Links: Big thoughts for the last week of summer

Wizard interviews three webcomics creators—Scott Kurtz of PvP, Chris Onstad of Achewood, and Lora Innes of The Dreamer—and talks some serious nuts and bolts: What’s your traffic, how much do you pay for hosting, how do you build your site, and what do you use to draw the comic?

Apparently not everyone shares my aversion to scrolling; Von Allan did a poll and found that 80% of respondents weren’t bothered by it at all. I guess I’m in the minority.

And here’s a big-picture piece by Jake Forbes: Four Challenges for Digital Comics to Overcome. Forbes is a veteran comics editor whose credits include the best-selling comic Fruits Basket. (Yes, it’s manga, but the top manga outsell most other comics.) Anyway, upon reflection Jake comes up with a more concise list; both are worth a look.

The Monsters of Webcomics show is up at the Museum of Cartoon Art in San Francisco, and the local media is on the case with both the San Francisco Chronicle and SF Station filing reports this week.

Lori Henderson reviews the online manga anthology SIGIKKI. Speaking of which, in this article, Japanese publishers basically admit that they can’t do much about scanlations, illegally posted fan translations of manga, through legal means, so they are fighting back by putting their manga up on the web themselves. It’s so crazy it just might work!

Alex Dueben talks to Jonathan Rosenberg about Infinite Typewriters, the print edition of Goats, at Comic Book Resources.

Delos reviews >Will Write for Chocolate, a charming little webcomic by writer Debbie Ohi.

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Digital Strips 171 – Horizons Watch and Snowflakes

I’m trying to think of something catchy to get you guys interested in listening to this week’s show, but Planet Earth is on right now, and I just can’t focus when there are monkeys on TV.

On this trip to the horizon we bring back two juicy, good comics for your enjoyment. Tales from the Looking Glass by Jamie Cottel and Anthony Perruzo and Snowflakes by the impressive team of James Ashby, Chris Jones and Zach Weiner.

So pull up a chair and a pair of head phones to find out why these comics belong in your Web browser and in your life.

Sites mentioned in this week’s show:
Zuda
Captain Excelsior
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Grumps

Special thanks to I Fight Dragons for our new outro music. Head on over to their website for more happening tunes. (you know they must be good if I’m telling you to go to myspace)

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Links: Ignatz, Wowio, and site design

Johanna Draper Carlson picks up on an interesting tidbit: Platinum no longer owns Wowio, although it doesn’t seem to have moved too far away; Platinum’s president and CEO, Brian Altounian, formed a holding company that bought it in July. Flashback Universe has an interview with Altounian that’s more about the site strategy than the financial side. (Via Fleen.)

The Ignatz Award nominations are up, and the slate for best online comic comprises Dash Shaw’s Bodyworld, David King’s Danny Dutch, Joey Alison Sayers’s Thingpart, Vanessa Davis’s comics for Tablet, and Cayetano Garza’s Year of the Rat.

Here’s my cranky take, from a reader’s point of view, on webcomics site design at Robot 6.

Smith Magazine, which hosted the webcomic A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, is launching another high-profile webcomic: The Pekar Project, featuring the work of Harvey Pekar.

Merlin Mann is the guest on the latest episode of Webcomics Weekly.

Larry Cruz is going on hiatus for a few weeks, but he leaves us with an interesting Q&A post about webcomics in general.

Spike talks Templar, Arizona, with Lauren Davis at io9, and Johanna Draper Carlson chats with Erica Moen, creator of DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary at Publishers Weekly Comics Week.

Sheldon Vella discusses his suprise at the success of Supertron at MPD57. (Last three links via Robot 6.)

Chris of The Ego and the Squid is the guest on the latest Ninja Consultant podcast.

prevmainNot awesome: A magazine devoted solely to the topic of preventive maintenance. Totally awesome: A magazine devoted solely to the topic of preventive maintenance and illustrated by Will Eisner. If anyone can make grunt work exciting and sexy, it’s Will, so the Virginia Commonwealth University Library has truly done a public service by putting the full archive of Eisner’s work for PS Magazine online.

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Left to our own devices: Backlist in motion

ICv2 notes that the number of comics available on mobile devices has doubled in the last two months and gives a bit of background on who’s doing what.

