It always seems the biggest news any strip pr collective can make is getting to the one year marker, and Blank Label Comics is no different. BLC was formed May 23, 2005, by a small group of keenspotters in Brad Guigar, Paul Southworth, Kristofer Straub, Paul Taylor, Steve Troop and David Willis. A year later the group has been living up to all the hype and has added 3 new members since.
To celebrate their anniversary there’s going to be a drawing. The winner of the drawing will receive a signed book from every member of Blank Label. To enter, send your name and address to drawing blanklabelcomics.com
All press releases aside the BLC group does have a lot of notches on it’s bed post but there was one particular claim to fame that made me clean my glasses. Here’s the statement I’m hoping is just a little jab at us DS guys who were so supportive when the collective went live:
Over the course of a year, BLC has established itself as a leader in the webcomics community, with a robust advertising system, several self-published books, a widely-copied podcast, and community activism for charity.
Just to clarify they’re claiming to have a widely-copied podcast. Is it just me or were we just stepped on? I mean by Sept 5th we had done pretty well for ourselves and there were already other podcasts out there which had come before them, but before us the only online web comic audio was Talk About Comics, Fanboy Radio, and My Extra Life. Don’t get me wrong but wouldn’t that imply that either Scott Johnson or Digital Strips have the widely-copied podcast?
I won\’t confirm or deny the feeling that the podcast in general has been imitated — what I will uphold is the feeling that the podcast theme song has been imitated. Man, you can\’t argue that! We were #4 on German uni radio.* The BLC Podcast was definitely en vogue and spurred the addition/sensibility-lifting of its theme song in a number of other podcasts.
I ain\’t sayin\’ I have a copyright on obnoxiously chipper openings, but I\’m looking at you, Keencast.
* a lie.
Well, for sure, Digital Strips didn\’t imitate anything– they had full on comic music in their first few episodes and an opening song but not a custom theme song persay.
I HAVE noticed though a couple other podcasts with gay theme songs now though and I immediately thought of Blank Label\’s podcast\’s sound. Not that BLCs sound is gay, I mean the ones sort of imitating them.
No one listens to those podcasts anyway, so fuck em.
NO!!! Touche my fellow podcaster. You did beat us to having an original theme song although I do love our old one. Zampzon must have it somewhere so I can listen to it again.
I ahve to admit though that you guys were the first in a huge wave of tailored podcasts. There\’s so many out here now that I stopped keeping track.
The only way the Keencast theme would NOT be called a rip-off of BLC\’s is if it were a very slow-paced funeral dirge.
I\’ve got nothing but praise for the BLANK LABEL creators. They\’ve put something really excellent together and collected every reason I ever went to Keenspot under one, much better constructed roof.
I hope they keep up the goodness for many more years.
Funeral dirges test high in certain markets.