The Bears vs. the Packers. The Redskins vs. the Cowboys. The Army vs. the Navy. Labourdonnais vs. McDonnell. Fischer vs. Spasspky. Laver vs. Rosewall. Borg vs. Connors. USA vs Russia at the 1980 Olympics.

Sam vs. Jeph.

Sam Logan and Jeph Jacques have been going at it, pen to pen, tete e tete, nose to grindstone in one of the dirtiest and longest running webcomics rivalries ever. It started out innocently enough as a marketing device, but now… puppies are getting kicked.

It seems unusal that two creators who write such similar comics would be out for blood. Particularly when Jeph is such a whiny emo shoegazer. (Sam Logan, that amazon-wish-list-hacking, baby painting, easter egg stealing fiend, made me say that.)

I had a recent opportunity to try and reconcile these two and attempted to convince them to settle their differences like the gentlemen that I know they are.
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So Howard Tayler, mad scientist behind Schlock Mercenary, has opened a new website devoted to an ostensibly-fake foodstuff a foodstuff that one might think existed only in a fictional universe, but which has made its way into our own reality, draped in gooey perfection.

Recipes, discussion of various cheeses, and a tribute to cast-iron that would make Alton Brown moist are to be found here.

This could be the start of a trend. Already, Greg Dean, Tayler’s Blank Label-mate, has shifted his life (and update schedule) to attend culinary school. Could there be more webcomickers making the leap to food-themed endeavors? Because that could be awesome. Or sad. Guess it depends on what’s cooking.

From R Stevens, regarding the sudden unavailability of the delightful iheartpixels:

OK, so I made a goof! I used a third party to register my domain and do my hosting for i heart pixels. It was a momentary lapse of do-it-yerselferness. SUDDENLY, THE DOMAIN DOES NOT RESOLVE after 2 really good days of traffic. And guess what? I can’t point it where I want. Lovely. So, I solved this the way I solve most of my problems – atomic warfare. Please change whatever bookmarks/links/boners you may have to iheartpixels.org

You heard the man. Point yer boners here.

We have previously reported on the failure of Vault Distribution and the impact it had on the creators that were involved. At that time, we also pointed out that there now an open niche in the market and creators who were looking for someone to help sell their stuff. (As a side note, if you’re one of the small distributors out there, and are looking for some exposure – please use our contact form to tell us your story.)

Yesterday, we received the following press release, sent out by Neil G.
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While this is very old news, I recently had a conversation with D.J. Coffman about the demise of PVComics.

PVComics went offline sometime early last year – D.J. said that it had been gone for over a year now but it had actually been floundering for a bit before that.

The bare facts of the matter are that Logan DeAngelis got too busy with ComixPress to continue to manage and direct PVComics. And the domain and intellectual property still reside soundly in Logan’s hands… so nobody else can really pick it up and carry on.

PVComics started out trying to provide a creator centric subscription model, acting more as a service collective than as a publishing house. When it became clear that almost nobody was making any money off of the subscription business, PVComics switched to other business models, and ended up basically a pure service collective.

And then D.J. had this great idea… why shouldn’t someone start a print-on-demand service specializing in webcomics that was just as creator focused as PVComics was…? And so he mentioned it to Logan and…

All of the big plans and high hopes of PVComics members quietly went by the wayside.

D.J. says that the break up was amicable, and that he was happy to get the dishes and that rug that really pulled the front room together, and that he’s glad that all the PVComics alums are still friends.

Of course if any of you out there have a different side of this story, and would like to tell it – we all know that the webcomics industry doesn’t have nearly enough drama on a regular basis, so do your part to keep us all entertained by sending me some email or writing some comments or use the contact form.

The newest webcomics meme has hit over at LiveJournal.

People are drawing Batgirl! Webcomics types like Meredith Gran (Mer gets top billing because she designed our kickass masthead — thanks, Mer!), Ian Jones-Quartey, Brian Lee O’Malley, Abby L., R Stevens, Vera Brosgol, Ryan Estrada, Ryan North, Lem, Kean Soo, and Kristopher Straub have taken a whack at drawing the commissioner’s daughter. Also Andy Runton. Okay, Andy works in the print comics world, but Owly is too cute for words, and you should go buy all of his books.

