Okay gang, new webcomics rule: When Paul Taylor does color? It’s worth paying attention. And if you’re so inclined, you can own a tasty full-color print of the strip, or even the B&W original.
Seriously, I wish that every webcomics artist would do splash panels the way that Taylor (and, come to think of it, Phil & Kaja Foglio) does. And the 9 – 10 month interval that he’s established between these little story breaks/nuggets of fanservice? Just right.
The redoubtable T Campbell (so don’t doubt him unless you’re willing to redoubt as well, Slappy!) dropped some email on me earlier today; let’s share, shall we?
Today sees the launch of One Simple Ad, a simple and original idea, an unprecedented value for advertisers, a unique and intriguing idea for a site, and an unapologetic attempt to keep myself out of the poorhouse.
I would appreciate it if you gave the site a moment of your time and attention, and asked others to do the same.
Done, and done (and, my I say, noble goals on Campbell’s part). My time and attention having been spent, here’s my thoughts:
Interesting idea on an intellectual level: one ad plays on an otherwise empty page, nothing to distract, pure laser-like attention from the viewer on the ad and nothing else, all good things from the perspective of an advertiser. But I don’t get it viscerally; I don’t see the benefit to the person with the eyeballs that are intended to be captured. Campbell’s got an interesting take on the FAQ page:
Who will visit?
People who believe that advertising is an art form in its own right. Andy Warhol showed us that neat things happen when you combine art and commerce in new ways, and Super Bowl commercials have shown us that advertisers respond well when you give them one big chance to make their pitch. I grew up the proud son of an advertising executive, so I appreciate ads at their best, and this site should give people an incentive to create some!
Which, um, yeah. I might be speaking purely for myself, but advertising is what I put up with to get free media, not something I seek out … and I think most people are of like mind. The fact that, in a world of near infinite space on the digital cable converter, there’s no Ads Channel is clue #1. The fact that if you ask 100 people what one gadget in their house, if it broke today, they’d have a new one by tonight, will cause most of them to answer “My TiVo” is clue #2. And I can see the Super Bowl argument kinda, but then Campbell adds in this bit from the T & C:
- Ads should be non-animated image files (GIF, JPG or PNG). [my emphasis]
That’s not a Super Bowl ad, that’s going outside the house at intervals during the Super Bowl and staring at a billboard for 30 — 60 seconds. And nobody’s gonna stare at a billboard that long, even if it’s as brilliantly wrong as the [in]famous Pork the one you love. That’s clue #3.
Anyway, there’s about five ads in the rotation now (four if you discount the fact that one is for Campbell’s own webcomic); they’re … ads. Campbell’s is pretty to look at and all, but nothing that’s going to make me want to come back and hit the refresh button on a daily basis. Unless you’re already reading James Lileks tributes to old ads, I’m afraid that this one’s not likely to capture your imagination.
So Tony Long doesn’t think that American Born Chinese is deserving of nomination for the National Book Award. This is one of the most poorly informed opinions I have ever read. Let me elaborate.
Mr Long has not even read American Born Chinese, but his assupmtion is that it is much harder to write a novel worthy of NBA nomination than it is to write a graphic novel of equal quality. In his words:
[A]s literature, the comic book does not deserve equal status with real novels, or short stories. It’s apples and oranges.
If you’ve ever tried writing a real novel, you’ll know where I’m coming from. To do it, and especially to do it well enough to be nominated for this award, the American equivalent of France’s Prix Goncourt or Britain’s Booker Prize, is exceedingly difficult.
I’m not even going to bother working out how many more novels have been nominated for an NBA than graphic novels, but I’ll give you a clue: lots. So I guess it’s much harder to write a novel worthy of nomination than a graphic novel, right Tony?
One other thing. Not only did Mr Long not read the book he is claiming to be unworthy of nomination, he clearly didn’t read the submission guidlines for the award he thinks American Born Chinese is unworthy of. Let’s take a look.
A. Full-length books of fiction and general nonfictionare eligible. Collections of short stories and collections of essays by one author are eligible. Collected and selected poems by one author are eligible. All books must be published in the United States.
Now, last time I checked, American Born Chinese was a full length book of general fiction. Maybe next time you want to claim that a fine work of literature is not worthy of a particular literary award, you should read the rules of eligibility for said award first.
The only thing that bothers me, after reading the specific guidelines, is that more graphic novels haven’t been considered for the Award in the past.
