I never said I’d be good at these. I want you guys to all remember that.

The Comic: Evil Inc

The Creator: Brad Guigar with colors by Ed Ryzowski

The URL: http://www.evil-comic.com/

The Verdict: Keeper-for-now

I started following Evil-Inc back when it debuted in full color a while back. I was familiar with Guigar’s work from Greystone Inn and other projects but this was the first time I really took a real look at it. I was not disappointed. This strip has a great premise that really speaks to a comics geek like myself. Just the idea of an all-powerful corporation, employing all the world’s most dangerous villains being run by the cast of your average office sitcom makes me happier than I can describe.

The art is solid. The characters are all well designed and hold together well. The aforementioned color really makes everything pop all the more and makes an already enjoyable picture all the more so.

Like all gag-a-day strips out there, some days are stronger than others, but the over all quality is still good. I usually at least grin to myself in a very pleased way.

All that being said, it’s still not a comic I’m passionate about. If there’s ever a link in the daily section of my comics bookmarks that I just forget to hit, it’s this one. I can’t really figure out why though. I think it’s the pacing, it takes a long time for some of the story lines to finish. This is really sort of a nitpick for me, but that’s what ya’ll come here for isn’t.

Evil Inc is becoming like Beetle Bailey in the comics page I read as a kid (I’m not comparing them in quality, EI is much better than BB. And Lightning Lady is way hotter than Miss Buxley). It’s not the driving force in my decision to pick up the paper, but I’m glad it’s there.

And of course, every week or so Guigar totally nails one out of the park. And that’s more than St. Snorkel ever did.

If you live on the East Coast, then like me, you’ve found that March has indeed rushed in like a fierce, untamed lion. This also means that we are less than two weeks away from the biggest webcomics gathering ever!

As I will be the sole representative for DS at Webcomics Weekend (that pre-reg craziness didn’t bode too well for people who aren’t online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) I’ve decided to put that full-access pass to the biggest names in webcomics to good use. Click over to the guest list at the NEWW site and see which creator you’d like to pin down to ask a few questions.

Shoot ’em to me, either at jasonsigler@gmail.com, or in the comments section below, and I’ll make sure to corner them until I get the dirt. It’s all for you, webcomics faithful, so get those questions in and let’s see how many people we can collectively make quite uncomfortable in the span of a weekend.

I will make sure to ask the tough questions… they just might not be to the right people.

Meredith Gran, de facto organizer of the mass gathering known as the New England Webcomics Weekend, has let it be known today that a pre-registration for the event is now required due to the huge influx of visitors and creators they are expecting.

Go fill out a quick form and make sure you won’t be the one whimpering, “But my girlfriend’s in there”, to which Gran will reply, “Hey, a LOT of people’s girlfriends are in there.”

UPDATE: And registration is closed. Wow. Check back here or the Webcomics Weekend site to see if more space might open up, because this is one party you DON’T want to miss!

It’s no secret that we here at Digital Strips don’t dig the MySpace model of reading comics. It’s clunky, ugly, and infested with poor, user-manifested web design. This would be the main reason why I’ve never bothered with the Dark Horse comic series, Dark Horse Presents. Today, however, there is hope at the end of this long, dark, dank, diseased tunnel.

Three webcomics all-stars are now featured in the twentieth edition of DHP. In this edition, you can find:

• The Catch! A Wondermark Tale by David Malki!
• An Achewood tale by Chris Onstad
• A Darwin comic by Kate Beaton

As loathe as I am to say this, you should very quickly and very carefully check the DHP site for some webcomics goodness from three of the industry’s (community’s?) finest.

Dylan Horrocks has launched a new webcomics site, Hicksville, with four comics—two short stories and two longer serials. The design is nice and clean—I wish all webcomics sites were like this!—and the comics look good, so go take a look.

Larry “El Santo” Cruz urges everyone to be a good citizen and contribute some updates to Comixpedia. He also has new reviews up of Anders Loves Maria and Nedroid’s Picture Diary, as well as an interesting interview with T Campbell, writer of Penny and Aggie and A History of Webcomics.

Shaenon Garrity interviews Aaron Neathery, whose post-apocalyptic webcomic Endtown debuts this week at Modern Tales.

The Amway of comics? Johanna Draper Carlson looks at an online “manga,” Guardian Angel, that allows readers to set up their own purchase link and get 50% of the price. Interestingly, Guardian Angel bills itself as a MangaFox top manga. MangaFox is a scanlation site, and when I clicked over there, I saw that Guardian Angel is listed as a sponsor. So they expect people to pay for their comic, but they have apparently teamed up with a blatant violator of copyrights to promote it.

At Blog@Newsarama, Kyle Latino and Lee Cherolis look at webcomics apps for the iPhone. And at the Gillians Heart blog, Dave Baxter waxes enthusiastic about the Android Comics Reader for Google phones.

NYC Graphic Novelists catches a video of Dean Haspiel talking comics and other stuff with Seth Kushner, who photographed him for NYCGN.

Therefore Repent, Jim Munroe’s post-Rapture graphic novel, is now available in its entirety here in a variety of formats. (Thanks to Matthew J. Brady for pointing that out.)

If you scroll down far enough in this Cup O’Joe column, you will see what Joe Quesada thinks of digital distribution of comics. Continue reading →