T Campbell's Blog

What about you, Mr. or Ms. Webcartoonist?

No one on God's green earth thinks like Ryan North thinks.

Congrats to Steven Goosey and all the entrants of our fanstuff contest!

Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards are ready for nominations.

The Pasadena Star-News reports that little young lady (sorry, couldn't resist) Amy Kim Ganter is helping out the next generation.

I'm popping into the London Expo today to say hey to a few other Tokyopop folks. Hope to see you there.

Whilst searching for prospective Smashers, I found "Misspent Youths #1" by David Lee Ingersoll. Despite the extremely well-drawn violence, I just don't think it's quite "actiony" enough to invite to GS... which is a shame, because it's really well done! Give it a look.

David Willis reports that History is in stores already. This is news to me, as I was told the release date was May 31, and there's no mention of it on Antarctic's site... and yet, there it is on Diamond's shipping list (with "webcomics" misspelled again, Christ). Being in the U.K. right now means I may not see this thing myself until Comic-Con. But, um! Book! Woo!

I'm still trying to clean up my sites a bit so they look nice for any new readers the book may bring in. Starting with this blog. Yes, it's time for another format change. Those image links on the right were nice in a sort of totally ridiculously color-clashing way, and making the whole rest of the blog gray, well, that showed foresight, but I think it's time to get back to basics. I'm seriously contemplating a move to Wordpress next month, but this will at least ramp up the contrast and legibility.

So far Willis has the only online reaction I can find to the ACTUAL BOOK being out, one way or another. I'll be interested to see what the rest of you think.

In keeping with the changes slowly overtaking Graphic Smash, Rip & Teri is now free. It's also ended.

It's difficult to say a proper goodbye to this one. I think it contains some of my best work. The art has been fantastic. But the weekly schedule has meant that through most of its existence I've only been aware of it on the back burner, while doing other things. And now it's like the three-year co-worker who's just been hired away by Microsoft. You never know how much you'll miss him till he's gone. And then you rifle through your memories for the times you spent together and find them so much fuzzier than they should be.

Still, this is the moment we've been preparing three years for. It read well as a weekly but was always meant as a full and complete package.

I am more grateful than I can say to John Waltrip (pencils and inks) and David Willis (main colorist). Really, no words do these guys justice. None. Just LOOK at that work. LOOK at it.

Thanks as well to early colorists Abe Melendez and Jamie Noguchi, editors Joey Manley and Chris Mills, helpful reader Megan Ward, inspirations Jim Steranko, Nora Ephron, Terry Moore and Roy Crane, everyone I'm forgetting and you, if you read it.

Start from the beginning. If you're into lit-crit, you may want to check out the Comixpedia.org entry afterwards... but if you're not, then just settle in for a good, solid yarn. I hope it gives you a thrill.

Maybe you've noticed some new features on the Graphic Smash feature bar?

Or maybe you haven't.

We added two new and one returning features at the very end of last week, on schedule, but naturally it's taking the artists a little time to settle into their new digs. But that feature bar will be the first sign you get that a new round of features has joined.

Meanwhile, the P&A fanstuff contest is over... Gis and I will post the results shortly.

In other webcomics news, I find it encouraging that some people are planning their webcomics launch more than six months in advance.

Spent Sunday in the rain with the London Copyfighters. Cory was there, and I was maybe 40% less intimidated by him this time, although I still babbled too much. Thanks to Cory for his suggestion about History: I'll take it. And thanks to Suw Charman for founding the group and all the people whose names I didn't retain for making it a good time for all!

Canada's rockin' the webcomics coverage lately-- articles on Joey Comeau's new book and yaoi as exampled by Sarah Terry and Reena Smith's Sublunary. Webcomics here and here.

On the off chance that anybody's forgotten to send in their Penny and Aggie fanstuff, we're extending the contest to Monday at midnight, EST. Get your stuff in by then if you want it to be shown!

I'll be spending a large part of the day with Wednesday White, taking in some of the Oxford I rarely make time to see.

Hope you're having a happy and healthy!

I still can't post onto Eric's darned blog, so I'll just link here with congratulations.

