Self-Promo: "Cypherpunk"

The conclusion to my first commercial comics story is now running online with commentary. It looks rough to me now, of course. But in many ways, this one has become a "thesis statement" for the rest of my career.

9/8: Mostly Fanboy Enthusiasm Today

Favorite comic of the day has gotta go to Wonderella. "...real busy with my charity work..."

But the comic that's got me salivating for upcoming installments is Starslip Crisis: Alterverse War. Kristofer Straub is writing this as a prequel and a crossover with 29 other comics-- including Fans! I don't think anyone else has really done a webcomics-based uber-crossover in quite a while, and Straub is an accomplished mimic as well as one of the best writers we've got in the field right now. Looking forward to it.

Related and I missed it: almost a year to the day after its last installment, Checkerboard Nightmare gets two in one shot.

Howard Tayler knows where his next batch of new readers are coming from.

Covered already: I wish they'd stop calling this kind of stuff "comic books on cell phones." You can cram a comic onto a cell phone but the resulting format is nothing like a book.

PC Weenies' Krishna M. Sadasivam celebrates his impending fatherhood with a new autobiographical series... because... fatherhood means he'll have more free time? I wish Krishna all the best but I suspect that Uncubed may not last long enough to show us baby's first steps.

Alexander Danner and Tim Tylor have reminded me that Phil Foglio's early works Buck Godot: Zap Gun For Hire and What's New are now being serialized on his site, albeit without clearly labeled RSS feeds of their own. It's interesting to see this early work of Phil's again. Originally published in the recently deceased Dragon magazine, What's New is a pretty good torch-bearer for what "gamer comics" were like before that meant "videogamer comics." Godot has a few story problems that I think we all overlooked back in the 1980s: the first story shows a much meaner Godot than the others, and the "Rat and Teleporter" story relies on Godot pulling a staff of experts out of nowhere. But it's always lots of fun, and as with many webcomics, one of the pleasures is watching the creator continue to get better.

George Takei, God of Gay Comedy

What's your favorite video you've seen on the Web this year?

Thanks to Randy Milholland for reminding me of this one.

Webcomics News & Things 8/30-8/31

Congratulations to August J. Pollak, whose Some Guy With A Website is now featured on the Huffington Post. The HufPo is the fifth most popular blog on Earth according to Technorati.

Here's a contest that's actually respectable: "Pitch Your Game" from The Penny Arcade Expo.

More Wikiscanner fun: state governments discover their employees are filing paperwork on 8-Bit Theater.

Censored: This Opus installment. Newspaper editors continue ever vigilant for the next cartoon jihad, sort of the way Homeland Security keeps watching for the next kamikaze hijacker. (Lightning will strike twice ANY DAY NOW!) Of course, anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see that this is not a portrayal of the Prophet Mohammed or even of a Muslim woman, but a moonbat trying on multiple identities, but whatever.

Comics installments: Uh oh. Okay, I'm just going to give up guessing where Brad Guigar is going with all this. Also from Brad: the best pun I've seen in ages. And I don't need to tell you why I like this one, do I?

My favorite comic of the day: Shaenon Garrity asks, "What if Edward Gorey drew Star Trek's "The Trouble With Tribbles?" Apparently it would be AWESOME.

Miscellaneous: "KNEEL BEFORE BARGAINS..."

"Heroes"

Annotated version starts today. Hey, remember when we all thought Voyager was as bad as the Star Trek franchise could get? J.J. Abrams, OUR FATE IS IN YOUR HANDS.

Star Trek FanTubes

Kirk/Spock slash is so last century. Thanks to J.G. for the first of these. Greg, this is for you.


Time Warp


Monty Python -- Camelot


I'm Too Sexy

Fans: "Campaigns"

Oldschool Fans is back in action. Learn all sorts of unnecessary trivia about my second story, including its theme that unnecessary trivia rots your mind!

Why I Don't Draw My Own Things: Sketchbook Entries

Even more San Diego memories: I actually did a couple of sketches back then for Kevin Brown, who has my thanks for preserving them.

Why don't I draw more often?



Brown also asked a number of artists to draw Meaghan Quinn, who'd recently married Frank Cormier, in a sexy pose. I was all too happy to dive in over my head:



For the full list of Sexy Megses, go here and scroll down.

I don't have any copy of the cartoon I drew for a unicorn-themed book in San Diego '05... was that for Aeire?... Hope I catch up with it someday. At any rate, you can probably imagine the images from the caption:

UNICORNS EAT GRASS
UNICRONS EAT ROBOT WORLDS
DELI MIXUP: FATAL.

I do know where my 2006 Comic-Con sketch is, but I don't like it, so no link for it!

Here's hopin' I have a sketch or two to show you after SDCC '07. Anything to make my artists look better by comparison.

Tommespin Lives Again!

Many thanks to Sir Alan Dicey for his continued efforts as Fans' official archivist.

Me at San Diego Comic-Con 2003...



And me with Tom the Fanboy, dressed as his namesake Tim the Fanboy/Timmespin.



A good time was had by both.

Fans Annotated Flash Forward

I don't have any idea why the Fans Annotated page has jumped forward to the last page I uploaded eight days before you were supposed to see it. I'm having Mosso look into it now (note to self: ticket number #44113). In the meantime, enjoy some ahead-of-schedule annotations, on me.

Farewell to Favorite Advertisers!

Penny and Aggie, Cool Cat Studio and Fans are trading out all but a few of our Project Wonderful ads-- the really small ones-- for ads from other advertising networks. More money for us in the long run, which is good!

But I can't help but be a bit sad that those sites will no longer be so involved with such a webcomics-friendly service. There were a couple of comics sites I was especially happy to receive bids from recently, and since I can no longer display them on those sites, I figured I'd just show them here. Lunchbox Funnies is a nice kid's-comic collective, and Dresden Codak is one of my ten favorite comics right now. So click those ads!

RSS Follies

I'm currently in the midst of trying to create a more streamlined RSS for the comics and an RSS-to-HTML solution that'll help broadcast these posts through the network. Many thanks to Zachary Lewis and the FeedForAll folks for their help so far.

San Diego Memories 2003

I wish I still had those photos of Tom the Fanboy, one of Fans' biggest fans, back when he dressed as "Timmespin" for San Diego Comic-Con '03.

With Less Than A Minute To Spare...

Fans Annotated is up. Still some work to do on the tech side of things, but you can start reading annotated comics, and I'm pretty sure that's what matters to you most!

Fans Annotated

Launches later today. Watch this space.

"Graphic Smash Reunion"

Naturally, they're all in prison. Considering how liberally Fans made use of other people's characters, I'm happy to see Jackie getting a little screen time, even if her circumstances are unenviable.

Operation: Comix Relief

I'm moving soon, and I had a surplus of copies in stock of Faans comics from way, way back in the day.

So this Christmas, I sent them to the troops. Despite Will's anti-military stance, I've seen a lot of troops in my native Virginia Beach that get a big kick out of the series.

If you have a similar surplus, or want to find out more about Comix Relief, the organization that helped me get them overseas, click here.

You may also be interested in Heroes4Heroes, a less comics-specific organization but no less worthy.

Best and the Brightest/Fans Cameo

By almost pure chance, I happened upon this little sequence of cameos, which includes a very nice and completely in-character homage to Fans. Here's hoping the above link is sufficient reward for Doublemint's trouble.