Johanna Draper Carlson wonders why anyone would make a motion comic and looks at the difference between the Marvel and DC strategies at Comics Worth Reading.

Here’s the demo for Panelfly, a new mobile comics reader app; Scott McCloud finds it a bit disturbing.

It’s a dramatic tale, full of thrills and uncertainty, with a happy ending: MyRomanceStory is putting their comics on the iPhone, and their press release, intentionally or not, fits the genre to a T.

The NBM folks are a bit more staid about their venture onto the iPhone, but they have an interesting twist—while most publishers sell a chapter at a time for 99 cents, NBM is selling full graphic novels for $6.95 to $9.95 a pop.

Sean Kleefeld finally got a cell phone, but it’s a Dare, not an iPhone, and he’s wondering if anyone is making comics for it yet. I haven’t heard of any. Readers?

At the Boys Next Door blog (which focuses on yaoi manga), Nikita reviews vol. 1 of Games With Me, by Tina Anderson and Lynsley Brito, which is available only on Kindle at the moment.

Lori Henderson takes a look at the newest iteration of the Sony E-reader at Manga Xanadu.

Quill & Quire asks: Is Kindle more environmentally friendly than dead-tree books?

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Digital Strips 170 – Review: Imagine This

It’s almost creepy how much this episode reminds me of the Digital Strips shows of years ago with Daku the Rogue and The Mighty Zampson. With the smart writer guy at odds with the lovable but dopey artist guy over a comic’s awesomeness. Fans of the old school podcast or the UFC shouldn’t miss it.

This time our two heroic hosts do battle over the strip Imagine This by Lucas Turnbloom. A classy looking gag a day full of great characters, personal violence and 80s nostalgia.

While we both had good things to say, Jason still felt the need to bring up a few issues that required me step up and defend the comic. A bloody podcast battle ensued and after an epic back and forth both parties were left sad and broken. And after all the work I put into finding a strip for him.

After such a betrayal of trust, I don’t know if we’re going to be talking anymore.

If this is a strip you’ve been planning on reading on your own, you may want to go a head and do it because cause there are several spoilers in the show, but if it’s new to you jump on in and see if we can convince you. I bet you two donuts that we can.

Show notes abound.
The Prehistory of the Farside
Least I could do
The System
Diesel Sweeties
Garfield
Get Fuzzy
Joe and Monkey
Calvin and Hobbes
Penny Arcade
Tall Tale Features
Legend of Bill
SuperFogeys
Dog Eat Doug
Gill

As always, we welcome and want your feedback, please leave it below.

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Left to our own devices: PSPs, iPhone app index, and new comics

Creator Kyle Hurlbut found that sales went up after Apple made him raise the age rating on Fallen Justice #2 from 9+ to 12+.

Sony will launch a comics reader for the PSP in December, with comics available for purchase from the PlayStation store. Reportedly Marvel, IDW, Image, and Archie have signed on. JK Parkin has more at Robot 6.

Comics apps for mobile phones are coming out at a dizzying pace, and now there’s a site to help you keep track of them: Find Comic Apps lists new releases and old favorites in a convenient single location. (Via downthetubes Mobile Comics.)

Cherise Fong interviews creators and publishers of comics for mobile devices and discusses the potential for spreading comics worldwide at minimal cost at CNN.com. (Via Robot 6.)

Creators, if all this talk is making you feel like you should be putting your comic on mobile devices, here’s an article for you: Lemuel Pew goes over all the options (including doing nothing and letting people just read your comics on the browser on their handheld), with a thorough discussion of the pros and cons, at Webcomics.com.

JM Ringuet’s cellphone graphic novel Stolen Suns is now available in the iTunes store. Link is here. (Via The Beat.)

Also new at iTunes: Marvel’s first Spider-Woman motion comic and Alterna’s American Terror: Confession of a Human Smart Bomb.

And R. Stevens’s LoLBoTs is available on the web but formatted for easy viewing on cell phones. Why has no one else thought of this? (Via Fleen.)

Here’s a milestone worth noting: iVerse Media reports over one million served.

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Links: Creator-o-rama

Brad Guigar and the Halfpixel guys have started something they call Webcomics.com University, which will feature lectures by noted creators. First class is tonight; Professor Scott Kurtz will talk about line quality.

