New Robot 6 webcomics columnist Brigid Alverson wastes no time in telling it like it is:

Eight pages should be enough space to establish the setting, introduce one or more characters that are worth caring about, give some sense of what the comic is about, and get the story rolling. This is obviously most critical for longer stories, but gag-a-day creators would do well to establish their premise and characters clearly as well.

A surprising number of stories flunked this test. Many jumped right into the action, often starting off with a complicated fight (Zuda creators love a good fight) between utterly unknown characters, leaving me unsure who to root for.

Each Zuda page includes a space for a text-only synopsis, and that is where I would often find finely crafted, intricately thought out backstories and alternate universes.

Unfortunately, that’s not where they belong. They belong in the comic.

Although she’s talking about Zuda specifically, the complaint about bad storytelling applies to many webcomics/comics everywhere. We’re busy. We don’t have time to make understanding your comics’ contents a new hobby–unless your concept and execution are so superior and daring that we can’t help ourselves, but that is exceedingly rare.

Now, some people LIKE to need ancillary material to understand the storyline. Indeed, the internet has made the background material and the ARG part of the story in many cases. We’re probably as guilty as any of not laying a foundation for a story when more info is only a Google click away, but you need both.

After a hiatus of a few months, Jeffrey Rowland’s webcomic WIGU, the family/fantasy/comedy, is back with new episodes. Hoorah!

Yow, two great-sounding anthologies in one day? This one will be online, but covers a topic that has been, as yet, little covered by comics (or most of the media.) ACT-I-VATE announces THE IRAQ WAR STORIES ANTHOLOGY, edited by Nick Bertozzi:

Sundays on ACT-I-VATE.com starting 5/10/09

“What’s happening over there?”

Nick Bertozzi has been teaching cartooning at The School of Visual Arts for six years. This past year he asked the students in his Comic Book Storytelling Workshop to adapt stories that took place in Iraq during the War. The majority of the stories were found on blogs, a few were adapted from stories told to the students by friends, and one student, himself a veteran of the Iraq War, wrote and drew a story based on his own experience.

The purpose of the anthology is not to wave a flag for the war or against it—though some of the stories certainly have a political bent—instead, the students were asked to write and draw stories that would give the reader a sense of how the War has effected individuals, both American and Iraqi.

ACT-I-VATE is a host for new online comics and is pleased to run this thought-provoking anthology on its site.

These stories are intended for educational purposes only. The artists receive no money from these stories. The points of view within do not represent those of The School of Visual Arts or ACT-I-VATE.

The thirteen stories will run one-a-week, beginning Sunday, May 10th.

We forgot to pot this news, but everyone else did, but it’s still too good not to pass along: SALT WATER TAFFY, Matt Loux’s charming series about youthful adventurers, is going to run as a webcomic in addition to the regular printed versions:

“When I was working on THE TRUTH ABOUT DR.TRUE, SALT WATER TAFFY V3, Jack and Benny kept wanting to go on side trips, and I realized they would make great comic strip characters,” said Loux. “The Salt Water Taffy website creates a place for me to tell more of their adventures in a new format.”

Loux will premier a new comic strip online every other week until the launch of SALT WATER TAFFY VOLUME 3: THE TRUTH ABOUT DR. TRUE. The Salt Water Taffy website will also keep fans-up to-date on news, reviews, and events, and give a sneak peek of the new book.

Have you heard? People are reading things on mobile phones! But we may not be reading them quite as much as folks do in Japan, as this long, informative article in The Independent on the huge success of keitai — novels written for and read on mobile phones. In Japan, five of last year’s top ten best-selling novels started life as keitai novels.

And who do you think is driving this boom? WHO DO YOU THINK???

Keitai novels are mainly read by teenage girls, with 13- to 18-year-olds accounting for 70 per cent of downloads, and while Izumi gained a doctorate in Victorian literature from Cambridge University, he does not claim to be writing highbrow literature. “There is less scene-setting than in conventional novels, fewer adjectives, and more of a focus on conversation and emotions. The structure of the novels, with very simple sentences, makes them accessible,” he says.

Toru Kenjyu, CEO of Takarajima Wondernet, the biggest creator of mobile manga, says that 80 per cent of comic book downloads – for which subscribers pay a £3 monthly charge to keep up with – are by women.

