More and more of the alerts I’ve been getting seem to be more about webcomics getting more coverage on Google than ever before. Out of the past 12 I’ve looked at 5 of the alerts were for comics I had never heard of and 5 were for xkcd. Yeah, I’m starting to get a little sick of it as well. Reminds me of the advertising blitz they did for Avatar. If only that movie had turned out less than fabulous I could continue with my righteous anger.

Kate Beaton came out with a new book a few weeks back. This is the third time I’ve seen some sort of link to “Hark, a vagrant” in as many months, so it has just ended up on my list to review and possibly visit in one of our adventures.

There’s an update on Stephanie McMillan’s children’s book. She looks to be nearly finished and has put together a short video preview of the beginning, with narration by Derrick. The book has received more than $1400 of the $6000 goal so far, through partnership with Kickstarter as a fundraising tool. For thos who would like to contribute go here.

Looks like the guys behind Bat & Wolf are having trouble finding additional help as well. For the past year it has been almost impossible to find other artists or writers interested in teaming up. It’s almost as if the medium is having a backlash from all the brotherly love of last year with the great collective rush. Anyone else having trouble finding good team players?

I was going to skip by this but apparently Jonathan Moo has been doing so much leg work that I have to applaud him. What caught my attention was this post about how to advertise your webcomic for free. The seven things he covers are forums, directories, showcasing, bookmarking, link exchange, mirrors, and articles. The advice might be common knowledge but he puts some common sense behind it that’s worth reading.

It’s been a long holiday and I’m finally back for the holidays. I try not to let more than 4 days go by without giving you webcomic goodness but sometimes you can’t help but enjoy time with your sig other’s family. No worries, your minds can rest because we have more linkage to massage it. It helps that my alerts went nuts and I’m sitting on 30+ news articles.

Let’s start with an interview that’s days old. Lately there seems to be more and more sites covering webcomics, to the point where I could spend day after day trolling sites for you link to. More to the point, it’s a great way to get introduced to someone’s creation when you can hear their voice. One example is this interview from fandomania with the creators of Evil Diva. Kelly gets into some questions about how the strip was started and what goes into it’s routine in creating it. From the banter we get back and forth between them I would probably listen to a podcast, but luckily we odn’t have to deal with the competition and instead get a rather cute, unique, and creative strip.

If I had to write the obvious steps to take when creating a webcomic I think this would be it. I think I find these at least once a month and there’s always that one piece of advice that bugs me every time. They always tell you to write what you love, as if that is a magic formula to producing mass quantities of fantastic material. Every time I read this advice I get the same reaction: “What they’re really telling me is write what you love so you don’t feel bad when you don’t make it.” If you want some real advice I’ve got two things for you. 1) Write what you know, not what you love. 2) Don’t start off with your comic. The reasoning is simple. Just because you think you love something doesn’t mean you can be a brilliant commentator about it. It takes practice and experience to be good.

Missed another webcomic convention in Webcomic-Con 2009. I don’t know much about it but it looked like there is finally something on the west coast that wasn’t either Comic-Con or PAX. Yes I know there’s others like Emerald City but this one seems dedicated exclusively to webcomics. Don’t know what happened so if anyone has followed up it feel free to comment.

Another print comic goes wild and joins the flooding ranks of comics online. After publishing two volumes of Chickenhare with Dark Horse Comics, Chris Grine turns the focus of its third volume to the Internet. The first volume of Chickenhare was published through Dark Horse comics in September 2006 and was amazingly nominated for an Eisner award in 2007! It has also been published in Italian where it was called, Leprepollo. The second volume, though it was praised, like it’s predecessor proved to be difficult to market due to it’s odd characters and off-beat story-lines.

Found another interview with a different comic. This time we get some intimate goodness from Comics Alliance over Mocktopus. Talk about something I would never have thought to review. Here’s a comic that specializes in not having a point. It’s a little like watching Seinfeld but in comic form and written by someone who’s dying to pick a major in Design. At least this high school student should because despite an unorthodox approach he seems to havea formula that works. Max set out from the beginning to create neither a gag strip nor an epic story. Fomr day to day you can expect any number of styles in both the line work and the inking, the color and the shading. but not the writing. Although I haven’t dived in to the comic it certainly looks worth a read.

