It’s been almost three weeks now since Gabe and Tycho decided to hold a contest, the winner of which would be their next, non-PA mini-series. The results brought about two winners; Lookouts, the tale of a band of young scouts and their fantastical adventures; and Automata, a noir-esque tale featuring a robot detective as the protagonist.

Now, the fate of those two victors stands revealed. As investigated and reported by Gary Tyrrell, Tycho discloses in today’s news post that Automata will be starting the week of San Diego Comic-Con while Lookouts will receive a… different treatment. About a week ago, TychoBrahe Tweeted this juicy tidbit:

Many people have asked who won the voting for the long-form pieces. The answer is “both,” though I’m not prepared to say how yet.10:59 PM Jun 25th from TweetDeck

Tyrrell (fleenguy) followed up with this inquistive Tweet:

@TychoBrahe Just emailed you about that “both”.11:58 PM Jun 25th from TweetDeck in reply to TychoBrahe

From one inquisitive Twit to another, it seemed he was on the scent of a scoop. So it came as no surprise when today, my Google Reader picked up a story from Fleen naming two creators other than Gabe and Tycho as the creators behind the Lookouts mini. It was even more interesting to hear the artist behind the project: none other than Becky Dreistadt, artist of Digital Strips reviewee, Tiny Kitten Teeth! If there’s one painterly-leaning cartoonist artist who is perfectly suited for this, it’s Dreistadt. And writer Oliver Grigsby’s pedigree on Heroes ensures this is going to be something special indeed.

And they’re not even making us wait for the awesomeness; the Lookouts story kicks off on Wednesday! So go soak in the Tiny Kitten Teeth goodness (if the PA linkage hasn’t already crashed their servers) and prepare for a story worth voting for!

Oh, and hope that poor old Jim Darkmagic gets in on the now-weekly DING! fun over at PvP so everyone gets a fair shake of this deal.

Joey Manley is doing an experiment that may be of interest to those of you who are planning to finance their webcomics by flogging merch: He’s testing the return on investment of three different ad schemes, Google AdSense, Project Wonderful, and Facebook. He explains it here and has a progress report here.

The Daily Cross Hatch posts a short comic by Raina Telgemeier, whose webcomic Smile is going to print early next year.

Gisele Lagace, who recently wrapped up her artistic duties on the long-running Penny and Aggie (still written by T Campbell but now illustrated by Jason Waltrip) has a new strip, Eerie Cuties, a humorous take on the vampire-school genre.

Warren Craghead reviews Franklin Einspuch’s poetic webcomic Crabapple. The review is considerably longer than the comic but points out what makes it tick.

Department of unfortunate coincidences: Scary Go Round introduced a new character recently who bears a more-than-passing resemblance to The Gloved One. Oops! Creator John Allison notes

The last thing anyone expects, when they have introduced a character who is a kind of grotesque version of a world superstar, is for that superstar to die. It is entirely possible that Michael Jackson sat down to read Scary Go Round yesterday, began to turn slowly purple at what he saw, and collapsed clutching his arm. Actually I know that isn’t true. Jackson was on record (citation needed) as more of a Dresden Codak man.

Anyway, Allison has the comic written and thumbnailed up to well into July, which just goes to show that there can be such a thing as working too far in advance.

At Fleen, Gary Tyrrell, has an appreciation (not a review) of Infinite Typewriters, the print version of Goats.

Sandy Debreuil has a three-part series on using Flash to create webcomics at Webcomics.com (inking, making word balloons, and a step-by-step demonstration).

El Santo has been busy lately, posting reviews of Raven’s Dojo, Sin Titulo, The Black Cherry Bombshells, Let’s Be Friends Again, and Earthsong at The Webcomic Overlook. Lots of good stuff here; in some cases, the review is more entertaining than the comic.

Ethan Young is putting his previously self-published comic, Tails, on the web. It’s a semi-autobiographical story of a young cartoonist who lives with his parents, and a large number of cats seem to be involved. Enjoy! (Via Comics Worth Reading.)

Andy Belanger’s new Zuda comic, Bottle of Awesome, only has two screens up right now, so you can jump on early. BoA is an instant winner, not part of the regular competition, so you won’t have to wait months for page 9. It’s the tale of a nebbishy boy who… drinks a bottle of awesome and becomes too awesome, as if such a thing were possible. If Belanger’s work looks familiar, it may be because he is also the creator of Raising Hell on the consistently excellent Transmission X site.

Over at Robot 6, I take a look at three webcomics that are written for children but are sophisticated enough for adults. Longtime DS readers/listeners may experience deja vu…

Everybody’s talking about the new Longbox digital comics store, and the Robot 6 folks pick up on some of the news, including the fact that seven publishers have signed on and the software will have an age-restriction feature as well as a manga mode that allows you to read comics from right to left. iFanboy has an in-depth look by Ron Richards, and Van Jenson has some thoughts on the bigger picture.

