e-Manwha Research

Reference notes for an upcoming Broken Frontier article:

Examples of e-manwha sites here and here and here.

Also, this article cites "Apartment" as a pioneer in online manwha. A little checking reveals that it has made the transition to film, as in this previously-linked story. Card Boy Bebop is another Korean comic to become a film, and Priest is going Hollywood.

Collge student's report on Korean webcomics, 2005.

2005 report on growth of market.

2005 Publisher's Weekly on Netcomics.

2005 report on more general Asian webcomic movement.

2007 report from BusinessWeek.

Netcomics, the English-language representative of Ecomix, Korean leader in e-manwha.



Netcomics' recent Alexa ranking: 110,588. 208 Technorati links. Gather Compete.com and Quantcast data and compare: Boxcarcomics, Wirepop, Tokyopop, Keenspot, Comics.com, Penny Arcade, Ecomix.co.kr.

A Season In Review

Everything Matt Koelbl and I have done for Broken Frontier so far, in one place.

"Publishing Follies"

Todd Allen did a lengthy interview (about 1800 words, give or take) with me about my tenure on Broken Frontier. Allen writes about business issues and opportunities facing cartoonists in a digital world. I found his questions and statements fair and insightful.

PF: Did the terms of the contract match your verbal discussions?

T: Not at first. The first thing I signed was an NDA about their upcoming business plans (not, obviously, their past and current practices, or we wouldn't be talking). Then they gave me a modified version of the same boilerplate that they give to artists on their properties. But it wasn't modified enough. The language could have been interpreted as a non-compete clause, which I sure as hell couldn't sign when I was doing my own online comic that competed with Platinum's Drunk Duck for mindshare! Things like that. So I asked Platinum to modify the contract and sign some statements which would address all my worries, and they did so. (The noncompete was narrowed to mean that I couldn't work for other comics news outlets like CBR.)

More.

Asian Marketing Is Very... Asian. McDonald's Marketing Is Hopelessly Condescending.

Are these two great tastes that taste great together?

No.

Notes From The Funeral.

"The Gibbs clan are interesting people because they are interested people."

"I like the beard. It makes you look older."
"Well, something was going to."

"I think one of the reasons she kept going was that it just never occurred to her to stop."

Very much enjoyed talking with Robert G. Jacobsen, nuclear physicist, professor, xkcd fan.

Also enjoyed catching up with Philip McLaughlin, a childhood friend who's now a sous-chef in Chapel Hill.

Obituary: Ethel M. Gibbs passed away June 25, 2007. She was born May 11, 1905, to John Morris and Amy Estelle Markley in Gratersford, Pa. She graduated from Hood College in Frederick, Md., in 1926 and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She married Dr. Albert G. Gibbs in 1929 and lived in West Nanticoke, Pa., until 1942 when Albert went into the Navy. They retired in 1959 and moved to Virginia Beach. She belonged to Princess Anne Country Club, Princess Anne Garden Club, Virginia Beach Garden Club, Norfolk Botanical Gardens and the Garden Club of America. Her gardens were on the Norfolk Botanical Garden Annual Tour when she was 95. Her many other interests and talents included world travel with Albert, acting in little theaters, exhibiting Ikebana arrangements, oil painting, knitting, reading, playing bridge and mahjong until she was 101. She was preceded in death by her parents, two brothers and her husband. She is survived by her three daughters, Caroline Jacobsen (Robert) of Wheaton, Ill., Gwen Gibbs of Dallas, Texas and Sally Shook (Lou) of Chapel Hill, N.C.; a sister-in-law, Jane B. Markley of Schwenksville, Pa.; five grandchildren, Robert G. Jacobsen (Heather) of Berkley, Calif., Jennifer Jordan (Fred) of Sherborn, Mass., Dr. Edwin McLaughlin (Debra) of Virginia Beach, Virginia Hawley (John) of Virginia Beach and Philip McLaughlin of Chapel Hill; nine great-grandchildren; and a goddaughter, Elizabeth Holm (Mike) of Alexandria, Va. Special thanks go to Jewish Family Services and the women who took such good care of her this past year and Dora Fuller, her faithful housekeeper... In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Virginia Beach Rescue Squad, 740 Virginia Beach Blvd., Virginia Beach, VA 23451.

Quote From That Thing I'm Doing With That Guy.

I still can't tell you what it is but I'll post a few snippets of dialogue. Here's one from one of our more eccentric characters:

"Of course I respect Schulz. He taught hundreds of millions of people that life is unrelenting misery, that they will never kick the football or talk to that red-haired girl or even fly a goddamn kite correctly. I hope I can piss on the dreams of one-tenth as many people! But he should never have stopped doing the strip. That work was the only thing holding him together. He died almost instantly after he quit. If he'd stayed with it, he could've had another year or two at least, maybe more, and if Charlie Brown's life was bleak before, can you imagine what Peanuts would be like if Schulz was a half-dead zombie, unnaturally kept alive by sheer work ethic? Now I hate everything Johnny Hart stands for, but I gotta say, I want to go out the way Johnny Hart went out. Heart attack right at the drawing desk. Hard. Core."

(Thanks to The Comics Curmudgeon for the Johnny Hart observation.)

(Mostly) Webcomics-Related Links

The Bamboo One is a drawing tool pitched directly to webcartoonists.