Write Now! #12 has a piece I did for the webcartoonist newb called "Writing Webcomics." It's harder than people think. First you squiggle out the "W" in a way that's legible yet distinctive, and then you must decide: "Capital E or lower-case e? WWSMCD-- What Would Scott McCloud Do?"

Could this be the first webcomic-newspaper comic crossover? I know of no earlier.

New and intriguing: Dirk Schwieger's Tokyo Blog. He does work on an assignment basis, then posts the results in his Livejournal. Thoughtful! And the interactive premise reminds me of The Morning Improv.

Links ahoy.

This Joe Zabel piece deserves to be read. I agree with the gist, that the "usual suspects" are becoming less influential as the number of cartoonists and readers grows larger, but that they still have a role to play.

For a VERY DIFFERENT take on the webcomics community, Ryan North has an interview. I'm not sure what to make of his comments on that, really. I think most of the people in Joe's article would agree that it's mostly cartoonists who stir the pot.

Also, Ryan, or maybe the interview's editor, kinda glosses over whose idea a "webcomic search engine" was, but the Examiner manages the neat trick of describing my role in OhNoRobot WITHOUT MENTIONING RYAN IN THE PARAGRAPH AT ALL. Um. Can we call it even? I don't want to stir the pot here.

In case you're just joining us, I maintain that Ryan is one brilliant dude, and his disconnect from "teh webcomix dr4ma" probably reflects WELL on him. How many programmers do I know who program for a hobby while cartooning for a living? One.

Ha ha, Gary, I only WISH I had time to be Kate Ditzler. Fleen has gotten closer than ever to its original mission statement with the latest wave of contributions. I hope they can keep up the pace, and I'm rooting for them.

"Hey, I know that guy..." Benjamin Birdie's Modern Tales experience helps him crack print.

And pure fun: Charles Schulz's Marvel.

The Good: Scott Kurtz isn't the only one to blog about Net neutrality, but he is the only one I know of who's drawn about it. If you haven't signed the petition yet, drop everything and do so.

The Bad: Hamas Webcomics. One strip repeats the myth that Israelis booby-trap toys in order to kill little Palestinian children. (This technique is practiced frequently by terrorists, but I can find no confirmed evidence that Israelis ever employed it. But this is the least objectionable of the three: I have to concede that if you find "free toys" in a war zone it's probably best to be suspicious.) The last strip encourages kids to become doctors and save lives among the Fedayoun, conveniently glossing over the fact that "Fedayoun/Fedayun/Fedayeen" means "suicide troops." And then there's the adorable little boy with the picture of the sky raining stones upon Israelis.

One more time, just for clarity's sake. Scott sometimes writes without thinking, picks online fights he shouldn't, and attacks me and others unfairly, but also uses his influence to help many cartoonists, works damn hard to improve his craft and uses his strip to alert people to issues he feels may affect the whole webcomics field.

Hamas? Kills people. Then draws cartoons to make kids feel like it's fun and good to kill people.

So stop telling me Scott Kurtz is evil, okay? That's not evil.

This is evil.

There are a lot of things I've been doing that I need to be doing better. One of them is Graphic Smash.

I've gradually disengaged from the "hands-on" editorial approach that set me apart in the early days from other anthology site editors. It seems to me now that week-to-week feedback isn't the most productive use of time-- some people acted on the typo corrections and such, but most did not.

I've resolved to send out critical evaluations every few months, but lately my advice has only carried so much weight because I didn't have much ability, practically speaking, to approve strips for a new lineup or remove strips from the database.

Graphic Smash was founded with a simple mission: to collect the best action comics online. For a long time, I have not been able to pursue that agenda. Now I am.

There are still obstacles. The recoding of the Modern Tales sites is drastically behind schedule. So are payouts and the restructuring of finances, in keeping with the move to a more ad-supported model. By and large these things fall into Joey Manley's purview, but he's given me the ability to do my part.

In the next three months, I will be "liberating" many Graphic Smash series, removing some and adding others. A few features will remain subscription-access only, but that's largely the cartoonists' decision. I am tired of losing my ability to celebrate what this medium has to offer because the action webtoonists I admire the most don't want to go "behind the wall."

Strips will also not have to be exclusive to be featured on Graphic Smash. My first invitations are going out to three strips who sure as hell won't give up their home URLs if they know what's good for them.