And it’s not just novels:

Toru Kenjyu, CEO of Takarajima Wondernet, the biggest creator of mobile manga, says that 80 per cent of comic book downloads – for which subscribers pay a £3 monthly charge to keep up with – are by women.

The current best-seller is Catwalk Beat, the story of a boy with a troubled background, but excellent sartorial sense. When he starts a new school, his fashionable threads unite all the pupils. More than seven million people downloaded the mobile manga, and the fashions from Catwalk Beat have been produced for real and are available to buy online. And while this may eventually be published as a traditional comic book, it is more enjoyable on the mobile as the phone vibrates whenever there’s a tense moment.

It’s not just comic art that is popular on mobile phones in Tokyo; street artists also create designs specifically for mobiles. Mao Sakaguchi, web project leader of the Shibuya HP France Gallery, says he grew frustrated by the limited art market in Japan, so had the idea of using mobiles to introduce art to a wider audience. “I had friends who were street artists, and I used my fashion store as an art gallery, changing the work monthly,” he says. “We started by taking pictures of their work that could be downloaded onto mobile phones.”

Since Japan seems to be our trend leader in so many things, it does stand to reason that we’ll be doing the same thing in a few years; however, there are some differences in Japan’s (and the UK’s) mobile phone systems (not to mention society) that may require tweaking. Of course, it’s a given that Japan and Europe are way ahead of the US as far as bandwidth and phone capabilities are concerned, although the iPhone is helping Americans catch up.

Also, the Japanese have a much bigger audience for what they call “light novels” — genre-oriented YA novels which would seem to be a precursor to keitai. Genre-oriented light novels are pretty big in the US too — Twilight — so there could be some inroads there.

In our humble, and farseeing, really wacky out of right field, opinion, someday very, very soon, someone somewhere is going to create something original for the mobile phone in the US that some teen-age girl just won’t be able to live without. We predict it will involve romance and fashion. And that will happen very, very soon. And then everyone will say “We told you so!”

The New York Times strikes yet again, this time with a profile of XKCD creator Randall Munroe and his plans to go to print:

The print xkcd book is not being published through a traditional company but rather by breadpig — which was created by Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of the social-news Web site reddit. The site has sold high-concept merchandise like refrigerator magnets or T-shirts, but never a book. (Its profits go to the charity Room to Read.)

•

“We never made any projection — 10,000 seems like a good run,” Mr. Ohanian said, adding that this lack of research “is laughable from the perspective of anyone who knows the book industry. It’s what makes sense.”

The book — with the working title “xkcd,” though Mr. Ohanian says it may carry a subtitle like “a book of romance, sarcasm, math and language” — will not initially be sold in bookstores, and probably never in the big chains. Instead, it will be sold through the xkcd Web site.

“It doesn’t need to be in bookstores,” Mr. Munroe said. “I don’t have hard numbers about this, but the impression I get is that the amount of eyeballs you get from being on the humor shelf at Barnes & Noble — it is almost insignificant.”

Munroe is just 24 years old, and he doesn’t see the need to go with an Andrews McMeel or Random House to be successful. Barnes & Noble and Borders are completely beside the point. He’s either yet another in a long line of naive creators who don’t want to look at numbers, or the prophet of a new way of thinking that isn’t ground down by a system that obviously isn’t working any more.

Compare this story with a recent one in PWCW about CTRL+ALT+DEL, which is employing a similarly “mavericky” publishing strategy — creator Tim Buckley has already self-published several collections but is now teaming up with an already trusted collaborator — not a book publisher — to get into bookstores, for whatever that’s worth.

OTOH, Jon Rosenberg has the opposite idea with his GOATS collections — and he’s going with Del Rey.

It’s way too early to tell who is going to win this race …in fact, there could be MULTIPLE winners. Or different roads to the same destination. The Big Takeaway is that today’s creators — including some of the most creative — are approaching their business models free of any old notions of success and failure.