If this excerpt isn't one of those movie trailers that shows all the good parts, then I'll probably be buying Douglas Wolk's new book.

Japanese men can't get laid.

PAX triples in size.

Don't drink and eBay.

Celebrating twenty years of Sam and Max.

Read 'em While They Sleep: Indefinite Hiatus

Sometimes webcomics just fade off into the background. The scene tends to focus on who's updating right now, and "indefinite hiatus" is, more often than not, the creator's kiss of death to his creation. I don't know if any of the following webcomics have many future updates ahead, but I would like to appreciate them while they're online:

More.

Komaiku Komplete.

For the Thing:

"Rugged, outdoorsy."
"Rock-hard abs." "Pearly white teeth."
Sounds pretty, don't it?

Many more here and here.

Komaiku Kwestions.

Yesterday's stunt seems to have inspired as much confusion as enthusiasm:

"What?

What the hell?

I mean...
Why?

And in inverse-alphabetical order?"

Reverse-alphabetical order: I put them up in an order that would guarantee I didn't mess up and post one of them twice. There's no reason they have to be in any particular order.

Why komaiku? I get weird ideas sometimes. I wanted to experiment with the Americanized haiku-- a sensory lightning bolt-- and match it to comics, an exclusively visual experience. Most of the poems play on taste, scent, kinesthetics or other senses.

Why 100 in a day? Well, firstly, I had already roughed out almost all of the poems weeks ago, so I wasn't writing that many all at once. I had been posting one a day for about four weeks and the project showed few signs of growth.

I wanted to experiment with a huge temporary boost in posting (with relatively little promotion) to gather data I can use elsewhere. Plus, I wanted to go ahead and complete this project so I'd be free to start others. My original goal for this site was 115 haiku, we have 121 now. Movin' on!

Off to Ethel's Funeral...

Blog and Broken Frontiersmanship when I return.

100 Haiku Posted In Eight Hours

Begins seven minutes ago.

WANTED: Webcomics Journalists

My term with Broken Frontier lasts until the end of August. Sadly, I won't be renewing. It's probably obvious I'm still enjoying hell out of this position, but it's consuming too much time for too little capital these days, and I've accomplished my primary goals for it.

So we're starting to seek my replacement.

I wouldn't recommend getting into this for the money. The current rate is $300 a month for editors, who should write at least one piece of their own per week, and contributors are volunteer. I would instead view it as a step toward building your audience and career in the longer term, and a chance to help cover the medium. (Comixtalk has a lot going for it, but Xaviar and crew can't do it all.)

Send any applications to Frederik Hautain, site manager, at frederik@brokenfrontier.com. If you have any more questions for me, send 'em to my e-mail address, linked above.

Today on Broken Frontier:

Money quotes from the latest batch of webcomics.

Random Links 6/27

Via Something Positive: How to save Internet radio.

Sex discrimination at Walt Disney, 1938.

For my own reference: Femfan outrage over the latest superhero marriage.

Has MoCCA peaked?

"More than half of all teens have generated media content and roughly a third of teens online have shared content they produced with others." Part of what promises to be an excellent Wikipedia study from a name I trust.

Bonus.com announces webcomic and produces seven episodes before taking it out of beta. That seems pretty backward to me.

"What Would Wonder Woman Do?: An Amazon's Guide to the Working World. Key phrases: Paradise Island, Justice League, The Perils of the Office Romance." No, really, this exists.

Finished!

"Verge" done.

Tomorrow, I will be releasing 100 haiku on this site over a period of eight hours. Pretty much because I feel like it.

Sergey Brin, Billionaire Romantic

No pre-nup, even.

It's one of my great frustrated ambitions to do a story about the lives of Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Last time I tried it, I got about thirty pages out of a hundred done. But I think I'm just going to have to wait until they're a lot older and history's verdict is in.

Also, via Heidi: ginormous guide to comic book podcasts.

And congratulations to webcartoonist Mitch Clem for his mention on PC World's "100 Blogs We Love." I found ABC News' version first, but they copied it over without keeping hyperlinks in the article. SERIOUSLY, ABC, GET WITH IT, GEEZ

On the Verge with The Verge

Nine outline points to go; got sidetracked into two long but fruitful discussions with old colleagues, now invited to a housewarming and forced to procure food for myself. Will return and finish outline late this evening. This, I vow.

Finishing "Verge" Outline

I'm super late on this, so I'm spending the next few hours on it. A brief snippet for your amusement:

6. Time slows almost to a stop. Zylo still seems capable of conversing with his Body, and uses that to try to get a handle on the situation while the bullet hovers inches from his face. Short answer: the same cybernetics that Zylo has been using to interact with his body and the Ultranet are now in emergency overdrive, allowing him to think at electronic speed.

7. But thinking is not the same as moving-- the fastest he could move would not be fast enough. Zylo is reminded, and we learn, that human speech is no longer a purely physical process: since anyone or anything worth talking to has electronic communicators, speech has become more like chat, complete with elaborate emoticons and other extra features. This gives Zylo a ray of hope: he can't escape the bullet, but maybe he can talk to something that can save him...

Today's Broken Frontier Is Nothing Too Special...

