Kawaii is the Japanese flavor of cute, made famous by Hello Kitty and her softly rounded, mostly nonthreatening colleagues (my favorites are the San-X characters, all of which are slightly twisted in interesting ways).

In Japan, these cartoon characters can decorate everything from cell phone charms to checkbooks and cars. In Meghan Murphy’s world, they talk back.

Murphy’s Kawaii Not takes kawaii and gives it some bite. Murphy appropriates not only the Japanese concept of cute but also the 4-koma format, a four-panel gag strip that runs vertically rather than horizontally. But there’s something very American about her straight-talking hearts, ice-cream cones, and even toilets; each strip starts out cute and ends with a twist.

Murphy is a professional illustrator by day; her work can be seen at her professional site, Murphypop. We decided to talk to her about what makes Kawaii Not tick.

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This started out as a post about The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo, which Jason, Steve, and I were just talking about on our podcast about the Harvey nominations last week. But then it got derailed in an unfortunate way.

For those not in the know, Poo is the story of Edgar Allen Poe’s imagination, which becomes separated from him in a time of turmoil (he poops it out in an outhouse, hence the title) and has to journey through a mythical underworld to be reunited with him. It’s a bit of a saga—the reveals come too far apart for me—but the writing is clever and the art is wonderful. What’s more, it’s a truly all ages webcomic: Kids will read it as a simple adventure, with a bit of scatology thrown in just for giggles, while adults will catch more of the literary dimension. And in this interview with Poo writer Dwight MacPherson and artist (for the second volume) Avery Butterworth at Comic Book Resources, the creators make it clear that they for an all-ages audience.

…OK, right after I wrote that, I went to the site to get an image and the ad under the comic was for “FREE ONLINE PORN: Hardcore Movies, No Membership Required. Start Watching Now.” The image below it was of a couple having sex, full penetration on display. I know it’s possible for our advertisers to dish up a surprise once in a while—it happened to us here on Digital Strips—but I also think, as we said in the podcast, that it’s time for these guys to get their own domain. Their site is beautifully designed, except for the ugly Drunk Duck crap at the top and bottom, and a kid seeing an ad like that (and telling Mom or Dad) would be a real disaster. While that’s the first time I have seen a porn ad on the site, the fact is that if you’re providing comics for children, you have the responsibility to monitor your ads really closely. Time to move on, guys. It looks like www.edgarallanpoo.com is available. Domains are cheap; your reputation is priceless.

UPDATED 7/20/08: Wow, I didn’t think this could get worse, but it did. I just went back to look at the comic and they have added interstitial ads. So I’m reading along and all of a sudden my screen changes to a huge ad asking should smoking be allowed in public places or some such thing. There is no way I would recommend this as a kids’ comic when they’re doing this. I wouldn’t even recommend it for adults. Put your comic on a site that doesn’t get in your way, guys.

Most of the manga you see on bookstore shelves falls into a few easily recognizable categories—battles, boobs, and boyfriends, although we prefer to call them shonen, seinen, and shoujo manga.

And then there’s Project X: Cup Noodle, which is sort of a combination business case study and inspirational text; it’s the story of the heroic struggle to develop the familiar ramen-in-a-cup convenience food. While Project X has achieved cult status in the U.S., and other edu-manga are published here from time to time, the genre is still pretty obscure.

So this is a rare treat: Bill Gates: My Computer God, a brief manga (it was published in 1982, when there was less to say) about the Dark Lord of Microsoft himself.

If you read all the way to the end, you will see that this is actually an ad for a computer book, but it’s a good stand-alone manga story about a guy with a special talent who proves himself in a series of struggles. Usually the struggles are more dramatic than debugging a computer or convincing people you’re not too young to do the job, but the dynamic style of this strip somehow makes these pedestrian dramas interesting.

The manga originally appeared in the Japanese manga magazine KoroKoro Comic. It was scanned and translated into English, apparently by Artefact, the blogger who posted it, but left in its original right-to-left orientation. For those who speak Japanese, the untranslated original is also up on the page.

(Note: Some of the content on this page may be NSFW.)

Wowio.com is down at the moment. The site says they are gearing up to go global, and that they will reopen in July. Over at The Beat, though, Heidi MacDonald thinks something else is up; she hears the company is going to be sold.

Wowio always sounded too good to be true. Customers get to download ebooks for free; creators get 50 cents per unique download. How do you do that? Ads, embedded in each book. The books themselves are PDF files with a number of built-in copy protections. T Campbell peeked under the hood in his blog last year and explained a bit about the nuts and bolts of the site.

A number of folks pop up in comments at The Beat to say that they have done quite well with Wowio. Probably the biggest winner is Chris Crosby, who says

I’ve posted WOWIO revenue numbers publicly before for my companies (Blatant Comics/Keenspot), so I have no problem with giving an update on that. Since last August we’ve made $93,624.50 from 186,736 WOWIO downloads.

Chris’s properties are among the most popular on Wowio, but others post respectable numbers as well. Bill Williams, of Lone Star Press, estimates his company has taken in about $15,000, and he adds,

WOWIO far out-performs sites like Drive Thru Comics which is a pay-per-download site. I think that WOWIO has proven that giving away ad-supported books works better as a business model than the pay per download sites.

