Publisher’s Weekly Comics Week talks to DC honcho Paul Levitz about digital comics, and he demonstrates that he gets it where a lot of others don’t:

I don’t think if you create a comic flat for print that it’s likely to be the perfect thing for a digital world. I enjoy having The Complete New Yorker on my bookshelf in digital form, but I don’t look at it very often. I think in the end the great success is when you’re creating for the dynamic of the medium you’re in.

Maybe that’s why Zuda is the one webcomic distributed by a publisher that actually fits on my computer screen. However, I have to say that the idea of the limited-animation version of Watchmen fills me with horror. I have yet to see an animated comic that impressed me.

Although Levitz is right about fitting the comic to the medium, there’s nothing wrong with scanning in a vintage comic if the material merits it. I’m thinking of Tops in Pops, a 1964 story from Archie’s Mad House, now playing at I’m Learning to Share. It’s the tale of two deejays, one a swingin’ sixties guy and the other a determined square, locked in an escalating battle of publicity stunts, and the Archie tendency toward bad hipster talk actually kind of works in this one.

Dan Hess has a new comic, Weesh, an all-ages strip about a licorice-eating bunny who grants wishes to the kids he live with. The humor is dry enough for adults to appreciate, especially the recently concluded arc about the little girl who brings her stuffed animals to life. Dan is the creator of Angel Moxie and Realms of Ishikaze, so his webcomic credentials are in good order.

How’s the new Wowio thing going? Continue reading →

Let this be a lesson to you fanciful artist types out there. Just because you strike a two-hit combo of Ctrl and S, don’t think that somehow, magically, your file has been saved for all eternity. It’s always, always, ALWAYS a great idea to keep at least one backup of your file(s) in case of freak emergencies. As our unfortunate volunteer example, Tom Brazleton of Theater Hopper, will attest to.

He, too, has experienced that moment when you boot up the ol’ hard drive only to hear or see something not at all common. Smoke, clicking sounds, small imp-like creatures, these are just some of the oddities that seem to affect random hard drives around the globe. The problem is, you never know when one might strike next. It’s an unproven science: I could pour water in my hard drive, let it dry out for a few days, put it back in the PC and see no change in performance.

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The folks at Tokoyopop have at treat for Star Trek fans right now: They have put up all three volumes of their Star Trek global manga online for free. Each manga contains four or five chapters by different writers and artists, and all the stories are based on the original Star Trek series.

The ostensible reason for this generosity is so that readers can vote for which story they want reproduced in color for the upcoming Star Trek Ultimate Edition, which will collect all three volumes in a single hardcover volume. However, it’s a good opportunity to check out short stories on a common theme by some talented artists. Many of the creators who worked on these stories have also done global manga for Tokyopop, and their work is pretty good, so the books are worth a look. And check them out now, because although there is no end date on this thing, I doubt the books are up there permanently.

For those with different tastes, Tokyopop is also previewing most of Dark Metro, and they will start posting The Mysterians one chapter at a time on August 15.

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