In a move that is certainly causing mixed reactions across the board, Webcomics.com, helmed by Brad Guigar, announced Sunday that the site content will now be available to all who register for a pay account for the price of $30 a year. The post declaring this new business model for the community-driven webcomics information hub has a lengthy comment thread that is well worth reading if you’re trying to decide whether or not to give it the ol’ college try.

The question that strikes me as particularly intriguing is one posed by David Gallaher:

Clicking around, I didn’t see a Terms of Service notice or anything that guarantees my rights as a consumer of your information. How do I know that Brad won’t take all of my money and build a dream house in Florida?

In terms of this being a business decision, this does seem like a make-it-or-break-it point. The Internet has proven to be anything but stable, so is there any way to ensure subscribers they will get their money back if the whole thing goes tits up tomorrow?

Oh, and some dude talked to Brad himself about the whole thing. Maybe he has more info you should check out.

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

Bit of sad news to start your morning out with. Highly DS recommended strip “Dawn of Time” creator Michael Stearns announced today that he’ll be cutting back updates from MWF to once a week so that he can focus on his art career.

I guess we’ll have to sate our selves on the adventures of the lovable Dawn and her even more loveable triceratops companion Blue just once a week until the comic takes off and becomes the weekly syndicated Saturday morning cartoon that it deserves to be.

You can check out our review of the strip here.

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.

Remember that webcomics community I was just praising? It’s opportunities like this that make that group such a good one to be associated with.

Via yet another tweet, Scott Kurtz has asked all bloggers to help spread the word about his latest calendar, featuring a Skull plushie traveling around the world, which will help to improve the lives of many Cambodian children.

Nothing more to say about it that hasn’t already been said: it’s a product you were probably going to buy anyways and it benefits a great cause. So click here, get your calendar, help out the children of Cambodia, and tell a friend.

Just a friendly reminder to all you aspiring webcomickers out there to send your strips to digitalstrips@gmail.com so we can give ’em a once over to see if we’d like to use them in a future podcast! We’ve gotten a lot of submissions recently and many of them are going to be featured soon so we can share these relative unknowns with the rest of you ‘Net navigators out there!

As a disclaimer, however, entering your strip does not mean a review is forthcoming. We take a look at the overall quality and determine, based on many complicated algorithms, whether or not we will review the comic. I say this not to discourage but because, if we were to do reviews of strips that didn’t measure up in terms of technical skill, they would be a) too numerous to count and b) overly negative.

So if you think you’ve got the chops to stack up with the big boys, submit your comic to us! If you want more shows, we need more strips, so you’re really only helping out yourselves in the long run.

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.

Given how readily giving webcomics readers have proven to be already, I’d say we need plenty more strips just like this one. Daniel Lafrance has started a new webcomic with the specific purpose of raising money for the Starthrower Foundation, a charity geared towards providing the means for young Haitian adults to finish their educations and move out into the workforce and out of the poverty so many are stricken with.

The strip, titled Starthrower in Haiti,  has already been praised by Brad Guigar, so you know that Daniel is doing at least something right in this endeavor, and a quick glance shows that the art and story are at least competent enough to warrant passing along some money to this great cause. Read a bit more about the comic straight from Daniel himself and make sure to give at least a little in this season of glad tidings:

Starthrower in Haiti, a Fundraising Webcomic

We are thrilled to announce the launch of a webcomic completely dedicated to raising funds to a charitable cause!

Starthrower in Haiti (www.starthrowerinhaiti.com ) introduces us to the work of the Starthrower Foundation, a Canadian-registered charity in Haiti.  All funds raised by the webcomic go directly to sponsor young Haitian adults who wish to complete their education and/or apprenticeship enabling them to move into the workforce, and out of poverty.

Starthrower in Haiti is created by Daniel Lafrance (www.danlafrance.com ), a professional storyboard artist working in animation for over 24 years.

[…] Starthrower in Haiti is updated twice weekly.