The story surrounding the much talked about documentary film on web comics that has caused such a stir among cartoonists and readers continues today.
Scott McCloud, author and cartoonist behind the famed books Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, has published a very public criticism of the guys behind Penny Arcade over the comments and comic they posted about the upcoming film, Adventures Into Digital Comics, and the filmmakers behind the project. Continue reading
For the past four years there’s been the Web Cartoonist’s Choice Awards. The WCCA is to web comics as the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards are to movies. Anyone and everyone (there are some limitations) who has created a web comic is free to nominate and then vote for the most outstanding comic in 26 categories. Plenty of people have commented (Ping Teo, Tycho, Sam Logan, Scott McCloud, etc.) with everyone sort of mixed on the validity of the whole event. The biggest complaint is it’s an award for who has the most fans followed by grumbling that the same strips keep getting nominated.
It seems that the web comics community loves nothing more than to come across something that really pisses them off. Everyone gets all riled up and the keyboards let fly. People just love a good scandal. So, allow me to jump into the fray with two feet.
Last week the trailer for an upcoming independent documentary film about web comics went online. The film is titled “Adventures into Digital Comics” and is being produced by Continue reading
We got word today that the guys over at The Chronicles of Garas just completed chapter two of their very impressive fantasy based epic. The graphic novel style comic features impressive style and compelling storytelling and shows a great deal of effort and love of the comics form. I highly recommend everyone go have a look. While you’re there be sure to let Mark and Elshad know what you think of their stuff.
We got a complaint about how there wasn’t a contest entry posted with this week’s show announcement and before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion let me explain. All the contest entries will be posted along with the show announcements each week. Yes, I skipped this week because some coding still needed to be done surrounding the gallery section of the site.
For those of you who care, most of the code you see on DigitalStrips.com, if you look under the hood, is being dynamically generated. Continue reading
For those of you like me who waited around until 2pm EDT to buy the CAD books you probably got upset really fast. There was the expectant long load times but after finally getting one each of the two collector editions you probably got a SQL error, over and over and over again. You just had to be one of the first 400 so you would get one of these limited hardbacks.
It appears there were so many requests for these books that the servers for Canada Post crashed and you can see who’s fault it is with this message: Continue reading
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This week we interview a couple of the artists behind Blank Label Comics, Kristofer Straub and David Willis. Both of them, along with a few other cartoonists, recently broke ranks from Keenspot to form their own independent web comics label. During this interview they tell us all about their decision, their plan, and their work.
It should be noted that we used Skype to connect the four of us into the conversation. It seems the more people you connect the worse the overall sound quality gets. Some of the audio isn’t the greatest, but the content is well worth the slight loss of audio quality. Here are the comics by Kristofer and David:
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Last Friday there was another addition to the loser category. Jeff Bent along with Wendy Chin are the two latest additions to an obvious pattern of one contestant dropping out every week. At some point they will widdle down to the guys who have always updated every day and newbs who have so far put themselves on the map through the competition.
OK, so it might not out sell Harry Potter, but who cares. I may be an online comic snob but look at this! Who doesn’t want these little treasures. It’s the entire body of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons in three hardcover, four-color volumes in a sturdy slipcase. You can pre-order at Amazon or Walmart.
Excuse me while I go squeal in excitement.
Here at DS we love to take shots at newspapers but we realize the decline of the printed word can’t be placed solely on the business itself. There are newspapers everywhere trying radically different approaches to bring readers and increase circulation but innovation always has a tendency to fall victim to the masses.The North County Times of Escondido, Calif. began soliciting reader cartoons about six weeks ago and doesn’t turn down cartoons containing opinions with which it might disagree. Continue reading