IDW, the third-largest publisher of print comics, has created a new position, director of e-publishing, and hired Jim Webber away from uClick to fill it. That’s the news hook in this PWCW article by Heidi MacDonald, but there’s plenty of food for thought in there, including the fact that IDW expects to sell as many of its Star Trek comics via iTunes as via print—and the print run on their first issue was 15,000. Also, it looks like Apple is moving on a ratings system that would allow more adult content in the iTunes store, so this sort of thing won’t be happening so much.

Bookmark this: ICv2 lists all the comics available on iPhone/iPods. They plan to keep adding and updating, which should make it a useful tool.

Dark Horse joins the growing list of publishers making their comics available on the iPhone with the release of the four-issue series Terminator: Death Valley. Shaun Manning of Comic Book Resources talks to Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson about the hows and whys.

Alterna Comics is jumping on the mobile bandwagon as well, with plans to bring their catalogue, which includes Mr. Scootles, Jesus Hates Zombies, and American Terror: Birth of a Human Smart Bomb, to the Android, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

At PC Magazine, Sascha Segan discusses Apple’s rumored Kindle killer (dubbed the iPad) and why it might not be such a bad thing for Amazon.

Technology watch: BoingBoing has a post about colored ink for e-readers, a necessity if comics are ever to migrate to that platform. (Via ComixTalk.) However, Engadget catches a rumor that PVI, which makes the display for the Kindle as well as the Sony e-reader, is having problems with its colored e-ink technology.

The big news yesterday was the release of the Kindle DX, which is bigger and has better graphics than the Kindle 2. It’s also more expensive, with a $489 price tag. The selling point is that the Kindle DX can handle newspapers and magazines, and quite a few people are eyeballing it for comics as well, but it still lacks that essential ingredient: Color.

Engadget takes a first look at the Kindle DX and even has a video demo.

And how will it do for comics? As always, the first stop is The Beat, where folks gather around Heidi’s water cooler to compare notes. Kelson Vibber sees definite potential as a comics platform, and Lori Henderson looks at how it stacks up as a manga reader. Glen Hauman at Comic Mix sees the lack of color as an obstacle.

Finally, a few items that aren’t specifically about comics but may be of interest to readers and creators: At the New York Times blog Bits, Saul Hansell compares the marketing philosophies behind the Kindle and the iPod: Sell a lot of books to a few people (Kindle) or a few books to a lot of people (iPod) and considers the ramifications of the rumored Apple tablet. And the ireaderreview has an interesting analysis of e-book costs and pricing.

The Independent writes about the popularity of cell phone (ketai) novels and manga in Japan, including a fashion tale called Catwalk Beat:

More than seven million people downloaded the mobile manga, and the fashions from Catwalk Beat have been produced for real and are available to buy online. And while this may eventually be published as a traditional comic book, it is more enjoyable on the mobile as the phone vibrates whenever there’s a tense moment.

(Via Anime Vice.)

At Robot 6, Park Cooper provides an interesting glimpse into the process of getting his new iPhone comic, Gun Street Girl, accepted for iTunes and adapted to the format. Plans are in the works to put the story up on the web in PDF form as well.

Yaoi Press just announced that it will put almost all of its manga on iTunes. Yaoi Press publishes non-Japanese yaoi (male-male romances) of various levels of explicitness. Here’s their description of the new service:

Young adult titles will be presented in their entirety. Mature readers titles will be modified as little as possible to adhere to ITune’s content policies.

A 120 page manga is turned into a 500+ page ap for the IPhone. Each page is one or two panels so there isn’t the need for excessive scrolling.

Launch titles include the young-adult manga Zesty.

Xavier Xerxes reports that Clickwheel has relaunched and revamped their interface, which is good because the last time I looked it contained zero information for anyone who wanted to read their comics.

UClick and Digital Manga Publishing have announced their latest manga app for the iPhone: Vampire Hunter D. The first volume is available now for 99 cents for each of its six chapters.

It’s still big news when a webcomic attracts the attention of the New York Times, and this article, pondering the significance of Randall Munroe’s decision to self-publish the print version of xkcd, is certainly getting a lot of attention. Oddly, they seem to regard the notion of a creator self-publishing a print comic as some sort of novelty. The article drew a bemused reaction from Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter but evoked some vitriol from commenters at The Beat.

Van Jensen reads the Platinum Studios Annual Report, and the numbers aren’t pretty. Also, the Platinum folks took exception to an unflattering article Jensen wrote about the company for Publishers Weekly, and when he contacted them for a followup, they threatened him. In print. That’s just… dumb. (Full disclosure: I am also a freelancer for PW, although I have never met Jensen.) Also, this description of a lawsuit filed by DoubleClick has a hapless ring to it:

The contract at issue was a three-year agreement to provide ad serving services, requiring a minimum $3,500/month payment with no termination clause. The employee who executed the agreement without having counsel review it is no longer with the Company. Between February and June 2008, the Company attempted to negotiate an “out” without luck.

