In this month's Panels & Pictures, Derik A Badman reviews the recently completed The Lady's Murder by Eliza Frye, an evocative 32 page mystery that uses bold colors and striking compositions.

DrunkDuck.com founder and administrator Dylan "Volte6" Squires announced yesterday at the DrunkDuck forums that he has left Platinum Studios to pursue new opportunities.  I caught up with Squires via email to fill out the story.

Jason Shiga is an inventive cartoonist and the creator of FLEEP, a comic serialized at Modern Tales back in 2003.  Shiga is fairly prolific and has posted to his website many other examples of his work over the years.  His most recent graphic novel Bookhunter was nominated for an Eisner award this year and he's already at work on new comics.

Back in 2003, one of the first webcomics reviewed by ComixTalk was a cute little absurdist riff called Bueno The Bear.  Bueno the Bear was a strange, but sweet-natured aburdist bit of humor; alas it's creator Pendleton Ward took the archives down from the web.  Curious as to what Ward is up to now, I got a chance to interview him via email.

Carol "Klio" Burrell is the Glyph Award nominated creator of SPQR Blues -- a webcomic set in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in the era of the Roman Empire. Burrell is really talented which is a great thing because a historically-based webcomic like SPQR Blues appears to be a really  demanding task:  set in Roman times with a wide-ranging cast;  all of it meshing with our collective sense of the Roman empire both in terms of the writing and the visuals -- it's extremely interesting to say the least and perhaps the education-oriented publishing company (Graphic Universe)  Burrell works for ought to consider putting it out as a book when she's done.

I was really excited to see Burrell's Roman take on "steampunk" for our cover at ComixTalk this month.  I think there's a whole new subgenre of speculative fiction waiting to emerge from that image.  I got a chance to interview Burrell about her and her webcomic via email earlier this month.

Many people died to bring us this comic review.

Okay, no one died, but one brave Doctor did have to go several hours without power over the span of 3-4 days. For the first time in awhile, I turned off the laptop and I went to the library to read a book. A book printed on real paper.

And then I used their free wi-fi to surf the Internet.

Dylan Meconis created the popular and well received webcomic Bite Me!.  ComixTalk reviewed it back in 2003.  Nowadays Meconis is working on the webcomic Family Man.  Family Man is being serialized by Meconis on her website and as she discusses below is a work with a lot more ground to cover before it will be completed.

Meconis also wrote a regular column called Juxtapose This! for ComixTalk in its first years.  Aside from Paul Bryant Johnson's comics, it's the only thing I think we've published that had footnotes.  But really good footnotes! (honest!)  Being the fifth anniversary year of ComixTalk I thought it would be a great idea to catch up with Meconis and see what she's up to in 2008.

Faith Erin Hicks is the creator of two critically well received webcomics, Demonology 101 and Ice.  She most recently put out the graphic novel Zombies Calling for which Hicks was just named "Favourite Canadian Comic Book Creator - English Language Publications" at this year's Joe Shuster awards.

We've covered much of Hicks' career in webcomics at ComixTalk from a review of D101 in March 2003 to interviews with her at the completion of D101 and during the start of her webcomic Ice.  She even did one of my favorite covers for ComixTalk for the April 2005 issue. 

Given the very recent news of her Shuster award it was great timing to catch up with her on life in Halifax, Nova Scotia and to get a few words on the new graphic novel, The War at Ellsmere, she's currently working on.

Aaron Diaz's Dresden Codak is an inventive swirl of science and supposition.  The writing is fantastic speculative fiction all on its own but it's complemented by Diaz's damn impressive artwork.  ComixTalk had a review of the comic earlier this year, I caught up with the creator for an interview by email for this month's issue.