Really, all I do is take a long time to link to this review of the state of the art in popular webcomics, which this blog has spotlighted before. So if you've been reading here, you're already ahead of the curve.

"Meat and Bones"

Another written-in-2001, published-in-2002 Cool Cat Studio story begins today.

In some ways this is a lot like looking at old baby pictures, but at least we did some actual research into bodybuilding culture for this one. Nice to see Gisele breaking away from her usual "type" of female figure, too.

How'd I Miss This?

I'd heard Paris was freed after three days but not that she was sent back to jail afterward. I guess that Doonesbury sequence would work after all.

And I don't know whether to be embarrassed about not knowing that...

...or proud.

UPDATE 6/27/07: Phil Kahn informs me she was re-freed late yesterday. I guess that's an example of the problems of doing a topical strip. And, oh yeah, an example of injustice.

Best Wishes and Prayers to Steve Gerber.

One of the most inventive comic-book writers of the 1970s has announced several health problems. One of said problems, ulcerative colitis, is "the nuclear equivalent of irritable bowel syndrome." Another, pulmonary fibrosis, is ultimately fatal.

"Above all, just in case anyone's tempted, do not accuse me of courage in the face of adversity. I'm scared shitless. (And no, it's not because of the colitis.)"

The HERO Initiative is helping to pay Gerber's medical bills. If it upsets you to think about the comic-book writers and artists of the 60s and 70s and how little payback they've received, you could do worse than to look into this organization.

Goodbye, Ethel.

Ethel Gibbs passed away this morning.

I've written about her before, here and here and here and here (caution: comment links on older posts do not work).

She turned 102 last month.

I visited three times after she'd been laid up in a hospice with a bruised leg. The first two times, she was lively and chatty, although I think she was kinder to her visitors than her caregivers. ("She loves men," one of those caregivers said, a bit ruefully, as I walked in.)

The third time I visited her was the day of her fourth stroke. It took me a while to realize her condition, and a while longer to understand that it had changed since the last time the hospice workers had checked on her. She couldn't speak well, but they had pointed me to her matter-of-factly. I assumed everything that could be done for her was being done.

As the hospice workers and I finally realized something was wrong, I tried to keep talking until the ambulance arrived.

I told her everything I could about my life and the world around us, the world she always took such an interest in. But we only had one meaningful exchange that day, if you can call it meaningful:

"Ethel, can you hear me?"
[with difficulty] "I reear oo, T."

She took hold of my arm a couple of times as the paramedics arrived. Slurring unintelligibly.

Trying to tell me something.

I only saw her once after that, in the hospital bed. The TV was on and turned to Cops, of all things. She was fast asleep and stayed that way. I couldn't bear to wake her.

Her family saw to it that she died at home in bed, not in a hospital. I have faith that this made her happy. It was always the way she wanted to go, surrounded by loving family. She never regained the power of speech, but my parents visited her four days ago and said that she seemed to understand them.

One hundred years and more.

Life is valuable no matter how much of it you have.

"Fallen Arches," Undrawn Script

Conclusion to Cool Cat Studio's 9/11 storyline, never drawn for a combination of reasons that aren't important now:

1. Aftermath of "Friends in High Places." Sophia looks down at the floor, or perhaps at Billy, her unborn child. Now Mike is on his cellular phone. He's pinching the space between his eyes at the top of his nose, as if he has a slight headache. Liz turns away from us, folding her arms, keeping her thoughts to herself. Jeremy casts a nervous glance at Belinda. Belinda grasps the table. She grits her teeth. She's taking charge.

TV: One hour after the collapse of the second tower...

Belinda: Everybody out.

More.

Approved New Design For PnA Site (Coming Soon)

Rejected Design for PnA Site:

iPhone-Phriendly PnAs

Homeless Comic-Book Artist.

Unusual perspective.

Via Eric Millikin.

When The Jesusphone Comes

The iPhone, has skipped past the traditional moco development industry, focusing instead on Web-based applications and a modified version of the Safari browser. That's great news for digital cartoonists who don't want to have to learn a new platform. And it eliminates [the] cost to entry. Which means that you-- yes, you-- can be an iPhone developer.

More.

How Many Webcomics Plan "Big-Screen Premieres?"

AFAIK, one. Okay, it is Wendy Pini, but still, that's thinking ahead.

78 Myths Busted and Counting.

Good source of story ideas.

The Dangers of Spokesblogging

New technology, old conflict of interest. Naturally a professional concern for anyone who writes about the field and makes friendships or business relationships within it. Discussed here.

7 Unusual Military Animals

Yikes.

Political Cartoons From Japanese Opposition Party

Reported: Democratic Party of Japan uses comic to rally the public against a large scale tax hike.

Comic.

Intriguing Storytelling Previews From Doonesbury

Some of these seem to be jokes, but it looks like at least one of them is not: Celeste saves B.D. from himself, again. I kind of hope they all turn out to be true. Even though the Hilton jail story ended sooner than we thought. "Time again for our Doonesbury Planner" implies that Trudeau has done this before, but I must have missed those strips. Anybody know if he has a history of following through?

Mystery Project.

There are a few projects I need to keep under wraps for various reasons, even though I'd love to tell you about them. All I can do is drop a few hints.

