The webcomics blog about webcomics

Slight Web Access, Hooray

Let’s reward the situation with slight webcomics news.

  • Steve Jackson Games, which has been in the business of making nerd entertainments roughly forever (hands up everybody that played Car Wars instead of dating at any point in your personal history), also has a history of intersection with webcomics. For instance, numerous webcomickers have contributed cards to the Munchkin series of games, and Dork Tower creator John Kovalic is practically the SJG house illustrator. Now anybody can join that rarefied group of talents:

    Do you publish a webcomic? Are you a Munchkin? Do you like . . . GOLD PIECES?

    We will be running a month-long contest for webcomics that refer to the Munchkin game. At the end of the contest, the SJ Games Men in Black (our demo team, hundreds strong) will vote on the winners.

    Short version: prizes up to $1000 for the judged portion; a parallel contest will be open to public voting, but given that such a scheme gives an advantage to already-popular webcomics, this contest will be for donations (again, up to $1000) to the creator’s favorite charity. The mechanics and rules are here, but several items should be called out for your attention:

    2. You may use images or representations of the Munchkin game, characters, logos, or monsters as long as you acknowledge that Steve Jackson Games retains ownership of the characters and monsters depicted [SJG provides boilerplate text for this, and will allow reprints of these comics in collections with the same acknowledgement].

    5. If your comic burns out the eyes of our staff members, it’s out of the running. We have no doubt that some of you have the power to squick some of us. Please don’t.

    8. You must be cool with worldofmunchkin.com linking back to all entries, and permanently hosting copies of the winners with links back to their regular sites.

    9. The contest begins on May 1, 2011 and ends on June 1, 2011.

    10. The e-mail entry must be sent to SJ Games by noon (Austin time) on June 1, 2011. Please include your name, address, and e-mail address.

    11. Employees, immediate family members of employees, MIBs, contractors, or freelancers of SJ Games may enter the contest but are not eligible to win at higher than Honorable Mention level. If ineligible people do something cool, we’ll celebrate it — we just won’t write you a big check for it. We might hire you afterward if you’re not careful.

    Item #11 is what will keep Kovalic from winning automatically, so that’s good. Personally, I think you should get bonus points if you can work in Wil Wheaton somehow, but it’s not up to me. Check out the full set of rules and create something amusing.

  • I apparently spoke too soon yesterday about Wondermark‘s birthday passing unremarked-upon; starting today, and continuing for a massive eight pages, David Malki ! presents the Nominally-Essential Tinkerer’s Handbook, which appears to be what you get when David Malki ! attends a machining class and then freebases a two-year backlog of MAKE.

    This massive creation is, naturally, in addition to tonight’s live stageshow which — we have just learned — will feature cake. Birthday cake, as today marks six months since the release of Machine of Death (which is like 17 years in human time). Fun! Excitement! DJ Malki !-Malk ! droppin’ fat rhymes! And if you can’t make it in person to Holllllywood’s Fake Gallery, you can take advantage of the livestream here, starting at 8:00pm Pacific (UTC -7). The only thing you’ll miss out on not being there in person is the magnificent, personal magnetism of Malki ! (I think it’s some kind of pheromone) and the other performers.¹

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¹ And the cake. Delicious, delicious cake.

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