Category Archives: Editorial

The Webcomic Overlook Evaluates The Biz ~OF~ Reviewing Webcomics

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Via a tweet from The Superfogeys creator, Brock Heasley, I’ve stumbled across this introspective write-up from luchador blogger, El Santo, on the business of reviewing webcomics. The post is interesting in terms of what he will be writing about on his own blog in the future, but it’s the comments about giving time to new, unknown webcomics vs. covering the big guns that piqued my interest the most. On the goal of focusing on the unknowns, he writes:

This is actually a very noble aim. I mean, does the world need another person gushing about how much he loves Penny Arcade? Do we need yet another person saying why xkcd is the greatest webcomic of the century? Isn’t ragging on Ctrl+Alt+Delete just getting a wee bit tired? Wouldn’t you rather hear something new?

I applaud all bloggers who live by this code. I’ve encountered quite a few, in fact, have expressed the same sentiment […]

See? Someone applauds us. So we’re doing something right.

In terms of what we here at Digital Strips cover, the unknown approach seems to work the best for us. Sure, we can throw the success stories a bone here and there, but my personal goal for DS is to help those comics that are incredibly talented but not necessarily connected to the greater webcomic community find their way to that road that will lead to the community that eventually builds towards a greater following and thus, greater success.

While I can’t disagree with El Santo’s reasons for reviewing bigger, more recognized webcomics, we decided a while back to make this our mission statement and luckily, we’ve been able to keep the podcast alive, which is our best shot at connecting with readers/listeners about a new property they need to notice on their radar.

Thanks to El Santo for getting this discussion started, and please chime in with your thoughts on the topic.

The Webcomic Overlook: Why Captain Nihilist reviews the “big” webcomics (El Santo, 2009)

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Preaching to the Pews

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Years have gone by, 5 for those who are counting, since I started reading webcomics and it still surprises me. It is amazing how a medium that feels so niche can also have so many followers, but isn’t that the point? My previous post talked about Diamond not distributing the last week of the year and how it is a great opportunity for webcomics to get on the shelves. But why has it been so hard up until this point? Since my memory works like a plate of spaghetti, another memory came falling out about a mini storyline completed a month ago on Least I Could Do.

It has been some time since I concluded that success of webcomics is due to the combination of Internet and niches. That’s why it so hard to make it on to the comic shelf, because your entire audience is spread around the world and they are not even going to think about running to your home town to buy of the 5 shelves you convinced owners to give you. Instead webcomics sell online, along side their free product. This creates an environment of immediately hostility for those creators who stray even one inch outside their reader’s comfort zones.

So why did the guys at LICD jump on their soap box and tell an audience, generally known for chasing free products, that illegally downloading products is wrong? I don’t know about you but that sounds like shooting a gun off in a small metal box. There are going to be readers that disagree, violently. Yet a short walk was taken and although the why seems obvious, the “what’s for lunch” question seems just as interesting. Has Ryan been drinking an endless supply of red bulls paid for by Bono? or perhaps he personally believes deep down that he isn’t entitled to the hard work of others and that the best solution to make valuable products cheaper is to stop buying or stealing them at high prices? In the end only the artist loses because the middle men all have insurance from theft.

Besides having a pair of bowling balls for walking around with a match at a gas station Ryan showed me something else. They may be running a business with the strip and Blind Ferret but him and Lar are still artists. The product is never sacrificed for the green and the message always comes from the same place. That makes a good start to creating a webcomic. Don’t worry about your readers or any outfall. In the end what you should really care about is if your comic still makes you proud today as the day you started.

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Making of a Webcomic: ComicPress

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We’re about three months into our little adventure with the crew and I’ve learned a few things. Some of these were obvious. For instance I’m terrible at artwork and the writing for a comic. Writing full blown scripts seems like a piece of cake compared to restricting myself to under 20 words per page. Other tid-bits I knew would be hard and turned out easy to start but a near nightmare to advance, and that is where ComicPress comes in.

Starting out was SOOOO much easier than what I thought. My first criteria, for the comic, was it needed to be hosted on DreamHost along with everything else we run. That pretty much ruled out most of the hosting communities but that’s when Midnight threw in ComicPress. Of course I’ve heard of it and even discussed the idea with tons of people. The problem is I never personally used it so I couldn’t vouch for the product itself as the answer to hosting.

