Today, I would like to chat a little bit more about Livejournal and its role in webcomics. I think Livejournal isn’t considered nearly enough by webcomic creators when they consider how they’d like their content to appear to their readers. There are some lazy readers out there, after all — and they like their webcomics to appear on their friends pages like they do in their daily newspaper.

This little feat is done with RSS feeds, and can only be created by a paid or permanent Livejournal account holder. (Creators do have control, but they have to take an active role in stopping the feed.) If the feed isn’t in the top 1000 on LJ, or isn’t advertised in the community, it’s nearly impossible to find. But each official or unofficial feed has people commenting. (Notice the icons in those comments. Bunny icon, Megatokyo icon, Calvin and Hobbes icon!)So, while comics may have forums, there’s discussion elsewhere, which is something that should be realized, if not looked at, or — if you’re just that cool and above your celebrity — interacted with.

Personally, I don’t use syndicated accounts to read my comics. Using Mozilla’s wonderful “open all tabs” I keep folders for each day of the week and just open them all at once… several times a day. (Sorry for the false hits, guys…) It means I don’t get to play the “first post!” game, or even interact with other fans… but I prefer my friends page free of clutter.

Thoughts?

So what’s happening with Mac Hall right now? Parallel universes? Is there a difference between Mac Hall 2.1 and Mac Hall 3.0?

Okay, so I’m aware that this could just be an over-sight on Ian’s part, but what with him moving to California… where does that leave the Mac characters that we know and love? Personally, I think it would be fun to see what crazy stuff Ian gets up to in Cali, but at the same time bringing the storylines we have going with the “2.1�? characters to a close.

Since updates have been well, sparse (at best), two storylines would be confusing and maybe frustrating. These problems arise when a comic is semi-autobiographical. I think we need some kind of resolution on Mac Hall 2.1 before we launch into a new chapter of Mac. It doesn’t matter if it’s entirely fictional, like in any relationship, closure would be nice.

I just got off work and I’m freakin’ tired. So instead of writing some beautifully poignant piece on web comics, I’m just going to share with you the handful of comics that metaphorically popped my web comic cherry.

The very first web comic I read and almost literally devoured is Questionable Content by J. Jacques. This little Indie dream won my heart over in a matter of minutes. I read the whole backlog in one sitting, and still craved more. This is when I knew that I was meant for web comics.

Another web comic that tickled my fancy at an early stage was good ol’ Toothpaste for Dinner by Drew. I became obsessed with checking this comic daily, and I’m pretty sure a good sum of my money has gone to his t-shirt store.

One last comic that I’m sure you’ve heard of is White Ninja Comics. This Ninja is white, crude, and hi-larious. I e-mailed these crass but wonderfully delightful comics to all my friends and even a few foes. I still get a kick out of horribly offensive humor, which is why I’ve been true to White Ninja through out the years.

These three comics are what opened the gateway to the wondrous world of web comics, and for which I owe them my eternal gratitude.

Yesterday I said there would be a review of a very good political comic, but I lied. Journalists, man, what are you going to do?

Instead I’m catching up on four days worth of missed comics because I left for an extended weekend. With that being said, this is what I learned from comics this week: Questionable Content tapped into my food neurosis this week. I check my food religiously for anything that looks bug-like. So I don’t know where this OCD instinct came from but reading this comic was very hard on me.

Gunnerkrigg Court started Chapter 8 and the official start of Book 2 on the 29th as well. I’m hoping that Book 2 explains much of the unsolved mystery that was unraveled in the first 7 chapters.

One of Family Man’s most unique pages went up on the 31st. It seems like nothing is happening until you look very closely to see that the last two panels are individually drawn. It’s almost impossible to tell but for the fact that all the clocks have ticked a minute forward from the previous panel. Dylan Meconis blows my mind.

No Rest For the Wicked brought out one of the most fun pages yet. And today Ctrl+Alt+Del posted their 5th animation short. It’s in the premium section of the website and while there are differences of opinion about having a premium section, that’s a debate for another day. I like the shorts. I feel like I get enough bang for my buck.

The thing you have to understand about Howard Tayler is, he’s basically the same guy as me. Okay, he’s got a passle o’ kids and I’ve got a dog; he’s a Latter-Day Saint and I’m a nonthiestic humanist (that’s me in the crosshairs); he bears a startling resemblance to Tycho and I don’t. But we were born a few months apart, we’ve been married to our respective wives about the same length of time, we’ve both worked extensively in tech, we both drive New Beetles, and I suspect that we have a similar love of pie — and if that’s not enough to make us brothers under the skin, then I don’t know what is.

And it’s obvious that we both really like the concept of DVD extras, as his first collection of strips, Schlock Mercenary Under New Management, is chock-full of the print equivalent of commentary tracks, mini documentaries, and deleted scenes. Tayler’s pretty well known for these commentaries within the bounds of the daily strip — you’ll learn about the logic behind his various sci-fi constructs and doo-dads, and get an occasional lesson in practical geology if you aren’t careful (you may also discover that in the future, he’s taking literal pot-shots at your place of residence).

