After having been out of the scene for so long I have to refresh my list of sources. Luckily many of them are still around but there are about 10 times the number of blogs there use to be. If I thought there was a proliferation of podcasts and writers out there before, I’m drowning in them now. It does make my life a little easier though because my little Google news alert comes back with something at least once a day instead of once a month, so I only have to wait a few days before I can give you some linky goodness.

First on the list is an interview of Alan Evans. creator of the comic Rival Angels. Fandomania goes through the usual questions of where do you come from and what is your inspiration. BTW no one should ever actually ask “What is your inspiration?”, it’s just understood that no matter what the interviewer’s first question is they are secretly asking for inspiration. KM (the interviewer) goes on to ask how the comic is created and Alan gives an unexpected response of saying that although he does pretty much everything there is a lot of collaboration going on, especially with maintaining the dialogue as female. The rest of the interview is pretty stock but good info for those new to reading Rival Angels.

The next blog is The Webcomic Overlook. This blog has been around for over two years, just long enough that I didn’t know about it. I think this one is going to end up on the list of official news sites. It caught my attention with this post about conservative webcomics, a topic I passingly touched on early in our inception. El Santo sets up the beginning of what would be a very good research project for an article, by touching on three different conservative based strips. I would only fault him in not comparing those strips to known conservative creators, despite a passing mention of Doonesbury.

This is the only post I get to write every year involving nudity, but have no fear! It’s not the inevitable webcomics-to-porn changeover that you’ve all been fearing! No, it’s that time of year again, time to start thinking about you’re going to do in the New Year! Maybe lose that spare tire? Kick that nasty habit! Or start reading more, quality webcomics.

Whatever your desire, you can mark each important occasion with the Tastefully Done 2010 Calendar! The Tastefully Done Calendar is comprised of the biggest names in webcomics, bringing their signature characters to the printed page in their completely natural, nearly-nude forms. Official word of the calendar from Lulu.com is as follows:

Featuring Danielle Corsetto, Lem Pew, Aric McKeown, Jess Fink, Guy Hodge, Huw Davies, Rasmus Pettersson, Rachel Dukes, Frank Page, David Wolfe, Michael Lalonde, James Norris, Jamie Smart and Krishna Sadasivam. All of these great people band together to show the other side of their webcomic characters for Cancer Research. Allowing them to bare all, once and only for your viewing pleasure. ALL PROFITS GO TO CANCER RESEARCH!

Those are some mighty fine creators, and they’re all naked, for only $15.99! Wait, I’m not sure I get how this works…

“Tastefully Done – Webcomic Characters Showing It All (2010) by Krishna Sadasivam, Danielle Corsetto, Aric McKeown, Lem Pew, Jess Fink, Guy Hodge, Huw Davies, Rasmus Petterson, Rachel Dukes, Frank Page, David Wolfe, Michael Lalonde, James Norris, Jamie Smart” (Lulu.com)

Not to long ago I found out we were having a serious problem with email forwarding. Here I was getting all this email sent to the DS address and I thought it was also getting forwarded to everyone else. Boy was I wrong! That means a bunch news worthy material didn’t get leaked to you and I’ll totally take the blame for that. To make matters worst the old news submission system we had running is also on the blitz. Let’s see if we can’t make up for that with some old news posting that’s still worth knowing about.

Back in August the webcomic Teaching Baby Paranoia —by cartoonist Bryant Paul Johnson—celebrated the publication of its 500th strip. The long-running strip, which debuted in January of 2000, is a mélange of historical fiction and pseudo-academic nonsense, drawn in a classically cartoony style, and annotated with footnotes of dubious
accuracy. Bryant has said “I wanted to mark the occasion with something a little different; to stretch my legs a bit, aesthetically. It was important to me to make this a special event. I’m planning on retiring the strip on its 10th anniversary, so this is a last hurrah!”

I received an email, back in Sept., about a new app on the iPhone called Strips. At the time life was busy and there just wasn’t enough time to give an appropriate review. Well it looks like the creator got a little zealous and ended up on the wrong end of copyright infringement. Can’t help but hink that sometimes are passions blind us to our common sense. The comics listed were some pretty big guys and I was really surprised and thought Jeff was going to create something nice if so many had bought in. Guess I was wrong…

There’s a new webcomic publisher on the block. Several emails have come my way from TopatoCo about signing so big artists to print there more recent books. They added Halfpixel cartoonists Dave Kellett and Kris Straub as clients back in early July, becoming the exclusive online retailer for Straub’s “Starslip” and “Chainsawsuit” books and related merchandise, and has partnered with Kellett to produce “Sheldon” apparel. Then they secured the popular online comic The Adventures of Dr. McNinja on July 22. Dr. McNinja: Operation Dracula! From Outer Space contains issues 5-8 of the story about a ninja who is also a medical doctor.

SMASH has finished its first season, twelve episodes or nearly 140 pages. In the Episode 12 finale, ten-year-old superhero Smash faces off against his arch-enemy, the brilliant lunatic known as the Magus. Co-created by brothers Chris A. Bolton (writer) and Kyle Bolton (artist), Smash is an all-ages web-comic that combines the humor of Calvin and Hobbes with the adventure of The Incredibles and Bone.

After trying to use Yahoo to build up followers Project Black Manga finds out, like the rest of us, that getting published is nearly impossible for an unknown. I have seen these before, where a comic broken up frame by frame and turned into a video. Typically done with mangas in the tradition of exporting to the rest of world, I’ve never seen it be successful with an unknown comic.

No other comic slams Digg like XKCD. Before Digg was full of trash, I use to find the webcomic on the front page at least once a week. Every time it would have at least 3000 diggs. This time they’ve topped the charts with two girls gaming with one of them who knows how to talk to guys.

iPhone only comics are stating to get noticed. Are these still being called webcomics or are we going to have to create a completely new moniker? Anyways, I found out here that David Gallaher has a new comic on that platform called Box 13. As their second comic along those lines, this strip seems to be taking advantage of the screen better and is being released serially.

The family comic series, “Silly Daddy,” posts its 500th online cartoon November 9th, 2009. Harvey and Ignatz nominated, this comic combines science fiction with real life family drama and humor, and has won the Xeric Award. Since 2004, Silly Daddy has also been a webcomic with an emphasis on one panel cartoons.