The Good: It’s WordPress. That’s immediately enticing because I’ve been using the open source software for years now and it has only been getting better. On top of it being fantastic blogging software it has tremendous flexibility in tailoring the front and back end. If I need support there are multiple forums for me to read. Next there are several different templates developed requiring zero customization to get your comic going. Perhaps the best selling point, and what sold me, was how many of my favorite comics are using it. Nothing sells better than your friend giving you something you wanted all along.

The Bad: I don’t know a darn thing about PHP. Well I know how to edit existing code but there’s no way I would pursue a job coding, unless they paid me a lot of money. Also don’t know the innards of WordPress if they were spilled in front of me. This means if I want to edit anything I HAVE to read all those forums until I find something remotely similar. Then we have the problem of two artists (well let’s say an artist and a writer) but only one blog path. How in the world do you get us to have separate columns for our posts?

The worst happened recently. There was an upgrade to WordPress that nuked the comic viewing. None of the posted comics would display unless it was on the homepage. Brought up the forums a couple of weeks later and found a defect database where there was a bug that matched my problem. The solution required me to have detailed knowledge, which I don’t have. Tried contacting Tyler with no luck. Eventually I spent 2 weeks learning PHP and debugged it myself. I’m not complaining that I had to learn something new, but that there was ZERO communication. It was almost as if those guys could care less about me good or bad.

Do I recommend this product? Yes, it is a brilliant piece of work that deserves respect. Just understand that unless you are a current paying customer you’re going to be ignored. Shoot, I offered to pay for their time and got nothing.

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The Web Comic Enema Continues with You’ll Have That

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The next comic in my list is a sad one. Not “My mom ran over my dog today” kind of sad or even “we’re out of ice cream” sad. This is more of a “My best friend got a really hot girl friend” kind of sad. I’m happy for the comic, there’s just no place for me in its life anymore.

yth

The Comic: You’ll Have That

The Creator: Wes Molebash

The URL: www.yhtcomic.com

The Verdict: Honorable Discharge

Not too much I can say about You’ll Have That that hasn’t already been said. It was great. Now it’s over. I’m sad about that, but I’m tired of skipping over the link every morning. It’s time for me to move on.

If you’ve never read YHT, go read it now. If you tried reading it in the past and have since found yourself in a serious relationship, go read it now. Molebash took the slice of life, it’s funny because it’s true, relationship comic genre and mad it his own. Andy and Katie are such realistic characters, I feel like I actually know them. And unlike the characters at QC, I wouldn’t feel intimidated going up to them at a party or something.

Molebash has decided to delay his next comic endeavor to let it mature for a bit. Since mature is one of the first words I think of when I think of YHT (and not the immature kind of mature like the comics with giraffe’s with boobies) I’m sure this can only be a good decision. If not a heart breaking one.

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Steve “The Geek” Shinney’s Web Comic Enema Begins

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Every few years, it’s important to evaluate your habits and change what is broken, no longer working or just smells funny. It’s the policy I’ve used regarding underwear since I moved out of my parent’s home and I think it can be applied to pretty much everything. Since it’s about that time again, I could either clean out my fridge, or read comics.

I always chose B.

I’ve had the exact same web comics links since I graduated college two years ago. It’s time to clean this old folder of bookmarks out and see what’s still worth hanging on to and want needs to be ignored until it stops fussing. Most of these are still comics I read and love, so it’ll be more of a chance to reflect on why I love them before carefully putting them

Since if I don’t start posting more on the blog Jason’s going to start drawing me in a dress, I’ve decided to blog out my reasoning for keeping or dropping each strip. Some will be long, one will be short. In the case of some of these it will be one line “I’m dropping this sucker since it hasn’t updated since before I knew Barack was a real name.” There’s no order to these other then the order I have them in my links. If there is a reason for the ordering I’ve long since forgotten it.

You guys will probably know most of these comics. Hopefully a few will be new to you though. Even if not, I’d love to generate some dialog in the comments about what you think of each strip.

So come along won’t you, join me for Steve “The Geek” Shinney’s Web comic enema.

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Let’s Watch Other People Talk About Things ~THE~ Long-Form Digital Comics Discussion Edition

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And boy, have a LOT of people already talked about this one!