If you’re in Toronto, you should go to this:

Graphically Speaking: Webcomics!
Featuring Kate Beaton, Willow Dawson, Emily Horne, Brian Mclachlan, & Ryan North
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009, 6:30pm - 8:30pm
@ North York Central Library

TOTALLY FREE

Chris Butcher has more comments on his blog:

As you might be aware, The Beguiling works really hard to keep books in stock (for you!) that aren’t offered through standard distribution channels. That includes minis and zines, it includes specialty books of interest to comics fans but not necessarily carried by Diamond, and it also includes print versions of popular online comics (generally referred to as ‘webcomics’). We do this because we like to sell things and make money, but also because we feel that a big part of being a comic book store is… wait for it… Selling Comic Books. And that means regardless of the format, or where they originally appeared. We like comics, we sell comics, and we’re happy to do it.

Over the past few years, more and more comics material has started to become available online. Granted, comics on the internet go back to more-or-less the first protocols for displaying graphics online (and even earlier if you count bbs’), but it’s really been in the past few years that comics specifically intended for the web have become viable, moneymaking enterprises for the folks that do them. Penny Arcade, PVP, Deisel Sweeties, Questionable Content, Wigu/Overcompensating, Achewood, and Toronto’s own Dinosaur Comics, are just a few examples of folks who are making a go of publishing online, and deriving their income from those pursuits.

But how are they doing it? And how does that affect us, a comic book store, the ‘middleman’ who’s being ’skipped’ in this publishing model.

That’s what we’re going to discuss!

Well, the winners of the April Fool’s Contest is definitely those mild-mannered twins Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, who got EVERYONE with the announcement that CASANOVA, the former Image book written by Matt Fraction with art by Moon, would be returning as a webcomic. It didn’t seem to be so outrageous an announcement that it couldn’t be plausible, there was a great piece of art, and comics were promised the very next day.

It’s been two days and no more activity, so one must assume this was a joke.

YOU GUYS SUCK!

Seeing as it’s April 1st, this cannot be seen as totally verified but at least there’s some nice art to go along with it. Fabio Moon announces that he and Matt Fraction are bringing CASANOVA back as a webcomic:

New Casanova is coming. Starting tomorrow, out of the blue, we’ll be starting the new story arc. IN COLOR. Yes, you read correctly. And it’s going to be online, FOR FREE.

Where?

Here at the blog.

We wanted to do it over at Casanova.com, but that was taken. And, hey, it’s the internet, so it’s just a click away, no matter the url.

Matt is back, I’m back and, in time, Bá will be back too. It’s going to be different and exciting. Where will you be tomorrow when it hits?

No print plans announced, but the web-to-print thing would be highly plausible.

The “Next Door Neighbor” webcomics anthology has been running at SMITH Magazine for some time, with contributions from everyone from Harvey Pekar to K. Thor Jensen and back again. Chronicling tales of nightmare neighbors — and we’ve all got one of THOSE — the series is edited by Dean Haspiel. Babelgum, an online video site, now has a nice piece on Haspiel, NDN and the Deep Six Studio up.

We all have a next-door neighbor and a next-door neighbor story. With this realization in mind, comic book artist, Harvey Pekar collaborator and founder of webcomix collective Act-i-vate, Dean Haspiel approached storytelling site SMITH magazine. The result: a yearlong anthology of diverse, shocking and heartfelt true-life webcomix published biweekly by both emerging and celebrated writers and artists. We visit Dean, and contributors Joan Reilly and Joe Infurnari, at their communal workspace deep in industrial Brooklyn and discuss the importance of place and community – real life and virtual.

You’ll have to go to the link to watch the video.

Via pr, it seems that ComicMix, the website offering classic and new comics material in serialized webcomic form, has just landed a print deal, via IDW. Previously, a few print editions of ComicMix titles had been published as a one-off for the Baltimore Comic-Con.

IDW Publishing, a leading publisher of comic books and graphic novels, has begun an innovative partnership with ComicMix.com, a free website offering new and classic comics. Through this multi-year agreement, IDW will publish graphic novels, books and comics for ComicMix.com properties, enabling both companies to expand their offerings to customers and retailers, and combine their audience reach.

“ComicMix has a great line up of original and classic brands that are currently only available online, and despite the shift to the virtual world, there is still something unmistakable about reading a real-life book” said Greg Goldstein, chief operating officer of IDW. “IDW is known for producing some of the highest quality books in our industry, and we are looking forward to offering this to fans of ComicMix properties.”

