Digital Strips 156 Pigtails and Potbellies
I had a pet pig when I was in high school and my wife looks great in pigtails so I might have a little bit of bias towards today’s strip. Pigtails and Potbellies has a classic Wattersonian feel to it that I really dug on. Tune in to see if Jason agreed and give the comic a look so and let us know what you think.
I also love bacon, but I don’t think that had any baring on my opinion, maybe it did, who knows.
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Recently, the folks at Ka-Blam, one of the leaders in digital printing, decided that the shenanigans going down at Diamond Comic Distributors had gone far enough and formed their own print-on-demand company to combat the monopolizing powerhouse. Labeled ComicsMonkey, it’s a service that could offer a solution to many publishers who can no longer do business with Diamond and who want to get their work out to the public via dead trees.
Barry Gregory, a partner in the whole Ka-Blam/IndyPlanet/ComicsMonkey she-bang, was kind enough to answer a few of our burning questions about the new addition to the already well-known printer and just what it might mean for webcomics creators.
Digital Strips: How did the recent changes at Diamond affect the timing of your launch?
Barry Gregory: It certainly accelerated things. Â We had planned to launch our service sometime later this year and only after a limited pilot program and a retooling period in which we evaluated what worked and what didn’t in the pilot program. Â Now we’re just sort of jumping right in with both feet.
On his website, Scott Bieser describes himself as “Liberty’s Cartoonist.” Certainly the graphic novels published by Big Head Press, of which Bieser is a principal, embody a strong libertarian philosophy, mixed with liberal doses of science fiction. Consider Roswell, Texas, an alternate-history tale in which Texas never joined the U.S., Charles Lindbergh is president of the Federated States of Texas, Walt Disney is president of California, and Meir Kahane is a Texas Ranger, when a flying saucer crashes in Roswell and gets the story moving. 
Or La Muse, the tale of a sexy superheroine whose seemingly limitless powers are matched only by her lack of inhibitions. (Last month, La Muse received an honorable mention in the Publishers Weekly Comics Week annual critics poll.)
In 2005, Big Head Press put the graphic novel The Probability Broach online in its entirety and saw sales of the print edition double. Since then, they have been following the free-webcomic-to-print-edition model, selling their graphic novels through a variety of channels in addition to comics stores. We caught up with Scott, who is a comics creator as well as a businessman, at NYCC and spent a few minutes talking about how the free-comics model works for him and what his plans are for the future.
OK, here’s someone who is taking digital distribution to its logical extreme: Dave Baxter talks to Hermés Piqué, who collaborated with Juan Romera on Misery Depot. The comic was published under a Creative Commons license which means anyone can redistribute it—digitally or in print—as long as they do so for free. This means the comic is being shared all over the place, via peer-to-peer networks, downloads of .pdf and .cbz files, online at its own site, and through iComics where, because of the CC license, it is the default comic. The conversation is well worth a read for its discussion of how to distribute a comic electronically, but conspicuously absent is any mention of how you monetize that.
Meanwhile, this newspaper interview with Howard Tayler explains how he did it the old-fashioned way, building an audience with Schlock Mercenary and then self-publishing the print edition to maximize profit.
At Blog@Newsarama, Kyle Latino and Lee Cherolis discuss webcomics formats and whether webcomics, like newspapers, can go beyond the daily gag strip to present long-form adventure stories. (Yes, I know that’s already happening.) To explore the possibilities further, Latino posts his own adventure webcomic as part of the column.
Stephen Schleicher says he likes reading comics digitally—not too many people are admitting to that just yet—and he considers some of the possibilities for the future of comics. Read the comments for more. (Found via Robot 6.)
It’s like a dream come true for anyone who has followed webcomics, heard of webcomics, or who may have come into contact with webcomics (consult a physician).
This week, the Webcomics Weekend was announced, and it is packed full of webcomic talent, the likes of which has never been found under one roof. Taking place in Easthampton, MA, this meet-and-greet-and-possibly-buy-some-merch-not-a-convention get-together already has a huge list of guests and it’s just going to get bigger before the March 20th kickoff date.
Visit the Webcomics Weekend site, join the Facebook group, follow the webcomicsweekend bird on Twitter, and get yourselves to MA come March to take part in a milestone in webcomics history!
Every few years, it’s important to evaluate your habits and change what is broken, no longer working or just smells funny. It’s the policy I’ve used regarding underwear since I moved out of my parent’s home and I think it can be applied to pretty much everything. Since it’s about that time again, I could either clean out my fridge, or read comics.
I always chose B.
I’ve had the exact same web comics links since I graduated college two years ago. It’s time to clean this old folder of bookmarks out and see what’s still worth hanging on to and want needs to be ignored until it stops fussing. Most of these are still comics I read and love, so it’ll be more of a chance to reflect on why I love them before carefully putting them
Since if I don’t start posting more on the blog Jason’s going to start drawing me in a dress, I’ve decided to blog out my reasoning for keeping or dropping each strip. Some will be long, one will be short. In the case of some of these it will be one line “I’m dropping this sucker since it hasn’t updated since before I knew Barack was a real name.†There’s no order to these other then the order I have them in my links. If there is a reason for the ordering I’ve long since forgotten it.
You guys will probably know most of these comics. Hopefully a few will be new to you though. Even if not, I’d love to generate some dialog in the comments about what you think of each strip.
So come along won’t you, join me for Steve “The Geek†Shinney’s Web comic enema.
