Or, the alternative title: My Chronologically Awkward Review

My housemate doesn’t describe herself as a webcomics reader, exactly, even though she does have a number of regular comics that she reads on a regular enough basis. Though she’s emphatic that she doesn’t consider herself part of “webcomics culture” (whatever that means), she knows enough about it to point me towards new webcomics.

Take for example K. Fuhr’s Friendly Hostility over at Keenspot. I’d never heard of it and I was looking for a strip which discussed non-hetero sexuality (it is National Coming Out Day, after all). “Oh!” my housemate said, “Have a look at this one.”
(more…)

Just a reminder, I’ll be at SPX this weekend; if you see a guy with glasses and a moustache, it’s probably me. As AlP creator Bernie Hou and I have to get an early start on the driving, you’ll probably get a slight or missing update tomorrow; I swear I’ll totally make it up to you.

Speaking of events, there’s a new contest in the offing and you (yes, YOU) could win stuff. And we’re not talking about t-shirts this time; we’re talking genuine consumer-grade electronics. Take it away, David Davis:

My webcomic is about to transition into Cosmic Dash, and to celebrate, I am holding a drawing contest with the winner recieving a 30 gig Microsoft Zune as well as some original penciled pages and a character designed around the winners specifications. The contest is pretty easy to get involved with and lasts until November 5th, so check the contest page for details.

I just hope it’s not the poo-colored one. Regardless, if you want to get free stuff, fire up your art studio, break out the scanner, or at least see what you can put together with some webcomics tools from Strong Badia. Stuff’s awaiting.

Randall Munroe has an interesting superpower — things that he casually includes in his webcomic come true. Sometimes it’s out of his control, and just due to readers gettin’ creative. Sometimes Munroe nudges it along. Truly, I’m hard-pressed to think of any better use of the internet than to provide pictures of scantily-clad or naked people rocking out in the shower (one of whom does her own webcomic which has more than its share of xkcdesque moments). Well done, Munroe and wet rocking people!

In other news:

• Hardy leave-print-for-the-web-then-reprint pioneers Phil and Kaja Foglio will be speaking at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus, on Saturday at 2:45pm:
  

  Titled “I Can Haz Moniez Now?”, the topic is webcomic business models and their successful transition from print to web as a comic publisher.

  To be held at the U of I campus, SEIBO Siebel Center, Room 1404. The lecture is open to the public.

  LOLFOGLIO? FOGLOLIO? Something like that.

• The fresh hiatus made necessary by life’s ass-kicking tendencies will not deter Owen Dunne from finishing the latest Beevniks storyline.
• And via Lore Sjöberg, news of 400 or so bad comics on the web:
  

  Two guys I did not know about until just today are each publishing 200 bad comics on some sort of Internet double dog dare sort of a thing, and I have to admit I’m enjoying them.

  Bad comics guy 1, bad comics guy 2, and the meme has spread to guy 3. This could get out of hand.

So Sheldon [the Pig [Who Couldn’t Stay Put]] isn’t going to be Sheldon [the Pig [Who Couldn’t Stay Put]] any longer. Not to say that Sheldon will be staying put, he won’t (except in the sense that he’ll still be at Modern Tales). What I mean to say is that Sheldon [the Pig [Who Couldn’t Stay Put]] will be renamed.

But not Sheldon the pig. The strip about Sheldon the pig (who may or may not be able to stay put). Here, let’s let creator Kevin Moore explain:

I am hosting a contest to re-name this series. Don’t worry, Sheldon gets to keep his name, but the series needs something a bit different, wider in scope to reflect the growing world Sheldon inhabits. Or something like that.

The winner will receive a custom t-shirt with the new strip title and their favorite character on it, so that’s pretty cool. If you want to enter (or just vote on current entries), do so here.

