Found a new site trying to give the basics on how to start your own webcomic. It’s short and barely adequate, but it does give just enough information for anyone to start looking for more. Actually it’s a better list then you’ll find almost anywhere else, based on our experience with DSA. For instance having a more than one strip is essential. You have to give your readers a reason to flip through and stick around. Using a hosting site can save a lot of problems (never heard of Comic Dish before this article) but I would also recommend pursuing something like Comic Press. Getting a comic email address and following a schedule seem obvious but you’d be surprised how many mess either of those up.

Found a new webcomic collective in the Webcomic Factory. Not sure about the name but it is the brainchild of Christian Beranek and Tony DiGerolamo.  Together, they created this webcomic “hub” from a variety of artists.  The concept of the Webcomic Factory is to create a professional hub of quality comic entertainment.  It’s like a digital version of the funny pages in a newspaper mixed in with traditional comics and Japanese Manga.  Already, Christian and Tony have acquired a huge library of affiliated content and they look forward to creating new content for you every day.

SWOR has a new update finally. This new issue is a lot better than the first, not just because they’re using a hot girl with red skin. There’s still the problems with pacing and not having any idea of what’s going on. The best update seems to be to the flash engine. Perhaps I missed this before but you can click on the right and left sides and a page turning graphic reveals the next or previous page. Can I get that?

Found a new comic and it has the best name I would be afraid to use: Contropussy. This is a webcomic by Emma Caulfield, Camilla Rantsen, Christian Meesey and Thomas Mauer. It chronicles the adventures of Contropussy and her friends. By day, Contropussy is an ordinary house cat, but at night she comes alive and searches for excitement in the world outside. Think of it as a more subversive Sex and the City with animals. The strip is updated every Monday and Friday and they’re hoping to go daily once they get enough donations.

This came up in an alert and I have no idea what to think about it. There’s some vague memory in my head hearing about Kiva on NPR but then I have a vague memory about everything, like walking through life under a permanent sense of deja vu. This project was inspired by the Comic Creators Alliance charity. While Yamiloo was trying to think of an original way for webcomic artists to earn money, she remembered a Sister Claire food contest.  The idea is simple: each artist creates a postcard design, of which they print 10 limited editions. The cost of printing and mailing the cards will be covered by the minimum donation.  A minimum donation will get a “general” card, and the limited edition cards will be priced a bit higher. The limited cards will have personal messages from a character in the comic, and be signed by the original artist. All the proceeds will be donated to Kiva.

Seen the new webcomic Facebook page? Some random side-effect of when Facebook created a page for everything or maybe someone finally thought it up and followed through. Webcomics now have it’s own page that the world can link to promoting their love of the art that is digital.

If it’s not another blog it’s another list. There is another webcomic ranking site out there. This one is called the WebcComic Super 100 List. This goes beyond the existing The Webcomic List, the Belfry Webcomic Index, Webcomicz, and the most popular of them all TopWebComics. Let us hope it doesn’t go the way of Buzzcomics.

Found an AOL Small Business series called the Startup Online Reality Series. Laura found herself interested in a comic called The Oatmeal by Matthew Inman. Surprisingly she also goes deep and does a real in-depth and well researched article. Almost as if she’s taking the medium seriously and not just trying to get some easy search hits. First we are given some quotes from Matthew on how he went from rags to self-sufficient. Then there are mentions of xkcd, Penny Arcade, PvP, and Achewood on their success along with information from Brad Guigar. Perhaps my favorite quote is from Inman where he tells us he had 200,000 visitor but only 50 of them were willing to help support him.

Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? Although in this case they didn’t so much pave paradise as just stop updating it.

We’re getting in the wayback machine once again to take a look at where our horizons picks from a time long gone are now. It’s a strange occurrence, as all from the first show have disappeared into the ethernet, while everything from the second show lives on and goes strong. Along with all this nostalgia we hit the news feeds for another addition of Digital Strips Google News Alerts.

Join us, won’t you for a look at a simpler time with some complex and awesome comics.

Show Notes.
No More Zuda
David Gallaher
Night Owls
Goats
Fleen
Octopus pie
Superhero for a day
GhostPimp
KittyHawk
Mimes
Tiny Kitten Teeth
Penny Arcade
Lookouts
Lovecraft is Missing
Rice boy
Order of the Stick
Joe Loves Crappy Movies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download