Strawberries in a pile of shit

December 3, 2009 | Posted by Brigid

At The Hooded Utilitarian, Vom Marlowe critiques the art of xkcd. Yes, you read that right.

Meanwhile, Mike Perridge claims that the number of good works is shrinking relative to the medium as a whole at the Ulysses “Seen” blog, comparing quality work like Asterios Polyp to finding a strawberry in a pile of shit. And the way the medium as a whole isn’t taken seriously:

Are you denying that everyone laughs when you call it a graphic novel? It’s not the same look of derision you’d get if you were a conceptual artist … it’s worse … and seriously that’s when you know there’s something wrong!

I’m not sure I agree, but it’s food for thought.

Nominations are open for the Eisner awards, which include a category for Best Digital Comic. Gary Tyrrell posts the criteria for the category, which seem to have tightened up a bit:

The best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2009. Webcomics must have a unique domain name or be part of a larger comics community to be considered. The work must be online-exclusive for a significant period prior to being collected in print form.

And he points out that this is a shift from previous years and raises some questions: Are gag comics out? What about comics that run for several years?

Gary also notes that there is still time to enter the Calamities of Nature guest strip contest.

Ed Ryzowski explains how to make a new comic look old, with those funky old halftone dots that the print publications use, at Webcomics.com.

The Archie folks are pushing digital subscriptions as an awesome holiday gift. Johanna Draper Carlson has some suggestions on how that could be improved.

Scott McCloud posts a cute little comic he did a few years ago that didn’t get a lot of exposure at the time.

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