Blah blah blah Silent Hill. Blah blah blah Super Man Returns. Blah blah blah Doom blah blah blah X-Men 3. Video game movies and comic book movies are all the rage these days it would seem. That’s right, geeks have it pretty good when it comes to making a choice at the box office, so how long will it take before the first web comic movie appears?

Realistically? Probably pretty long, but it’s still fun to talk about. There’s no doubt that there are web comics out there that have the goods to be turned into a Hollywood movie. Strips like PvP and Ctrl Alt Del have been experimenting with animation, but what would it be like to see your favorite online characters played by real Hollywood actors? I am of the opnion that it could be awesome. I think the following ideas have some potential, and remember folks, you heard it here first!

Schlock Mercenary: Directed by Joss Whedon, staring Nathan Fillion as Tagon, Katee Sackoff as Elf and David Koechner as the voice of Schlock. I’m thinking the cruise liner storyline would make a great Aliens “homage�?.

Sluggy Freelance: Directed by Terry Gilliam. David Spade as Torg. Johny Depp as Riff, Carla Gallo as Zoe and Debra Messing as Gwen. How about the Isle of Doctor Steve saga, with Mila Jovovich as Oasis and Bob Hoskins as Steve!

After these two blockbuster hits, the path will be clear for a Dr McNinja comedy martial arts movie with Stephen Chow, a Mac Hall college slacker movie with Judd Apatow and a Dinosaur Comics movie with Steven Spielberg!

Yeah, things got a bit out of hand there, I think I’d better go lie down…

Gary wrote an interesting post meant to start a discussion about the importance of art in webcomics. The discussion was interesting; the general consensus was that the art should match the style of the strip.

But I like to think that the art is sometimes the best part of a webcomic — little details are what make me laugh. So, I’d like to present a counter point to those minimalist strips that Gary cited. I present the to you The Holy Bibble.

The art style is distinctive, more of a cut-paper glued onto a background, or maybe the felt boards that some of us learned Bible stories on. Luckily, the art isn’t actually cut felt, because then we wouldn’t get the depth of detail that exists in the The Holy Bibble. (Though, Sunday school lesson plans from the Holy Bibble would not be very… G-rated.)

Two major examples of this detail that I’d like to share with you are this:

1. In which Cain is reciting Gothic Poetry, and the Devil answers his “prayers.” Notice Abel in the third panel, walking fuzzily in the distance. In each subsequent panel, we see exactly how Cain murders Abel — unwittingly.
2. Another, this time when Cain is settled in the Land of Nod with his wives, and he thinks about his family back home, thinking that their life is better than sitting in a hot tub with anime chicks. If you look carefully at the artwork, you can see that Eve is carrying around a baby in her old age, one of her daughters is heavily pregnant and worried, and one young child is bullying another.

In both of these examples, the artwork supports the joke — the art is the punch line. What’s interesting about this comic is that they are working from a source text, and so they have to make their work compelling for something other than the storyline. The artwork is a good example of this.

But they’re not above reinterpretation of the Bible, in fact, it is their goal. Cannan and Lucas, the writer/artist team, have a mythology going. They are making this comic because they are prophets, after all. That makes it so much better than other similar projects out there.

And I’m sure that they’re sure I’m about to be smitted. (smitten? smote? I am not a wordbeast yet.)

Some have noticed and remarked on the fact that all of the new writers I’ve introduced so far are young women. Well, those of you that have low, suspicious natures will be relieved to note that PJ Hart, our fourth and final new writer, is in possession of both X and Y chromosomes. PJ comes to us from Belfast, Northern Ireland (thus bringing Fleen closer to the dream of worldwide domination), where he’s a student in Film and English and helps run a movie making society. Any one of those things should make him nigh-irresistable to the fairer sex, but add in that accent? Ladies, please! One at a time!

Everybody say hello to PJ!

You know how there are certain friends who have their inside jokes, and no matter how hard you try, you will never understand the punch lines? I feel like the outsider peering on Guido and Luigi. When I first came across this comic, I was excited to see what it had to offer. The cartoonish art style, the simple punch lines; I was expecting comedy gold.

What I received instead was lame joke after crippled joke centered on body building. Seriously? You’re going to dedicate an entire strip to two wimpy dudes going to a gym? Now I shouldn’t be too harsh, since this comic is brand new off the presses, as of March. It also began in a Norwegian weight lifting forum, which isn’t the typical web comic community that most artists are familiar with.