Beginning in the fall of 2009, IDW will release trade paperbacks of ComicMix comics, as well as monthly comics, including many new stories that have previously been only available online at ComicMix.com. Initial titles will include GrimJack: The Manx Cat by John Ostrander and Timothy Truman, Jon Sable Freelance: Ashes of Eden by Mike Grell, and Hammer of the Gods by Mark Wheatley and Mike Avon Oeming, among others.

“This is a bit of a homecoming for many of us at ComicMix, because we have had a professional relationship with IDW Publishing over the past several years,” ComicMix Editor-In-Chief Mike Gold noted. “We’re honored to be among such first-rate comics and graphic novels. Quite frankly, I don’t think the ComicMix properties could find a better publishing home than IDW.”

The partnership with ComicMix allows IDW to distribute comics via mobile devices, increasing the company’s growing digital, downloadable publishing program, which already includes several major titles such as Star Trek: Countdown and Ghostbusters.

The New England Webcomics Weekend, organized by Meredith Gran and Rich Stevens, seems to have been a rousing success, and almost inevitably a rallying point from which many, many new things will spring. A few hundred people attended; in the future, a thousand will have been there.

Gary Tyrell was swept up in the magic, which was brought about in part by a conference-style group meal the modern way:

The day ended up with the greatest thing that’s ever happened in webcomics — rather than trying to decide where to take fifty creators and volunteers to eat (and split the bill) — the Topatoco secret weapon known to the web at Tallahassee Econolodge (real name witheld to protect the innocent) arranged for a dinner spread (and beer!) to be brought in to the Eastworks building and got the money collected well in advance. As the collected creators ate in a building constructed in the 1880s, the possibility arose that everything might collapse and webcomics would be wiped out with only Kate Beaton, John Campbell, John Allison, and Penny Arcade to carry on and rebuild our lost civilization (you read it here first — Kate Beaton is the Secretary of Agriculture of webcomics).

The feeling of community that’s so often found in webcomics was almost tangible in the room; I watched more sincere mutual admiration going on than ever I’ve witnessed. Looking into their eyes, I could see every creator in the room getting fired up and determined … If this person thinks so well of my work, I have to absolutely bring my best work and be worthy of this respect. I saw the basis of decades worth of weekends, conventions, symposia being laid, and every person in the room felt privileged to be there at the start; in 15 years when the new up-and-coming talent wants to know why the assemblage of webcomickers has sushi at the Saturday night gathering, the answer will be “Because we did it at NEWW ‘09.”

Rick Marshall has a more factual account:

- While the rest of the day’s panels drew slightly smaller crowds (with the exception of the “Print vs. Web vs. Bear” panel, which was well attended), most creators I spoke with seemed thrilled by the day’s outcome. Those who attended with an eye toward selling books and other merchandise generally broke even or turned a decent profit (Templar, Arizona creator Spike sold out of the 100-plus books she brought with her midway through the day), and those creators who were more keen on the networking and social aspects of the event seemed thrilled by the results. On the other side, I didn’t hear a single complaint about the event by any of the fan attendees, either. There was none of the grumbling concerns about crowds, lines or creator accessibility I tend to overhear at other shows, and to be honest, I couldn’t find anyone who had a negative comment about the event — no matter how much I eavesdropped.

This is only the beginning, we’re sure. In the meantime, there’s a The Webcomics Weekend 2009 Photo Pool Pool, from which we ganked the above.

Developing.

By a strange quirk, two big meetings are taking place today that reflect the two branches of the comics industry as it’s evolving.

Up in Easthampton, MA, the New England Webcomics Weekend is taking place, a Woodstock like gathering of webcomickers from around the nation that we’re sure will plot a course to take comics to the 22nd century and beyond in no time flat. If we didn’t have all this other crap going on, we’d be up there for sure, plotting away with everyone else, but in the meantime, we welcome all reports. The Boston Phoenix had a nice preview:

Fans will gather at the New England Webcomics Weekend on March 20 through 22. Originally planned as a small, informal gathering, the event has snowballed into a sort of Web-comics Woodstock — but in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

“We wanted to have a few of our friends who did Web comics come out for the weekend, show them the area, and tell them how we organize our business,” says Meredith Gran, one of the show’s instigators. “But . . . the response was massive.”

