Joey Manley is doing an experiment that may be of interest to those of you who are planning to finance their webcomics by flogging merch: He’s testing the return on investment of three different ad schemes, Google AdSense, Project Wonderful, and Facebook. He explains it here and has a progress report here.

The Daily Cross Hatch posts a short comic by Raina Telgemeier, whose webcomic Smile is going to print early next year.

Gisele Lagace, who recently wrapped up her artistic duties on the long-running Penny and Aggie (still written by T Campbell but now illustrated by Jason Waltrip) has a new strip, Eerie Cuties, a humorous take on the vampire-school genre.

Warren Craghead reviews Franklin Einspuch’s poetic webcomic Crabapple. The review is considerably longer than the comic but points out what makes it tick.

Department of unfortunate coincidences: Scary Go Round introduced a new character recently who bears a more-than-passing resemblance to The Gloved One. Oops! Creator John Allison notes

The last thing anyone expects, when they have introduced a character who is a kind of grotesque version of a world superstar, is for that superstar to die. It is entirely possible that Michael Jackson sat down to read Scary Go Round yesterday, began to turn slowly purple at what he saw, and collapsed clutching his arm. Actually I know that isn’t true. Jackson was on record (citation needed) as more of a Dresden Codak man.

Anyway, Allison has the comic written and thumbnailed up to well into July, which just goes to show that there can be such a thing as working too far in advance.

At Fleen, Gary Tyrrell, has an appreciation (not a review) of Infinite Typewriters, the print version of Goats.

Sandy Debreuil has a three-part series on using Flash to create webcomics at Webcomics.com (inking, making word balloons, and a step-by-step demonstration).

El Santo has been busy lately, posting reviews of Raven’s Dojo, Sin Titulo, The Black Cherry Bombshells, Let’s Be Friends Again, and Earthsong at The Webcomic Overlook. Lots of good stuff here; in some cases, the review is more entertaining than the comic.

Ethan Young is putting his previously self-published comic, Tails, on the web. It’s a semi-autobiographical story of a young cartoonist who lives with his parents, and a large number of cats seem to be involved. Enjoy! (Via Comics Worth Reading.)

Andy Belanger’s new Zuda comic, Bottle of Awesome, only has two screens up right now, so you can jump on early. BoA is an instant winner, not part of the regular competition, so you won’t have to wait months for page 9. It’s the tale of a nebbishy boy who… drinks a bottle of awesome and becomes too awesome, as if such a thing were possible. If Belanger’s work looks familiar, it may be because he is also the creator of Raising Hell on the consistently excellent Transmission X site.

Over at Robot 6, I take a look at three webcomics that are written for children but are sophisticated enough for adults. Longtime DS readers/listeners may experience deja vu…

Everybody’s talking about the new Longbox digital comics store, and the Robot 6 folks pick up on some of the news, including the fact that seven publishers have signed on and the software will have an age-restriction feature as well as a manga mode that allows you to read comics from right to left. iFanboy has an in-depth look by Ron Richards, and Van Jenson has some thoughts on the bigger picture.

Must read: Rantz Hoseley talks to CBR about Longbox Digital Comics, an enterprise that will allow readers to download digital comics for 99 cents each. I know this has been tried before, but Hoseley seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about this and it’s interesting to read what he has to say. He makes the inevitable comparison to iTunes, but there’s more to it than that.

Phil and Kaija Foglio have put their Buck Godot: zap gun for hire comics up for free on the web, reasoning, from their experience with Girl Genius, that this will help them sell the print versions when the time comes. And also, it’s kinda cool. (H/t T Campbell, via Twitter.)

New comic alert: Jason Thompson has started a webcomic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Strange High House in the Mist. Page 1 is up now, with more to come next week.

There seems to be a webcomics problem in France. The problem is, folks are making ’em but no one is reading ’em. So some creators have come up with an extremely French solution: A manifesto! Named after a date! (If you have ever lived over there, you know what I mean—they’re all Plaza of the 23rd of December and like that.) Click on that manifesto link and you’ll also see a selection of French webcomics, which seem not unlike ours—I noticed a gag strip, several anthropomorphized animal strips, a slice-of-life comic, and of course plenty of sci-fi. How do you say Zuda in French?

I took some iPod comics out for a test drive at Robot 6 this week, looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the format and some of the ways people are adapting to it.

Speaking of which, Transformers comics were the top app of the day in Apple’s iTunes store yesterday, and Heidi MacDonald takes a snapshot of the day’s ratings, which show 10 Transformers apps in the top 20. Who do they think they are, Naruto? In the comments section, someone wonders if more people aren’t reading Transformers on iPhones than on paper; statistics are brandished about.

Aurora Publishing is putting their josei (young women’s) manga Walkin’ Butterfly on the iPhone. It looks like fika publishing is doing the adaptation. Aurora has also put many of their manga online at Netcomics. (Via the Icarus blog.)

Here’s a look at manga on the Kindle DX, from a student in Sri Lanka who uploaded scans of his own comics as PDF files. He includes photos of the comics on the screen, and they look pretty decent.

At Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson discusses the question “What would it take to get me to buy a Kindle,” and commenters chime in with ideas of their own.

Caleb Goellner talks to Jeff Webber, the new director of ePublishing at IDW, who brings considerable experience as he is coming from uClick.

Three-san, a Japanese webcomic about the PS3, is available in English for the iPod/iPhone.

And this is very cool: Indian comics, based on Indian mythology, for your iPod/iPhone. Meanwhile, China gets Harlequin romance comics for mobile phones, and Naruto and Dragon Ball come to European cell phones.

We haven’t been fans of MySpace as a webcomics site, but they did bring the comics to where the kids were. Except the kids have moved on, to Facebook and Twitter and probably some other thing we haven’t even heard of yet, so MySpace Comics is closing up shop.

In this week’s Publishers Weekly Comics Week, I talk to Brian Leung, who has set up Kidjutsu, a portal for kids’ webcomics. Go, read, and then check it out—some of the best comics on the web right now are kid stuff.

Curtis Silver talks to Chris Hastings, creator of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, at Geek Dad.

At Manga Xanadu, Lori Henderson discusses some possible formats for online manga, from a magazine-type anthology to a full-on manga version of Hulu.

Gus Higuera talks Zuda with Thom Zahler and Bill Williams, who have teamed up to create The Urban Adventures of Melvin Blank for this month’s competition.

I guess the great thing about being Scott McCloud is that if you just mention that you would like to see something, the creator goes ahead and puts it up on the web. Cool!

It’s a wrap: Jason Little has completed BEE in: “Motel Art Improvement Service.” It’s good stuff (nominated for an Eisner in 2007) so if you haven’t read it already, now’s your chance to read the whole thing—the link is to the first page.

Johanna Draper Carlson reviews the print edition of Goats at Comics Worth Reading.

A Marketplace story on the struggles of newspaper comic strip artists as newspapers lose ground to the web attracted an interesting string of comments from readers, mostly pushing back against the notion that the web will kill comic strips the way it is killing newspapers. The reporter doesn’t seem to have heard of this whole “webcomics” phenomenon, although to give him his due, he appears in the comment string to say his mea culpa. Although Randy Milholland eventually had to intervene, this discussion is less contentious than most and gets fairly nuanced, with people chiming in on the different challenges faced by web and newspapar artists. Also, someone tossed in this helpful Wikipedia list of webcomics artists who are making a living from their art, which makes interesting reading.

Gary Tyrell has an excellent MoCCA wrapup at Fleen. Dave Roman, of the doomed but wonderful Nick Mag, checks in as well. And here’s a big announcement: Becky Cloonan and Hwan Cho will be launching a new webcomic, K.G.B., in September.

Gary also points to an interesting if rather odd site called Comic Hour, in which the proprietor, John Woakes, posts a different, random webcomic from his collection every hour. There is no archive—what you see is what you get, but Gary provides a bit of context, and there’s more in comments.

Sean Kleefeld reviews the steampunk-inspired Sidewise, one of this month’s Zuda entries.

For those in a hurry, Diana Kingston-Gabai rounds up some capsule webcomic reviews at The Savage Critic(s).

So I mentioned in our last show (found conveniently right below this post) that just about my only gripe with Legend of Bill was that it’s jokes are two “Newspapery.” As I was editing the final product, I realized I never really explained what I meant by that. And as I thought about it, I realized that it was because I really don’t know myself. I’m currently working on a little bit of thesis on the topic that I hope to be able to shed some light on the whole subject and bring joy to the world.

Until then though, I’m going to leave it as “it just feels that way.” I know this is a cop out but its the same cop out that I use when I don’t want to knock on a door, so I say the house is haunted.

In the mean time, I’ve recently came along Imagine This by Lucas Turnbloom. I’ve only read the last 50 strips or so, but so far this strip feels very “web comicy” to me. Which is odd since at first glance it looks like a very professional newspaper strip. Still though, there’s something about the hard edge the writing that strikes me as a prime example of Web comic hood.

Check it out, see what you think. Either way, I think you’ll like it.

First of all, check out my new webcomics column, Unbound, over at Robot 6. For this inaugural column, I reflected on what I learned from a year of ZudaWatch podcasts right here at DS. It’s very simple, really: Tell the damn story!

And here’s a useful resource, also courtesy of Robot 6: A horror webcomics list. Handy for when you’re home alone on a dark and stormy night and need something new to read.

At Comics Worth Reading, Johanna Draper Carlson talks to Tara Tallan, creator of Galaxion.

Scott McCloud points us to the webcomic Manmachine, which has an interesting scrolling mechanism—you pull the comic along with the cursor. (Via Scott’s blog.)

At Blog@Newsarama, Vaneta Rogers asks a bunch of comics folks what they think of the new modes of digital distribution for comics and gets a range of different answers.

Tucker Stone interviews Kate Beaton at comiXology. Kate’s first print collection sold out in a heartbeat, but fortunately there are more copies on the way.