Having that said, this comic is not worth the effort. The art is simple, dull, and has no unique style whatsoever. The writing is flat, as are the characters. The set up for the jokes are obvious, and the punch lines made me grimace in disappointment. I honestly gave it the old college try when it came to finding this web comic funny, but I just ended up feeling defeated, and just a little empty inside.

Over the past months Tim Buckley at Ctrl+Alt+Del has morphed his comic into a self-sustained community. He’s reinvented his site design, introduced animated shorts of his beloved characters and opened up CADMedia for reviews and previews of video games on all platforms. Up until now, however, it’s been all Tim, all the time.

This morning Buckley put out a broad call for writer applications to fill a staff working on CADMedia. The expectations for applicants are intimidating and he’s not calling it a volunteer position for nothing. The applicants can expect criticism, disagreements, deadlines, hard work and no pay. Sounds grueling you say? That sounds exactly like the life of your typical comic creator. We all work within our art form not for its rewards but because we don’t know how to live our lives without it.

The value of a well-written and honest review is immeasurable for readers. It’s not about typing up 300 words on what you like or don’t like. Journalists have to juggle their own personal opinions with useful, needful information and sometimes these two things clash with wild and spectacular production. We journalists tell you what we like and hopefully we tell you why, but we don’t always tell you if it’s any good. A good video game review will help someone turn over $49.99 of their money for something they’ll love, or pass it up until they can get it used for $12.99.  

Good luck to Tim in his search for the logophiles, the verbose and the poignant. For those who are brave enough to go through the application trial I have a few words of advice. Don’t let deadlines scare you, edit yourself religiously and remember that you are not bothering contacts when you call for information. They want to talk to you as much as you need to talk to them. Finally, at the risk of sounding embarrassingly clichéd, if you really enjoy your subject matter, the rest will come easy. Just write.

Joe Zabel’s doin’ some big thinking over Examiner way, and I’ve come away more confused by the question than anything; not about the answer, but why the question is being asked, since it seems self-evident. Short form, he’s wondering if the “webcomics community” is shrinking even while “webcomics” are expanding. Slightly longer version, from the introductory paragraphs:

Recently a friend of mine made an observation that got me to wondering. “The webcomics medium is burgeoning,�? he said, “but the webcomics community is this tight little group of old-timers who always show up with the same opinions and the same agenda. And while the number of webcomic creators is growing by leaps and bounds, the ‘webcomics community’ is drastically shrinking.�?

I was so captivated by this notion of a paradoxical shrinkage at the center of a flourishing artistic movement that I decided to poll a number of colleagues about it and do some further research and brainstorming to hypothesize what’s really going on.

Zabel wisely starts with a definition of his terms:

But by “webcomics community,�? understand that I’m not referring to the entire body of people who participate in webcomics as readers or artists; this aggregate group is certainly on the rise. By “webcomics community�? I mean the community at the center of all this activity, the people who are interested in webcomics in general– in webcomics as a medium, as a distribution method, as an artform, as a pursuit. I’m thinking of the community of artists who create webcomics, along with avid fans of the medium, and (dare I say it) the critics and journalists who focus on the medium.

By those criteria, it’s fair to say that Zabel would place himself in the “webcomics community”; whether or not he’s correct to place this group “at the center of all this activity” is a matter of personal opinion. But here’s where things get a bit … ironic. Zabel starts soliciting opinions on the direction of this center, talking with Shaenon Garrity, T Campbell, Joey Manley, Mike Meginnis, David Hellman, Tym Godek, and Eric Burns. With the possible exception of (curiously enough) Manley, everybody Zabel spoke to is arguably a part of the center as he defines it. This sort of reduces the question to, “Does a self-identified group in a larger culture become less important as the culture becomes still larger and more diverse?”

All together now: yes. There’s plenty of people creating and reading webcomics that never heard of Big Panda, and have read the work of first-generation creators. New webcomics crop up all the time; it’s true that without the first generation, they wouldn’t have the same environment to grow in, but does that mean that they owe alliegance to this center?

The task facing those of us who love webcomics is not to form a Webcomics Academy, it’s to make sure that every offering in this marketplace of amusements gets a chance to find an audience. Creators and projects will come and go, they’ll shift tone and audience, and local concentrations of interest will form and disperse, regardless of what definition of Webcomics (capitalized, proper noun) you follow. It’s not a case of whether or not the center will hold.

It’s whether or not the center ever truly exsited. As Zabel’s describing it, I don’t think so.