Amazon.com has announced the Comic Strip Superstar contest, in which one lucky/talented creator will get a book contract with Andrews McMeel and possibly syndication through Universal Press Syndicate and Uclick—very multimedia. The info is up at Webcomics.com, where Brad Guigar doesn’t just run the press release, he takes a critical look at the terms that creators may have to agree to. Gary Tyrrell has some misgivings, and he and Gordon McAlpin now have a twenty dollar riding on the outcome.

Seth Kushner interviews Kevin Colden, creator of Fishtown, for the latest edition of NYC Graphic Novelists.

Jackson Ferrell This Week in Webcomics interviews, in comics form, Blank It creators Aric McKeown and Lem Pew.

Josh Neufeld is doing a book tour to promote the print edition of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. David Welsh turns in the latest review of the book at Precocious Curmudgeon.

Shaenon Garrity has some self-publishing tips for those who are thinking of putting their webcomics into print. This is not the usual top ten, and she has some good ideas, like this point about cover design:

From about the 1880s to the 1930s, people were really good at design. You can’t go wrong ripping those people off.

Heidi MacDonald features a video preview of Longbox, which is being touted as “the iTunes of comics,” at The Beat.

At The Webcomic Overlook, Larry Cruz reviews Dreamless (written by Bobby Crosby and illustrated by Sarah Ellerton) and David Reddick’s Legend of Bill.

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Digital Strips 169 – Zuda Watch Aug 2009

There seems to be strange new pattern emerging from Zuda Watch these days. Yours Truly, once the paragon of optimism and joy is finding more and more thinks to gripe about than every before. Meanwhile the Midnight Cartooner, a man once so bitter he was a few gray hairs from sitting on a bench and yelling at squirrels and immigrants, is beginning to sound a bit like a fan girl.

These episode we dig into another feast of Zuday goodness and lay it all bare before you. We do hope you enjoy it.

A while back some one told me it would be better it I had links to each entry in these notes so I’m going to give it a try. Also besides the name of each comic is the approximate time that we started reviewing it. Never say we Digital Stripists never respond to advice, it just takes us a half a year or so sometimes.

A Stinking Corpse 4:45
Absolute Magnitude 9:05
Antique Books 13:00
Artic 17:35
Bow and Arrow Detective Agency 23:00
Cards Kill 28:00
If you can see the hills 30:45
Octane Jungle 33:30
Psyicon 38:33
Rogue Royal 42:35

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Links: Constructive criticism

Here’s the big news of the day: MySpace Dark Horse Presents is back! One of the early and more successful publisher webcomics sites, MSDHP went dark in the wake of massive layoffs at MySpace. Comic Book Resources has the deets on their triumphant return.

Phil and Kaija Foglio delivered their Hugo Awards acceptance speech for Girl Genius in the form of a comic. Cool!

Kyle Latino went to Chicago Comic-Con and had his portfolio critiqued by Howard Chaykin and Mitch Breitweiser. Rather than crying into his beer about their comments, he did something constructive and created a webcomic illustrating the principles he learned in the critique.

Meanwhile, Adam Kushner’s critique of the print edition of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge for Newsweek ends up being a critique of the graphic novel medium as a whole. I still can’t figure out whether it’s a rave or a pan, but I do think that Kushner needs to read more graphic novels. I think he’s missing out.

Brad Guigar harnesses the teachings of behavioral psychology to suggest strategies for a successful gag strip. B.F. Skinner would approve.

Congratulations to Bryant Paul Johnson on reaching 500 episodes of Teaching Baby Paranoia. If you haven’t read this one yet, you’re missing a treat—it’s sophisticated, pseudo-historical humor delivered in digestible bites, often accompanied by misleading footnotes. Check it out!

Delos reviews Quirk’s Evil Little Webcomic at Art Patient.

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Warm Up For ZudaWatch 08.09 ~WITH~ CBR’s Zudist Colony

The August ZudaWatch is in the can and on its way to the presses! (That’s right, Steve, correct? Presses?) So while you wait patiently to find out what we thought of this above-average crop, stop over at Comic Book Resources (proud new home of Digital Strips‘ own, Brigid Alverson) to partake of their monthly Q&A session with every Zuda contestant, cheekily titled “Zudist Colony”.

Zudist Colony: Talking to the August Zuda contestants (CBR)

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