Xaviar Xerxes talks to Caleb Sevcik, who has a new webcomic in the works but not up yet, at ComixTalk.

The latest episode of The Webcomic Beacon is devoted to what not to do when making a webcomic.

At Webcomics.com, Brad Guigar has some suggestions for making the most of your About page. Then his readers chip in with some ideas of their own.

Added to my RSS feed: Webcomic Rumble, an e-zine and podcast that promise to look at webcomics with a critical and informed eye, from the point of view of readers rather than creators.

Some reviews and recommendations:
Sean Kleefeld on Runners (Kleefeld on Comics)
Larry Cruz on Surfboards and Rayguns (The Webcomic Overlook)

Piled Higher and Deeper: A Graduate Student Comic Strip Collection
Writer and artist: Jorge Cham
Piled Higher and Deeper Publishing, 2002
ISBN: 978-0972169509
$12.00, 176 pp.

Jorge Cham’s is another name I was less familiar with before the first Webcomics Weekend. While I knew his name and the name of his strip (Piled Higher and Deeper, a comedic look at the lives of graduate students), I had never put the two together. By the end of the weekend, however, his casual and friendly ways had snookered me into buying the first volume of the comic. And even though Bill Barnes had previously suggested I buy the latest volume of any collected work in order to get the best work, I chose to pick up Cham’s first offering.

As an artist, I can appreciate the process behind the creation of a body of work and what it takes to get from one style, which might be rough and untested, to another that employs both experience and experimentation. For this reason I like to take in entire bodies of work rather than a sampling of the best stuff and webcomics really offer the best venue to witness this transformation firsthand. With that in mind, I started the book at the point where most webcomics begin their tales; joining a creator who has an idea to convey and at least a bit of talent with which to cultivate it.

PHD (clever title, eh?) is the tale of Cham (at least I think it’s Cham, but we’ll come back to that) and his cohorts as they struggle through grad school, more specifically Stanford University. This premise is nothing original and the first hundred or so strips are nothing too remarkable, simple sequential comedy to give his fellow students at Stanford something to chuckle about from day to day (the strip was originally published in the student paper, the Stanford Daily Newspaper).

Staying true to the journal comic code, PHD, at least in it’s formative years, was written and drawn for the Stanford crowd and contains jokes that might miss the mark for anyone else (subtle digs at rival school, Berkeley, for example, see below). True, there are bits of common amusement that play on the geek guy to gal ratio as well as riffs about the life of a grad student set to the tune of The Little Mermaid hit, “Part Of That World”, but overall this collection is full of stories that are geared towards Stanford students who attended from 1997 to 2002.

Tajel finds her liberal roots in an early strip

Around 1999, however, Cham began to work on the story structure and crafted stories about the characters and started to explore them from viewpoints not tied to university-specific incidents like qualifying exams (called quals in the grad world, apparently). Pop-culture runs like takes on Star Wars: Episode I, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Matrix offer a different setting for at least a few strips and stories focused on grad students in general, not just at Stanford, became more the norm from that point on. It’s also this point where the art took a leap from crude to more refined, featuring thicker lines and more detail that help to really differentiate one character from the next.

There are really only four characters to speak of: the nameless main character, presumably Cham himself if you go with the journal comic setting; Cecilia, a deceptively normal girl who finds it hard to admit her geek roots; Mike Slackenery, a self-professed slacker who is perfectly comfortable staying in the grad program for the rest of his life (see below); and Tajel, a more liberal grad student who takes on nearly every cause to cross her path. It’s only towards the end of this collection that any of the characters, save the easy-to-slot Slackenery, break out of any mold to have personalities of their own. However, given that this is merely the end of one volume and not an entire series, I’d say this in acceptable, especially given that all show some promise by the time the volume wraps up.

Slackenery might have finally found his impetus to finish the grad school he so desperately clings to

Of course, it’s impossible to judge a dead tree edition of anything related to webcomics without talking about extra content, and PHD contains a few tidbits to entice readers past the typical strips. An afterword written by one of Cham’s professors at Stanford (who is featured in several strips, though usually in an off-panel manner) and a few sketches are joined by choice notes about some strips which Cham felt the need to expound upon (the sparse, dialogue-free September 11th strip is made much more poignant with the commentary). Nothing too spectacular, but enough to say at least someone tried.

Overall, PHD: Vol 1 was an enjoyable read that started off predicatably and ended up in a much better position by the time the fifth year came to a close. While I am inclined to get that first volume of a strip to get a feel for the journey the creator(s) and I are embarking upon together, it does take something special to get me to pick up the second. Luckily, Cham learns the ropes pretty quickly and decides to invest in his characters which will eventually become the backbone of the strip.

Most webcomics do start with an idea and a bit of talent. But it’s the successful creators that are able to take that initial idea and really push it, transform it, and turn it into something special. And for this effort, I applaud him and can’t wait to pick up the second volume. Look for that review sometime in the future, and in the meantime, pick up a copy of the first volume of Piled Higher and Deeper to begin a journey with one of the friendliest and talented creators around.