I found Kawaii Not long before I received the email that contained the backlog of creators who wanted some exposure through Fleen. My bet is, unless you have a Livejournal, you’ve never heard of Kawaii Not. The strip has one vote on TopWebComics.com, number 1068 of 1800 strips. Not the worse, but really not good at all.

Besides not having a lot of high profile publicity the four-panel strip, featuring bright and child-like characters, is hard to find simply because Livejournal obscures its own content. If you search for webcomics by interest on LJ, you find 434 communities and 430 persons. None of them, at least in my very brief perusal, were webcomics.

Then, how did I come across Kawaii Not? Icons.

Livejournal icons are the viral marketing of webcomics, and they’re a bit under-utilized by those creators who do not base their entire production on the LJ apparatus. Icons, or userpics, on livejournal have an option for “comments.” It is customary, common, and polite to credit the user or community that you downloaded the icon from in that “comment” section — as was the case with the distinctive Kawaii Not icons.

When used in discussion communities or other high volume areas (like LJ news posts), are highly visible and their origins are easily discernable. This makes them the perfect billboard for creators to please the fans as well as generate new interest and hits. A typical exchange would go like this:

User 1: “Awesome icon! Where did you get it?”
User 2: “Kawaii Not! It’s a great comic, you should read it.”

Official icons, or permission to use the artwork with proper credit, are an amazing way to market a webcomic to a fanbase who is particularly loyal, who would be willing to chat up the comic, link it, and recommend it. No need to press the readers to vote, no need to exchange links or join a group – have the readers do it. They’re more than willing to help.

On the flip side, if they’re looking for new webcomics, and you see a set of icons that all have similar artwork — check them out. They may be sequential art. Or they may be something else entirely which can also be quite fun.

Truth be told, I’m not sure that Kate Ditzler even exists. Oh, sure, there were entries in the Win A Gig At Fleen contest, and there’s been email between us, but it could have all been an elaborate setup. “Kate” (if that is “her” real name) claims to be single, 19, a student at Michigan State, studying International Relations and Social Relations. That sounds an awful lot like the stereotypical “internet girlfriend” that lonely nerds might make up … the only trick missed is that she’s not from Canada! But wait, “Kate” claims to be heading to London next year to continue her studies via an internship! Oh, sure, I’d like for you to meet my new writer, but she lives in another country!

The only question is, who is “Kate” exactly? An amazing life-like simulation? Or somebody claiming to be her in order to engage in nefarious purposes from inside the Fortress of Fleen? I can only think of one person well-versed enough in webcomics, with layers of influence throughout the land, and even experienced in writing from the POV of a teenage female: T Campbell, you’re busted!

Or maybe not. Everybody say hello to Kate!

So an invitation to check out a strip came through recently, leading me to check out Thingpart by Joe Sayers. There’s some fairly smart references hiding behind those stick figures, which leads to the question: is writing enough? Can the art be as, um, child-like and innocent as humanly possible, and still be offset by the words?

If you think “no”, then don’t bother with those links; you won’t like ’em. But then you probably don’t like The Perry Bible Fellowship or Boy on a Stick and Slither, either. They’re pretty much the Platonic Ideals of simple art used with great effectiveness. If you think “yes”, how do we explain the fact that Nicholas Gurewitch and Steven Cloud can be seen to use simplistic art merely for its effect (affect, even), and often mix in beautiful, complex artwork and or backgrounds that hint at subtle depths? To get by with simple art (or nearly without art entirely), do you have to obsess over language to a Northian degree? Shall we to this marriage of Art and Language admit impediments?

So … discuss. And after we’ve solved this dilemma to everybody’s satisfaction, we can get to work on the whole Bird Flu thing.

Nazi Polka and sandwich-fueled murder is what I love about Muffin Time. Brian Chojnowski’s brain has spawned a web comic full of fun, bright, and slightly-offensive humor portrayed in the usual three delicious panels. I’ve always had a penchant for weird, disturbing humor with beautiful artwork and quirky characters.

That’s why I’ve decided to give Muffin Time the mention I think it deserves. The humor can be hit-and-miss at times, which is common for web-comics still developing its niche in the web-o-sphere. But when you take in account that the strip has recently been revamped with a new art style, it is truly impressive how much it has grown since its beginnings.

Going through the archives, I’ve found numerous scrumptious strips featuring tasty dialogue on Andre 3000, apricots, and the ever-lasting gobstopper that is Jesus. Muffin Time offers its own book, bountiful downloads, and forums where one can chat about zombie communists and whatnot. Just watch out for those katamari, they can be hard on the digestive system.