In fact, registration has been officially closed because of parking restrictions, so chances of getting in at this point are dicey. (Gran promises, though: “This will definitely be a yearly thing.”) At press time, more than 700 artists and fans are scheduled to descend on the Eastworks Building, a converted factory at 116 Pleasant Street in Easthampton, where they’ll buy and sell merchandise and attend panels and a Web comics award show.

MEANWHILE, down in Memphis, the annual ComicsPRO meeting is winding up, as DC makes lots of announcements (see separate post) and forward thinking comics retailers plan THEIR 22nd Century futures. Matt Price is regularly reporting on the goings on:

Not all was rosy, however. The overall economic slump had affected some locations. Furthermore, logistic problems with a large supplier have become more pronounced in recent weeks. And, something on many stores’ minds is the question of how digital content will impact the comic book industry.

More as it develops.

Glen Hauman interviews the scans_daily moderators over at ComicMix, and it’s interesting on many levels.

ComicMix: What do you know about the circumstances of the shutdown? Has LiveJournal told you what prompted the shutdown? Were you given any warning, or any ability to address the situation?

Stubbleupdate: I crawled out of bed on Saturday morning (which meant that the community would have been deleted late evening/night on Friday, America time) and saw that my inbox had a lot of LJ friends requests from people on the community. I get that sometimes, but four overnight is unusual. They all wanted to know where the community had gone, which is the first that I had heard of it. A lot can happen in six hours on the internet.

We’ll drink to that. Later on, there’s this:

Rabican: We don’t have any hard data about this, but honestly, as moderators of an 8000+ member community … we didn’t really have the time. Still, the distinction needs to be made between 8000 people on an online community and 8000 people scattered throughout the comics-buying audience. Yes, many of us on s_d did share the same tastes (ironically, there was a strong Peter David fan contingent), but I would be surprised if any title besides the most popular, best-selling comics broke more than 1,000 buyers from our membership. (That’s just a ballpark guess, since we’ve never taken polls and have a lot of lurkers anyway.) Eight thousand people is a large number, but 1,100 buyers of New Avengers here, 600 people with Invincible on their pull lists there … that’s just going to vanish in larger market fluctuations.

We hadn’t realized that the scans_daily community was larger than the paid circulation of all but a handful of periodical comics not published by Marvel and DC (and more than quite a few comics published by Marvel and DC). To all those people who said that exposure on scans_daily meant greater sales, wouldn’t it make sense for periodical comics sales (other than stunt event comics) to be RISING rather than falling? Yes, we know that free sampling works, but we must have taken stupid pills today because we just don’t get it.

A few people have linked to this post at Mightygodking as being of interest, but we couldn’t tell you exactly why.

Dylan Horrocks, one of New Zealand’s premier cartoonists, hasn’t been much heard from in recent years, but he’s got a brand new website which will showcase the popular webcomics serialization of his old print series ATLAS — which has come out twice since 2001, so hopefully he’ll be a bit more prolific!

Well, it’s taken me a while, but I’m finally joining the wonderful world of online comics. Henceforth, this site will be my primary way of serialising long stories, replacing the old paper pamphlet format of Pickle and Atlas. I’m making the shift for a number of reasons - from my growing enthusiasm for the internet to the appeal of weekly deadlines - but for those who still love paper, never fear: everything will end up as book collections as well.

Horrocks plans to serialize two stories online, “The American Dream” and “Sam Zabel & the Magic Pen.” Since Dylan is one of our most favoritest cartoonists, we’re overjoyed to see him back in the game.

Technorati Tags: Dylan Horrocks

My only regret is not doing everything myself forever.

– Webcomicker R Stevens.

§ Reed Exhibitions is hiring a marketing guru for their pop culture shows:

I am looking for someone to join our team here in Borwalk, CT as a Marketing Director to oversee all of our marketing efforts on New York Comic Con, New York Anime Fest and the new C2E2 (Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo). This is not an entry level job, this is not a fan job this is not an easy job, but it is a lot of hard work and a lot of fun.

