For some reason I just don’t like guest artists. Maybe if I explain myself this might make a little more sense. I love webcomics, especially those driven by story arcs, because they allow characters to grow with me as I read through the archives or catch the updates. But it completely destroys my train of thought to have fan pages thrown in the mix that have no input into the comic. There are countless webcomics I have stopped reading because their guest strips ran too long and I had obvious way to skip them.

What spanned this little thought was a forum post that got alerted to me. J Gray of Mysteries of the Arcana is putting out a call for submissions to help promote other comics for two weeks. It is very nice that he’s taking the time to help others and with very little restrictions to what you can send him. I can only hope that he doesn’t through these into the main story line if I go back and try to read through the archives. I say put them on the front page but leave them in their own gallery.

How do you make a grown man squeal like a little child? You have BioWare create their own webcomic and publish through Dark Horse. I don’t know how many others of you out there are like me but anything BioWare is instantly bought by me. Ever since the original KotoR I have been an acolyte and never been disappointed. I can only hope that continues with DragonAge. That being said it also appears there is another webcomic I was unaware of it and it’s time to let my fingers do some research.

I have a vague memory of having seen something from Mr. Colbow before. It was probably for older post similar to what Google decided to alert me on but it looks like he’s created a bit of a stir on the problem with DRMs. For some reason he decided to torture himself and attempted to view DRM protected media at his library and finds out that although everything is free it takes forever to find out that you have no idea how to get it to work.

Yay! The Escapist has announced the winners to their contest. Going through 350 comics, how in the world did they manage to get that many submissions, they narrowed down the field to 18 finalist. Finally the infamous panel of judges duked it out with foam bats until they all got tired, fell to the ground, and peacefully discussed how the winner should be. After an era of minutes passed them by they concluded the winner was Out of Tens. Congrats Decoy Doctorpus!

For the entire month of March at Schlegel’s Coffee Shop in downtown Chillicothe, OH is displaying the artwork of Wes Molebash.  The entire run of Max vs. Max strips (from the beginning of the series through February) will be on display. On Saturday, March 13, the Chillicothe Art League hosts a Gallery Stroll through the downtown.  Wes will be there from 6 PM until 9-ish so those who happen to be stalking him will no where to find him.

Would it be possible to comb through the entire archives of XKCD? A couple of years ago I managed to accomplish this but that was without the past 2 years of updates on top. At this point it would take more than a week. That doesn’t stop some people from saying they have read all of them and know which are the best ones. It’s your turn to read through and find out if he got it right.

The Escapist took submissions for a huge contest. Apparently it was so big they secured help from webcomic industry veterans Ryan North, creator of Dinosaur Comics, Brian Clevinger, founder of 8-Bit Theater and Shamus Young, the man behind Stolen Pixels to be judges for the event. The contest submissions were due no later than noon EST on February 28th. Due to the great response, winners will be chosen and posted this week.

Has anyone taken this survey?

Back from blogging purgatory (working on two comics along with a real, honest-to-goodness social life is tough work!) to drop the news of a phone app based on one of our favorite webcomics! Lucas Turnbloom’s Imagine THIS is now available in handy, portable format for all of you who love reading comics on your smartphone/mobile device of choice (not this guy, no sir).

The official word from the bird himself:

Can’t get enough “Imagine THIS”? Yes, I know. It’s truly hard to live without the mediocrity.

Well, now you can take the mediocrity with you — on your phone!!

Just point your mobile device’s browser to: gocomics.com/imaginethis and, BAM!!!

Can’t pass up that fun, now can you? Let me know when I can view this on my brand spankin’ new iPad and we can talk more seriously. And yes, it is great to be such a delusional fool.

Just a quick note for you guys. Those guys over at Comic Book Resources did a really interesting interview with Joey Comeau and Emily Horne the creators of A Softer World, one of the most original Web comics out there. I’m a fan of any interview that helps me understand a creature better, but this one is even more interesting just because asking these guys to give us a look at their creative process is a much less generic question than it normally would be.

If you’ve never read A Softer World, I highly recommend giving it a try. In a world of copy-cat Web comics, this is something truly unique. I’ve often criticized photo comics because I don’t think they can capture action at all. Photos have always been meant to take a single moment in time and make it last forever. A Softer World uses this to it’s advantage, as each comic is just a small moment in time, incredibly created from a bit of clever text and an excellent but often only loosely related photo. There’s nothing like this anywhere else. You owe it to yourself to at least give a try.

Much thanks to our good buddy Funny Ninja for pointing us to the interview. We love getting notes like this, even though sometimes we drop the ball, we do like to use them on the site when we aren’t being lame.