And that’s just the people whose names caught my eye when scrolling down the list — as of this writing, there are nearly 500 entries. The whole thing apparently got kicked off with a link to some old character proposals by Andi Watson (buy all his books, too). Favorite so far: Jeff Rowland, reminding us that even superheroes need some “alone time”.

One of the things that you get used to real quick when you read webcomics is merch. This is a pretty natural thing, given that the people producing that webcomic you love so much ain’t paying hosting bills for the sheer fun of it. If there’s not a tip cup, there’s stuffs for sale, even for the semi-hobbyists.

But fundamentally, those stuffs fall into the categories of:
1. Shirts and shirtlike garments
2. Books
3. Art

That’s about it. Oh, sure, if you’re willing to associate with Cafe Press, you can get your character on a frisbee or whatever, but why so few options?
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One of the harder parts of creating a webcomic is actually writing it.

Even comics that are exclusively joke-a-day, like ?, need to be written.

And if you’re doing anything even a little bit more involved than that, you need to create characters. And these characters need to be distinguishable from each other. And so you give them different haircuts (none of them anatomically possible) or different boob sizes (none of them realistic), and they wear different clothes (and never change their clothes).

And then, just because you’re so very very very clever and fun… you decide to give one of them an accent.

And because you’re just such an amazingly original writier, you decide to give this character a French accent. And now your new character says ‘Ze”, and “Mozair” and “non!” and “baguette” and “bagatelle” and “Voulez-vous coucher” …

But, really. You’re not very good at it. And your character is not nearly as cute as you think it is.

So, try again, please. And that character you have, who is always obnoxious to everyone? That guy isn’t funny either. And enough with the bad guys who always sssssss their essess.

And remember the lesson of Lucas, too. That accent you find so hilarious may actually be racist. Oy Vey!

What with Clickwheel blurring the lines and all, you could argue that Homestar Runner is or is not deserving of mention here. But one thing is certain: Strong Bad is himself a comics creator, and you see his comics on the web, so….

Anyway, after a month of no updates, H*R has an update. Thrill as the aforementioned Mr Bad skewers every terrible Hanna-Barbera “Hey, chums, let’s go solve a wacky mystery!” cartoon of my youth. You know that somewhere, Frank Welker is laughing at this, too.

Also after a month or so, Kestrel and her crew are continuing their commented countdown towards … um … something that starts with a “k” sound. Queen of Wands reruns with DVD commentary track, for your enjoyment.

Lastly, we commented earlier on Owen Dunne’s computer loss and revival. Not only is You Damn Kid back, but he’s launched a new strip called My New Mommy (check out the intro here), and revived the hiatused Norman P. Function and the deliciously deranged Nippleshine Manor. That’s four separate strips, for which Dunne has set himself an ambitious update schedule of eleven strips per week (including color Sunday YDK). Here’s hoping that life doesn’t conspire against him, because his work’s always entertaining.

It seems like almost every week, there is a new webcomics collective that is started or dies or is reborn…

All this activity leads an inquiring mind to, well, inquire. Or at least to wonder.

Why do artists form collectives and why do they join?

Most collectives seem to fall into one of the following broad categories

• Business collectives – collectives put together for the purpose of making money directly, usually using a subcription model. There aren’t as many of these as there used to be.
• Service collectives – collectives put together to provide information and artistic and technical support to members. There aren’t as many of these as there should be.
• Marketing collectives – collectives that provide a unifying brand to promote the works of the artists in the collective.
• Hosting collectives – collectives that provide hosting services for members.
• Community collectives – collectives in a more traditional sense of the word, to provide a gathering place for webcomic creators and fans.
• Artists collectives – collectives that provide an artistic umbrella for works of a certain style or quality

There’s a few more types of collectives, with fewer examples, like vanity collectives, but that’s not the topic under discussion.

All of the types of collectives listed above provide different reasons why artists might want to join a collective.

But I think there’s a simpler reason.

I think that the majority of webcomic artists are lonely geeks living in garrets and basements, and need all the friends they can scare up or pay for.

Or is that just me?