Following on the DVD analogy, the book is the equivalent of a reference-quality disc, with heavy glossy paper (seriously, this is the heaviest stock I’ve ever seen in a webcomics book … there is some serious heft here), deep colors, rich blacks, with an occasional transfer artifact somewhat distracting from the overall presentation (that is, somebody needs to clean the printing web a bit better as there were some ink smears around the margins, but thankfully not on the main images). If there were a soundtrack to the book, it would have those reassuring little sci-fi spaceship background noises interspersed with some BLAM and ommminous hummmmm in 5.1 surround.

Storywise, SMUNM goes from March 9 to August 23, 2003, covering four arcs of a year-plus long story (which we are promised will continue in the next book); you could just read it online, but the book has a distinct advantage in that it’s easier to navigate. The latest website redesign eliminated the drop-down box that allowed a browser to jump to particular story points; Tayler has mentioned his unhappiness with this particular feature loss, so hopefully we’ll see the capability back soon.

In the meantime, SMUNM is exactly what you want from lighthearted SF — no big heavy morals or using the far-flung future to address pressing issues of our day, just a bunch of weird people wandering the galaxy and blowing up other weird people. Can’t ask for more than that, and with pre-orders done, it goes back on sale today.

We don’t usually talk about the super-popular comics around here much, but since Gary has provided the main course of today’s reading with his beefy interview, how about a mint and some coffee in the form of a wee article about Penny Arcade?

Today, the PA boys showed us some evidence that they can actually occupy a room full of children and deliver fun, constructive learning, and not for the first time, apparently. I was just thinking, is there really any other web comics artist out there who can do stuff like this? The answer is, well, yes. Yes there probably is. However, on the same news page there is mention of a new ad campaign by Tycho, Gabe and Kiko for the one and only ESRB. That’s pretty heavy stuff. Scrolling further down, Gabe talks about the convention that is held in their honor. Not only that, but two separate pilgrimages of sorts are trekking across the country to attend. These guys are probably the closest thing we have to rock stars in the magical land of web comics and I shall take this opportunity to tip my hat to them. My hat which is not a monkey.

Regular readers of this page know a few things about me: I like webcomics, setting off the occasional potentially-explosive discussion, and beer. I also have a low opinion of comics syndicates and how they treat a) their artists; and b) their audiences. And yet, there is room to discuss the syndicates and their contributions to an art form we all love, in a mostly-mature fashion.

Enter Chris Baldwin of the incomparably wonderful Little Dee, who on Monday announced a move in the direction of syndication; Baldwin was kind enough to talk to us about his reasons for doing so, his hopes, and whether or not he thinks he can take Dave Kellett in a no-holds-barred-fight. Okay, I made that last part up. Sorta.

(more…)

Originally this article was supposed to be about a political comic that really impresses me, but I ended up in a tangent about the definition parameters of the Webcomic. So I’m just going to stick with the tangent for today and delve into the comic tomorrow so that the argument doesn’t overshadow the comic and then we all end up wondering what the hell my point was. There are many opinions on the matter; I’ll just skip straight to mine.

I think if we can treat books printed by online comics as extensions of their work then the same should be true of print to web comics. But I’ve read the hysterical comments made by readers and artists alike who are outraged at being lumped with primarily syndicated comics (hell, there are arguments against collaboration threatening the salient purity, but I digress). Living in Omaha, Nebraska, home of the indie-kids’ wet dream Saddle Creek Records, I bear witness to a great number of so-called purist discussions, much to my discomfort. The web is a medium and not a genre. Comics are comics are comics, even though how you read them may change. There, I said it. People who call online comics “Sell Outs” that want to become syndicated make me crazy.

So tomorrow when I talk about a comic that is primarily syndicated but can be found on the web and if it angers your purist sensibilities because I squandered adjectives on them, well then we’ll just have to discover a way to live at peace with one another, regardless. 

Update schedules have been covered. But what about the time of day when the update appears? It is, after all, some sort of cliché thing that says “Timing is everything.�

Consider two types of readers:

(There are, of course, more. But for the sake of argument let’s go with this.)

Your insomniac readers, of which I am one, who wait until the midnight or 1 am updates to update before going to bed. Comics that get updated at night are Questionable Content and Megatokyo (except when behind. Then it becomes more like the second type here).
And your daytime readers, who read the comic when they wake up, on their lunch break, or after the evening news. Comics like this include Friendly Hostility, which comes with commentary.
When you update, of course, has something to do with what kind of person the creator is. Maybe you’re most creative at night, or in the afternoon. It really depends.

Do you make sure your content is up for the insomniacs? Or are you content to get the middle-of-the-day surfers?

Does it matter?

So the Color scheme in this particular issue of Boy on a Stick and Slither reminded me of a certain other web comic. Synapses fired in my brain (I imagine, what do I know, I’m a writer) and a startling connection was made.

Wait for it.

BOASAS is kind of like Bunny!

Anyone with enough time on their hands can find similarities between almost any two things if they really try hard enough and have enough time on their hands. I am not fond of the former and don’t have the latter, but what I do want to say about these two strips is this:

Neither would make a good comic book in any traditional sense of the term. Neither are likely to find their way into syndication anytime soon. Both are still brilliant comics. Lem and Steve both use the abstract in the way it is meant to be used. They make people think about stuff. Sometimes it’s Politics or the environment or language. Sometimes it’s silly things, like moustaches.

Also, both comics can get pretty existential sometimes , which is something we just don’t have enough of in today’s pop culture. I like that.