I'm doing a collaboration with a longtime friend via Google Docs. Yesterday we managed to crank out 15 pages together, and I learned two things:

The time students are required, by generally agreed-upon etiquette, to wait for teachers to show up if the teachers are late to class: twenty minutes. Or sometimes ten minutes for regular professors, and twenty for PhDs.

Water Ice is a concoction without which Philly just wouldn't be Philly.

This one will be a while in the making, but I'm feeling good about its future.

The Name Keeps Making Me Think "Coffee." This May Be Intentional.

You probably already know this, but the MoCCA festival is becoming a real hotspot for webcartoonists and other interesting folks. If you're in the vicinity of New York, it's a good way to spend a weekend!

Ginormous Screenshots From Penny Arcade: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness

Click the image for full-size display. Many more at the link.

Lulu "Blooker" Staffers Discover They Are Annoying.

Well, that's got to be humbling. Via The Register: a low-key poll sponsored by the Blooker Prize attempts to find the ten most annoying words about the Web:

1. folksonomy
2. blogosphere
3. blog
4. Netiquette
5. blook
6-8. [undisclosed]
9. cookie
10. wiki

Sample size is only 2091, which is a shame. I'd love to see a larger poll broken down by generation.

Blowing Bubbles: Jennifer Delk

BROKEN FRONTIER: Hello, all! This is T Campbell, this is Blowing Bubbles, and I'm here with Jennifer Delk to discuss an interesting venture that involves webcomics and many other forms of media. The project is called "World Without Oil," and the idea, as I understand it, is to imagine the consequences of peak oil and what comes after-- "play it before you live it," as the slogan says. Now, you live in San Francisco, where the project got started. Were you involved with it from the beginning?

JENNIFER DELK: Oh, well, I went to the San Francisco Art Institute for a year, and one of my instructors there was Jane McGonigal, who was a co-head of the game. So she actually brought it up to our class before it started, and asked if any of us wanted to join in the project.



More.

Shaenon Knows How To Tribute.

I could do a lot worse than link to Shaenon Garrity's blog. It makes me learn things.

This time out, she has a tribute to Carl Gustav Horn, prolific manga editor. Among Horn's gifts, apparently, is the ability to bring lively English to his translations. Among Shaenon's gifts is picking samples that make Horn's ability clear, even if you don't speak a word of Japanese.




Much more at the link.

Few or Many?

If you read this blog regularly, you may have noticed post-count is up. I'm experimenting. Do you like it, or are you drowning?

It's 9/11, Garfield!

I often look back on my old work with a mixture of pride and embarrassment, and rarely is the mixture quite as volatile as it is with this story.

Sometimes it looks absolutely fine to me. The idea is that Camus the cat, like many Americans on September 10, arguably like America itself, thinks that he's got life all figured out and he's pretty close to invincible. At the very least, he thinks his position is secure enough that he'd see any potential threats coming. And then the world just turns upside down. I think that works.

And sometimes it just looks really tacky, stretching a comedy character past the breaking point. Alvin, Simon and Theodore say "no" to marijuana! Betty Boop wears a rape awareness ribbon! It's 9/11, Garfield!

See what you think. The script for an unpublished sequel, "Fallen Arches," airs Monday.

The New Greatest Films OF ALL TIME until home depot sponsors another special

A couple years ago, I had the idea to watch all the movies on AFI's original "100 Years, 100 Movies" list. I got through to #58 (except I skipped Raging Bull for some reason) before I had to drop the project, and I was thinking of picking it back up when I heard about the new edition.

Nitpicks:

1) I think it's kind of hilarious how AFI makes access to these lists on its own site members-only, as if you can keep something a secret AFTER airing it on national television.

2) There's a curious inconsistency: their press release claims Casablanca is #2 and Godfather is #3, as they were in the old list, but the TV special had those numbers reversed.

3) And not even Morgan Freeman can convince me that this list now represents "the greatest 100 films of all time... [films that] will endure," while explaining that we need a new list because our perspectives have changed.

But none of that's a big deal. All 123 films in both lists are worth seeing. I guess I'll start back up with Raging Bull and Rebel Without A Cause, and work my way from there. Of the combined 123, how many have you seen?

Webcomics Review: Multiplex

Today on Broken Frontier, Matt Koelbl reviews Multiplex.

Noted for Reference

Nine ways to draw black women's hair. Considering how often Gisele experiments, we might be consulting this sooner than I expect.

American Cartoonist II

Here's another cartoonist contest a la American Idol. Unlike the "Comic Book Challenge," which farms for intellectual property that Platinum Studios can promote, this one seems more concerned about promoting the use of "Comic Book Creator" software.

Some of their copy is just begging to be mocked-- "aspiring comic artists who have never laid out a page in their lives?" I think the real market for this is busy cartoonists who would prefer to automate the most boring parts of their technique and open up new possibilities. But we'll see.

Site Feed Link Fully Functional.

Blog reader "polsy" writes:

fwiw, the link rel="alternate"s are pointing somewhere strange, but the feed itself (.../rss.xml) is ok now.

Took me a while to figure out this problem, but now it's fixed too. Feed away!

Artistic Critiques

Via Fleen: Josh Lesnick offers some artistic critiques of popular webcomics.

Would I like this piece as much if: 1) Josh didn't use "What We Don't Know" correctly as a jumping-off point and 2) Josh was less kind to Gisele?