(Bill talked in more detail about Wowio to Johanna Draper Carlson earlier this year.) And Steve Horton says

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Well, Tokyopop introduced their Manga Pilot program this week, and the internet lost no time in opening up a can of whoopass on it. First blood goes to Lea Hernandez, who points to a major problem with the contract: It requires creators to sign away their droit moral, the crazy notion that creators can retain control of their works. Lea has been critical of Tokyopop’s global manga contracts in the past, but Tokyopop really left themselves open to this by not only posting their contract online but also attempting to put it in user-friendly language, while retaining several blatantly user-unfriendly clauses. At his LJ, Bryan Lee O’Malley picks up the cudgels and pretty much finishes this contract off. At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson wonders if she’ll even bother with Tokyopop books from now on. Also weighing in: Christopher Butcher, Niki Smith (who was considering sending in a story and has reconsidered), Gia Manry, Jen Wang, and Hope Larson.

All these people are looking at it as comics creators. I used to be a book editor before I became a freelance writer, so my perspective is a bit different.

To me, Lea nailed it—signing away the droit moral is bad. When you read about people having long-term snarling matches with their publishers, it’s usually about that sort of thing.

Also, one of the big points people are making about the contract Continue reading →

Lisa Anderson has some advice for would-be webcomics artists at Comics Village, and it’s actually pretty good counsel for anyone thinking of embarking on a creative career: plan ahead, be original, stay committed. And there are a few suggestions that I wish more webcomickers would take to heart, such as this advice on website design:

Before running off to the land of fancy effects and complex coding, consider your readers. Black backgrounds are rarely a good thing, as most colors (especially fonts!) look horrible on it. Standard red and blue should not be used atop one another…they have different depths, and many can become sick at the difference it causes their depth perception. Frames can be handy, but bad layouts and complicated formatting can leave the reader lost and annoyed. Try to keep your archive neat and accessible. (A personal pet peeve are those archives based purely on date posted. It makes finding specific arcs or strips impossible.) When it doubt, go for something simple with a soothing color scheme.

Here’s my own pet peeve: putting so much stuff up top that I have to scroll down to read the comic. Sometimes I can’t even find the comic in the mess of banner ads, titles and subtitles, blog posts, pictures of the kitties, whatever. Almost as bad Continue reading →

The list of nominees has been released for the 2008 Joe Shuster Awards, which honor the best Canadian comics creators of the year, and the webcomics list includes several Digital Strips favorites. Here’s the lineup:

Michael Cho for Papercuts
Scott Hepburn for The Port
Karl Kerschl for The Abominable Charles Christopher
Gisele Legace for Penny and Aggie
Ramon Perez for Kikuburi and Butternut Squash with Rob Coughler
Scott Ramsoomair for VG Cats
Ryan Sohmer and Lar De Souza for Least I Could Do and Looking for Group
Cameron Stewart for Sin Titulo

That’s some good reading, right there. It’s interesting to note that at five of the nominees are affiliated with the Transmission X collective: Papercuts, The Port, The Abominable Charles Christopher, Kukuburi, and Sin Titulo. If you haven’t already, I suggest you check out this superb website, which presents an eclectic variety of comics with a polished, simple interface.

Also, there’s a change in the way they do things chez Shuster this time around: The winners will be selected by a jury, not a public vote as in previous years.

The third episode of that Cloverfield web manga is up and has been translated into English, perhaps in violation of copyright laws.

John Jakala discusses Franken Fran, a scanlation he is really enjoying:

I’d describe it as an amped up Tales From The Crypt for the new generation. (Imagine that there’d been no comic code to worry about so EC could have shown disembowelments and other gruesome fates in graphic detail.) Still, despite the gore, the series does have a heart… even if that heart is frequently ripped out and stepped on at the very end.

Also, this is getting linked all over but in case you missed it, here is a moe explanation of the war on terror—well, it’s mostly about Afghanistan, really. If you don’t know what moe is… that’s some right there on the right.

In non-manga news, big ups to our own Jason Sigler, whose Amazing Super Zeroes passed the 200th-episode milestone a few weeks back. Nice work, Jason, and keep on writin’ and drawin’!

MassLive.com talks to webcomicker and Fleen columnist Anne Thalheimer about the place of webcomics in the world and the unique possibilities of comics as a storytelling medium. Good stuff.

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I’m off to Anime Boston this weekend, H2 recorder in hand, and if all goes well I’ll be chatting up some folks on Artists Alley. In the meantime, here are some webcomics stories you may not have seen.

Gary Tyrrell has a lengthy post on the panel Webcomics: A Primer, which includes lots of nuts-and-bolts discussion among creators Dean Haspiel, Raina Telgemeier, Rich Stevens, and Ted Rall about timing, format, and “the economics of free.” Set aside some time to read the lengthy comments thread as well.

At Broken Frontier, Tyler Chin-Tanner interviews Joe Infurnari about his webcomic The Process. I don’t really have words to describe The Process, but the art is wonderful and you should really just go look at it for yourself.

Shaenon Garrity deconstructs the WCCAs in her latest comiXology column.

At Precocious Curmudgeon, blogger David Welsh reviews the print version of North World.

I can’t imagine there has been a huge demand for this, but Harlequin and SoftBank Creative just announced that they will be making Harlequin manga available for cell phones starting next month. Enjoy!

Over in Japan, the publisher Shueisha is launching an online manga magazine, Ultra Jump Egg. Go to the link for an explanation of how to navigate the pages if you don’t read Japanese but want to see the art anyway.