(Emphasis mine.) Oh, and they can’t pay their rent.

Related, but only tangentially: The Webcomic Beacon folks devote their latest podcast to a discussion of the Drunk Duck webcomics community.

Matthew Loux has started a Salt Water Taffy webcomic using the characters from his kid-friendly graphic novels of the same name.

Xaviar Xerxes muses about a way to sell webcomics before they go on the web.

Joey Manley has a very calm post on why webcomics people are so cranky (or at least, why they seem to be.)

Spike walks away with the Stumptown Awards for Templar, Arizona, and Ellie Connelly creator Indigo Kelleigh got a mystery award as well.

The big news for manga readers this week is that Rumiko Takahashi ‘s new manga, Rin-ne, will be simultaneously published in the U.S. and Japan—and the English version will be published online for free. Viz, Takahashi’s U.S. publisher, has set up a special website, TheRumicWorld.com, for the manga. New installments will be released weekly. At Talk About Comics, Joey Manley applauds Viz’s choice to go with a free online comic, rather than trying to charge for the comic itself, although he’s waiting to see just how it is implemented.

Takahashi’s previous manga (InuYasha, Ranma 1/2, Maison Ikkoku) have a big following, and Viz is probably trying to get ahead of the inevitable scanlations. The manga may be free, but the site also sells books and other Takahashi merch—just like a real webcomics site!

Until recently, Japanese publishers have not been very interested in digital rights. The advent of cell phone manga plus tough times in the publishing world have changed that. Over in Japan, creator Shuho Sato recently announced that he will post his manga, New Say Hello to Black Jack, online one month after it appears in print. Viewers must pay a fee to read it. Sato claims that he actually loses money on his manga when it is published in a magazine, so he is hoping to suppement his income with webcomics. Another Japanese creator, Kazuo Koike, is also going the digital route with his most recent Lone Wolf and Cub series, which is now being published in eBook Japan’s web magazine Katana.

J.J. McCullough is shutting down his political webcomic Filibuster, and his explanation is worth a look:

My reasons are multiple, but the simplest explanation may also be the most blunt — the site is simply not popular enough.

A lot of folks would regard 2,000 daily visitors as pretty good traffic. This comes at an interesting time, though, when a lot of editorial cartoonists are losing their jobs at print newspapers, and some lively discussions are going on about the print/webcomics model for that genre. Xavier Xerxes reacts to McCullough’s decision at ComixTalk; the headline alone is worth a click.

On the other hand, Lea Hernandez is relaunching her webcomic Rumble Girls: Runaway Lightning Ohmry, on a subscription model. Sort of a modified subscription model, actually: You can read the comic online for free, but subscribers get earlier updates and a bouquet of other perks.

The nominees have been announced for the Stumptown Comics Fest trophy. Here are the webcomics contenders:

jason janicki, Wayfarer’s Moon
Shaenon K. Garrity and Jeffrey C. Wells, Skin Horse
terrytoledo, Sid Love
Craig Schwartz, toonlet.com
Daniele, The Cide

At The Savage Critic, Jeff Lester wraps up his three-part interview with Adam Knave, creator of Legend of the Burrito Blade. (Part 1 and part 2 focus on Knave’s print work.)

John Freeman has a brief chat with the creators of Spy6Teen, one of the new Zuda entries, at the Down the Tubes Mobile Comics blog.

Xaviar Xerxes talks to Box Brown, creator of Bellen!, at ComixTalk.

Matthew Braga of Blog T.O. reports on the “Talking Webcomics” event in Toronto, which featured Kate Beaton, Willow Dawson, Emily Horne, Brian McLachlan, and Ryan North.

The Halfpixel crew has a video of their recent panel from Emerald City Comic Con up at webcomics.com. Also new at the site: A quickie tutorial in Comic Life Magiq, a “photo comic creation tool.”

William Jones of the Graphic Novel Reporter interviews Mitch Clem, creator of Nothing Nice to Say (now out in print from Dark Horse) and the very funny My Stupid Life.

At ICv2, comics retailer Steve Bennett reflects on the real advantage of digital comics: They have no physical existence.

At Publishers Weekly Comics Week, Ada Price has a nice piece on Zuda’s first print comic, Jeremy Love’s Bayou.

