While we wait for Jason to file his Webcomics Weekend stories, here are some other bits of news from around the blogosphere:
Phil Foglio was one of the first creators to make the free webcomics model pay off in a big way, and he goes into the nuts and bolts of it at ICv2, explaining why the webcomics format saves him money and boosts creativity and giving actual numbers for web traffic, print runs and sales.
On the other hand, Indigo Kelleigh, the creator of Ellie Connelly, is facing some of the challenges that dog webcomics creators: he revealed on his blog that he has rebooted the promising adventure-comedy comic but put it on the back burner due to family problems, the pressure to do paid work, and a surprise appendectomy. We reviewed Ellie Connelly here a few months ago and really liked it, so I’m rooting for Indigo to make a comeback at the Emerald City Comicon.
At Blog@Newsarama, Kyle Latino and Lee Cherolis interview Casey Lau and Jeff Kwan, creators of Super Kaiju Hero Force, which debuted last week on the iPhone.
Here’s an interesting forum thread to check in on: Anime Vice writer Gia asks manga readers if they would switch from scanlations to legal e-manga if the price was right. There aren’t many answers yet, but I’m hoping for a robust discussion.
IDW is releasing iPod, iPhone, and Android versions of its Star Trek prequel Star Trek: Countdown, starting this week.
Sean Wang sci-fi series Runners has just launched as a free webcomic on the Runners World website.
Allison Bergh of the Newark Webcomics Examiner reviews a fairly new webcomic, Traitor.
Don’t worry, you’re not waiting alone.
The problem with Ellie Connelly is surprisingly simply, though some will laugh or scoff until they think it through.
She has a penis nose.
Men don’t dig this on a woman, especially a fairly unsexy one like Ellie.
The other issue is the faux vintage aura on many things, like scroll work and sidebar announcements. At first glance it’s fetching and intriguing, but really it’s specialty pen designs downloadable for Illustrator and the sidebars are real life crap, not Chris Ware-style parody.
If, as I have heard, we are dealing with a pen name from the author, it is similarly poorly chosen, confusing people about gender and POV of the work. If that is not a pen name, I suggest finding a way to tamp down the glare, perhaps by using initials.
Heroines do not need to be sexy to succeed. Overall, the lack of a keen editorial perspective embedded a sense of doom in the strip by page three.
I think this strip is finished and a replacement would be a better idea, but I like to see people pursue their dreams and I wish Ellie luck. I sense the talent and imagination at work, and would love to be proven wrong. If not, perhaps something simpler and less mannered, as a way to develop Hemingway’s built-in, shockproof bullshit detector. There are simply too many false notes sabotaging the comic in its current form.