New To Me, And Maybe You
While we’re all waiting for NEWW, let’s focus on some things that are new, or at least offer vague rhymes with “new”.
- From the Infrastructure Desk, word that Storenvy (a user-customizable storefront service/social network) has added a webcomics-specific section, The Webcomics Market. B Root of The Dawn Chapel calls it a Topatoco for everyone else (which seems like the best descriptor — a single point of purchase for multiple creators, but without the editoral/curatorial aspect):
- It doesn’t cost anything; Storenvy’s business model is built around their merch printing service, Threadbird, which you are not obligated to use
- It handles a bunch of standard storefront functions: inventory management, shipping groups, item variants, and other stuff
- You can directly edit the layout using Liquid tags or HTML
- It’s preconfigured to work with Google Analytics so your sales stats will show up
Those of you without a storefront may want to investigate, and at the moment you’ll get in on the ground floor of the Webcomics Market, as it appears at the moment there are only three other webcomics that have colonized the neighborhood.
- Not new, but rhymes with: Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery was first mentioned in these pages back in the halcyon days of Aught-Eight, and it’s only gotten more fun since then. Worth a look-see and an archive trawl.
- New, and sorta rhymes: Twit Troo of the Moon; the first two iterations are each only a few strips long, but the latest — Comets Are Curious — tells a full story over a few dozen strips. Alternately B&W and color (seemingly based on how much time creator AD Finke has), the chief appeal for me was space critters that look like the best of Spaceman Spiff‘s nemeses.
- Totally new and still rhyming: Blue Yonder. All I can tell you so far is that it’s superhero oriented, and of the so-far unnamed characters, these two appear to be the protagonists. Oh, also that they have a more “Zan and Jana” vibe than “Reed and Sue”. With the prologue still in progress, that’s all we know so far about the story, but superhero fans may find something similar to SideChicks — full page updates once a week, and hopefully an avoidance of the hyper-decompressed, splashpage-heavy approach of capes stories in print.
- Not rhyming, not new, but dang I like it already: Edmund Finney’s Quest to Find the Meaning of Life. Here’s what you need to know: Edmund has a prodigious nose, he wanders from place to place trying to achieve insight, and roughly every 5-7 strips the tableau shifts to new environs. The story is thus short-arc based, never dragging on, but as Edmund is on a journey, the moving on feels natural, unforced, and never abrupt. Oh, and it’s very pretty, and creator Dan Long feels free to bust out the big strips if that’s what it takes to get to the right mix of absurdity, profundity, and punchline.
This is going to sound out-of-left-field, but it reminds me of nothing so much as that moment of anticipation I always felt when watching The Muppet Show, and The Great Gonzo was explaining his latest stunt; you knew it was going to end up somewhere unpredictable and ridiculous, but with a strange sense of internal logic. Highly recommended.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by B.Root, Nina Lords. Nina Lords said: While we’re all waiting for NEWW, let’s focus on some things that are new, or at least offer vague rhymes with “… http://bit.ly/aPTdt0 […]
By Tweets that mention Fleen: Home Of The Webcomics Action News Team! » New To Me, And Maybe You -- Topsy.com on 11.04.10 10:45 pm
[…] have too much in the way of newsworthy stuff to talk about. The venerated webcomics news blog Fleen dropped a link this way after I fired off an email about the webcomics market on Storenvy, which was awfully nice of him. […]
By The Dawn Chapel - Unwell, page 5 on 11.05.10 3:01 am
I love comics with clever titles. Comets are Curious? I have to check that on on general principle!
By Michael Vox on 11.05.10 10:59 pm
[…] let us know that he’d sent glowing emails to a few leading webcomics blogs. Not long after, Gary at FLEEN told his readers about us, and whaddaya know, the Market is now sporting 12 stores and growing. […]
By Webcomics creators: Come one, come all! | The Storenvy Blog on 11.13.10 2:45 pm
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