Open-source webcomic: Someone has gone to the trouble of translating Ubunchu, a Japanese manga about the Ubuntu operating system, and putting it online. Because this is manga, the OS is presented in the context of an after-school club, and there are battles. Sort of. One thing that’s kind of cool is that the creator and the blogger have made sources and rough translations available and invited their readers to improve the comic if they like.

Over the weekend, Amazon.com removed the sales rankings from books it deemed “adult,” apparently to protect unsuspecting readers from being exposed to such literature. Because this was done via some sort of algorithm, rather than by a human, a whole slew of books with gay and lesbian themes, many of which had no sexual content at all, were deranked, while such wholesome fare as a book of Playboy centerfolds and the notoriously erotic graphic novel Lost Girls remained in full view, as it were. Amazon claims it was just a “glitch” and has begun restoring the ranking info, but ero-manga publisher Simon Jones points out that this demonstrates the risks inherent in using a closed distribution platform, whether it’s Amazon or iTunes.

A company called Plastic Logic is out to exploit the limitatins of the Kindle with its “Kindle killer” device, an e-reader designed specifically for newspapers and magazines, with a larger display, flexible screen, and—this is key—color! This article in the New York Observer starts out with an interview with the designers but then goes on to the rumor that Apple is working on a Kindle killer of its own, basically a bigger version of the iPod Touch. (Via Journalista.)

Newsarama asked its readers what they would pay for downloadable comics, and less than 50% expected to get their downloads for free. On the other hand, a surprising number of the people who bothered to respond felt that comics belong on paper, not screens, so it’s probably not a terribly representative sample. (Via Down the Tubes.)

Weekly Tezuka Osamu Magazine is a new iPhone/iPod Touch app that is just what the name says: about 100 pages of Osamu Tezuka manga downloaded directly to your device. The good news: It’s all free. The bad news: It’s all in Japanese.

John Jakala points out that one possible feature of manga e-books would be the ability to toggle between English and Japanese sound effects.

There’s a quiet uprising going on at Amazon, where Kindle users have started a boycott of books that cost more than $9.99. Galley Cat has the exective summary, and Andrew Savikas has more at O’Reilly TOC, but what’s really interesting is to go to Amazon itself and see how the online retailer’s own tools have been turned against it: Irate readers simply created a 9 99boycott tag and are busily applying it to books they think are overpriced. There’s an active discussion as well, and a tag cloud with related tags such as “drm infected” and “overpriced.”

ICv2 discusses rumors of two e-book readers that are on their way to the American market: A possible competitor for the Kindle from Barnes & Noble (here’s more) and Fujitsu’s FLEPia, which launches this month in Japan at a retail price of $1,000. The big deal about the FLEPia is that it has color, and it also has some standard computer functions, extending its usefulness.

Keenspot is looking for comics to put on the iPhone, and they expect to expand to other platforms, including Blackberry, Android, Palm, and Nokia, in the near future. Don’t make comics? They are also looking for freelancers to do the conversions. Even if you’re not interested in a gig, it’s worth clicking over to see the screenshot of their comic in the top 20 iPhone apps, following Classics: As Seen on TV!, the bible, several volumes of Twilight, and iPhone: The Missing Manual. Sort of tells you where our priorities lie, doesn’t it?

Good news for manga fans with Android mobile phones: The Android comics viewer can now handle manga that reads right to left.

The Eisner Award committee released this year’s nominations today, and here are the webcomics finalists:

Bodyworld, by Dash Shaw
Finder, by Carla Speed McNeil
The Lady’s Murder, by Eliza Frye
Speak No Evil, by Elan Trinidad
Vs. by Alexis Sottile & Joe Infurnari

I am confident that this will provide fodder for many fruitful and interesting discussions in the weeks to come.

At Indignant Online, Todd Allen takes a look at the various models for making money off webcomics. To put this in context, it follows a post about the possible demise of print comics. (First link via Journalista.) Tom Spurgeon, however, doesn’t think much of Todd’s article and would like to see more hard numbers.

Sean Kleefeld has a nice post about social marketing of comics, which will be especially significant for webcomics creators.

At Sequential Tart, Rebecca Buchanan interviews Lora Innes, creator of The Dreamer, which IDW is about to bring to print.

Here’s a reason to hang on to that old URL: cat garza let Whimville go a few years ago and now it has been resurrected by a chiropractor, apparently to boost his SEO rating. But it still has some of cat’s comics on it. (Via ComixTalk.) UPDATE: Gary Tyrrell sends them a polite letter.

Also at ComixTalk, Xaviar Xerxes recommends we take a look at a new webcomic, Urf, and from the few panels I read, it looks like his hype is justified this time.

Marc Alan Fishman recommends Kawaii Not at ComicMix.

Delos reviews Bear Nuts at ComixTalk.