The Everyday

Time to go: Adam Cadwell has wrapped up his autobiographical webcomic The Everyday, after 200 episodes, and Mark Ellerby has called it quits on his diary comic Ellerbisms after comic number 250. That leaves both those webcomics at a nice, easy to read size for those who want to look at them from the beginning. Cadwell has a big post about his future plans and a flurry of alternate endings to finish his strip in style. (Hat tip: Forbidden Planet blog.)

Here’s some big news: Tickets go on sale today for New England Webcomics Weekend.

Brian Heater is doing a massive multipart interview with Dan Goldman, creator of Red Light Properties, at The Daily Cross Hatch.

In Maps and Legends started running on Zuda in May, but the site shut down two months later so it didn’t get too far. It’s coming back, though: Creators Mike Jasper and Niki Smith are relaunching on a variety of platforms, including the web, on September 1.

Creator on creator: John Walsh, the creator of Go Home Paddy, a webcomic that is new to me but looks kinda cool, interviews Mark Siegel about his webcomic, Sailor Twain. (Via Fleen.)

Looking for a new webcomic to check out? Daniella Orihuela-Gruber has ten suggestions.

Podcast watch: The guest on the latest TGT Webcomics podcast is Yamino, co-creator of Sister Claire. Meanwhile, The Webcomic Beacon goes to Minneapolis Indie Expo and talks to Evan Dahm (Rice Boy.)

Reviews

Larry Cruz on Amazing SuperPowers (The Webcomic Overlook)
Jason and Steve on Bullfinch (Digital Strips)
Larry Cruz on Nathan Sorry (The Webcomic Overlook)
Dave Ferraro on vol. 1 of The Night Owls (print edition) (Comics-and-More)

Seedless

I saw the solicitation for Corey Lewis’s Seedless a while ago, but I didn’t realize it was a webcomic. Chris Arrant interviews Corey at Newsarama; who knew there was so much to know about grapes?

For those coming late to the indignation party, Larry Cruz has a summary of the Penny Arcade fiasco. Read the comments and follow the links if you have a lot of time; it’s an interesting debate.

Looking for some closure in your life? Alexander Danner posts a roundup of webcomics that are scheduled to end soon at ComixTalk.

Geeks of Doom has an interview with Brian Clevinger, who is best known for Atomic Robo but also has a couple of webcomics, How I Killed Your Master and Warbot in Accounting.

Patch.com talks to Mark Siegel, the editorial director of First Second Books and the creator of Sailor Twain, about his webcomic and his love of the Hudson River.

Erica Moen (DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Diary) chats about her life and work with Dan Copulsky of Question Riot.

At Robot 6 I offer quick takes on five webcomics that I’m catching up on over my summer vacation.

At ComixTalk, Max Vaehling discusses Flattr, which allows readers to tip a webcomic they like, but he expresses doubts about whether it’s going to make much of a difference for most people. And he also has an interesting survey of the German webcomics scene.

Laura Hudson of Comics Alliance visits a gallery show by John Campbell, creator of Pictures for Sad Children, and finds it has the same brooding, wistful vibe as the comic.

Podcasts: Kurt Sasso chats with DJ Bogtrotter and Brock Heasley at TGT Webcomics, and comics management systems for webcomics sites are on the agenda at The Webcomic Beacon.

Reviews

Daniella Orihuela-Gruber on vols. 1 and 2 of DAR (All About Manga)
Alexander Danner on Family Man (ComixTalk)
Jason and Steve on HIKYM and Nathan Sorry (Digital Strips)
Sophie Stevens on vol. 6 of Megatokyo (print edition) (Animanga Nation)
Koltreg on Octopus Pie (Koltreg’s Nerding/Review Blog)
Leroy Douresseaux on Penny Arcade 6: The Halls Below (The Comic Book Bin)
Robert A. Howard on Requiem (Tangents Reviews)
Lauren Davis on Shi Long Pang, The Wandering Shaolin Monk (print edition) (Storming the Tower)
Sean Kleefeld on Shi Long Pang, The Wandering Shaolin Monk (print edition) (Kleefeld on Comics)
Jason and Steve on Strewth! (Digital Strips)

Set to Sea

Drew Weing’s Set to Sea is one of the most beautiful webcomics around (well, beautiful and violent), and it’s interesting to hear him talk about how he developed his style and his story in this interview at Avoid the Future. (Via Journalista.) Also: Cody Clark of the Somewhere in Utah Daily Herald profiles Howard Tayler, creator of Schlock Mercenary.

At CBR, Alex Dueben talks to Karl Kerschl about The Abominable Charles Christopher.

Katie Monnin talks to Dan Goldman, creator of Red Light Properties, at Graphic Novel Reporter.

And Brian Heater has an epic, four-part interview with Dean Haspiel (somehow it seems like everything associated with Dean is bigger than life, so why not have the interview be too). Start here and keep going.