§ICv2 sits down with Tokyopop CEO Stuart Levy in a wide-ranging and fairly candid for this sort of thing manner:

So in other words you were seeing declines in your sales that led you to believe that you had to prepare for a smaller market?

There were declines in sales, but there were also returns. The returns were the big things. We’ve seen declines in sales before. But the amount of returns that were coming back from retail was so significant. We saw that early first quarter and then continuing in second quarter.

We’d seen first quarter returns before, but continuing second quarter like that was the first time. It really shocked us and I said, “There’s something going on here.”

And Part Two:

What’s going on with the movie development of Tokyopop properties? That’s probably our most important initiative because it’s very clear to me that without a big movie, without a big TV show it’s very hard to have a significant blockbuster hit. And you can look at anything that’s selling in the comic book world, or the manga world, or the book world in general and it’s almost inevitably related to some kind of film or television.

§ Erin Finnegan has two excellent recaps of the recent ICv2 conference. Part 1, Part Two.

§ The Hibbs vs. Butcher debate vis-à-vis Viz backlist viability continues in this all-star comment thread.

§ Internet kerfuffle classic!

Step one: Val D’Orazio discusses the ongoing monetization dilemma:

Yes, it looks like the switch is on from paper to digital. But are people willing to pay for this digital media? For the most part — no. People are not willing to pay for it, unless you give them a damn good reason to. Damn Good Reasons To: 1) If I was DC or Marvel (or any other media company), I’d pinpoint what the top 5% webcomics are. Offer those web cartoonists competitive exclusive distribution deals that includes a health insurance component. Then make a subscription-based site offset by sales of hard copies and merchandise.

It’s a thoughtful post, although I’d quibble that a lot of what she’s talking about to happen in five years has already been happening — the big media blog buyout happened two years ago, f’r instance.

Step two: Joey Manley comes right out and says Occasional Superheroine’ is Wrong About Webcomics:

I can’t say that the post is plain wrong and belittle it with 70’s TV references without at least explaining why I think it’s wrong. There are all kinds of reasons, but here’s one fundamental one: D’Orazio sees a day when the “top” webcomics are bought up by Marvel and DC, and the rest are discredited as amateurs. Her comments section filled up immediately with “top” webcomickers declaring that they’re doing just fine, thank you, and that it would be a very, very expensive proposition to buy them out. Which is true. Another truth: there are new “top” webcomics launching every day. It’s a slippery and ambitious field, with new xkcds popping up at an alarming (or delightful) rate and proceeding to take over the world. I picked xkcd as my example on purpose, by the way: what DC or Marvel editor would have picked that one up? No DC or Marvel editor would have, especially if he or she only had the first month or two of strips to go by. And the people who discovered xkcd and made it a hit? Most of them, I’ll wager, weren’t comic book readers, and would have been immune to any “anti-amateur” campaign waged by Marvel and DC’s PR machines. (I mean, come on: it’s stick figures for God’s sake).

Step three: Val, who is always going on about how horrible the internets are and wishing people would be more civil, responds that Manley must be wrong about webcomics because…he’s an expert in webcomics:

Joey Manley wrote a post (which I am not giving the benefit of a link) that he says “isn’t meant to start a fight” — “But her recent post about webcomics, and how the business should (or will) evolve in the next five years, is just plain wrong.” Disclaimer: Joey Manley’s main business is in webcomics — including the running of sites that host web comic creators.

For a far better discussion of the business models involved, read the comments post of the original piece.

Karen Ellis, creator of the webcomic PLANET KAREN, is the latest comics creator to face the disaster of a devastating fire, according to a widely circulated letter:

Karen Ellis, creator of diary comic Planet Karen, lost nearly everything in a fire this weekend.

The apartment above her own caught fire on Sunday night, and while firefighters fought the blaze for three hours, tragically, the occupant was killed. Karen is physically fine, but most of her possessions, including books, clothes and drawing supplies, are ruined beyond repair. The apartment itself has suffered so much structural
damage that she’s also been made effectively homeless. (See this comic for an account in her own words.)

Karen is a valuable part of the webcomics community. If you can, please consider making a contribution via the donation button at Planet Karen to help out. Every donation, whatever its size, really counts!

