The webcomics blog about webcomics

Let’s Do Some Catching Up Today

You'll thank me later.

Are you the one person that didn’t know that Octopus Pie updated last night? If so, my good deed for the day is done. Read, enjoy, and for the sake of all that’s good and holy, avoid unicyclists.

  • What the hell, England? Jorge Cham, Doctor of Engineering and well-known world-wide lecturer to graduate students, comes to your fair shores on a speaking tour and you detain him at the border because he’s not a “real doctor”, and thus sentence him to deportation? The first comic went up the day he was due to begin speaking in England, and the story isn’t done yet … but seriously?
  • On the non-sucking side of England, there is a new Freakangels trade in my hands after yesterday’s trip to the comics shop — the third of the series, released pretty much like clockwork, and appearing mere weeks after the last page of the book updated online. Okay, granted, Warren Ellis has a publisher taking care of many of the fiddly little bits inherent in publishing, but damn — that’s impressive. Twenty-four (mostly weekly) six-page updates and call it a book. My hat’s off to you, angry drunken sir.
  • Reminder: just over two weeks until the Dallas Webcomics Expo takes place in Plano, TX. Taking a cue from New England Webcomics Weekend back in March, Texas-area webcomickers will be getting together and seeing what kind of fun they can have. Speaking of NEWW, it will be returning in 2010, but sources say it will be moving from the very busy Spring con season to Fall. More on exact dates when that information is available.
  • Episode 12, and the end of the first “season” of SMASH by Chris and Kyle Bolton, released this week. Know what I call that? A good opportunity to either get all caught up or to read a big chunk of story (just shy of 150 pages worth) before the new season starts. You play end-of-season catch-up all the time with Mad Men or Breaking Bad; just this time it’s got a 10 year old superkid and not morally bankrupt early-60s ad execs or meth-cooking high school chemistry teachers.
  • Speaking of milestones, here’s one that’s worth mentioning. Webcomicker get to draw whatever they need to into their scenes, and that makes the most fantastical vistas possible. Slightly more difficult are photo comics, where you have to stage the scenes (or write around your latest random snapshots). Even more difficult would be photo comics where you have to build the settings and scenes, but what about where you had to construct the mise en scène not out of interchangeable components, but from traditional handicrafts? Ladies and gentlemen, Amu’s World:

    Amu’s World has reached its first year of updates [28 October]. It’s a photo-based comic featuring hand-crocheted amigurumi characters created by my wife. I know a year isn’t a particularly long time for a webcomic, especially a weekly, but I’m very proud do have never missed an update or been late with a comic.

    Also, we’re celebrating our first year with a Fan Art contest. The prize is a hand-crocheted Amu’s World amigurumi doll and a large print of one of my photos I post every Friday. The winner chooses which one they get.

    Let’s be clear — if creator B. Casimir Slaski wants to do a comic with a ninja, the Prince of All Cosmos, or a villainous gang of bunnies with eyepatches, he first has to convince his wife to craft such a thing. It kind of limits how much he can wake up at 3:00 am with a brilliant — brilliant, I tell you!! — idea to take the strip in a new, exciting, hilarious direction because the lead time on a crochet Yog-Sothoth (is it weird that’s the first thing that popped into my head?) is probably pretty long. For creating under such constraints, we at Fleen salute Amu’s World.

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