Chris Hazelton talks Misfile with Randall Danger at The Epic Sandbox. (Via Spwug.)

Podcasts: The Webcomic Beacon looks at organizing your work area in their latest episode. Barry Linck of Phineus: Magician for Hire is the guest on the latest TGT Webcomics podcast, and Kurt and Mike are heading to Fan Expo 2010 in Toronto in a couple of weeks.

Reviews: At Spwug, DKM Marlink has a few thoughts on the end of Dreamless.

Michael Meylikhov on Cat Versus Human (Multiversity Comics)
Larry Cruz on Ctrl+Alt+Del (part 1, part 2) (The Webcomic Overlook)
Robert A. Howard on Lizzy (Tangents Reviews)
Larry Cruz on Manly Guys Doing Manly Things (The Webcomic Overlook)
Koltreg on Manly Guys Doing Manly Things (Koltreg’s Nerding/Review Blog)
Daniella Orihuela-Gruber on Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn (print edition) (All About Manga)
J. Caleb Mozzocco on Set to Sea (print edition) (Las Vegas Weekly)
Lauren Davis on Split Lip 2 (print edition) (Storming the Tower)

Girl Genius heroine Agatha Heterodyne

Kaja and Phil Foglio, the creators of Girl Genius and several other comics, have a stern rule about not letting their intellectual properties sit idle. Not only do they publish Girl Genius as a webcomic and as print compliations, but they also have their older work up on the site, running as webcomics as well, in order to promote the print editions.

And now Agatha Heterodyne herself will be doing triple duty: The Foglios have just signed a deal to have Girl Genius adapted into prose novels, and those novels will in turn be converted to audiobooks. Tor Books will publish an omnibus edition of their first three Girl Genius trades, and Alpha Entertainment is bringing out a Danish edition of the comic as well. No doubt other languages will follow. And there’s games and iPad comics and all kinds of other stuff; can a movie deal be far behind? Full press release after the cut.

Today Studio Foglio, LLC, creators of the award-winning webcomic, Girl Genius, announced a series of publishing and merchandising deals that will help introduce Girl Genius to the world at large.

In a world ruled by Mad Science, Girl Genius follows the adventures of Agatha Heterodyne, the recently revealed heiress to a powerful family of mad scientists, whose very existence threatens the peace and stability of an alternate steampunk Europe. The creators, Kaja and Phil Foglio, have been publishing the series online and in print, to a discerning audience of steampunk cognoscenti ever since 2001. In 2009, the series was the first graphic novel to win the prestigious Hugo Award, awarded by the World science Fiction Society, for Best Graphic Story.

Studio Foglio is proud to announce that that the Girl Genius is breaking out in 2011 when three publishers will be launching the series in three separate formats. First, Night Shade Books will publish the first-ever prose version of the Girl Genius series. Their publication of Agatha H. and the Beetleburg Clank, the first volume in the Girl Genius Trilogy, in Spring 2011, will be followed by subsequent volumes in 2012 and 2013. This, though, is only the beginning: Simultaneously, industry leader Brilliance Audio will be releasing audio adaptations of each of these novels.

In Fall 2011, TOR Books will launch their new graphic novel line with the republication of the first three Girl Genius graphic novels as a color omnibus edition even as Studio Foglio is publishing volumes 10 and 11, completing the first great arc of the Girl Genius saga.

And Girl Genius is no longer confined to the English language and the United States, Alpha Entertainment of Copenhagen, Denmark will begin publication of a serial version of Girl Genius, in Danish, in their new magazine, Comic Party in spring 2011. In addition, various Girl Genius game licenses are expected to be released in 2011. Along with a re-issue of the critically acclaimed Girl Genius ‘The Works’ card game by Seattle based Bucephalus Games, iPhone and Facebooks games are in development.

PvP

This seems counterintuitive, but he’s not the only one doing it: Scott Kurtz is ending his deal with Image Comics and moving back to self-publishing with the latest print collection of PvP. The PvP monthly comic book will end with issue 45.

“Over the last three years our business has shifted,” says Kurtz. “Sales through brick-and-mortar stores are declining and online sales are increasing. Readers who discovered PvP in comic shops have shifted from monthly readers to online readers, and their buying habits have changed. The monthly floppy is selling less and the trade paperbacks are selling more.”

Kurtz says some nice things about Image, but he seems to be moving away from Diamond:

Although Kurtz has no immediate plans to offer future collections through Diamond, he’s still eager to work with interested retailers.

“The retailers have always supported PvP and I want to make it as easy as possible for those who wish to carry our books moving forward. Any interested retailer can contact me directly via email and we’ll do our best to get them whatever they need.”

In other news…

Tall Tale Radio interviews Adam Huber, the creator of one of my favorite comics of all time, Bug.