All the cartoonists have to do is have their work appear on a page that gives them some additional advertising or subscription revenue. Given the ease with which readers can move from one site to another, established online cartoonists can consider the Smash a promotional venue for their own presences. Beginners can consider it their primary venue.

As a cartoonist, you gain more exposure and an implicit recommendation.

That's really all there is to it.

For Modern Tales' first few years, the subscription model was, in the minds of many, "what Modern Tales was all about," and to a degree what its sister sites were "all about." Now that the model is changing, I see a chance for Graphic Smash to be all about something else. What I wanted it to be about all along.

QUALITY.

Today, the TITLE tag on Graphic Smash says "Action Webcomics." When I'm done, I want it to say "THE BEST Action Webcomics." I want it to be a showcase for action comics that can hold their heads up high and REPRESENT.

"Best" is subjective, of course... and readers will vote on that with their eyeballs. But I now have the tools to give this my best shot. I'll be altering the lineup piecemeal over the next several months: my goal is to complete the transformation by July 19. The first new features will go into place later this week.

Keep your eyes peeled. :-)

"You inspired this" are, to me, the most flattering words in Galactic Standard." Check out this riff on my Narbonic story, "Just Think."

I've come back from the Comic Expo in Bristol.
Much fun. Conversations with the boyish, upbeat Geoff Johns and the grizzled yet charming Howard Chaykin, the self-effacing Dave Gibbons and many more. I'm finally learning to relax around people whose byline I've been reading for years. It was especially super-great to talk to Roy Thomas about Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Captain Carrot.

Not to say that every moment was totally seized. I spent some down-time reading books, not comics, and only some of the purchases I made in the indie aisle really made it with me. But on balance, good times.

Congratulations to Batton Lash, an old acquaintance and a class act, for his win of The Eagle Award for "Favourite Web-Based Comic." (I gotta say, I'm intrigued by this British convention of "Favourite" rather than "Best." Overly modest? More of that British understatement? Perhaps.)

When Opus returned to papers a couple years ago, a few people made a big deal of the fact that you couldn't find it online, at least not on any regular basis. As the strip debuted, Breathed had some choice words about "the damn Internet and the snarky little office imps -- especially ones around newsrooms -- who feel they need to upload everything they can get their sticky little digital digits on." In its offline-only status, Opus stood apart from virtually all other newspaper strips. I wondered whether this strategy of "playing hard to get" would pay off for Breathed. Would readers want more of what they couldn't have?

Apparently not.

Opus' offline-only status has quietly eroded, and at this point you can get all of Opus through Breathed's own site (under the guise of sampling apron patterns). Breathed was one of the most popular cartoonists of the 1980s, and if he wasn't able to fight the Internet, then I wouldn't advise anyone else to try.

Joe Alterio has an interesting set of thoughts on the phrase "Clickwheel Animatics" and alternative terms. I've added my thoughts, and now you can add yours.

This is what I was doing instead of a blog entry yesterday: Clickwheel joins iTunes.

I could go on for a little while about the benefits of getting comics onto the hottest media distribution service since the Internet itself, but I think they're pretty self-evident, and I've already done a Y Comix On iPod? piece.

As before, Clickwheel is open to pretty much anyone who wants to apply and can produce a few samples.

If you have iTunes, you can find the current offerings here and here and here and here and here. Or just search "clickwheel" to get 'em all.

Going to the Comic Expo this weekend, where they'll be handing out the Eagle Awards... and, stunningly, all the online nominees have done significant work in 2005, so I have no serious complaints. You're all relieved, I'm sure. (Not to say that a few of the other nominees don't make me raise my eyebrows... I mean, The OMAC Project? Really?)

On a similar note, William G and the Dumbrella fellas made me laugh with naked Oscar-baiting and privately held ceremonies.

I had just made a resolution not to post in anger... I think I'm just going to have to amend that to not to make a LENGTHY post in anger.

Hey, "omg q.q?" You suck.

[Update: Just to be clear, this is directed not at Biscuit Press, but at the "h4xxor" who thought it would be fun to shut down BP's forums and perhaps its whole site.]

Mitch Clem's long-term efforts on behalf of O Pioneers! appear to be bearing fruit. Tip for new musical acts: befriend a cartoonist today!