Must read: Rantz Hoseley talks to CBR about Longbox Digital Comics, an enterprise that will allow readers to download digital comics for 99 cents each. I know this has been tried before, but Hoseley seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about this and it’s interesting to read what he has to say. He makes the inevitable comparison to iTunes, but there’s more to it than that.

Phil and Kaija Foglio have put their Buck Godot: zap gun for hire comics up for free on the web, reasoning, from their experience with Girl Genius, that this will help them sell the print versions when the time comes. And also, it’s kinda cool. (H/t T Campbell, via Twitter.)

New comic alert: Jason Thompson has started a webcomic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Strange High House in the Mist. Page 1 is up now, with more to come next week.

There seems to be a webcomics problem in France. The problem is, folks are making ’em but no one is reading ’em. So some creators have come up with an extremely French solution: A manifesto! Named after a date! (If you have ever lived over there, you know what I mean—they’re all Plaza of the 23rd of December and like that.) Click on that manifesto link and you’ll also see a selection of French webcomics, which seem not unlike ours—I noticed a gag strip, several anthropomorphized animal strips, a slice-of-life comic, and of course plenty of sci-fi. How do you say Zuda in French?

I took some iPod comics out for a test drive at Robot 6 this week, looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the format and some of the ways people are adapting to it.

Speaking of which, Transformers comics were the top app of the day in Apple’s iTunes store yesterday, and Heidi MacDonald takes a snapshot of the day’s ratings, which show 10 Transformers apps in the top 20. Who do they think they are, Naruto? In the comments section, someone wonders if more people aren’t reading Transformers on iPhones than on paper; statistics are brandished about.

Aurora Publishing is putting their josei (young women’s) manga Walkin’ Butterfly on the iPhone. It looks like fika publishing is doing the adaptation. Aurora has also put many of their manga online at Netcomics. (Via the Icarus blog.)

Here’s a look at manga on the Kindle DX, from a student in Sri Lanka who uploaded scans of his own comics as PDF files. He includes photos of the comics on the screen, and they look pretty decent.

At Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson discusses the question “What would it take to get me to buy a Kindle,” and commenters chime in with ideas of their own.

Caleb Goellner talks to Jeff Webber, the new director of ePublishing at IDW, who brings considerable experience as he is coming from uClick.

Three-san, a Japanese webcomic about the PS3, is available in English for the iPod/iPhone.

And this is very cool: Indian comics, based on Indian mythology, for your iPod/iPhone. Meanwhile, China gets Harlequin romance comics for mobile phones, and Naruto and Dragon Ball come to European cell phones.

We haven’t been fans of MySpace as a webcomics site, but they did bring the comics to where the kids were. Except the kids have moved on, to Facebook and Twitter and probably some other thing we haven’t even heard of yet, so MySpace Comics is closing up shop.

In this week’s Publishers Weekly Comics Week, I talk to Brian Leung, who has set up Kidjutsu, a portal for kids’ webcomics. Go, read, and then check it out—some of the best comics on the web right now are kid stuff.

Curtis Silver talks to Chris Hastings, creator of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, at Geek Dad.

At Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson discusses some possible formats for online manga, from a magazine-type anthology to a full-on manga version of Hulu.

Gus Higuera talks Zuda with Thom Zahler and Bill Williams, who have teamed up to create The Urban Adventures of Melvin Blank for this month’s competition.

I guess the great thing about being Scott McCloud is that if you just mention that you would like to see something, the creator goes ahead and puts it up on the web. Cool!

It’s a wrap: Jason Little has completed BEE in: “Motel Art Improvement Service.” It’s good stuff (nominated for an Eisner in 2007) so if you haven’t read it already, now’s your chance to read the whole thing—the link is to the first page.

Johanna Draper Carlson reviews the print edition of Goats at Comics Worth Reading.

A Marketplace story on the struggles of newspaper comic strip artists as newspapers lose ground to the web attracted an interesting string of comments from readers, mostly pushing back against the notion that the web will kill comic strips the way it is killing newspapers. The reporter doesn’t seem to have heard of this whole “webcomics” phenomenon, although to give him his due, he appears in the comment string to say his mea culpa. Although Randy Milholland eventually had to intervene, this discussion is less contentious than most and gets fairly nuanced, with people chiming in on the different challenges faced by web and newspapar artists. Also, someone tossed in this helpful Wikipedia list of webcomics artists who are making a living from their art, which makes interesting reading.

Gary Tyrell has an excellent MoCCA wrapup at Fleen. Dave Roman, of the doomed but wonderful Nick Mag, checks in as well. And here’s a big announcement: Becky Cloonan and Hwan Cho will be launching a new webcomic, K.G.B., in September.

Gary also points to an interesting if rather odd site called Comic Hour, in which the proprietor, John Woakes, posts a different, random webcomic from his collection every hour. There is no archive—what you see is what you get, but Gary provides a bit of context, and there’s more in comments.

Sean Kleefeld reviews the steampunk-inspired Sidewise, one of this month’s Zuda entries.

For those in a hurry, Diana Kingston-Gabai rounds up some capsule webcomic reviews at The Savage Critic(s).