In a post that’s almost two weeks old now, Jeph Jacques defends the current selling-t-shirts-and-prints webcomics business model, pointing out that it’s just as valid as any other way of making money off of comics. Key quote:
Saying webcartoonists are t-shirt hucksters is like saying Charles Schultz was an insurance salesman because Snoopy is on the Met Life blimp.
Dave Roman considers the many possible ways of monetizing webcomics and ends up rather dubious about the notion that readers will pay directly for content, either online or on some sort of device. He sure asks a lot of questions!
Marvel exec Ira Rubenstein is more optimistic about paid content. Anthony Ha casts him as the Clueless Suit in this now-famous (on the internet anyway) exchange at the ICv2 Graphic Novel conference:
Rubenstein: Those are our characters. How could someone else write another Spider-Man story?
Roman: Because fan fiction is becoming so powerful. I’ve seen the power of fan fiction. Working at Nickelodeon, there are people out there doing ‘Avatar’ comics that are soooooo much better…
Rubenstein: But that’s like saying YouTube is a real entertainment channel. It’s not.
He leaves out the part where Roman and a bunch of other people yell “It is!” But Rubenstein responds in the comments that he was taken out of context, and he makes a good point:
I made the comment that only Marvel could create compelling new stories with our characters. To which Dave made the comment about Fan Fiction.
The point I was making was comparing fan fiction to our Marvel Comics is like comparing an Episode of LOST or HEROES to user generated content on YOUTUBE.
In other words, Continue reading
Does motion comic=bad animation? Someone in the webcomics panel at the ICv2 conference that opened NYCC said words to that effect, and now here’s Blog@Newsarama’s David Pepose arguing in the other direction, saying that the choppy animation of BET’s Black Panther series made it more like a good motion comic than a bad cartoon. And here’s a comic about motion comics, which pretty effectively explains what you will lose when you add animation.
Ignoring all this, Marvel Comics announced at NYCC that they will be doing a motion comic of Astonishing X-Men for digital release via iTunes and the web.
Writer Christopher Irving seems to be quite taken with Dean Haspiel’s coolness in this article at NYC Graphic Novelists, but it’s an interesting read anyway, and the site itself looks like it’s worth bookmarking. Also, Seth Kushner’s lovely photos are worth a click, although I don’t remember Brooklyn being quite that gray. Dean also talks to The New York Times about webcomics, living in Brooklyn, and … stuff.
Brian Warmoth interviews Brendan McGinley, creator of Hannibal Goes to Rome, which debuted on Zuda and now sits on the Shadowline Web Comics site.
Here’s a cute little comics-theory webcomic that stays still while you use arrows to scroll through it. (Via Journalista.)
The Independent, a UK newspaper, discovers webcomics. The article covers well-trodden ground. but the patient reader will be rewarded by an interview with Gary Tyrrell and some interesting tidbits.
High Moon creator David Gallaher lists 20 webcomics worth checking out at Blog@Newsarama. It’s a good selection, but it’s too bad no one thought to include links to the comics. Fortunately, Gallaher follows up and providest the links here.
Meanwhile, at The Webcomic Overlook, El Santo lists the worst webcomic titles—it’s not that the comics are so bad, it’s that the titles make you not want to read them. And he treats us to reviews of Sam and Lilah, Loviathan, and SPQR Blues.
If the theme of NYCC was “Recession? What Recession?” then the subtitle was “webcomics are the new floppies.” Digital distribution of comics is clearly going to be a hot topic in 2009.
For a quick overview, take a look at Kiel Phegley’s writeup of the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference, which includes sound bites from all the participants in the webcomics and social media panels. Thanks to poor planning and a late train, I arrived late for the webcomics panel, alas, but my impression was that aside from the presence of the very impressive Dave Roman, both these panels consisted entirely of people from large and medium-size publishers, and the panels could have benefitted from having more of an actual webcomics presence. Dave posted about his panel at his LJ.
But how will people read these comics? No one seemed too sold on the Kindle, and while Tokyopop makes comics for the Sony e-Reader, it seems like folks are still waiting for that killer app. The tech blog io9 took in a UClick panel and was mighty impressed with their comics for the iPhone, but the thing that jumped out at me was an almost offhand comment made by DC’s John Cunningham in the State of the Publishing Industry panel:
Amazon has been able to have their way with Sony by emulating Apple’s model: I have the software and hardware combined, I am going to deliver somebody else’s IP. Do you think Apple is going to let Amazon have hegemony over that? One of big rumors is that Apple is looking at in fall 2009 a 7 x 9-inch iPod touch. That is going to happen sooner rather than later.
Here’s Ron Hogan’s writeup of the panel, which mentions digital media but not the iPod rumor; I’ll try to do my own report later in the week.
The Zuda panel was impressive, with over 15 creators packed onto the stage and SuperTron creator Sheldon Vella participating from Melbourne, Australia, through the magic of computers. Continue reading
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Just last week, Paul Southworth posted that he was ending Ugly Hill, with the final strip to hit sometime in the near future. As an avid reader of the misadventures of Hastings Kilgore and all the other misfit monsters of Ugly Hill, I felt it my duty to get to the bottom of this sudden, unexpected announcement. The following is my conversation with Paul:
Digital Strips: Did it hurt at all to submit that post announcing the end of Ugly Hill?
Paul Southworth: Of course! All those maladjusted little tools are like my family at this point. I knew it was coming for a long time, though. It was just a matter of me getting up the cajones to go through with it. It’s hard to quit something like this, to conclude the stories of characters you’ve been working with for years. It’s like they become part of your brain, and they’re always back there, whispering ideas to you about what they want to do next.