Maybe not quite as much, but I'd still be glad he did it. It's the kind of criticism that I'm trying to encourage. The essay probably won't make his life any easier, but I'm glad he wrote it.

Here it is.

Blowing Bubbles: Top Cow

A few weeks ago, we spoke to Filip Sablik of Top Cow, about Top Cow's partnership with IGN and their resulting online store. Top Cow is a direct-market company taking its first steps into the digital marketplace.

More.

When Will I Stop Linking To David Willis?

When he stops being this damn on target. Almost everything that I didn't like about Civil War and the aftermath, condensed into six panels.

Search Engine Funnies Scooped By Reality

Some readers will remember Search Engine Funnies, wherein my artists and I satirized the search industry. Five months back, I toyed with reviving the series, but only completed one script about Yahoo's leadership troubles. Now that Terry Semel is no longer CEO, the chances of this script getting drawn have dropped to zero, so I thought I'd share it with you here. It was more prophetic than I thought. Warning: strong language, violence.

Six square panels of equal size.

1. Jerry Yang slams open the door to Terry Semel's office, interrupting Terry as he spreads peanut butter on bread for a sandwich.

SFX: SLAM!
Yang: What the fuck are you still doing here?
Semel: Jerry...?
Yang: Mr. Yang to you, Semen!

2. Jerry stands proudly, suddenly clad in a giant feathered headdress like the Native American chiefs once wore. He will wear this in panels 2-5.

Yang: No, even better! Call me... Chief Yahoo!
Semel: W-w-we agreed that headdress was offensive...
Yang: Maybe it's offensive on television, y'old Hollywood fart! You know what's offensive on the Internet?

3. Yang brandishes a tomahawk at Semel, who stammers to defend himself.

Yang: Missing chances to buy Google and YouTube! Saying "duhhh, no" to social networking! Being such a gigantic pussy that I had to take over again!
Semel: I... I...

4. Semel, broken, confesses his sins, tears streaming from his eyes. Yang, not appeased, lifts his tomahawk for the kill.

Semel: I-it's true! I'm an old-media figurehead only appointed because new media didn't believe in itself! I'm not true Yahoo! I don't bleed purple and yellow!
Yang: We'll fix that!

5. Cut to a few minutes later. Soaked in red blood, Yang stands atop of a desk with Terry Semel's scalp in one hand and his tomahawk in the other, looking out with zealous eyes to the cheering masses of Yahoo workers who slap their cheeks and whoop in appreciation.

Yang: The new era of the Internet begins here! Let our cries of joy, our cries of war, ring out!
Yahoos: YAHOO! YAHOO! YAHOO! YAHOO! YAHOO!



6. Those first five panels were fantasy. Here is reality: The Yahoo Christmas party (in a dark dance floor with a Y-sign on top of a Christmas tree), where Jerry Yang fiddles with his iPod, oblivious to everything (http://www.valleywag.com/tech/yahoo-party/the-holiday-spirit-220865.php). Two Yahoo workers look on wistfully, sharing a thought balloon that shows Jerry's face from panel 5.

Yang: Mhmhmm mhmhmmm
Yahoo 1: Never happen.
Yahoo 2: But it would be so beautiful...

Companies Are Not Moral.

Mike Sprang airs his bitter disappointment in Platinum's work-for-hire policies here, Joey Manley responds with artful metaphor here.

I still work for Platinum, and Tokyopop for that matter, so I obviously don't think quite like Mike and Joey do. But I think it comes down to one question. The question is: Can you live with losing control of this work?

I long ago decided my answer was "yes," as long as I had other work that remained my own. Now I have some projects like Divalicious of which my creative partners and I have surrendered some or all control, because there are other benefits, financial and creative. (We never could have gotten Diva into bookstores under our own power at that point in our careers and the market.) Others like Penny and Aggie are all ours.

But if your answer is "no," then don't work for hire. Nothing personal against Platinum, or Tokyopop, or Marvel, or any publisher. Companies are not moral.

On Episcopalians...

A reader recently asked me why I leaned slightly toward the Episcopalian faith when doing Christian characters like Katy-Ann and Rikk. No big secret: I was brought up that way so I figure I'm more likely to get them right. But I hadn't given a lot of thought to how Episcopalians were seen by other denominations, aside from the "Catholic Lite" joke. ("Same tasty rituals, half the guilt calories!")

So I was amused when my parents sent me this essay, credited to Garrison Keillor:

We make fun of Episcopalians for their blandness, their excessive calm, their fear of giving offense, their lack of speed and also for their secret fondness for macaroni and cheese.

But nobody sings like them. If you were to ask an audience in Des Moines, a relatively Episcopalianless place, to sing along on the chorus of 'Michael Row the Boat Ashore,' they will look daggers at you as if you had asked them to strip to their underwear. But if you do this among Episcopalians, they'd smile and row that boat ashore and up on the beach! .....And down the road!

More here.

UPDATE: Further investigation reveals that this essay has been "adapted" to refer to Lutherans and Methodists as well, and if there's an official version in Keillor's published works, Amazon doesn't know about it. I'm even more amused now that I know at least three denominations' representatives shamelessly take credit for this praise.

Read Along With Me: Gamer Edition

"So there are these two guys on a couch..."

