Earlier this year, BOOM Studios caused quite a bit of controversy but also sold a lot of comics by distributing the first issue of North Wind for free online. Retailers howled at first, but quited down a bit when the issue posted record sales. Now they’re extending that strategy by adding webcomics to their site. They started off with several pages each of six different series and will update each with five pages a week. It looks like all the launch titles are from their backlist, and the intent is clearly to drive sales of print comics.

Last Sunday’s Fox Trot featured four webcomics. I wonder how many regular readers of the Sunday funnies would recognize any of these? Even Jason and Steve and I were puzzled by the fourth one, although we figured it out eventually. Are webcomics more mainstream than we think?

Also, the power of xkcd was demonstrated once more Continue reading →

Ace reporter Heidi MacDonald tracks down an SEC filing that indicates that Platinum has indeed bought Wowio. Scott Christian Sava talked to William Lidwell, the president of Wowio, and came out reassured. It sounds like the model will change a bit: Books will be offered for free viewing or for pay, and readers outside the U.S. can now access the comics.

The sales agreement indicates that all current Wowio contracts will be terminated, although an e-mail sent out by Lidwell seems to indicate that they are just being amended. (Be sure to read the comments to both of Heidi’s posts for enlightening snark and analysis.)

Creators who worked with Wowio up to now have generally had good things to say about the service, which allowed readers to download comics for free but paid creators 50 cents per unique download. Sponsorships were the key to Wowio’s finances.

Platinum has been attracting some negative attention of late, however, and an article in this week’s Publishers Weekly Comics Week paints a grim picture of the company’s finances. Continue reading →

Kawaii is the Japanese flavor of cute, made famous by Hello Kitty and her softly rounded, mostly nonthreatening colleagues (my favorites are the San-X characters, all of which are slightly twisted in interesting ways).

In Japan, these cartoon characters can decorate everything from cell phone charms to checkbooks and cars. In Meghan Murphy’s world, they talk back.

Murphy’s Kawaii Not takes kawaii and gives it some bite. Murphy appropriates not only the Japanese concept of cute but also the 4-koma format, a four-panel gag strip that runs vertically rather than horizontally. But there’s something very American about her straight-talking hearts, ice-cream cones, and even toilets; each strip starts out cute and ends with a twist.

Murphy is a professional illustrator by day; her work can be seen at her professional site, Murphypop. We decided to talk to her about what makes Kawaii Not tick.

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Serving as a follow-up to my previous post about Wizard and their valiant attempt to cover webcomics, Rick Marshall has posted his own thoughts on the subject over on his personal blog.

Marshall, you will recall, teamed with Brian Warmoth to bring the Cursory Conversations to the Wizard website every couple of weeks.  When the archives of these interviews were erased and forgotten, so were Warmoth and Marshall.  Then, months later, Wizard decides to do the same thing again, with the same creators, and hopes no one will say boo about it.

Well, boo.  Marshall gives some detailed accounts from not only his side of the story but from other vantage points of people who have worked at Wizard.  The very provocative and scathing post includes this quote which still shocks me on its fifth reading, coming from someone on staff at Wizard:

“Why would we want to cover any comics people just give away on the web? They’re not REAL comics.”

If that was the only criteria for real comics, the long-suffered debate over what webcomics are could have been solved years ago!  Still, if people with that much influence on the industry are that clueless about the exciting possibilities being explored on the Web, it explains why there are some who still have yet to wrap their heads around the concept.

Humor comes in all different flavors and colors on the Web, and webcomics is certainly no differrent in this regard.  You’ve got your Penny Arcade-ish, in-your-face action shots that inspire laugh-out-loud moments (known to some as LOLs) and there’s also the XKCD, dry comedy route that brings about more of a hearty chortle or two with nearly every update.

Now the sharp comedic writing of Gabe Strine can reenter those ranks as Brinkerhoff is back, with updates on every Monday and Wednesday.  A horribly overlooked gem of a webcomic, Brink has been the source of some of this blogger’s favorite webcomics moments, full of characters who expound rather extensively on all subjects without prejudice or fear of reprisal.

But I’ll let Gabe himself tell you all about it, after the break!  Welcome back, Gabe!