And in less confusing news, Paul Taylor is joining Wonder Woman Day II, which is an art auction at the end of the month to benefit domestic violence shelters in Portland, Oregon and Flemington, New Jersey. Check out Taylor’s Wapsified entry here. I thought for sure I blogged about Karen Ellis‘s three awesome contributions in weeks past, but I guess I didn’t. Anyway, we’ll keep our eyes open to see what other webcomickers get in on the meme.

So over the weekend I was talking with my wife’s sister, the lawyer, and an interesting term came up that’s new to me: Contract of Adhesion:

n.(contract of adhesion) a contract (often a signed form) so imbalanced in favor of one party over the other that there is a strong implication it was not freely bargained…. An adhesion contract can give the little guy the opportunity to claim in court that the contract with the big shot is invalid.

Now she’s not IP or entertainment lawyer, but this little concept isn’t particular to IP or entertainment contracts — it’s a part of common law. Anyway, I can’t think for the life of me why I found this interesting in the context of webcomics. Nope, not at all.

In other, completely non-legal (as opposed to barely legal) news:

• The Spurge takes webcomics to task (short form: don’t fool yourself, there are good webcomics, but just as many crappy webcomics as crappy non-webcomics).
• Brian Warmoth joins the legions of those fascinated with my facial follicles. Oh, and he talks to Ryan Estrada, too. Hey, Brian? Two “R”s in Tyrrell, buddy.

On the one hand you’ve got the traditional publisher, complete with royalties for creators, paid from the coffers of a large media conglomerate. I particularly recommend your attention to lines like Two sources close to the production recall a principal player receiving a merchandising residual check for 45 cents and In several instances, New Line struck deals with companies within the Time Warner family, such as Warner Bros. Records and the TBS cable network. Just sayin’.

On the other hand you’ve got the indy creator, who will try all kinds of things to connect with the audience on a one-on-one level. The concept of a street team isn’t new to webcomics — just view the year-round association of über-PA boosters/volunteers known as Enforcers — but Meredith Gran (disclosure: she did our masthead) has taken this a step further and created a street team that is geographically specific. Interesting.

And while, yes, large publisher types have done street team-type things before, they always end up like those hot women in calculated tight black pants pretending to like a particular brand of vodka — contrived and artificial.

Hey, kids! Who’s goin’ to SPX next weekend? Webcomickers (and related types) to be seen there will include Blank Labellers Guigar, Kellet, Straub, Tayler, and Willis; Box Brown, who I completely read over on the list, sorry!, Nick Gurewitch, Bernie Hou, Jeph Jacques, James Kochalka, Carla Speed McNeil, Dave Roman, Joe Sayers, Raina Telgemeier, Colleen Venable, Chris Yates, and The Dreamcrusher.

Additionally, of that number, Sayers and Malki ! are up for the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic, along with Chris Onstad, Nick Bertozzi, and Kris Dressen. What I like best about the Ignatz is the physical form of the award — it’s a brick. And as long as you’re there, keep an eye out for the Josh Frulinger-moderated panel on the current state of comic strips, with Gurewitch on the panel

I should note that Gurewitch is on that panel as a cartoonist, not specifically a webcartoonist; in this, SPX has regarded the delivery medium as less important than the content. Give it a few more years, and we’ll hopefully see webcomics sprinkled throughout the categories of the Ignatzes (and the Harveys, and the Eisners), rather than segregated into one slot. Until then, come see what it looks like on an exhibit floor where webcomics are spread around instead of concentrated in one spot. It’s pretty cool.

This week I’d like to introduce you to The Secret Knots by Juan Santapau. It’ll evoke connections to A Softer World, as it should, plus it may get you thinking about Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. Erratically updated but beautifully done (perhaps these things are not mutually exclusive), The Secret Knots is worth your time.

