What with the Marvel’s motion comics and Disney buyout news, it appears that comics on the web may just be considered viable property worth investing in now. In the meantime…
- Pigs of the Industry reviewed Rogue Royal, Absoulte Magnitude and A Stinking Corpse. Webcomics Critique covered Outpost-7 and Optical Sloth reviewed Xoc, Coexistence and Animal Stew. Spwug reviewed Friendly Hostility and Other People’s Business… A bunch of the other review sites are on hiatus, vacation and changing schedules. I ran into this ultimate review site but I’m not sure if it’s updating every Monday as it promises. There was also a bold opinion about PVP, but I’m not sure about the update schedule there either. We’ll see Monday, I guess.
- Fictions reviews Ellerbisms 2 and 3 and High-Low reviewed Ten Thousand Things To Do, Typhoon, Negro Frankenstein and Real Madness Comix. Also: Absolute Magnitude takes the checkered flag.
- Speaking of Zuda, they’ve made some adjustments.
- Darryl Hughes and Monique MacNaughton have a new webcomic for us and it’s probably not what you’d expect. The Daily Crosshatch brings us another Subway Story and Comics Worth Reading made us aware of Doane’s Conversations With ADD, which is a collection of comic folk interviews. Heroes, Inc. featured Things Wrong With Me and Forbidden Planet mentions Geek Girl’s Network’s Top 10 Women Comic Characters.
- Kleefeld talks about original comic art and Zuda’s interface, push and pull. Newsarama logicaly expands on the topic a bit more. In my experience, the web is best used to showcase your work – except for those lightning strike few who have the right mix of excellent work, audience and business skills at just the right time. Showcasing your work may open other doors, at the very least.
- And the question is asked: What is the future of cartooning in the digital age? And the answer is “I think (with some sadness) that the future of cartooning IS the digital age…The key is not to think you need to know it all in order to use the technology.“
- And this… I just like the sound of it... comic domination.
- And Jake Forbes gives us four digital comic challenges but then he tells us what readers want from comics online. He even ends it with a nice zinger… “Until all of those wants are satisfied, Digital will remain an interesting supplement, not not a viable alternative to print comics.” Ouch.
- And there may be something to the technique used in this Things Change hypercomic. You could tell two or more) sides of a story in the same comic at the same time or include special animated panels or some other creative features.
- On the other hand, maybe it’s time for superheroes to stop with the constant soap-opera-ing. Of course, there may be some reason not to abandon the soap approach totally. There’s a balance to be kept there.
4 comments ↓
The thing about the Forbes articles is that he’s talking solely about the concept of taking old-fashioned Marvel-style comics digital while still retaining the traditional revenue stream.
I personally see Marvel-style comics and webcomics as completely different beasts, and I’m actually not all that interested in Marvel-type stuff. I love the freedom and flexibility that webcomics bring, and the wide variety of stories and formats that it offers. The last thing I want is “comic books online.”
For me, digital has already won because it’s not trying to replace something else.
I also like to support webcomic creators by buying their printed material, but unfortunately a lot of the more experimental ones can’t really do that at all due to formatting issues. I’d say that digital comic creators should consider selling CD-ROM-based partial site archives or something, but CDs are such last-year media too. So really they should just sell a .zip or the like and then let people archive the files however they see fit. (That is what I plan on doing when I finally complete Unity in a few months.)
Hmm… yeah. CD’s are sooo last year, aren’t they? A zip file seems like a much better idea – until Google decides it will just host the internet for everyone anyway. =)
It does appear important to use the strengths of the digital medium when possible. I’m looking at other CMS’s (besides wordpress) to simplify the headaches and make (for instance) my comics and online content downloadable and displayable on offline computers.
Thanks for the link! My Spwug column updates Tuesdays (usually evenings by US time). I normally do webcomic reviews the first Tuesday of every month. The one you linked here was delayed because I was called out of town. There should have been a new review on September 1, but this month’s chosen webcomic archives went offline due to a fatal server crash. So I’ll have to review a different comic and post it next Tuesday. Keep checking back, and reviews’ll show up eventually!
I’ll definitely be checking this site out. I’m glad to have been directed here!
Okay, the first Tuesday/Wednesday of every month, I’ll try to remember to check out Spwug. Great name, by the way.