Webcomics die hard Brad Guigar celebrated crossing the 3,000-strip mark with last Saturday’s (12/13) installment of “Evil Inc.” Guigar began one of the longest running careers in the biz doing a six-day-a-week comic, Greystone Inn, in February 2000, and with few exceptions, Guigar has been cranking out a daily comic ever since. The now immortalized Greystone ended in June, 2005, and his new daily comic, “Evil Inc,” began.

The list of comics Brad does is not even included in this list. With those extra comics, such as Guigar’s other comics works “Courting Disaster” (260) and “Phables” (97), could probably push him towards the 4000 mark, but the true amazement is that those 3000 have been mostly all in a row. He even has his record backed up by the long forgotten Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge.

Guigar is the co-author of “How To Make Webcomics” and the editor-in-chief of Webcomics.com.

Pertinent URLS:
• Evil Inc: http://www.evil-comic.com
• Greystone Inn: http://www.GreystoneInn.net
• Courting Disaster: http://www.courting-disaster.com
• Phables: http://www.phables.com
• Webcomics.com: http://www.webcomics.com

Somehow in a matter of days my Google alert, for webcomic news, went crazy. There were at least 15 but half of those were for the constant Digg updates on xkcd or the Weekly Webcomiq Wrapup from Joystiq. Both of which I stop bothering with because I just get tired of being bombarded. Now for something completely different.

It looks like webcomics has a fan at Chicago Now in GeekToMe. Don’t know about the name, as there’s something inherently annoying in calling webcomics Geek related. Anyways it appears he mentions small comics every Wednesday with little fanfare except that it’s mentioned on a site that gets hundreds of thousands of readers. Not bad.

The fourth annual Webcomic Holiday Postcard Fundraiser has begun where a whole bunch of webcomic artists have teamed up to create a set of classy holiday themed postcards! By purchasing any holiday themed postcard set, you’ll be donating to Child’s Play, a charity that collects toys and donations for sick children each holiday season! These high quality 4.25″x6″ postcards feature original art from Chris Malone, H. Caldwell Tanner, Steve Napierski, Tina Pratt, Brian Wilson, David Stanworth, Jamie Noguchi, Jen Brazas, Mohammad F. Haque, Scott Ramsoomair, Shawn Handyside, Vinson “Bleedman” Ngo, Yuko Ota.

Normally I don’t mention when a site does nothing but show a specific strip. I find that slightly silly and showing a complete lack of writing skill, but then every once in awhile the strip is worth reading. This time I’m linked to a new comic called Oatmeal.It took me 30 min to get past the ghastly artwork but the writing is so enjoyable I learned to read without using my eyes. This one in particular had me howling as it’s similiar to my past experiences dealing with clients.

Newsarama gives an interview with APE Entertainment’s Submissions Editor, Troy Dye, and the writer of a new APE webcomic, Elton Pruitt. Whilte talking about UFO Anthology: Encounter with the Unknown Newsarama discovers that APE has an existing small collection of webcomics, believes in alien life, every parent has a story to scare the children, everyone loves their readers doing their work for them, and that all it takes to be successful in any new project is to do your best.

The newest webcomic critic, El Santo, has a new editorial up on ComixTalk. Not my cup of tea but he does take a very long and in-depth look at the Zuda comic Azure. Apparently it’s an apocalyptic webcomic that doesn’t leave anything to chance. If you’re going to destroy the world why not throw everything you got it? Well El Santo goes further and talks about the artwork, setting, and writing with enough detail to wet my appetite but enough to convince me to read the comic. Although I could probably get by with a few fight scenes from the sneak peeks he shows us.

Finding webcomic news during Thanksgiving is probably the hardest time of the year. It’s not hard to figure out why when I see how much effort I put compacted into a couple of days instead of the months used for the end of the year. Mainly it’s exciting that The Geek is back with a new person in the world. Have to publicly give him Congratulations since I have such a public forum.