San Diego Comic-Con is coming up, and Gary Tyrrell has compiled a pretty impressive list of webcomics creators and collectives who will be there.

Johanna Draper Carlson surveys the digital comics scene to see how all the folks who aren’t comiXology are doing. Executive summary: Everyone else is too late or too limited in scope, although it’s still a moving target.

Lauren Davis takes a look at some webcomics supervillains at Storming the Tower.

Erika Moen is the latest guest on The Webcomic Beacon.

Reviews

Delos on Ace Hoyle (ArtPatient)
Robert A. Howard on Gypsy (Tangents Reviews)
Larry Cruz on The Masque of the Red Death (The Webcomic Overlook)
Lauren Davis on Nathan Sorry (Storming the Tower)
Greg McElhatton on Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn (Read About Comics)
Robert A. Howard on Red String (Tangents Reviews)

Screenshot of the DC Comics app

It has been a little quiet around here, mainly because I have been busy in other quarters of the internet, not to mention going to the American Library Association midsummer meeting in Washington, DC. But now I’m back and ready to round up the latest news and links.

One story that broke while I was away was the news of DC joining the digital fold. Their announcement that they are going to pay royalties to creators for work that goes digital spawned a bit of discussion; Augie de Blieck has a nice summary at CBR.

The other big news, also from DC, was the shutdown of Zuda, their online comics site. As with their summary execution of CMX, their manga line, earlier this year, this was done with amazing speed: The site was down within hours of the announcement. Some of the comics will continue as part of the abovementioned DC Comics app, while others will have to find new homes. My Robot 6 colleague JK Parkin talked to DC’s Ron Perazza about the move. Sean Kleefeld thinks there was a disconnect between the capes-and-tights crowd and, well, everything that isn’t capes and tights, and Lauren Davis is none too pleased with the whole thing, especially the part where we may be able to read the comics on an iPad, if we want to fork out for 1. the iPad and 2. the comic.

It was Marvel that made the big news a few weeks ago with their announcement that they would release the Iron Man Annual in print and in pixels on the same day, although the digital version is more expensive. Chris Sims gives it an early review at Comics Alliance; he loves the comic and favors digital but still had some complaints about the experience as a whole. Chris also speculates that Marvel is going to use its iPad app for backlist comics that have gone out of print, rather than do a second printing on paper.

In other digital news, the manga publisher Tokyopop announced that they would be partnering with Zinio to offer their manga online; the offerings all seem to be global manga. Tokyopop was an early entry in the digital sweepstakes; they were among the first publishers to put manga online, and they developed an iPhone app so early that no one could figure out what it was, so it’s kind of strange to see them going with an outside provider.

Fragment from Ulysses

Good stuff today. At mpd57, Mike Perridge has some questions for Robert Berry, who is working on a webcomics adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Maximo V., creator of the Zuda comic One Hit Knock Out.

The Toronto Star profiles hometown girl Rina Piccolo, a member of Six Chix and the creator of the gag strip Velia, Dear.

DJ Coffman writes about dropping his longtime comic Yirmumah and moving on to the next level, whatever that may be.

At Question Riot, Dan Copulsky interviews Joey Comeau, co-creator of the photo webcomic A Softer World.

At PWCW, Kate Culkin talks to Octopus Pie creator Meredith Gran and her editor about the upcoming print edition of the Brooklyn-based webcomic, and there’s a nice interview in Gothamist as well.

The drumbeat has begun for New England Webcomics Weekend, and the first round of guests has been announced. This year, I’m hoping to be there.

Voting is open for the Eagle Awards, and apparently anyone can play.

Delos has an interesting post on the most-used search terms and how to make them work for you.

Podcasts: Kurt Sasso continues to post interviews from C2E2 at TGT Webcomics; you can see them all here, and he celebrates his 100th podcast with an interview with Ryan Sohmer of Least I Could Do. The Webcomic Beacon has been taking on some interesting topics lately, including Collage Webcomics and LEGO Brick Webcomics. And the Digital Strips guys review Woody after Hours, pick their choices for the Eisners, and celebrate their 200th podcast with a wide-ranging conversation and some special guests.

Reviews

Luprand on Ace Hoyle (Luprand’s Webcomic Musings)
Luprand on Currhue (Luprand’s Webcomic Musings)
Coyote Trax on Cyanide & Happiness (Coyote Trax’s Webcomics Critique)
Robert A. Howard on Dominic Deegan (Tangents Reviews)
Larry Cruz on Galaxion (The Webcomic Overlook)
DKM Marlink on Least I Could Do (Spwug)

David Harper talks to Nathan Schreiber, the creator of Power Out, at Multiversity Comics.

Lauren David critiques an iPhone app for reading webcomics (it’s actually an RSS reader) but ends up defending it when creators accuse the developer of using their work without permission.

