The webcomics blog about webcomics

Final Word On The Print/Web Digression

It’s died down here and at The Daily Cartoonist, but there was one last hurrah in The Great Web/Print Convocation of Aught-Eight — an open conference call set up by Scott Kurtz last Friday, leading to Webcomics Weekly #29. From Kurtz:

So I set up a conference call via Talkshoe and invited everyone in last night. I was granted permission from the group to record the session and the resulting two hour debate is this episode of Webcomics Weekly.

A word of warning: This is a 2 hour podcast. I’m not sure of the audio quality because I used Talkshoe’s built in software to record it. At times, everyone is LOUDLY talking over each other. EXPLICIT LANGUAGE WARNING: Some of us curse. Mostly me. Sorry.

I was hoping that more of the print/syndicated cartoonists would show up. But mostly it was us web guys. Ted Rall called in shortly after we started and so did Matt Bors (who does editorial cartoons and is a part of Ted’s Attitude cartoonists). Halfway through our own Brad Guigar shows up and later in the podcast we hear from Rich Stevens and Meredith Gran.

I don’t want to say too much. I’ll let you listen yourself. A lot gets brought up and we don’t really solve any of the world’s cartoonists problems. But I think we make some headway in understanding each other a little better.

I’ve only had time to listen to the first half hour or so, thus far. It’s a bit random at first, as everybody gets used to talking without visual cues (as the veteran of many corporate con-calls, this is a very common thing). I’m reliably informed that the quality of the conversation ramps up once everybody’s figured out how not to talk over each other.

In other news, Spike’s totally awesome Templar, Arizona makes the jump to Keenspot, which means that as of today Reagan is scientifically proved to be 38% sassier.

And finally, a very happy 12th birthday to Help Desk; that is a long damn time, even factoring out “internet years”. May the malevolent boss of Ubersoft give you a break today, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

That conversation is all well and good for the strip people, which is the style that most people associate with the term “webcomic”. Now the long-form, full-page creators need to have a similar conversation. Online serialization of a graphic novel has a whole different set of challenges. maybe over at Panel and Pixel where a lot of long-formers hang out.

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