The webcomics blog about webcomics

Today’s Unanticipated, Unquestioningly True Thing

John Campbell is a genius. A genius, I tell you!

  • The 94% opium-free Wondermark marks (ha, ha) its departure from Modern Tales today; if you were to follow the links, you get a placeholder that promises the afootness of a thing. The Wondermark homepage similarly heralds this mysterious thing, which is revealed (at last) as a rather spiffy new web design, once again using Tyler Martin‘s ComicPress theme. Really, this is all just an excuse to point the five of you that don’t use ComicPress for your webcomic over to it, and the make sure the rest of you knew about Martin’s new advice regarding WordPress caching.
  • Speaking of design and redesign, I want to point you to some nifty Design Things. We at Fleen have been enjoying The System since it launched over the summer, and more recently, have been digging into the Rosscott, Inc blog. It’s heavily focused on a) graphic design and b) Mad Men; I don’t watch the latter, but the former has some really nifty stuff highlighted. Go check out fake movie posters, typeface porn, cool error pages, brilliant infographics, and more.
  • As long as we’re off of webcomics for a moment, have you seen this? One day only showing of classic MAD magazine covers at MoCCA, serving as a preview to an auction of same (including the first appearance of Alfred E. Neuman). It’s next Wednesday, 29 October, from 10 am to 5 pm at 594 Broadway #401 in New York ($5.00 donation at the door). I’ll be in Boston, dammit, so somebody go see this for me.
  • Finally, people have been emailing with news of the 2008 Webcomic Readers Choice Awards at Frumph. Quick thoughts:
    • Another set of webcomics awards? Really?
    • A manageable number of categories — that’s good
    • Winner plus three runners-up, plus honorable mention per category — that’s less good
    • Some high-quality judges, including Steve Hamaker — that’s good
    • A somewhat complicated nomination/voting process — that’s less good
    • Sixth-place finishes in both Best Protagonist and Best Antagonist for xkcd despite the fact that pretty much none of the characters has a name? Really?
    • Much like some earlier iterations of the Webcartoonists Choice Awards, there seems to be a domination by one or two comics, and a somewhat narrow field to the winners — neither good nor bad, but possibly reflective of too few people involved

    We’ll see if there’s a 2009 WCRCA or not, and in all these awards deals, probably the only one you really need to pay attention to is “Best New Comic”. In any event, Fleen congratulates all the winners and their parents, who worked so hard to make the costumes.

Let’s not dance around it too much. Circle Vs. Square for best writing? I’d name the winners for best art or anything else if I could remember even one of them.

[…] on things that interest me (generally design, coffee, nerdly stuff, and Mad Men).  Here’s another post from my friends over at Fleen: Speaking of design and redesign, I want to point you to some nifty […]

I agree on the amount of awards per category completely, will have to revamp that for next year.

Nominations started on Sept 1st and lasted until the 1st of October, all you had to do with choose a comic and a reason. From the 1st until the 14th you can login to vote and after that was judging.

It was completely my mistake to ‘screen’ the nominations, we had planned it, we even made judge notes to do so but in the hustle and bustle it never got done, totally my bad. Hence why XKCD was still there. We “did” however make a unanimous judges vote to bump them out of the award winning areas which is why you saw them at 6th place.

The reason we had so many awards *this* year was really because of the amount of the way the judges voting took place; which we’ll revamp of course next year. When comparing the bottom to the next one up it meant that the one above could only fall down one slot and that meant some really good webcomics that really desere the nod weren’t going to receive it.

I figure there was a domination of the comics is because of the popularity vote and how we went from the bottom / less voted and then up comparing which was better to the other, leaving the popular at the top; hence the webcomic “readers” choice awards, the readers/voters need to have a higher weight.

Next year there should be some significant changes including screening out nominations that just do not fit.

All in all I consider it a success mainly because I found out from various emails from readers that they have found some new and good comics to read; which was my main goal for hosting the WCRCA’s to begin with.

– Phil (Frumph)

[…] A Big-Ass Mad Men Post July 15th, 2010 I’m sure it should come as no surprise that as a big fan of design, I’m a big fan of Mad Men. It is an amazing show. I’ve taken some flak for this in the past, with Gary “Fleen” Tyrell saying about my blog: It’s heavily focused on a) graphic design and b) Mad Men; […]

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