It’s also, I think, worth noting that the comic’s creator is based in Chile. While we think a fair amount about webcomics as a global medium, I can think of maybe a handful based outside of the United States which have popped up on my radar, and even fewer where English is not the creator’s first language. He started “posting these single page comics on a blog, in 2005” and decided to continue the series through its own website. He explains that the “name of the series comes from something Athanasius Kircher wrote once: ‘The world is bound with secret knots’ which I find somehow connected to the tag line that I’ve been using: ‘comics about things we do without knowing why‘ (even though Kircher was talking about magnetism…).”

While Santapau has a disclaimer explaining that he isn’t a native speaker of English, his writing shows a degree of precision I haven’t yet seen in any other webcomic. There are occasionally a few very small errors, but they do not by any means adversely affect the work. Honestly, the language usage is so breathtaking in its range of vocabulary–and combine that feeling with reading those words in some of the evocative lettering Santapau composes. The total effect is almost haunting in places; overall, The Secret Knots is a fabulous example of just how powerful the combination of skillful word choice and the way in which those words are represented can be. Simply put, the webcomic is truly striking.
(more…)

Two things that could be of interest to capital-W Webcomics.

First up, the long-memoried among you may recall that most of year ago, we at Fleen tried to answer the question, How many readers do you need to make a living? We never got enough offers of data to do a proper analysis, but that hasn’t made the question go away. Fortunately, somebody else is taking a stab at answering it. I give you Jan Jaap Sandee, webcomicker and business student:

I have to write a business plan for a business. I chose to write a business plan for a webcomic and making a living off of this.

However to do this I have to do a viability test. For this purpose one of the things I have is a survey. To clarify the survey is about 5 to 10 minutes, and there’s no veiled advertising.

Eventually the entire research will result in an interesting document regarding living off of a webcomic. I have no problems sharing this document and/or relevant information.

Jan, we’re taking you up on the offer — send us a copy of the business case when you’ve got it done, and we’re sending you as many survey respondants as possible.

As to the other thing that may have some bearing on capital-W Webcomics, we mentioned way back in July that the Halfpixel Duo of Straub & Kurtz (makes them sound like a hero team … I’ll let them worry about which one is the sidekick) are working on a book about how to make them (webcomics, that is … stay with me, son), due in January from Image. Turns out that Straub and Kurtz aren’t making that book anymore.

That’s because the book will be made by Straub and Kurtz and Kellett and Guigar. Since the Webcomics Weekly podcast produced by the four of them is all about how to make webcomics, it makes perfect sense that all four ‘casters be in on the book. I was interested in the book before, but now I’m counting days; between those four guys you’ve only got about 30 years of webcomics experience. If you’re trying to make a webcomic, or trying to make one better, this book could be the online equivalent to Comics & Sequential Art.

News, news, news. Getcher news here.

Joe Chiappetta, who is a father and somewhat less than serious, announces:

The first ever Silly Daddy animated cartoon short is complete and viewable here. This entire short movie was done in the Chiappetta studio by Silly Daddy and his built-in team of child laborers working for under minimum wage.

After 16 years total as a print comic and ongoing webcomic, now you can also spend a whopping 26 seconds watching the animated version.

All daddies, silly and otherwise, are directed towards this short.

From Michael Rouse-Deane, a followup to a previous story:

The Kid’s Book Project is nearing its climaxic finalé with only 10 artists left to don their pages. The cover, just released today, is created by the talented Liz Greenfield who had the hardest challenge of creating a cover without even seeing the inside of it. Each book costs £6 and all profits go directly towards the Make-A-Wish Foundation. There will only be 500 printed, so if you don’t get one you probably never will.

The first 100 pre-orders will get a signed printed “thank you” letter from all the artists ranging from Frank Page, Ryan North, Mitch Clem, Brandon J Carr and many many extremely talented people. So if you haven’t already, pre-order your copy today because as soon as they’ve gone, you’ll never find out the answer – “can webcomic artists create a good enough story?”

It is a scientific fact that there can be nothing more adorable than a Teenage Mutant Ninja Liz. Nothing!