This week only, Tokyopop is posting the entire first volume of the manhwa (Korean comic) Priest online. Priest is an older title that has built a devoted following, so this is a nice opportunity to sample it for free.

Priest editor Tim Beedle takes this opportunity to post an interesting question on his blog. He admits that he has been skeptical of the online manga previews from the beginning, so he asks his readers: Do you read the previews, and if so, how does that affect your buying habits?

We have dealt with this question before, and I actually have an interesting followup. Last February, I linked to an item about Phil Foglio switching Girl Genius from pamphlet comics to strictly webcomics, Continue reading →

Everyone once in a while, my random wandering across cyber-space yields something unexpectedly cool. Yesterday while I was supposed to be working I found something that simultaneously satisfies my need for comic violence and user created content at the same time. Entervoid.com is a site where artists can create heroes and villains and then have them digitally duke it out through comic battles.

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Last week I had an experience that showed me first hand, why Web comics are fundamentally different than print comics. At least different from the kind you'll read in a newspaper. It wasn't really anything I didn't already know, but it came such a way that I can now more clearly explain the difference between the two mediums as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the two.

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My teenage daughter is a voracious reader. We have literally hundreds of volumes of manga in the house, and we get more every week, but she reads books like some people eat potato chips, and she’s getting to the bottom of the bowl.

So we started looking at scanlations, bootleg translations of unlicensed manga. I have long avoided scanlations for several reasons, partly because they violate copyright but mainly because I don’t like downloading stuff from a source I know nothing about.

What I want is scanlations that I can look at on websites, no downloading involved. And I have found a handful. These sites offer manga that is unlikely to be licensed in English, so I’m not really taking a dollar out of anyone’s pocket, and they’re easy to use.

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We all know that survival is the name of the game in webcomics. If you get the traffic from month to month to keep you in everybody’s pull lists, you’re golden; if not, it becomes a question of whether you’re doing it because you love to or if you just want the notoriety that comes with the success.

Three strips have recently broadened their respective ranges by finding yet another host for their work, though each strip is notable enough in its own right to make the change little more than a fool’s hope to own the Internet. Best of luck to them all, though! I’ve read each for some time now and keep up regularly with the stories (or lack thereof, in some cases) from update to update. With their virtual real estate expanding, you have no reason not to do the same.

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If you haven't read it there was a really cool article about Web comics over on Time magazine's Web page. It's quite well written and very positive towards the medium. It even has some success stories and quote from popular creators of strips like PVP, Penny Arcade and Achewood.

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Comics are huge in Japan, but webcomics are not: People read manga on paper or on their cell phones, but so far, webcomics don’t seem to be a big part of the mix. That may be changing, however, as the publisher Gentosha recently announced that it would distribute its manga online in seven different languages. Depending on how the releases are structured, that could mean that fans no longer have to wait for their manga fix.

Gentosha isn’t some little start-up, either; their properties include Rozen Maiden, the favorite manga of Japanese foreign minister Taro Aso, and the popular boys-love manga Gravitation. With creators like Peach-Pit and Kei Toume in their inventory, they are positioned to do quite well if they can make this online distribution work.

But can they? Continue reading →

Lar was right! Having webcomic friends DOES pay off! With my various connections, I was able to track down former artist on The Pet Professional and current artist on the recently relaunched The Sophisticated Pig, Chad Diez for an interview! Amidst fairly regular updates on the Pet Pro site, the news came suddenly that the strip had lost yet another artist, leaving myself and countless, loyal fans to wonder just what was going on over at the home of the greatest threat the animal kingdom has ever seen.

Chad was kind enough to sit down, via AIM, and chat with me about a situation much worse than I figured, on the possible extinction of Pet Pro, and the future of his own endeavors. So join me for an interview that nearly turned into an intervention…

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If you've never heard people joke about how all you have to do to break into Web comics is be named Scott, now's your chance. I was just over as Scott Johnson's site, Extralife, and it seems Scott Kurtz of PVP will be sitting in on tonight's taping of Extralife Radio. This weeks show is supposed to be all about the world of Web comics so I will be listening intently. They do record the show live over Stickam with a chat room so if you feel like stopping by and spamming the words 'Digital Strips Rocks!' you have my permission.

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