Edit: I was so mad about this that I forgot to give props to Jeph for pointing it out to me in the first place, and also to mention that Project Wonderful is not only a great idea – it’s also the best name for anything, ever!
In no particular order:
We (the WCCA planning committee) have already done a major revision to committee organization and the nomination editing process. These changes can be seen in our charter.
Each year we take a close look at every element of the awards and the 4th tier awards have been reconsidered every year that the awards have taken place. Currently we are in the process of reorganizing the entire list of categories and tightening up that list is a major priority this year. But at this point I honestly don’t know if the “genre” awards will be effected either completely or in part. Since the awards are coming up fast, we’re hoping to have a finalize list VERY soon.
So sure, it’s possible, but the fat lady hasn’t sung yet.
Fleen will be sure to report on the changes once they’re finalized. I’m not sure if that satisfies Mr (?) Nonymous’s concerns, but if it doesn’t, I’d suggest contacting the committee and asking how you can get involved (if not this year, then next).
That’s all for today, kiddies; gotta go carve me some gourds.
Bomb Shelter Comics Wants YOU
So you’ve got a webcomic, huh? You’ve even thought about trying to join a collective, but never heard back from anyone, right? Well, this is your lucky day. Because Bomb Shelter Comics is having their first-ever first annual Webcomic Idol membership competition! That’s right, we’re letting you guys try for a chance to join the BSC.
Not only that, we’re offering up some goodies to whoever wins. We’re gonna give you everything you need to make that comic of yours wicked sweet, things like:
a free BSC subdomain to host your comic on if you need it
your very own forum on our board
free web-design
and a free comic management script decked out just the way you like it
To enter all you have to do is send an email with your name and comic URL, DeviantArt accounts and things like that are okay too.There is a catch though, you have to update at least once a week. Miss an update and you’re out of the running. Of course, things like losing a limb and alien abduction will have exceptions made for them.
We’ve even compiled an all-star team of judges to help out on this thing too, like:
Tim Demeter — editor, Graphic Smash
Daku the Rogue — founder/podcaster, Digital Strips
and DJ Coffman — cartoonist, Yirmumah!
plus a one or two BSC members may get in on the action
So what’re you waiting for, drop that email on us. We’re ready and the judges are starting to foam at the mouth.
Ryan North, unsatisfied with having Oh No Robot and RSSPECT out there, has dropped Project Wonderful on the wide world o’ webcomics. In the words of the site, Advertising online just got totally awesome (a scary thought) and everybody wins, which is more reassuring.
Basic rundown: it’s an advertisting auction market. If you want to run an ad, you can bid a price and a period of time you want the ad to run (or reverse it: “run my ad whenever I can get it for a dollar a day”); if you have the high bid, the ad runs, and if you don’t, you’re not charged. If you want to run ads, you take the top bid for a period of time. It’s also got an interesting wrinkle, which we’ll let the TMM tell us about:
The wrinkle we throw on top of that is free advertising: all auctions start at $0, and you can place a bid of $0 if you want. This has two benefits: advertisers get free advertising (always a bonus) and website owners get to replace the “advertise here PLEASE I NEED THIS” banners that we’ve all seen with actual ads. It gets around the problem of people thinking “nobody’s advertising here – maybe it’s because there’s something wrong with it!” in a way that I hope is pretty elegant!
In addition, North has included “ad boxes”, where multiple ads (from multiple advertisers, at potentially different prices) can run in the space of a single banner ad; check out the top line on Dinosaur Comics for an example of eight ads in one. Of more interest is the transparency in the model; again, Ryan North:
A lot of online advertising has relied upon hiding information: ad companies want to get the highest ad prices for their member websites, but ALSO want to get the cheapest rates for their advertisers, and they way they do this is basically by hiding the truth: sites like AdSense won’t tell you what an advertiser paid to have their ad on your site — they’ll just tell you what they’re paying you. Stuff like that is dishonest or at least evasive, and what PW does is offer complete transparency: we show you what kind of hits the site is getting, who’s been linking to them, and what people have been paying in the past. We’re not going to rip anyone off by leading them to believe something that isn’t true, and we’re offering a free informed market for ads.