Gamer comics often give me the feeling of watching someone else play Street Fighter: watching someone go through a set of motions with little variety isn't my idea of a good time. But as with superhero comics, every once in a while something comes along to justify my interest in the genre...

More.

Blowing Bubbles (Chat) with Aaron Williams

BF: Hello, and welcome to another installment of Blowing Bubbles. This is T Campbell, and I'm here with Aaron Williams, creator of Nodwick, PS238, Full Frontal Nerdity, co-writer on Truth, Justin, and the American Way... and what do you do in your spare time, create Pluto?

Aaron Williams: I did, but an editor hacked it down to sub-planetary status. My fans started a letter-writing campaign and Disney is still sending me "cease and desists" over the name.



Continued.

"Holy Crossword, Batman!"

Naturally I was pleased to see The New York Sun playing with comics tropes in a crossword, even if it is focused on their unrepentantly cheesy side. Check out the puzzle for yourself (PDF, answer on page 2). Congrats to cruciverbalist Craig Kasper and editor Peter Gordon.

Commission Sketch by Gisele (colored by Olivera T.)

Um... wow.

Click the image to learn more about it.

This might be a good time to note that the Free Gisele Fund has a long way to go, but it is making slow, steady progress...

Hope Y'All Had A Happy Father's Day...

Daddy and I had ours a week early. Didn't plan it that way-- I just forgot which week Father's Day was supposed to be, and Daddy'd been vacationing out of the country so he was a little off his calendar too. We went to see Ocean's Thirteen, a thoroughly faithful sequel that gave us the dependable guy's good time we were looking for.

And I got to give him a card that Gisele and I made together.

It was a good day.

Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged Again

Oh, that was quick! Three more links this morning alone. Parts three and four have their moments, but Episode 20 has a much higher humor density.

Okay, on to other topics.

DC's Online Editor, DC's Online Manga

Congrats to Todd Allen for identifying DC's new online editor, Kwanza Johnson, confirming that DC is moving ahead with its plans to produce true webcomics. The keyphrase is "developing comics and content specifically created for the internet and other non-print methods of distribution, primarily focusing on DC Comics' growing online business plans."

I fought hard last year for the Online Editor position and was crushed when I didn't get it, but sometimes these things work out for the best. I don't know much about Johnson that's not on his resume, but experience at About.com, eMarketer, and Marvel is a good start.

Related, via Journalista: DC's investing in a Japanese startup and serializing its product online to pave the way for print editions. That's a couple of good ideas, right there!

And their choice of company seems, on the surface at least, to be an up-and-comer. From Dirk Deppey: "Flex [Comix]'s principal attraction is the comics-anthology magazine Blood, which is offered to readers in print, online and cellphone formats, the latter being perhaps the only serious growth market in Japan's domestic comics industry at the moment."



Between this, Gon and Megatokyo, DC may be beginning to make a real dent in the manga market. Time and sales will tell.

Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Movie

Oooh, I've been waiting for this one. Some of the jokes are getting familiar, but it still brings a smile. Part one and part two: more on the way.

I Knew French Classes Would Come In Handy Someday

According to Gisèle, Steven Withrow and John Barber's Webcomics, to which I contributed four pages on webcomics' development, has been published in French under the title BD En Ligne. (Poor Gis... she speaks fluent French and I got published in the language first!)



I'm pretty hopeless in conversational French, but I remember enough to know that BD is short for the French phrase for comics, bande dessinée, literally "drawn strip," and ligne means line, so... there we go, "on-line comics," or "online drawn strips." Wonder if the strips in there that aren't "drawn" so much as vectored or 3-D modeled give the French any problems? They tend to be linguistic purists.

I'm tempted to order this thing just to see if I can tell how well they managed the translation, but right now it's priced at 27.55 euros, or just under $37, plus shipping. So not now. But it's kinda weird, thinking that other people are speaking for you and you don't know the exact wording of what they're saying. Course, I guess Gisèle and I should be used to that by now.

Minor RSS Issues.

Just in time for the RSS article, I notice this blog's feed has developed a slight sniffle. My apologies to feed-readers. Testing fixes now.

Life on the Frontier.

I've viewed my time at Broken Frontier as a chance to wash out the taste of History, and I think it's been successful. Pieces like "What We Don't Know," "Just Another Online Comics Day," "One Word or Two?," "Webcomics' Greatest Superhero?" and the two-part series "Talking With Wikipedia" have done what I set out for them to do, and they still hold up reasonably well to my scrutiny now.

I don't think I'm a particularly great interviewer. But I do think I've had some particularly great interviewees, and I've enjoyed the chance to get personal with people whom I admire or whose work I enjoy. And I've appreciated the chance to feature Matt Koelbl's reviews.

All in all, this has been a good experience for me. But has it been good for you? Discussion of webcomics on the Broken Frontier forums has been pretty, um, dry. A couple pieces have sparked some discussion elsewhere, but I don't think any of them, except possibly "Wikipedia," have attracted as much interest as recent posts on this blog have. That's a sign, to me, that I might need to re-evaluate the long-term strategy.

So where do I think this is going? The immediate future holds more interviews and a higher percentage of chat interviews, a more serious run at the state of RSS feeds, an evaluation of the state of Internet advertising, and a fun look at the modern emoticon. But where's it going in the long term? Still mulling, and seeking feedback, as usual. Comment below or e-mail me.

