The webcomics blog about webcomics

Backloggin’

Okay, I don't have it quite this bad, but still.

Whole bunch of stuff that came up in the past 30 hours or so that we just didn’t have time to address previously. Let’s take it one at a time, shall we?

  • KC Green has preorders for Horribleville Vol 1 (with release scheduled for 16 February) open at New Reliable Press. He’s also got a really touching strip up at Gunshow today, and not the bad kind of touch, either. Don’t be surprised as you read it that you discover you’ve got something stuck in your eye.
  • I first heard about Mocktopus from the tweetings of Chris Sims (he of The Invincible Super-Blog; I’ve since learned both that creator Max Huffman is ludicrously young (that would be “15” in your Earth years) and he has a pretty good eye/hand/brain for absurdity. The art started off pretty rough and has since become much better in a really short period of time.

    Comics Alliance (which site is shockingly well done most of the time, and pretty damn funny when the aforementioned Mr Sims is writing) interviewed Huffman recently on the experience of being one of the younger creators out there, with an undercurrent of Risinig star who will be the hotshot cartoonist of 2013 (of course, the world will end in 2012, so that’s less to look forward to than one might have hoped).

    Anyhoo, Huffman acquits himself well; Dawkins knows that if somebody had interviewed me when I was 15, I’d have come off like a complete idiot, which is the natural state of most teenaged males.

  • Wondermark makes a return appearance over at at MySpace Dark Horse Presents (note: the direct links for the various stories all seem to go to “Brody’s Ghost” by Mark Crilley which was pretty good, but you’ll have to click to get to Wondermark) with an eight-page tribute to awkwardness. Also, the next issue of MDHP (due 3 February) will feature stories by Yuko Ota and Graham Annable, so keep your eyes open for that, hey?
  • The last Teaching Baby Paranoia went up yesterday. Ten years, more than 500 comics, and an unknown amount of true knowledge mixed with an even more unknown amount of complete apocrypha. Thanks to Bryant Paul Johnson for all the pseduohistory.
  • Via Joey Manley: there’s a Skottie Young webcomic a-comin’ and I for one am excited. Anybody that hasn’t seen his work on the Eric Shanower-adapted OZ comics (if you think you know the story from the Judy Garland movie, you’re sadly mistaken) from Marvel (of all places) is missing out. Completely charming work, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with when given the opportunity to work with an original creation of his own.
  • Speaking of Marvel, this was pointed out to me by my friend Brett: VC money backing “an immersive social experience and marketplace around digital comics and associated merchandise.” Partnership announced with Marvel, but it’s not clear what (if any) impact this will have on the indy creators that we focus on here; from the very minimal description, it sound like a turnkey solution so that the next time a publisher decides that “webcomics” means “put our back catalogue pages online”, they don’t have to build the whole damn thing from scratch. So in the forthcoming maybe-battle-for-marketshare between Graphic.ly and Longbox, which one is Betamax?
  • Finally, had another back-and-forth with The Guig-star late yesterday to find out how the somewhat abrupt transition at Webomics Dot Com had gone. In no particular order, it was established that:

    1. The lack of Terms & Conditions for subscribers at launch was an oversight that needs to be fixed and will be “soon”
    2. Those who wrote articles for WDC will be able to give their approval to Guigar to use their stuff or not as they wish; those that don’t want their stuff on Pay!WDC can run it elsewhere as they wish
    3. It’s been bumpy, but WDC got more subscribers on Day One than anticipated (Guigar described the number as “For a non-porn site, encouraging”)
    4. If Pay!WDC doesn’t work out, there may be a market for Guigar Porn, ’cause the ladies love them some Brad Guigar

Brad & Co. are now allowing access to some of the old content, specifically the old Public Forum. Strangely (ironically?), one of the posts in the Public Forum on December 28th concerns the exact issue of charging for content. A NYT article weighs in on media outlets charging for content. One of the posts discussing the article quotes the article:

“Of course, it is the established media, with their legacy of high operating costs and outdated technology, that face this problem. Leaner, newer online competitors will continue to be free, avidly picking up the users lost by sites that begin to charge.”

Gary, just wanted to say again how much I appreciate that you follow all this fast-moving industry action. I just can’t keep up. And with you posting, I don’t need to!

[…] page has previously mentioned Max Huffman, youthful creator of Mocktopus, and the zany stew of absurdity that he brings to his […]

[…] a pretty long hiatus (a touch more than three years, actually), Bryant Paul Johnson has given us just one more (dare I hope for more) update of […]

[…] a pretty long hiatus (a touch more than three years, actually), Bryant Paul Johnson has given us just one more (dare I hope for more) update of […]

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