I admit I've only skimmed True Loves, but after seeing the preview I'm intrighed by its launch.

Missed it: Article from The Korean Herald on Korean attempts to get noticed in the English-centered, already-crowded webcomics-to-print market.

So this is what Dave Rigley left Search Engine Funnies to do! Congrats, man. Seriously.

Kind of pathetic, really: Komikwerks thinks it's news that it has automated blogs now. I'd like to thank Ian J. again for showing me how to integrate Blogger into my comics system. THREE YEARS AGO.

It's Flight, and that's all I need to know: Previews here and here.

I gotta love Rich's advice in Point 9 of the E3 Survival Guide. Yeah, get your Penny and Aggie shirt now... oh, wait, we don't sell them yet.

New Penny and Aggie story starts today. This one is a bit of a play on perspective and philosophy, slathered in the chocolate sauce of screwball comedy. Don't miss out.

And if you're looking at this on May 8, check the homepage for a special offer on the P&A book collection, and a look at Chibi Penny and Chibi Aggie, which are both TODAY ONLY.

Another new discovery (to me at least):

Thanks to this Bookslut piece for turning me on to Phillippe van Lieu. Skip past his Depressing Stories of Depressing People (it's interesting at first but gets repetitive fast). Skip WAY past his "Muusu-gawa no Nihon" (the title is the best thing about this "attempt to suck like all other webcomics" containing such biting observations as "manga is in"). And focus on "Moose River Regular," where he stops trying to be clever and starts getting honest and grounded and, not coincidentally, GOOD.

In my opinion, as ever. My favorite line (NSFW): "Damn it, she took Rob Roy. That was my favorite!"

Poor Bryan Wong. Languishing in obscurity, feeling so neglected by "history" that he invokes my name in a halfhearted stab at some link love. Well, guess what, Bryan. It worked. Seasons of Constancy is a coming-of-age story with an ambitious SF backdrop. If you like to have to think a little to make your way into an imaginary world, give it a try and don't skimp on the footnotes.

Free Comic Book Day is today. I dunno if Tokyopop Sneak has any of Divalicious in it, but Keenspot Spotlight definitely has a full, hi-res version of "Parent's Nightmare," plus many other stories (some of them exclusive to the volume). If you're in the States, check 'em out!

*Sigh*

Another set of award nominees for 2006. This time it's for the International Clickie. (If you read Dutch, click here for the original announcement.) And once again, I have to question one of the nominations on the grounds of work done in 2005, this time, Bill Mudron's excellent but long-unfinished Anne Frank vs. The Moon Nazis...

But wait! What's this? Why, Mudron has scooped me!

Mostly sage advice for the would-be comics writer. You CAN find a pro-level artist who's willing to work for little, it's just very, very DIFFICULT.

Our podcast only scores the briefest of mentions here, but hey! Listeners in Germany!

Did you know Clickwheel has a weblog? It's true! What will we get next? A CAR??

By the bye, I'm not entirely sold on the title "Clickwheel weblog" (it's a little "weblah"), but Will and I are still mulling a replacement. If you have a suggestion, make it known!...

Happy Online Comics Day, 2006. To celebrate, underline Jerry Seinfeld's name. Then, when the awfulness of the pun in the previous sentence sinks in, think how much better your favorite online comic is.

"Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure, which is useful, to praise which deceives them." -- Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I spoke to the venerable Peter Venables today about restoring Savage Disassembly, a good idea that I really shouldn't kept on my radar earlier this year. Honest criticism of those who are willing to leave their egos at the door, suck up, and get better. The upshot is that I think it needs to be more centralized, and Peter is ready to do the heaviest lifting to centralize it.

Join the discussion and see what you think.

Hey, 'sall good, Mike Rouse-Deane. Could happen to anyone. Here, have a link. [Oop-- fixed misspelling.]

I've been looking for an appropriate time to share some sections of the upcoming A History of Webcomics. Hard's departure seems as good an occasion as any. This section is excerpted from Chapter 5, "Category Search."

Many Americans still viewed comic books as children’s entertainment. To retailers, that perception could be deadly. The most marginal offenses could bring charges of obscenity or child pornography.

Webcomics had fewer censors; Congress' attempts to regulate Web content had generally failed in the courts. Like journal comics, sex comics lacked some of their printed counterparts' rebellious side, because they had less against which to rebel. But as webcomics shifted from individual hobby to community, porn carried a hidden price.