An Apology.

The originally posted version of "Feed Along With Me (Part 1)" (corrected here) was a rush job that should never have been posted as it was; it contained misleading language and a couple of flat failures of observation, and was gleaned from far too small a sample size. I'm not sure which bothers me more: that I made so many mistakes in such a small space or that only one person called me on making any mistakes at all-- a person who called me on a similar gaffe last year. No, wait, I am sure: it's the "making so many mistakes" one. Quickly corrected in both cases, but you all deserve better. I'm aiming to make it at least five years before I have to make any more "quick corrections."

Coming tomorrow: a self-assessment on the Broken Frontier work to date and where I think it's going. If you have any comments on that, dear reader, now is the time to share them...

P&A Fanart

Whee!

Farewell to Strangers in Paradise

Having recently given Lynn Johnston a very hard time, I thought I should say a few nice words about Terry Moore, another cartoonist who's ending a work that represents a now-bygone publishing era of cartooning.

I began reading Strangers In Paradise twelve years ago. My attitudes toward romance and writing have changed since then, but the series still resonates, because it was part of my development. Its second volume, number 11 (or was it 10? Sorry, it was twelve years ago), contained one of the most powerful sequences I had read at the time, and it was a huge influence on how I developed the character of Rikk. Moore's approach to characterization in general was something I studied closely and tried to emulate. And his shameless mixing of drama with melodrama (bisexual love triangle, meet global Mafia!) opened my mind to new story possibilities.

I kept some distance from the series in its later years, checking in every few issues. Hard to say why, because in most ways it seemed about the same as it ever was-- but maybe that was the problem. Moore had set up a large-scale story with a beginning, middle and ending, and at some point, he sidetracked into a cycle of plot twists and countertwists that seemed to change everything but, in the long run, changed nothing that couldn't be changed back. If that sounds familiar, it should: it's a narrative weakness that DC and Marvel have fallen into almost out of necessity. Call it "direct market's disease."

But that problem has melted away in the series' last year. The final installment, on sale now, is the very definition of dramatic payoff, and I have a hunch those middle installments will look a lot better to me when I reread them knowing a payoff is coming.

Last issue highly recommended, if you know the series. If not, start with the second volume (much better than the first), and work your way back, then forward, from there.

Feed Along With Me

(Article mirrored from Broken Frontier. Posted here first due to technical issues.)

Comics that I follow regularly with the aid of Google Reader: 16.

Comics that I follow regularly despite the fact that they have no RSS link that I've seen: 6.

Ratio of said comics: 16 to 6.

Same ratio last year: 7 to 13.

A few years ago, there was a bit of an uproar about "webcomics rippers," best summed up by Jonathan Rosenberg's manifesto on the matter here. What surprises me is this:

The central complaint against "ripper" programs was (and still is) that they provide all of the entertainment value of the site but provide no opportunity for cartoonists to make money in exchange-- no ad revenue, no links to subscriber content or merchandise. And yet some of the Web's most popular strips are now doing just that to themselves with their own RSS feeds... at least day by day. Update: It's been pointed out to me that strips like Diesel Sweeties and Goats, while they don't embed ads or merch in every post, include marketing messages as part of their overall feed. Cat and Girl, on the other hand, seems content to just give us the strip, with the result that I haven't actually gone to the Cat and Girl site in half a year.

At the moment, my main strip makes no promotional use of the RSS feed, because I used the default version of SomeryC. I'm trying to figure out one of two directions to go with that feed. One method would be to embed ads and merchandise links in the feed itself. Update: Unshelved and Dinosaur Comics do this with every-post ads and occasional announcements, while Questionable Content currently runs an ad for its latest piece of merchandise in its feed.

The other method is to reduce the RSS feed to a link to the latest page, as you'll see in the feeds for Penny Arcade, the Giant in the Playground strips and others. My principal source of reluctance here is that, to me, the point of RSS seems to be delivering things to a busy audience-- a reminder is good, but actual content is better. I know that I prefer to see actual strips in my Google Reader-- even though I do feel vague guilt about not paying my dues for them.

I'm late to the game with RSS. I let P&A go without a reliable feed for months and I'm still figuring out where I stand. So before I take these thoughts and actions any further-- what do you think? Should more comics feed comic, ads and merch together-- feed just the link to the latest episode-- feed just the comic, despite my puzzlement-- or feed something else entirely? How can comics handle their RSS feeds "correctly?"

Discuss.

AFK Today...

Helping tally votes in my state's local primary. See you tomorrow!

Foobetter 'r Foowurse!

Disgruntled newspaper comics fans, this one's for you.



Obligatory footnote: Amy Mebberson and I have also worked together on Divalicious, as well as the Penny and Aggie story "Weights." You can see more of her early work at this site, and most of my stuff at this list o' links.

Obligatory disclaimer: We have no real insider knowledge about the dynamics of the Johnston household. The above is speculation based on what we do know.

(And unrelated: regarding the Sopranos finale, Sore Thumbs speaks for me.)