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Many remember the bi-weekly column over on the Wizard Universe site titled Cursory Conversations.  It was a great little pick-me-up for various webcomics creators and a good intro to the medium for newbies written by Brian Warmoth and Rick Marshall.

If you recall that, then you probably also remember that this welcome addition to the increasingly Maxim-ified Wizard world was cut before it could even build up a head of steam.  Then, that steam was forcibly evaporated, never to be found again.  Where did Warmoth and Marshall and their webcomics exploits disappear to?  The Internets would never know.

But lo!  The Wizard has again graced us, the webcomics people, with his presence, and brought us words from our gods from on high!  Listen as he tells us in his new column, Webcomic of the Week, of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja and Girl Genius! Marvel as you wonder whether or not these are the same strips they featured when Cursory Conversations began all those months ago!  Scream when you realize that it is indeed the same very strips!  And be thankful, ye who believe, that we have the Wizard to tell us of the webcomickers and their brave tales!

Sheesh.

This started out as a post about The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo, which Jason, Steve, and I were just talking about on our podcast about the Harvey nominations last week. But then it got derailed in an unfortunate way.

For those not in the know, Poo is the story of Edgar Allen Poe’s imagination, which becomes separated from him in a time of turmoil (he poops it out in an outhouse, hence the title) and has to journey through a mythical underworld to be reunited with him. It’s a bit of a saga—the reveals come too far apart for me—but the writing is clever and the art is wonderful. What’s more, it’s a truly all ages webcomic: Kids will read it as a simple adventure, with a bit of scatology thrown in just for giggles, while adults will catch more of the literary dimension. And in this interview with Poo writer Dwight MacPherson and artist (for the second volume) Avery Butterworth at Comic Book Resources, the creators make it clear that they for an all-ages audience.

…OK, right after I wrote that, I went to the site to get an image and the ad under the comic was for “FREE ONLINE PORN: Hardcore Movies, No Membership Required. Start Watching Now.” The image below it was of a couple having sex, full penetration on display. I know it’s possible for our advertisers to dish up a surprise once in a while—it happened to us here on Digital Strips—but I also think, as we said in the podcast, that it’s time for these guys to get their own domain. Their site is beautifully designed, except for the ugly Drunk Duck crap at the top and bottom, and a kid seeing an ad like that (and telling Mom or Dad) would be a real disaster. While that’s the first time I have seen a porn ad on the site, the fact is that if you’re providing comics for children, you have the responsibility to monitor your ads really closely. Time to move on, guys. It looks like www.edgarallanpoo.com is available. Domains are cheap; your reputation is priceless.

UPDATED 7/20/08: Wow, I didn’t think this could get worse, but it did. I just went back to look at the comic and they have added interstitial ads. So I’m reading along and all of a sudden my screen changes to a huge ad asking should smoking be allowed in public places or some such thing. There is no way I would recommend this as a kids’ comic when they’re doing this. I wouldn’t even recommend it for adults. Put your comic on a site that doesn’t get in your way, guys.

Most of the manga you see on bookstore shelves falls into a few easily recognizable categories—battles, boobs, and boyfriends, although we prefer to call them shonen, seinen, and shoujo manga.

And then there’s Project X: Cup Noodle, which is sort of a combination business case study and inspirational text; it’s the story of the heroic struggle to develop the familiar ramen-in-a-cup convenience food. While Project X has achieved cult status in the U.S., and other edu-manga are published here from time to time, the genre is still pretty obscure.

So this is a rare treat: Bill Gates: My Computer God, a brief manga (it was published in 1982, when there was less to say) about the Dark Lord of Microsoft himself.

If you read all the way to the end, you will see that this is actually an ad for a computer book, but it’s a good stand-alone manga story about a guy with a special talent who proves himself in a series of struggles. Usually the struggles are more dramatic than debugging a computer or convincing people you’re not too young to do the job, but the dynamic style of this strip somehow makes these pedestrian dramas interesting.

The manga originally appeared in the Japanese manga magazine KoroKoro Comic. It was scanned and translated into English, apparently by Artefact, the blogger who posted it, but left in its original right-to-left orientation. For those who speak Japanese, the untranslated original is also up on the page.

(Note: Some of the content on this page may be NSFW.)