This started out as a post about The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo, which Jason, Steve, and I were just talking about on our podcast about the Harvey nominations last week. But then it got derailed in an unfortunate way.

For those not in the know, Poo is the story of Edgar Allen Poe’s imagination, which becomes separated from him in a time of turmoil (he poops it out in an outhouse, hence the title) and has to journey through a mythical underworld to be reunited with him. It’s a bit of a saga—the reveals come too far apart for me—but the writing is clever and the art is wonderful. What’s more, it’s a truly all ages webcomic: Kids will read it as a simple adventure, with a bit of scatology thrown in just for giggles, while adults will catch more of the literary dimension. And in this interview with Poo writer Dwight MacPherson and artist (for the second volume) Avery Butterworth at Comic Book Resources, the creators make it clear that they for an all-ages audience.

…OK, right after I wrote that, I went to the site to get an image and the ad under the comic was for “FREE ONLINE PORN: Hardcore Movies, No Membership Required. Start Watching Now.” The image below it was of a couple having sex, full penetration on display. I know it’s possible for our advertisers to dish up a surprise once in a while—it happened to us here on Digital Strips—but I also think, as we said in the podcast, that it’s time for these guys to get their own domain. Their site is beautifully designed, except for the ugly Drunk Duck crap at the top and bottom, and a kid seeing an ad like that (and telling Mom or Dad) would be a real disaster. While that’s the first time I have seen a porn ad on the site, the fact is that if you’re providing comics for children, you have the responsibility to monitor your ads really closely. Time to move on, guys. It looks like www.edgarallanpoo.com is available. Domains are cheap; your reputation is priceless.

UPDATED 7/20/08: Wow, I didn’t think this could get worse, but it did. I just went back to look at the comic and they have added interstitial ads. So I’m reading along and all of a sudden my screen changes to a huge ad asking should smoking be allowed in public places or some such thing. There is no way I would recommend this as a kids’ comic when they’re doing this. I wouldn’t even recommend it for adults. Put your comic on a site that doesn’t get in your way, guys.

Most of the manga you see on bookstore shelves falls into a few easily recognizable categories—battles, boobs, and boyfriends, although we prefer to call them shonen, seinen, and shoujo manga.

And then there’s Project X: Cup Noodle, which is sort of a combination business case study and inspirational text; it’s the story of the heroic struggle to develop the familiar ramen-in-a-cup convenience food. While Project X has achieved cult status in the U.S., and other edu-manga are published here from time to time, the genre is still pretty obscure.

So this is a rare treat: Bill Gates: My Computer God, a brief manga (it was published in 1982, when there was less to say) about the Dark Lord of Microsoft himself.

If you read all the way to the end, you will see that this is actually an ad for a computer book, but it’s a good stand-alone manga story about a guy with a special talent who proves himself in a series of struggles. Usually the struggles are more dramatic than debugging a computer or convincing people you’re not too young to do the job, but the dynamic style of this strip somehow makes these pedestrian dramas interesting.

The manga originally appeared in the Japanese manga magazine KoroKoro Comic. It was scanned and translated into English, apparently by Artefact, the blogger who posted it, but left in its original right-to-left orientation. For those who speak Japanese, the untranslated original is also up on the page.

(Note: Some of the content on this page may be NSFW.)

Wowio.com is down at the moment. The site says they are gearing up to go global, and that they will reopen in July. Over at The Beat, though, Heidi MacDonald thinks something else is up; she hears the company is going to be sold.

Wowio always sounded too good to be true. Customers get to download ebooks for free; creators get 50 cents per unique download. How do you do that? Ads, embedded in each book. The books themselves are PDF files with a number of built-in copy protections. T Campbell peeked under the hood in his blog last year and explained a bit about the nuts and bolts of the site.

A number of folks pop up in comments at The Beat to say that they have done quite well with Wowio. Probably the biggest winner is Chris Crosby, who says

I’ve posted WOWIO revenue numbers publicly before for my companies (Blatant Comics/Keenspot), so I have no problem with giving an update on that. Since last August we’ve made $93,624.50 from 186,736 WOWIO downloads.

Chris’s properties are among the most popular on Wowio, but others post respectable numbers as well. Bill Williams, of Lone Star Press, estimates his company has taken in about $15,000, and he adds,

WOWIO far out-performs sites like Drive Thru Comics which is a pay-per-download site. I think that WOWIO has proven that giving away ad-supported books works better as a business model than the pay per download sites.

(Bill talked in more detail about Wowio to Johanna Draper Carlson earlier this year.) And Steve Horton says

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