After writing the previous post about the Eisner’s and whether or not Digital Comics includes Webcomics (it doesn’t), I did some backtracking and found several recent discussions and mentions about the long-form comics on the Web and whether or not they can be successful.

Seems everyone agreed that some degree of success can be achieved online and have moved on to specific venues in which that success can be found.

First up, I’ll give the floor to the Panel and Pixel forums, where this whole things started. Forum member Steve Horton kicks things off:

Panel and Pixel logo

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Webcomics Weekly ~FEATURES~ The Final Word In Print vs. Web Discussion

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It was long. It was hard. It was… EW! So not what I’m talking about!

It was the print vs. web discussion that raged through the comment strings of both Fleen and The Daily Cartoonist! After the back and forth on the threads seemed to be at a standstill, Scott Kurtz seized the opportunity to host a Talkshoe conference call to wrap the whole thing up with a big, pretty, Halfpixelized bow.

While I haven’t yet given it a listen, I have read what Gary Tyrrell, Head Fleener of Fleening, had to say about it and,Webcomics Weekly logo judging by every other Halfpixel podcast I’ve ever scoped, his analysis of “a bit random at first” sounds just about right.

Still, the Webcomic Weekly podcast always offers something interesting and this one should be no different. Give it a whirl and join me in saying, “Told you guys the web was better!” And Kurtz’ own synopsis of the whole thing can be found after the break!

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Keenspot ~PICKS UP~ Templar, AZ

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Looking around, I see that nearly every other blog out there… ok, I see that every other blog out there tends to post things wholly and without making a whole list out of them. And you know what? Those are the sites I read and quite enjoy reading! Nothing better than scrolling down (God bless you, mouse wheel!) and bypassing all the stuff I just don’t care about.Templar, AZ panel

Now, I’m sure nothing I’ve written falls into the category, but should it happen to anyone else, I would highly suggest adopting this post style. I’ll be trying it out and the first item to receive this bump is about one of the best black-and-white strips on the ‘Nets today!

Templar, AZ, the fun, fantasy-filled romp brought to us by Spike, is now sporting a new black header, courtesy of Keenspot. Seeing as how the latest KS acquisitions have been chums of mine, I’m not sure what I think of this recent snapping up of the talent. I am sure, however, that I congratulate Spike on the expansion! Work like hers is mega-worthy of more exposure and this move should help to do just that.

Speaking of exposure, Larry “El Santo” Cruz has posted his review of Templar over on ComixTalk (… *sigh*) so see what he thought of the sometimes NSFW strip and then stop by to do the same yourself!

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ZudaWatch: 03.08 ~TIME FOR~ The Lightning Round!

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Greetings, fellow ZudaWatchers! When next we podcast, our discussion topic will be the March competitors over on DC’s Zuda Comics contest. While we wait for that, I figured I would jot down my quick thoughts on each entry. Check out the opinionated fun below and stay tuned for our first ZudaWatch podcast, coming soon!

Among the Silver Stars– It’s a risky move to do the entire strip with a reversed-palette, black-and-white look and unfortunately, it doesn’t pay off here. The lines aren’t strong or consistent enough to pull off the effect and certain ultra-detailed surfaces and textures are offset by others that look criminally unfinished by comparison.

Day of Prey– This is quick and fun, from start to finish. Here, the cartoony look really works (it’s got a Mad Magazine vibe to it, twisted and humorous working well together) and tells the story of a fish casting his line for humans. I’m not sure if this violates the rules in any way (doesn’t the winner go on to be a longer-form work?) but I’d certainly like to see more from creator Ramon Cavalcante.

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Dead Baby Penguins Make Me Sad

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I think I’ve got it all figured out: PVP is basketball. That’s the big connection they’re going to make at the end of the series. I think I’ve won the Internet now.

 

When I worked for a newspaper, we covered all kinds of issues. Everything from gay marriage to abortion to gun control. Still the thing that got people the write the most impassioned letters to the editor was basketball.

 

People feel very passionate about there entertainment. More passionately than they often feel about important stuff. An example of this passion is this new blog that I found via a link from PVP about PVP called PVP Makes me Sad by The Fake Scott McCloud.

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