Jeffery Rowland, creator of Overcompensating and proud occupant of the Eastworks building where NEWW is being held, has offered up a little teaser for the event in his comic.

As if I weren’t already excited enough, now there’s a murder mystery involved? The plot is afoot…

Here’s an opportunity for creators: The Tangled Bank is looking for speculative works, including comics, for an online anthology celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. Read the guidelines for all the details, including payment. (Via Comics Worth Reading.)

Tim O’Shea talks to Warren and Gary Pleece about their new comic, Montague Terrace, which debuted last week on Act-I-Vate.

Spider-Girl returns to the Marvel Universe—the Marvel Digital Comics Universe, that is. Interesting use of the platform to promote a niche product—they have a couple of the older stories up for free, and a brand-new one coming that is online only.

For some reason, Toronto seems to produce an extraordinary number of good webcomics artists, so this webcomics panel, scheduled for April 7, should be really interesting.

Speaking of Toronto artists, Michael May reviews Karl Kerschl’s webcomic The Abominable Charles Christopher at Robot6.

New webcomic alert: Porterhouse, a gag strip about an aspiring comics creator by Tom Torre and Dr. McNinja inker Kent Archer. (Hat tip: ComixTalk.)

OK, we’re a bit late with this news, but Blue Sky reached its 500th installment in February. Congratulations to creator Jacob Bond.

ICv2 has a bit more on that Sony digital comics system for the PSP.

As informed by Brock Heasley’s Twitter feed (yes, we’re all over this brand-new, state-of-the-art tech), his strip, Superfogeys, about a team of super(retired)heroes has just hit 200 updates! 

And I mean just hit 200, Brock was even kind enough to Tweet about it at least 50 times in the course of this monumentous day. Just looking at this strip makes me want to read through the archives the moment I get a chance; the cartoony exterior is among the cleanest I’ve seen this side of The Venture Bros. and I can’t imagine the writing is anything but top-notch to match.

Look for a review (either in podcast or blog form) soon from yours truly and follow Brock (brockheasley) to congratulate him on the milestone!

Oh, right, the hash tag won’t work in a WordPress title. Gotten so used to doing it for my Tweets I must’ve slipped into autopilot.

Meredith Gran was interviewed by the Boston Phoenix about the Webcomics Weekend and those attending might be interested in checking out the brief, but insightful article. Sure, it’s full of things that most of you, as avid webcomics followers (not to mention loyal Digital Strippers) already know, but it’s always good to get that info out to the masses, right?

I especially like the “instigator” title interviewer Dan Mazur plants on Gran. It is true, all us webcomic types are always up to something.

See that graphic above? Whenever you see that over the course of the next week or so, you’ll know that you’re getting honest-to-goodness Webcomics Weekend news, straight from someone who was there!

Also, if you’re on Twitter and Tweeting about anything WW-related, use the hash tag (#neww, sans parentheses) to put it all in one easy-to-read thread on the Twitter search site. Reading through those posts is fun enough, I can’t imagine what the event itself will be like!

Webcomics.com had a really nice relaunch under the new owners, with some well written, useful articles, and then it sort of disappeared, due to problems with their web host. Now they’re back, sort of, although their RSS feed stopped working in my reader and I had to cancel and resubscribe. And they are looking for new content, so if you want to share your learning experiences with other creators, here’s some info on submitting a story.

El Santo has a nice review up of Dawn of Time at The Webcomic Overlook.

At Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Ada Price takes a critical look at reading comics on the Kindle. Despite the imperfections of the platform, publishers are taking it seriously as the next step in the long march to digital distribution. In other platform news, Slippery Brick notes that Sony is working on downloadable comics for the PSP.

Kevin Church is posting brief takes on webcomics by Twitter users at his blog, BeaucoupKevin(dot)com.

Here’s a new comic that’s worth a look: Model Behaviour, a manga-style comic about a shallow ladies man who happens to work in the fashion industry and becomes obsessed with a model. It’s a light comedy, and you can sort of see what’s coming with the latest twist, but it’s a fun read.

The sixth print volume of Dandy and Company is now available from Lulu.com.

Cory Doctorow has high praise for the print edition of Get Your War On at Boing Boing.

At ComicMix, Marc Alan Fishman recommends that you read Rogue Robot.

Stuck at your desk? Mari Kurisato lists three webcomics that are safe for work.