There are so many of these out there but this one is slightly different because it doesn’t try to be anything more than personal opinion. El Santo went through and picked at least 4 I heavily enjoy, another 3 I’d not heard of before and one I never understood why people love it so much. Have to say I disagree on a couple but then El Santo picked 2 that are no longer updating, but definitely deserve to be on everyone’s must have read list.

Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan bring you a sweet story for children, old Mrs. Johnson lives happily alone in the forest. She loves to knit sweaters and mittens for her grandchildren in the city. One day her solitude comes to an end when her mischievous forest neighbors reveal themselves in a delightfully colorful fashion. Who took her yarn, and what have they done with it? “Mischief in the Forest” will be 40 full-color pages. The story is written by Derrick Jensen and illustrated by Stephanie McMillan. The money raised here would be used for printing the book, and if they raise an amount higher than our goal, they’ll use it either for a higher print run and/or promotional costs.

The 2nd Annual Calamities of Nature guest strip contest has begun. Can you feel the excitement in the air? After last year’s contest, Tony decided to do it again and picking the 3 best strips submitted by December 11th. The 3 winners will have their comics featured as the December 14th, 16th, and 18th updates. These comics will get a place in the archive, along with a link to the winner’s website (for examples, see last year’s three winning comics). In addition, each winner will receive the choice of a signed copy of the volume 1 collection or a shirt. If you don’t win, you’ll still be compensated for your hard work. All other submissions (of reasonable quality) will be featured individually in the blog on Tuesdays and Thursdays and have their comics saved in the gallery.

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.

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.

This is what I get for being away for so long. As you’ve probably already read here and here Amazon has been running a contest for comics. I find it very amusing that the guys selling the newspaper replacement, in the kindle, are running a contest where new fresh artists are creating newspaper style funnies. I doubt this will be the next wave but it does feel like a good jumping board for Amazon to get into comics distribution. Now if only they could create an E Ink display that used color…

The 10 final contestants are:
Belle Plaine by Eric Gapstur
About Josh and Collingwood, two fifth graders who use their wit and ingenuity to stave off boredom in a small town.

Büni by Ryan Pagelow
A dark comedy told in cute pictures. It revolves around a hopelessly optimistic loser bunny named Büni. The girl he loves doesn’t love him back.

CounterCulture by Kory Merritt
Follows the life of Margo, an oddball teenager who lives with her father, Bob Bower. Supporting characters include Margo’s ditzy ferret Kassidy, her laidback boyfriend Dobbs, and her giant boa constrictor, Stretch Armless.

Evil Twin by Alexander Matthews
Story of twins Myron and Ludwig, two 10 year-old boys who, like most brothers, are engaged in a constant battle of one-upmanship. They trade insults, devise devious schemes, and have a vivid fantasy world.

Girl by Dana Simpson
She’s a kid who’s awkward at school, awkward at home, and comfortable in the forest, where her friends all live. She has a name, but her forest-dwelling friends all just call her “Girl.”

Hemlock Heights by Todd Machen
Come join the denizens of Hemlock Heights as they combat some of life’s biggest challenges: first-time snack duty, oversized pool tags, and that most unnatural abhorrence… the neighborhood newsletter (shudder). Tennis anyone?

Joe 6-Pack by Mike Floyd
This strip centers around Joe and his everyday occurrences managing his six kids. Joe used to bring a lunchbox to work everyday, but now he’s a stay-at-home dad. He’s raising his kids on instinct and therefore solves problems and handles everyday situations in his own unique way.

Lil Wit by Andrew Paavola
Whitaker Lawrence, or “Wit,” is a delightfully dark eight-year old by with a barbed sense of humor. Fortunately, Wit is not without his unique charms as he takes pleasure in the simple things, such as giving his teacher headaches, and annoying his sister.

Nutz n’ Doltz by Michael Underhill
A modern update of what Rube Goldberg did so successfully. With a twisted sense of humor and an even odder sense of design, Nutz n’ Doltz mocks the modern gizmos and the way they are advertised to us.

Thatababy by Paul Trap
Babies have it made– they set their own hours and make their own rules, all while commanding the spotlight. Thatababy celebrates that glorious freedom through the eyes of a newborn who lives by one simple rule: It’s a baby’s job to drive their parents crazy.