This one is going to take a bit of thought to see how useful it is (for example, a number of smart people hold to the idea that online advertising is essentially dead), but it definitely bears watching. North is running beta testing on it now, and when it’s ready to roll for actual sign-ups, he hopes to have other features in place:
We have a search engine for websites where you can specify what kind of sites you want to advertise on, and get emailed whenever there’s new results. You can even say things like “Tell me whenever a new site is linked to by BoingBoing (or Fleen) because that means they’re going to get a lot of hits and I want to get in on that”. Of course, with just me on the network right now that’s not THAT useful, but I hope it will become a powerful tool in the next few months.
We’ll check back in on Project Wonderful in a couple of months and see if we can get North to give us a rundown on to what degree it’s met his expectations. In the meantime, Fleen is accepting entries in the first iteration of the “What kind of webcomics tool will Ryan North come up with next?” contest; whoever comes closest in description and timeframe with their guess will win the people’s ovation and fame forever.
Things is happening over Dumbrella way; many people seem to think that Jeff Rowland doesn’t actually like Garfield. In other news, Rich Stevens is picking his battles; two shirts are going away on Friday, one may be hanging in there, but final disposition remains to be seen. On the positive side, Pixelween starts today with a little animation action.
Speaking of action, Jon Rosenberg‘s got an action figure, and if you pre-ordered one, you possibly have it now, too! At least, I do — waiting on my front porch when I got home last night. My wife was very amused by the back-of-the-box copy, and thinks that the little tiny Necronomicon (2nd edition) accessory is the funniest toy supplement ever. As an added bonus, I now have proof positive that as he was autographing my toy’s box, Jon ordered pizza. Bringing you the nutritional habits of your favorite webtooners is what we’re all about here at Fleen.
Speaking of my porch, I’m carving my annual webcomics–themed Halloween pumpkins this week. One will be an Andy Bell design (and some day, I hope to be able to manage a devil bears and Esther tableau), and one is a mystery until I see if I can make it work the way I want to. Pictures coming soon.
I received an email through the Fleen contact site from Brad Shur, letting me know that there is a fairly new web comic collective in our midst. The collective is so cleverly titled, Koala Wallop. I’m not sure where Koalas come into play, but I like the name nonetheless.
The collective is comprised of five web comics: Perfect Stars, Dresden Codak, I am a Rocket Builder, Minus, and The Secret Crocodile Adventure Club. I’ve browsed through their sites, and decided to talk about The Secret Crocodile Adventure Club today. I’ll get to the others later this week, if all goes well in Allison Land.
Now on to The Secret Crocodile Adventure Club. With a name like that, I came into this comic with high expectations. It’s a secret club, with adventures. That’s pretty damn hard to pull off. First off, the site is explained as a secret order of crocodiles, which comes with it’s own hierarchy and rules of engagement. Their main enemy is the Michael J. Fox Society to Prevent Parkinson’s Disease. Why? I don’t know. I guess they have something against Michael J.
As noted in his LiveJournal, Ryan North survived a stair-climb up the tallest building in the world. In his own words:
Then my brother and I got an hour of sleep before getting up at 4:30 am to climb the CN tower, aka the tallest building1 in the world. It is 143 flights of stairs straight up, and Victor, Allene and I were among the first to start at 6:00 am. Victor was the hero, doing it 2 steps at a time most of the way up, getting to the top in 19 minutes. Also he was still drunk from last night when he did it, and puked literally minutes before he climbed the tower. TRULY UNSTOPPABLE??
I waited with Allene (NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND) and we did it in 33 minutes, 36 seconds. I got a shirt that says this and am going to modify it to 3.3 minutes, 3.6 seconds, which is a very complicated way of time measurement but which gives me ULTRA SUPER HUMAN TIME. Also: I dropped my little time card and had to go down 2 stories to get it, which means I actually climbed 145 stories, 2 more than everyone else, and those stories account for any slowness real or imagined?
…
So while we did not break the world record, we did raise together about $500 for charity, and I started out my new year in style. Thank you everyone for donating! We then slept and at 4:00 Victor and Paul and I dressed up like Harry Potter, a Bell Canada Service Repairman, and a woman in a very pretty skirt, respectively, and participated in the Spooky Shred / Critical Mass ride downtown, which was a ton of longboarders, all in costume, riding through the city. Awesome!
Awesome indeed! Should North attempt the CN Tower climb again next year, all lovers of webcomics (and things that are FUN) are urged to support him. The best thing is that you support him in Canadian dollars, which are 112% as colorful as American dollars.
In other news of things that are fun: new Winterview! With Jeff Rowland! Intentional lies! Disconcerting eye contact!