Thank you, Scott McCloud, for saying what needed to be said:

The page designs of most long form webcomics suck donkey dick. Good artists and writers—including some of my favorite cartoonists in the world—force readers to sroll, then click, then read, then scroll, then read, then click, then scroll again for no other reason than a stubborn belief that all comics pages have to be taller than wide, and that all web pages need a metric ton of blinking crap at the top to work.

T Campbell checks in in comments to defend his use of vertical pages, but I remain unconvinced. As Scott says in his response, scrolling is OK and clicking is OK, but the click-then-scroll required for every page is distracting and annoying.

Greg Hatcher has a lengthy but very readable essay up at Comics Should Be Good that considers paper vs. digital comics in terms of both the creator’s economics picture and the reader’s experience. With pictures of his own collection, it’s well worth a click.

The Canadian magazine Mcleans has a nice profile of Kate Beaton, whose loosely drawn comics make history fun. (Via Blog@Newsarama.)

Also at Blog@, Kyle Latino and Lee Cherolis have brief reviews of White Ninja and Kukuburi.

Here’s a nice bit of niche marketing for you: BikeRadar.com interviews Rick Smith about his bicycle-themed webcomic Yehuda Moon. (Via Journalista.)

Space oddity: Japanese sci-fi manga creator Leiji Matsumoto’s latest work, Out of Galaxy Koshika, will be distributed digitally via the Wii Shopping Channel. Readers will pay 500 Wii points for the first chapter and 200 for subsequent chapters. The manga is being published only in Japan for the moment but the online version includes an English translation; no word yet of any print version.

Here’s your freebie of the day: vol. 3 of Oddly Normal: Fignation Times, which the publishers have kindly made available online. (Found via Sean Kleefeld.)

Webcomics Weekend is only a few days away and the official information is finally here!

Of large note is the panel list for the weekend. There’s everything from a live Webcomics Weekly recording featuring the Halfpixel crew to a livedrawing exhibition featuring a Cintiq tablet and a host of webcomic creators. If you didn’t think you had enough to keep you busy, well, you were just plain wrong.

Also, a map has been provided for the pub crawl on Friday night (good for all-ages, at least some parts). The weekend is shaping up to be one of the greatest in (the short) webcomics history! Hope to see you there and check back with Digital Strips during the weekend for up-to-the-minute updates on the goings on! Also, follow me at Twitter (mdnytecartunr) as I’ll be Tweeting away the whole weekend!

The Laugh Out Loud Cats is a much-admired webcomic around here, and we’re glad to hear that Abrams ComicArts just brought out a print edition. Over at Neatorama, creator Adam Koford discusses the origins of the comic and some of his creative influences, including Paper Moon, Dennis the Menace, and one of my all-time favorite movies, Sullivan’s Travels. (Via Robot 6.)

Over at Good Comics for Kids, Kate Dacey reviews the first print edition of The Araknid Kid, by Josh Alves, which started out on Zuda and moved over to Sugary Serials before hitting the dead tree format.

Bengo has an interesting post at The Floating Lightbulb, in which he looks at Google’s graphs of traffic for various webcomics and sees a marked decline in readership over the past few years. Readers question the accuracy of the data in comments, and I don’t know enough about Google data to be able to analyze it myself, but the trend looks marked and consistent, and some interesting discussions crop up in the comments section. UPDATE: Over at The Comichron, John Jackson Miller is hearing from webcomics creators that Google Trends seems to be understating their traffic.

One sign that a trend has jumped the shark is when the politicians start getting into the act, so make what you will of the fact that the Washington state legislature just passed a resolution honoring Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade. (Via Journalista.)

Jennifer Contino talks to Johnny Zito and Tony Trov, the creators of the Zuda-winning Black Cherry Bombshells, at The Pulse.

Shaenon Garrity interviews Ed Quinby, the creator of Teregrin, at Talk About Comics.

Larry Cruz checks in with reviews of Sister Claire and The Princess Planet at The Webcomic Overlook.

Delos reviews Dovecote Crest at Art Patient.

At Occasional Superheroine, Valerie D’Orazio reviews three webcomics that “address sensitive women’s issues with a great frankness and courage, and demonstrate what can be done using this medium for the cause of education & social justice.” They are: Unmasked: The Ariella Dadon Story, The Shake Girl, and Hathor the Cow Goddess.