New Philanthropy -- RIP Entrepreneurshippy

Back in January '07, I created several test blogs to test the waters for a career as a professional blogger. One such was "Entrepreneurshippy," a blog detailing the concerns of self-made businesspeople. I soon realized I didn't know enough about the subject to keep going, but I still like this post on "the new philanthropy":

Seems like every time you open the New York Times, some familiar face is trying to redefine philanthropy: Clinton, Google, Branson.

Of course, there's a long tradition of top-tier entrepreneurs giving back big as they approach retirement age... and the Google boys are early thirties, making them over 200 in Internet years. Still, all of them seem to emphasize the new ideas they have about charity, the way Picasso and Matisse went on about "new art."

So what do you think? Is this a genuine "new wave," or just a continuation of a natural impulse that makes us proud to be entrepreneurs? There's no depressing answer.

Blogicide!

I'm in mi base, killin my bl0gz.

I've tried many ideas in my day. On most of them I've followed through (for better and for worse!). But there are a few which I realized pretty quickly I couldn't make a go of. Today, I start killing them and transferring anything interesting from them over here.

First up: Gadgetration. My attempt at a "gadget blog." Never even managed a single post. I'm just not a gadget kinda guy. :-)

The Word That Made Me Realize That, Despite Everything We Have In Common, Tom Spurgeon's Beliefs About Comics Coverage Are Light-Years Away From Mine

"Hassle."

"Vertigo"

Starts today with a guest appearance from Liz and Tony of Cool Cat Studio, one of my favorite songs ever (and one that'll have a long shelf life at dance parties, I think), the return of Rich and, incidentally, our 500th strip. All I'll say about this story is that it features one very expected plot point and one very unexpected one.

"Heart of Hearts," Concluding Thoughts

Here's the story. And here's the commentary.

Since the Sluggy forums have some rules about speculation, these observations are going here rather than there. If you're not interested in Sluggy, proceed to the next post, because this level of fannish overanalysis can be lethal to the underexposed.

The First Couple of Sluggy Freelance have been doing the will-they-or-won't-they dance for almost a decade (in real time, at least). For me the question has become "Will they? WHY DON'T THEY?"

Sluggites know the official line: Torg refuses to get together with Zoë because as long as Oasis, the Torg-lovin' death machine, is out there somewhere, then dating Zoë is as good as killing her.

With all due respect to Torg and Pete Abrams, though, I don't buy that.

We don't know exactly what happened between this scene and this one, but it certainly seems that Torg lost little time forging a relationship with an alternate-reality Zoë, despite being Public Enemy Number One to an entire dimension of demons, which would put anyone who got close to him in even more danger than everyone else.

This would be after the curse of Torg's love interests was already well-established (one dead, one insane, and one dead, then insane, then dead again, insane some more, whoops dead, currently MIA to Torg).

Okay, there are qualifiers: different Zoë was sort of a "substitute," Torg was fairly convinced that he and she were going to die pretty soon no matter what, and her safety was clearly important to him. But if her safety were the only factor at play, Torg would've drugged her, packed her off to Quebec, and moved without a forwarding address. He does the right thing when the choice is clear, but he likes to avoid serious decisions when he can-- and he's not made of stone.

Torg's scared of a relationship with Zoë for many reasons, and Oasis is just the one that sounds the most noble. But even so, he's sent Zoë some pretty clear signals.

Bottom line: If Zoë started really pushing this relationship, or even sent some signals of her own that Torg didn't have to capture or destroy an immortal assassin just to earn dinner and a movie, I'm pretty sure Torg would cave.

That makes Zoë, not Torg, the primary obstacle.

Zoë is unaware of the depths of Torg's feelings-- but not that unaware. She doesn't think she's particularly beautiful-- but she doesn't think she's chopped liver, either. She would acknowledge she worries deeply about Torg, but would never say those feelings run deeper than friendship-- except when she almost did. Living with him had to set off a few alarm bells, at least on the subconscious level, where she rarely goes but where her shoulder sprites dwell, and where they influence her...

But nothing happened.

Not that this is unusual. Sexually and romantically compatible people stay in friendships all the time, and never make that jump. But with all the baggage these two have accumulated, the only reason for Zoë not to at least consciously contemplate this... is if something prevents her.

It's not a question of good versus evil. There are both selfless and selfish reasons to embark on such a relationship. It might be a question of Freudian eros versus thanatos, the life-impulse versus the death-impulse. Whatever it is, I think it's deep in her, and it might be related to her more recent behavior pattern of throwing away relationships for a broadcasting company whose loyalty to her is fragile at best. If so, it's a much bigger danger to her than Oasis is, and she'll need to address the source, not just the symptoms.

Here's hoping she figures it out. The clock is ticking.

P.S.: I said earlier that I didn't know if I had a third Sluggy idea I liked as much as the two for the stories I've done. Thanks to Clay Yount, I now do: "Where's Sasha now?" Let's see what my schedule looks like in 2009.

I'm Late On This...

But Comixpedia.org has reached one of those "now or never" moments. Xaviar and crew don't need money. They need someone OCD enough to put in the time. Otherwise the project is likely to wither and die, which will essentially give Wikipedia a monopoly on webcomics encyclopedias. That would not be a good thing.

(P.S.: I now see there's been at least one volunteer, which is v.cool-- Jeff Knooren would bring a lot of energy to it-- but more hands make light work.)