Mike Perridge interviews Andy Belanger, of Bottle of Awesome fame, at mpd57.

Reviews

Matthew J. Brady on Bodyworld (print edition) (Warren Peace Sings the Blues)
Rich Kreiner on Breakfast at Mimi’s: Mimi’s Doughnuts Zine vol. 1 (print edition) (The Comics Journal)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 2 of DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary (print edition) (Comics Worth Reading)
Johanna Draper Carlson on vol. 1 of Escape from Terra (print edition) (Comics Worth Reading)
Johanna Draper Carlson on Gunnerkrigg Court, vol. 1 (print edition) (Comics Worth Reading)
Michael May on Gunnerkrigg Court, vol. 1 (print edition) (Robot 6)
Collin David on Gunnerkrigg Court, vol. 2: Research (Graphic Novel Reporter)
Larry Cruz on Marilith (The Webcomic Overlook)
Greg Burgas on The Night Owls (print edition) (Comics Should Be Good!)
Johanna Draper Carlson on Odysseus the Rebel (print edition) (Comics Worth Reading)
Larry Cruz on Power Out (The Webcomic Overlook)
Marc Schuster on vol. 1 of Skin Horse (print edition) (Small Press Reviews)
Robert E. Howard on Terra (Tangents Reviews)

Too risque for the iPad

Jason Snell reviews the iPad as a comics reader at MacWorld; after covering all the bases, he concludes that it’s an excellent device for reading comics, but the publishers need to step up and do a better job of publishing for it. That point is echoed and amplified in Charles “Zan” Christensen’s article about Apple’s restrictions on iPad comics apps, which appears to work like this: No sex or nudity, even swimsuits, unless you are a big publisher like Sports Illustrated or Playboy. No graphic violence unless you are Marvel comics. And no gay themes, ever, even in comics that are not at all explicit.

ICv2 reported last month that digital comics sales came to between $500,000 and $1 million last year. That’s a pretty big error bar, but as Milton Greipp explaned in the presentation (which I attended), the estimates they got of the market size varied by as much as an order of magnitude. And that number doesn’t include subscriptions, which they have no way of measuring. Some people question ICv2’s numbers, but they are the only ones who attempt to keep track (at least, the only ones who do so publicly) and their analysis is usually worth a read.

Zippy creator Bill Griffith talks about the possibilities the iPad offers for newspaper strips, including displaying the comics at a larger size so the artists can experiment a bit more:

“I like the way comics look [online], a little fuzzy, but it’s in a pleasant way,” he says. “It’s more about tone than line. That’s OK with me.”

Soup to Nutz artist Rick Stromoski joins in as well.

IDW is releasing comics for the BlackBerry, which so far has been almost comics-free.

Brian Heater looks at the iPad’s possibilities for indie comics at The Daily Cross Hatch.

Yoshitoshi ABe draws on the iPad and makes it look easy.

Next!

I caught word this morning of a new webcomic that sounded pretty good and had endorsements from a couple of creators I’m familiar with, so I went over to the website to check it out.

What I saw was a decent enough comic that was rendered virtually unreadable by its website. It lacked all the navigational tools that have become standard among webcomics, including showing the comic at a readable size in the browser. Under the comic were the helpful words “Click on comic to expand,” which, sure enough, takes you off the main page to a page that contains just the image. To look at the next comic, you have to go back to the home page and… wait, there’s no “previous” or “next” button… ah, there in the sidebar is a drop-down archives menu. Yes, that’s the ticket.

Popping the reader out of the comics experience to go hunt for the next page is not conducive to a smooth reading experience. If you can’t do the basics—display the comic at a readable size on first click and allow the reader to advance smoothly through the pages—then you’re not done yet.

And there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. The standard webcomics format works pretty well, and people are used to it—because it’s standard, no one thinks too hard about it, and moving through the comic becomes almost an unconscious act.

Usually when I see a bad interface, it’s because the comic is being published by an artsy magazine that has decided to get in on this webcomics trend. The worst example I ever saw used Flash (of course) to blow the images up one at a time, displaying each one nicely but ignoring the sequential nature of comics; each image sat on its own page, and you had to go back to the home page each time to get the next one. And of course there’s Zuda, with its annoying Flash viewer that is too small to read without going full-screen and is painfully slow with transitions. Now that Scott McCloud has complained, I’m hoping things will improve.

(I will give Dan Goldman’s Red Light Properties honorable mention for varying the system in a creative way—the panels appear one at a time. This could be annoying in less skilled hands, but the timing is good and the reader still has a lot of control.)

The comic I saw today wasn’t particularly aesthetically ambitious; it was a standard-issue gag webcomic. Up in the banner there is a promise that a new website, powered by WordPress and ComicPress, is coming soon. If I were the creator, frankly, I would have waited until I had a decent site, rather than showing the comic in a format that just leaves readers frustrated.