Girl-Wonder.org, the organisation that hosts Planet Karen, is also planning a fundraising auction on Karen’s behalf. If you have items you think you’d like to donate, please contact Karen Healey at ten.karen@gmail.com for details.

Is Barack Obama funny? Dean Trippe and Evan Bryce are going to find out as they launch a new webcomic entitled PRESIDENT AWESOME.

President Awesome has officially taken office! Welcome to the new administration. This weekly series will faithfully satirize the 44th President of the United States as he preserves, protects, and defends the Constitution of the United States to the best of his ability.

President Awesome is a weekly political comic about President Barack Obama! Basically, it’s The Daily Show meets The Far Side, but you know, way better.

Congrats to Dash Shaw for finishing his astonishing webcomic BODY WORLD. You can read the whole thing online or wait until the Pantheon version comes out. The experience for both is quite different, we imagine.

Your choice.

This should be fun:

Fleen explains what’s going on, although we liked Unshelved’s description, as well: The accent will be on hanging out, with some additional focus on chilling.

New York Comic-Con 2009 is nothing but a lingering sore throat now, but all the forces and dramas that clashed and mingled continue to ricochet around the industry. Coming, as it did, at the crossroads of so many factors–the global economic collapse, plunging profits at bookstores, Borders on the critical list, and belt tightenings of varying degrees of painfulness at many comics companies–it set the tone that will carry us through several quarters

Amazingly, the tone was one of fan mania and not the gloom and doom that is everywhere else. In the week before the show, even the pluckiest of observers told The Beat privately that they feared a spending freeze on the floor, leaving exhibitors in a pool of red ink. When I wrote my preview for PW a month ago, everyone had been legitimately plucky and optimistic, but since then economic conditions had quickly worsened everywhere, and Diamond and DC had been hit with cutbacks. Exxpecting attendees to be tight with their pennies was a no-brainer.

But that didn’t happen. In Bob Chapman’s famous phrase, “Inside these walls the ‘fantasy’ economy is perfect. Outside the doors of the convention the economy sucks.” It was like everyone got to the Javits Center and decided it was really 2005, and ran around doing what people normally do at cons, getting autographs from Torchwood stars and Geoff Johns, watching movie previews and Cup O’ Joe panels, oogling Slave Leais, and marveling at Unemployed Skeletor. It was con, and even if it was fantasy, it was an escape.

Now, we are not here to say that everyone was raking it in like Bernie Madoff in 2008. Big ticket items, as expected, moved sslloowwllyy. Sales were quiet in the original art section and if you are thinking of casting a few expensive resin statues to sell, our advice is DON’T. Back issue sales were brisk because everything was slashed to bargain basement prices. Some artists and publishers did fantastically well, but many had sales that were far below a regular convention. It wasn’t champagne and caviar for everyone — but it was busy. And that in itself was remarkable.
(more…)

Fantagraphics’ website is now running Johnny Ryan’s Blecky Yuckerella, which we know many folks will enjoy.

Tor.com just announced a pretty impressive line-up of SF-themed webcomics, and they’ll be showing it all off at a panel on Saturday:Tor.com will be holding a panel, moderated by Pablo Defendini, and attended by Irene Gallo, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Dan Goldman.

Jumping in Headfirst: Tor.com and the role of traditional publishers in today’s new media economy
Saturday, Feb 7
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Room 1A18

Decription: As the future rapidly becomes the present, traditional dead-tree publishers have two choices: either get with the program or get out of the way. But the digital space rewrites the rules of the game for any industry based on IP (intellectual property).

Speculative Fiction publishers, already having an eye on the future by default, are in a unique position to lead the charge away from traditional publishing models and into uncharted territory. Come listen to staff and friends of Tor.com as they explain the method to their madness in putting together the science-fiction and fantasy site that gives away free (as in beer) stories, comics, and novels; followed by a Q&A session divided into two parts: first part with questions culled from Tor.com members in advance, second part with questions from the audience.

Topics to Discuss: Free content online, eBooks, digital delivery of comics, digital rights management. Building an online community as a platform on which to promote authors’ work.

Following a break while he had to move home and family, Chris Onstad is back with ACHEWOOD. How we missed thee.