So Much News Today, Probably Nothing Tomorrow
Let’s jump in, shall we?
- Will the world ever tire of telling Kate Beaton how much she rocks? Not this corner of it. Nor, apparently, the corner that included TCAF over the weekend, as the Doug Wright awards for outstanding Canadian cartooning were awarded on Saturday, and our Kate took the award for Best Emerging Talent. Everybody feel good for Kate!
- Speaking of TCAF (I so have to go in 2011), much coverage may be found around the nets, but I particularly liked Christopher Bird‘s take on things, especially this bit:
ITEM! At one of the panels the various panel members were playing “what indie band is each cartoonist.†IE, “Peter Bagge is R.E.M.†I mention this because Scott McCloud’s daughter said that Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics would be the Ramones, because “only the words change.â€
Bird doesn’t say which daughter it was, but Sky and Winter are both pretty quick, so we’ll award them each ten awesome points and a piggyback ride from Mr North.
- Back today: Anders Loves Maria! Rene Engström has said that she’s moving into the end-story, which is both awesome and horrible. I want to know where these characters end up, and I don’t want the story to be over.
- Man, David Willis should just be given the entire Sunday comics page (except for Doonesbury, Pearls Before Swine, and FoxTrot) to do with as he wishes. Once again, he funkily hits it out of the ballpark.
- Internet Jesus is pretending to want to know about your webcomic, and has declared it Webcomics Week at his forums in celebration:
You do a webcomic? Tell me about it here. Not more than one or two images, please, or else the thread takes forever to load. Don’t forget the bloody link.
Do not disappoint the man — he wields the Chair Leg of Truth.
- Finally, Valerie D’Orazio does a supremely good job of not falling down laughing as she points us all to maybe the stupidest thing said today about the internets:
“If you give away your premium content for free, you are basically hastening your own demise, signing your own death warrant,” said Laura Martin, a media analyst with Soleil-Media Metrics.
Forget our little online funnybook stories — the counterexamples on this one are too numerous to list. Unless, as I suspect, her audience is made up solely of people that do not actually produce any premium content, but merely make their cut by charging huge percentages of eventual retail for basically moving said content from place to place, in which case, it ain’t the giving-away that’s signed those warrants, it’s called progress.
[…] (No image, so as to avoid ruining the joke. Link via Gary Tyrrell.) […]
By Journalista - the news weblog of The Comics Journal » Blog Archive » May 12, 2009: Speed and cheapness on 05.12.09 10:24 am
Yeah that was Sky originally. It was from my solo panel in reference to this whole thing:
http://scottmccloud.com/2009/03/03/music-comics
Note that Dan Clowes is REM, not Pete Bagge (who was probably Hüsker Dü or something).
By Scott McCloud on 05.12.09 12:36 pm
Now, as near as I can tell, Google Trends says that Penny Arcade has about 100,000 readers, and I think most folks would point to it as one of the most popular webcomics in the world. Jeff Goldblum’s last TV show, the NBC cop drama Raines, averaged about 6 million viewers according to Wikipedia, and it was cancelled after 7 episodes. So if the networks can’t figure out a way to make a profit off something that gets 60 times the traffic of Penny Arcade…
Mike
By MHPayne on 05.12.09 5:57 pm
the counterexamples on this one are too numerous to list.
New to the whole Internet marketing thing – any chance you could give me an example or two?
So if the networks can’t figure out a way to make a profit off something that gets 60 times the traffic of Penny Arcade…
One of the problems the networks face is the immense amount of overhead and production costs required to make a TV show as opposed to a webcomic. The Penny Arcade guys basically need a tablet PC, some Adobe software, and a web host, and they’re set; whereas that immense list of people in the end credits following a TV show are for the most part *actually there for a reason*, and every single of one of them is getting paid for their time. TV production *really* does require an veritable army of cast and crew in order to turn out professional-quality work. So unless the networks find some way to cut costs in the long run, they’re kind of screwed.
By Jon on 05.13.09 5:00 pm
[…] recognizing the best in Canadian comics and graphic novels. Last year, she took the award for Best Emerging Talent, and this year she’s nominated for the Pigskin Peters Award, which recognizes experimental or […]
By Fleen: Home Of The Webcomics Action News Team! » Everybody I Know Is In Seattle on 03.12.10 2:31 pm
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