What's everyone reading these days, if they're reading? I just finished Scott Morse's "Barefoot Serpent" and "South Paw", which were two very different books. In spite of their differences though neither one of them was a "funny" book in the conventional sense of the word. Brilliant stuff.

I also read Blankets a while back, and loved it, thoughI haven't re-read it a dozen times the way I did with "Goodbye Chunky Rice". It was great, but I think that too much of it was on the surface. It was what it was, where GCR seemed denser and more symbollic... of course you don't have to agree.

All that being said, what are you reading?

Millarworld launches Mostly Wanted, a webzine covering comics and culture which launches today.

Slashdot posts its "community interview" with Neil Gaiman.

From the desk of CRFH!!!:

Today's my birthday! Can you believe I was 22 when I started making CRFH? And now I'm 27, and I can't help but feeling a little old. And I have been making this strip now for 1/5th of my life! o.O But hey, birthdays are the happiness! Lots of gifts and cake. Speaking of gifts, it'd be really nice if you brainwash- er, convince other people to read CRFH. Madness needs to be spread!

Until now, the only way that new readers to the popular fantasy comic strip The Circle Weave could read the archives of the series and find out what happened previously in the story was to pay a small monthly fee to subscribe to Moderntales.com, host of a number of premium online comics. However, with the introduction of micropayment service BitPass as an option, readers can now purchase access to the Circle Weave archives a chapter at a time directly from series creator Indigo Kelleigh -- at a much lower price.

I just wanted to say that I thought Dan Hess' entry was delightful. I also liked how it was faithful to the coloring scheme of the original panel. Yup, I hate blind dates. Although I never imagined a worst case scenario quite like that.

Ben

I was thinking - being the curious and over-analyzing type - what makes a webcomic your favorite?

Look at your favorite webcomic - or your top five or your top ten - and think about which elements put it at the top of your list.

Is it good art? Good storylines? Humor? Memorable characters? In-jokes? A detailed universe that you want to explore? An approach that's fresh and intriguing? An example of a genre for which you have some strange attraction? Consistency in updates (or perhaps a failure to dissapoint)? Quotability? Shock value? Topical issue coverage? The mockery of things you like to mock as well? The exploration of stuff you enjoy (gaming, programming, talking to pets) or hate (working in a cube-farm, paying bills, living with strangers)? Other stuff I haven't thought of here?