I would be a total failure of a web comics blogger if I didn’t whip the sleepy new dad gunk out of my eyes and post about this. Penny Arcade, the masters of all things digital are make the transition to reality TV.

Now I’ll be honest. I hate reality TV. As a guy who gave up his dream of being a screen writer, I hate to see TV made without a some one typing madly on keys while worrying about subtext. Plus 95% of reality TV is whining and crying and blurred out boobies, all things that piss me off. So this show already starts out in the whole for me. But on the other hand I love any and all things Penny Arcade. Their podcast, their charity, their other podcast and they even have a comic out there too.

So the up and down cancel out and I’m going to have to judge the show on it’s own merits. I got about 1/2 through the pilot and was so over come with jealousy towards these two men that I had to stop and go back to word editing this month’s Zuda Watch. You guys all do the same and we’ll chat about it in the comments together.

If there was ever a diamond in the rough in the world of webcomics, then Much the Miller’s Son would have to be that shiny gem. The recently reviewed comic doesn’t rank with the best in terms of web design, but the comic itself is top-notch and, at the end of the day, that’s what really matters.

Since we’re now BFFs, Steve has let us know about a promotion he has started which will benefit all involved. Take a listen:

From now on, if you donate $10 or more to Free The Children I’ll send you a free copy of my book! Just fire me an e-mail at stevelec (at) hotmail.com or a Facebook message with your mailing address and I’ll mail you a copy. Also, if you aren’t comfortable with using your credit card to donate, you can twitter or blog about what I’m doing or about the organization or set up your own fundraising page and I’ll consider it a fair trade.

I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do for the kids!

If there’s one thing the webcomics community has proven it can do better than anyone, it’s get behind a cause and see it through to a positive end. Help Steve do the same with this very worthy, Colbert-approved organization!

Back in the Spring of ’08, Brigid, Steve, and I sat down to review Josh Way’s Chronicle, a newspaper-style strip about a young man named Charles and his riches-to-rags-to-more-than-rags tale about trying to bring a struggling newspaper back from the dead and survive the local riff-raff in the process.

While we certainly didn’t see eye-to-eye on the strip itself, we all agreed that Way showed a lot of promise in the webcomics arena and would someday be a force to reckon with. The short name of the comic kept it fresh in mind, fresh enough to pick the title out of my Google News Alerts when it scrolled by yesterday.

Turns out our own former Digital Stripper, Brigid Alverson, tracked Way down for an interview about the ending of Chronicle and the subsequent beginning of his new comic, Strewth!, which starts November 30th. Check out the interview for an in-depthness only Brigid can deliver and make sure to check out Strewth! when it launches later this month!

Did you attend the first annual Webcomics Weekend is beautiful, sunny Easthampton, MA? Did you know someone who did? Did you live on the West Coast and lament that you just couldn’t give up the gas mileage to make the trip? Well then NEWW organizer and webcomics superstar Meredith Gran has some GREAT news for you!

By the way, do you live in Portland, OR or a city nearby? My studiomates Aaron, Luke and I are having an open house on Saturday, December 5th, and it’s open to all! Merch will be for sale, schmoozing will be had, and you can see where and how I get my cartooning done. We’ll also be joined by some awesome guests.

RSVP on Facebook if you wanna go! It’s going to be lots of fun, so I hope to see some of you there.

And this here amazing event poster gives you all the juicy deets, as well as some tasty pixel art for each creator. If you live in Oregon, have heard of Oregon, or just want to finally see the United States, make it a priority to be there!

Imagine that intro in my best Tom Bergeron impression and it will have more impact. And I feel sad for the one person in our audience that got that reference.

There’s a new strip to check out, and it’s by the enigmatic, ever-present, all ’round nice guy, Wes Molebash. It seems wherever we go, Wes is there to provide a real-life moment with warmth and humor like no one else. There was the webcomic, You’ll Have That, a large body of work that is highly recommended if you’re in need of some uplifting stories, and Wes even dipped his fingers into the Zuda waters with The Litterbox Chronicles.

Now, Wes has returned to writing human characters with Max vs. Max. This comic looks to cover the same territory as YHT, with perhaps a stronger emphasis on faith and its role in today’s hectic, selfish world. Here’s the word straight from Wes himself:

It would seem that Maxwell Stanton’s worst enemy is, well . . . Maxwell Stanton.  Recently divorced and struggling to find direction in his life, Max does his best to stay optimistic while wrestling with his insecurities and feelings of guilt.  Fortunately for Max, he has an awesome group of friends and a loving family to help him out and kick him in the pants.

Max vs. Max is about the underdog in all of us – that determined feeling we get that urges us to conquer the world even when the chips are down and the light at the end of the tunnel is still several miles away.  Max is proof that seemingly insignificant people can do very significant things.

If anyone can write down-to-earth, human tales of perseverance, it’s Wes. When you just need a good smile (and really, who doesn’t?), make sure to check out Max vs. Max.

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.

This is the only post I get to write every year involving nudity, but have no fear! It’s not the inevitable webcomics-to-porn changeover that you’ve all been fearing! No, it’s that time of year again, time to start thinking about you’re going to do in the New Year! Maybe lose that spare tire? Kick that nasty habit! Or start reading more, quality webcomics.

Whatever your desire, you can mark each important occasion with the Tastefully Done 2010 Calendar! The Tastefully Done Calendar is comprised of the biggest names in webcomics, bringing their signature characters to the printed page in their completely natural, nearly-nude forms. Official word of the calendar from Lulu.com is as follows:

Featuring Danielle Corsetto, Lem Pew, Aric McKeown, Jess Fink, Guy Hodge, Huw Davies, Rasmus Pettersson, Rachel Dukes, Frank Page, David Wolfe, Michael Lalonde, James Norris, Jamie Smart and Krishna Sadasivam. All of these great people band together to show the other side of their webcomic characters for Cancer Research. Allowing them to bare all, once and only for your viewing pleasure. ALL PROFITS GO TO CANCER RESEARCH!

Those are some mighty fine creators, and they’re all naked, for only $15.99! Wait, I’m not sure I get how this works…

“Tastefully Done – Webcomic Characters Showing It All (2010) by Krishna Sadasivam, Danielle Corsetto, Aric McKeown, Lem Pew, Jess Fink, Guy Hodge, Huw Davies, Rasmus Petterson, Rachel Dukes, Frank Page, David Wolfe, Michael Lalonde, James Norris, Jamie Smart” (Lulu.com)

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.