JT , Scott and guest Kreg Steppe talk Webcomics,  Christian Ellis Shallow Thoughts LInks: The GigcastA Nightgig Studios Production - http://www.nightgig.comwww.thegigcast.comHave News or a Comment?  Want to tell JT and Scott they are full of it?E-mail: gigcast@nightgig.comOne of the Farpoint Media family of shows - www.farpointmedia.net,Released under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial No-Derivs 2.5 license

WOWIO is back up - comics available for download and now -- reading online.  I'll post my reactions tomorrow probably.

A new Taking Up Space is up. In my haste to build the newly designed Todd and Penguin site, I forgot to link to my other comics. woops!

I'll post more tonight.

Tomorrow the beta for the new version of the webcomics toplist site Buzzcomix begins.  If you have an existing account at Buzzcomix and want to get in on the beta I'm handing out beta codes to the first 100 respondents.  Shoot me an email at xerexes AT gmail DOT com.

I'm working on an interview with Buzzcomix creator Andrew "mneonix08" Gomez that I hope to have up on the site later this month.  Click read more to see an excerpt from our conversation:

ADVENTURES INTO DIGITAL COMICS NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD!

Head on over to the EXTRA’s section to get the latest wallpaper, this time of The Hell’s Belles! Readers will recognize the iconic image of the Belle’s and now you can download it to your desktop. Enjoy! addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.RivalAngels.com%2F2008%2F07%2F31%2Fnew-wallpaper-the-hells-belles%2F'; addthis_title = 'New+Wallpaper-+The+Hell%26%238217%3Bs+Belles'; addthis_pub = '';

CONVENTIONS
Rick Marshall writes up his Comic Con experiences for ComicMix.

TOOLS
Newsarama interviews Clickwheel Editor In Chief Tim Demter about the new Clickwheel Comics Reader.  The reader is available for free from the Apple App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

DEAD TREES
Garfield WIthout Garfield gets a book deal with Ballantine.  I'm actually shocked that Garfield creator Jim Davis is letting this go forward (and wondering if he is getting a cut of anything) but he's already on record as being a big fan of the comic so it's pretty cool that he seems to have signed off on this as well.

BUSINESS
Ted Rall offers some thoughts on saving the newspaper business.  I don't always agree with Rall but I've always been a fan of his uncompromising viewpoint he offers in his comics.  But I don't know what he's thinking about with advice to newspapers like: don't be on the web; and charge more for the web than for the print version.  Doesn't he remember that young people don't buy the print version of newspapers?  Does he want to accelerate the implosion of the current newspaper business?

Here's a thought.  Before the web, it made sense to combine everything a city newspaper did into one business.  But today, why aren't people more seriously questioning the validity of combining (1) an ad agency; (2) content creation; and (3) a printer as a single business?  Maybe that just doesn't make sense anymore?

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
FLEEN approvingly points to The System, an unusual comic using a limited set of icons (like the men's room symbol!) for imagery.  It is definitely worth a read.

I had no idea that Rich Stevens sells Diesel Sweeties socks.

Flannery O'Connor once said of her own writing, "my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil."

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