If the mere thought of Valentine’s day is making you break out in hives, Rachel Nabors has the cure.

In fact, she has declared a Valentine’s Day Massacre of her own, but instead of machine guns, her weapon of choice is Cupid’s arrow.

Nabors, who works in a loose, manga-influenced style, has confected a series of short strips starring Anti-Cupid, Crusher of Crushes and Destroyer of Insignificant Others, who is created when Rachel’s lead character runs over the real Cupid with her car. Anti-Cupid’s arrows break up relationships, and then she jumps in to explain why You’re Better Off Without Him.

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The post I wrote a few weeks ago about why webcomics aren’t included in best-of-the-year lists has sparked a discussion on the print side of the comics blogosphere about what people like and don’t like (mostly don’t like) about webcomics. Now, you can read this as a lot of bitching and moaning from people who don’t like webcomics anyway, but that would be wrong. Every one of these bloggers loves comics in all their forms and would love to like webcomics as well, but they see obstacles in their way. So I’m linking to these posts not to be negative but to provide some opportunities; the webcomicker who comes up with a better interface, like the inventor of the better mousetrap, may very well find the world beating a path to his or her door.

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Christopher Butcher, a comics retailer whose blog Comics212.net is must-reading in for fans of dead-tree comics, poses an interesting end-of-the-year question. As the year-end retrospectives come trundling down the information highway, Chris asks: Why are these all print comics?

Why aren’t webcomics, by and large, included in all of these critical “Best Comics of the Year” lists? For my money*, Dinosaur Comics, Achewood, Diesel Sweeties, and Penny Arcade were as enjoyable reads as most of the other comics topping my list.

Well, DS readers, what do you think? Continue reading →

Here’s one of those things I found on the way to looking up something else, and it’s really interesting: Central Park Media, a manga publisher that has had its ups and downs over the past year, is putting its books online.

Manga publishers have been putting samples online for a while now, but CPM is unusual in that it is making entire chapters and indeed entire volumes available on the internet for free. Continue reading →

For your pre-holiday pleasure, here are three webcomics that are sparse—no lengthy archives to wade through—but beautiful, all in different ways.

The Undertaker’s Daughter is drawn in a traditional style that certainly looks like ink on paper. The format is a vertical page in black and white, like a traditional comic book—from an earlier era. Artist Eric Palicki explains on his blog that he plans to do 12 episodes, each no more than four pages, with a new chapter going up at the end of each month. The first one is up, and it starts out moody but ends with a twist. I’m looking forward to seeing more of this.

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