Once cartoonists joined collectives, their collective standards usually left erotic comics out in the cold. Despite the apparent popularity of Sexy Losers, Keenspot declined to include it when its members protested. Fancy Froglin did make it onto Modern Tales, but largely due to the status of its cartoonist, James Kochalka, and the strange, childlike nature of the main character, which defied preconceptions about the genre. A quick survey of other collectives—- The Nice, Teh Gewd Guys, PV Comics, Dumbrella, Comics Sherpa, Dayfree Press, the Modern Tales spinoffs—- turned up no erotic comics at all.

As larger, more "respectable" businesses set up shop online, their standards mattered too. In mid-2003, Paypal stopped processing any transactions with "adult content." Paypal played a central role in five of webcomics' six major revenue streams. Its loss stung.

Weeks away from graduating college, Josh Lesnick sized up this situation, saw a need, and filled it. He began Slipshine, a subscription site that proudly called itself "porn" but—- against preconceptions—- maintained certain production values. Lesnick’s discussion of the difficulties showed his priorities:

This is a genre of comics where people... uh... pay a lot of close attention to the human figure, so any glaring flaws in that area will look twice as glaring to the readers... While stylistic art can be done, and is something I actually encourage, the human figures still have to be drawn in an appealing way... It can be hard to keep the actual story moving when the sex comes in. This can make the story writing process a little frustrating, as it can essentially turn 15-page stories into 5-page stories with the obligatory sex taking up the rest.

Lesnick’s efforts aside, so long as an American influence dominated, erotic comics would probably remain ignored, marginalized, "outlaw." Sometimes, of course, that outlaw status was a bit of a turn-on.

Hard's really quit, and the Web feels like a smaller place.

For those not in the know, Hard drew a self-described "adult comic" called Sexy Losers for seven years (warning to the newb: this site is one of two reasons why the acronym for "Not Safe For Work" was INVENTED. For the other, ask Charles G to tell you about something called "Goatse").

I was one of the Keenspotters who raised hue and cry over the possibility of Hard joining "my" collective, back in the day. His work wasn't something I wanted to be associated with then, and it isn't now. But I learned from the debate about it, learned that he was attempting to bring a certain art to ideas and situations I more readily associated with Cum Drinkin' Sluts Part 5: The Gargling. I came to appreciate the then-young Comixpedia's attempts to review the work, even though the site's contributors clearly didn't reach consensus.

Was it porn? Greg Eatroff and I tend to argue over things like that. (I still say True Porn is more "erotica" than "pornography.") I think Hard's first purpose was to make people laugh, not to make them hot, and I think that clear intent makes the work something other than porn. But it used the elements of porn. It was comedy for the porn-lover, and that meant that it was sure to draw the ire of the porn-hater.

Hard obviously took Keenspot's rejection and Comixpedia's review personally, since he's still enumerating them as watershed moments in his career years after the fact. I am sorry about that. There's this treacherous trifecta in discussing comics: we have to carefully separate taste for the work (it's not to my taste) from critical evaluation of the work (there is craft here, and wry humor that separates it from the hardcore porn it evokes), and separate both from opinion of the man (never met him, and I learned more about him from his farewell post than in the previous three years. I honestly don't remember what I said in the Keenspot mailing list-- I might have been more presumptuous back then, but images of hardcore porn still do push my buttons).

The funny thing about porn is that it's ephemereal, but it's always there. Playboy and Hustler are almost official rites of passage. Everyone knows what "XXX" means in the video store, and it ain't "tired action movie franchise." Almost since webcomics' beginnings, Sexy Losers has been around for porn-lovers and porn-haters alike to make a touchstone... but not any more. We still have Slipshine (NSFW), which is doing its best to turn its "porn" label into a badge of pride, and plenty of online red-light districts (NSFW). But it won't be the same.

Time goes on, and another strip from the early days of webcomics passes quietly into the night.

The top Clickwheel artists are all paid up, I've caught up with some old friends, and I'm off to enjoy some more of Oxford's May Day celebrations. It's beautiful out here.

To hold you till I get back, a loooooong-delayed podcast about V For Vendetta.