starslip Crisis book and his webcomic has just hit the one year mark as well.

Fleen checks into Owen Dunne's My New Mommy webcomic. It's ending. And Fleen thinks Dunne's website navigation is confusing. Most of what Dunne has done is pretty hilarious IMO.

Tom Spurgeon rounds up reports on the recent BookExpo America event in Washington DC.

Gluemeat celebrates various Canadian holidays. I wish we had Muffin Day in the states too…

The Bone website has been redone and now features a blog from creator Jeff Smith.

And in notwebcomics news: Dorothy Gambrell's band is playing at the WYSIWYG Talent Show this evening.

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Late Night Sunday News Update

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Scott McCloud plans to visit all 50 states in the union to promote his forthcoming book Making Comics. The madness begins September this year.

Warren Ellis links to some webcomics without comment. I suppose he's implying "go check them out" but one can never assume to much with the old man.

Webcomics in Print rounds up lots of webcomics in print news so I don't have to! News on Funny Farm, Todd and Penguin, Bunny, Girly and Theater Hopper.

Speaking of print comics, Joey Manley reviews a recent graphic novel from Howard Chaykin titled Challengers of the Unknown.

Also from the Comixpedia blogs:

John Allison has been drawing past American presidents for potential (hypothetical?) t-shirts. They're all awesome – although I'm curious as to what he might do with earlier presidents like Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson.

And I can't remember now if I linked to this post from Bob Byrne from back in January 2006. Titled "Everything I've learned over the past 5 years…." it's a hodgepodge of tips and mantras to keep making comics.

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The Sluggy Freelance Code: So Dark The Con of Bun Bun!

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It’s going to be a year of Starslip Crisis this May 23rd. Congrats to Kris Straub. He has another video podcast up as well.

It’s movie month so here’s a link to Yirmumah mocking the Superman Returns poster.

Lore catches that Toothpaste For Dinner is having a contest for readers to send in photos of themselves wearing a TFD t-shirt.

Fleen writes about it’s impression that webcomic creators are all just getting out of their diapers but somehow I doubt that’s anything more than a reaction to some recent creators’ academic matriculations. It would be interesting to do a real survey on creators – maybe someone ought to get on that! 🙂

Tom Spurgeon reacts to Fox News dude Bill O’Reilly ranting about some comics in a school newspaper O’Reilly thought were offensive to the baby Jesus. I’ll wait until the Colbert Report covers the issue to decide if I care…
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Daily Grind Update

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It’s been over a year now, and there are still a lot of contenders in the Daily Grind contest. The remaining 24 contestants in this endurance contest are:

  1. Lonnie Allen (website)
  2. Joseph Bergin III (website)
  3. Jennie Breeden (website)
  4. Stephen Burrell (website)
  5. D.J. Coffman (website)
  6. Paul Gadzikowski (website)
  7. Jamie Dee Galey (website)
  8. Ali Graham (website)
  9. Edward J Grug III (website)
  10. Brad Guigar (website)
  11. Tim Hulsizer (website)
  12. Matt Johnson (website)
  13. Brandon Lewis (website)
  14. Tyler Longmire (website),
  15. Tom McHenry (website)
  16. Michael Payne website)
  17. Eric Poole (website)
  18. Phil Redmon (website)
  19. Andrew Rothery (website)
  20. R. Smith (website)
  21. Ive Sorocuk (website)
  22. Mike Stevens (website)
  23. Bryan Stone (website)
  24. Jam Torkberg (website)

From a quick glance at the list I’ve bolded those I’m immediately familar with.  That’s 17 creators that I am not sure I’ve read before.  I don’t know if that’s because they’re not that popular, or that good or rather just as likely – more evidence that there are more interesting webcomics out there than anyone can ever possibly write about.
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9 Years of Goats

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Jon Rosenberg’s Goats is 10 9 years this weekend.  I’ve been reading Goats for about forever and at a long ago point Rosenberg was as crappy an artist as I am.  He has, however, stuck with it since then.  Practice makes perfect a lot of progress actually. 

And of course he’s always been funny.  So he’s got that going for him…

Here’s a snapshot of Goats: the first is from April 30, 1997 and the second is from mid-2005:

  

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Late Night News Update

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Another milestone: Kris Straub’s guest comic is the 500 installment of Zach Miller’s Joe and Monkey webcomic.  Straub also mentions that Miller’s book Totally Boned is up for one of Lulu’s Blooker prizes. (Erik wrote about the Blookers last October.)

Not a webcomic but kind of internet-y funny: Subservient Donald.  I’d like to see Subservient Skull or Subservient Clango or something.

The Great Outdoor Fight – wow, that’s really hard to describe.  But I always have a hard time describing Achewood.  It’s just… Achewood.  Tim Tylor blogged earlier about the wiki a fan set up for this storyline.

Fleen also has more questions with Dave Kellett (Sheldon) on syndication and newspaper comics.

And Fleen also catches that Sylvan Migdal wrapped up Ascent today.

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Monday News Update

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Is anyone else really happy that Sluggy Freelance has finally moved on from its Oceans Unmoving storyline?  That's the first time Pete Abrams has completely lost me with the strip.  I kind of like the new shockjock characters too.

MILESTONES

MARKETING: Martiza Campos notes the recent First and Last post on CRFH!!! on her livejournal.  One other interesting tidbit from that thread is Campos note that she picked up a 1000 extra readers from her most recent Keenspot box.  Even for a relatively big strip like CRFH!!! I think that's a fairly large number and it shows how powerful the Keenspot network is.

CRAFT: H.S. Kim, creator of Kung Fool X and Kill Harry has a page full of art criticism and some video tutorials on drawing –  definitely worth checking out.

NOT WEBCOMICS: Tom Truszkowski of Station V3 is talking about record-collecting and drew some sketches of his characters with 45s. 

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An Interview with Soap on a Rope’s Bob Roberds by David Wright

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Soap on a Rope is one of the pioneers in the webcomic world, being one of the earlier comics to appear on the web. SOAR comes off not so much as a comic, but a damned good sitcom (and not the kind that get old after being around 4 years). SOAR is good because its focus is on its characters and the bizarre things that happen to them. Combine equal parts Seinfeld, Drew Carey, Soap, Simpsons, Family Guy, and throw in the movie Office Space for good measure, and you might get close to what Soap on a Rope is.

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