Randall Munroe

Webcomic News & Views for May 19, 2008

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on May 19, 2008 - 09:27

New column from Derik Badman - this month he reviews the comic Parade (With Fireworks).

Also a big thanks to our current sponsors: the Laugh Factory, the Learn to Draw course, the new children's novel Chessie Bligh and the webcomic The Asylumantics.

WEBCOMICS PORTAL LAUNCHES
Top Shelf's webcomic portal is live.

HOW TO MAKE WEBCOMICS SELLS OUT
Scott Kurtz writes that the initial press run of How To Make Webcomics is (almost) sold out.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 4 BLOGS
Alan Gardner reports that Michael Jantze, the creator of the The Norm has an animation short “Mr. Lux: At Your Service” in the Short Film Corner at this year’s Festival de Cannes.

Randall Monroe (xkcd) invents midnight underwater speed chess. "A nice feature is the naturally-enforced clock. You have as much time per move as you have air in your lungs."

Fabricari writes about spring cleaning and I guess I missed his post that he was selling off - cheap! - copies of his graphic novel Fabricari: Ad Hoc.

Happy birthday to Brandon J. Carr.

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2008 WCCA Winners Announced

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 8, 2008 - 21:12

The 2008 WCCAs were announced today -- Phil and Kaja Foglio won Outstanding Comic for Girl Genius while webcomics veteran Meredith Gran won Outstanding Newcomer for her new webcomic Octopus Pie. The Foglios took three total WCCAs this year, but Tracy Butler was a big winner too taking home 4 WCCAs for her work on Lackadaisy. Click read more for the full list of winners:

Critical Thinking Spurred by xkcd

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 28, 2008 - 09:32

Anne Thalheimer over at FLEEN notes how cultural critic Amanda Marcotte wrote a post titled “Musing on autonomy” at the blog Pandagon about a recent comic from Randall Munroe’s <

There Once Was a Comic From Nantucket

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 6, 2008 - 10:19

Randall Munroe (xkcd creator) sets out to return the limerick to the limelight with LimerickDB.com.

Because five funny lines of vernacular verse is da' bomb

And to update it

for 128 bit

every last line must include "nom, nom, nom"

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WCCA 2008 Nominees Are Out

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 5, 2008 - 11:00

The nominees for this year's WCCAs were released this past Sunday (sadly without any fanfare, or press release... again). But lots of interesting choices (and good links to comics!):

OUTSTANDING COMIC FINALISTS:
Achewood by Chris Onstaad
Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio
Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell
Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch
The Phoenix Requiem by Sarah Ellerton

ComixTalk's People Of Webcomics List For 2007

December 20, 2007 - 13:31

And now... the fourth annual People Of Webcomics list! I'll be the first to admit that this list gets harder and harder to compile as the lines between "webcomics" and just plain "comics" blurs harder than a greasy windshield in the middle of a West Texas downpour. Plus as publishing comics on the web and other digital formats becomes more commonplace it gets harder and harder to find those "firsts" that take comics in new directions whether artistic, technical or businesss-oriented.

The ComixTalk End of 2007 Roundtable

December 17, 2007 - 17:33 | Xaviar Xerexes

Our third annual virtual round table on the year in webcomics features comments from Gary Tyrrell, Dirk Deppey, Tom Spurgeon, Heidi MacDonald, Brigid Alverson, Derik A Badman, Reinder Dijkhuis, and JT Shea and Scott Gallatin.

It's December Already? UPDATED

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 3, 2007 - 15:19

COMIXTALK

Check out this month's cover art from Ryan Estrada!
First up is our year-in-headlines review of webcomic news from 2007. Still to come later this week is our annual critics roundtable and the People of Webcomics list.
Dr. Haus reviews another webcomic, this time The Prime of Ambition by Naomi Craig and Alyssa Follansbee.
We also have another article in Tim Broderick's review of his path to publishing his graphic novel: this time he covers writing the synopis.
And we have the second installment in Patric Lewandowskis look at the definition of "comic"; this month he explains the idea of applying four criteria to defining comics.

BUSINESS

Bill Barnes, the artist on the webcomic Unshelved has left his "day job" at Microsoft to go work full time on the webcomic. (more at FLEEN)
Potentially interesting item: FLEEN posted about a My Fridj website owned by a Dawn Douglass. Douglass countered that the My Fridj site was not really intended to be public (although she did blog about it in October without such reservations) and whatever "social media cartoon syndicate" she's working on is still to be revealed. It's clear from her website that she's engaged in a lot of research and thinking about the "digital comics" space (to put it in MBA-speak). And hey, she's a cartoonist herself.
The Comics Reporter reported that Marvel will stop publishing DVDs of its comics, supposedly because of the new DCU website service.

MILESTONES

Joe Dunn hits 300 episodes of Joe Loves Crappy Movies. This ongoing comic/review series is not just a funny comic, but Joe is a pretty good reviewer of movies as well.

AWARDS

Just for completeness' sake, the winner of this year's Weblog Award for a comic strip site was xkcd by Randall Munroe.

INTERVIEWS

Scott Kurtz interviews Tyler Martin - not a bad start to what Kurtz says will be a regular podcast called Webcomic Confidential.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Comics I Don't Understand has finally entered the 21st Century - moving to a blog format at a new URL.
The 24 Hour Comics Day project is looking for new blood to organize future editions. More information here.
Daily Cross Hatch reviews Captain Estar Goes To Heaven by Winston Rowntree.
Cartoonist Ben Boxer and sums up about 14 hours of opera in one webcomic. (h/t The Beat).
The Comics Reporter links to this funny "50 Answers" comic.

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Make Mine Six Month Old Marvel!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 13, 2007 - 11:31

HEADLINES

Dirk Deppey links to Marvel Comics new webcomic effort -- Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited as well as a USA Today story on the new site. The bottom line -- the site will feature 2,500 comics (nothing more recent than 6 months old though) for $9.99 a month, or $4.99 a month if youâ€™re willing to commit for a year. Aren't these guys about 4 years late to the subscription model? Still it'll be interesting to see how it does and who becomes its audience (existing fans or newcomers to Marvel stories).

ADVERTIZING

Sodaware reviews several ad platforms including Project Wonderful.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

Reinder Dijkhuis brings back from hiatus his comic Invasion which will resume on November 21, on his Chronicles of the Witch Queen site.

AROUND TEH WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

Randall Munroe entertains the masses at Carnegie Mellon.
New dope track from KRiS-ONE at Halfpixel.com.
Congratulations to Fred Gallagher of Megatokyo on becoming a dad.
Neil Cohn writes about how using repurposed art for comics doesn't work well.
The Moderate Voice blog names xkcd as it's top webcomic for 2007.Â Click here for their top 10 list. (h/t Tom Spurgeon)

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2007 Weblog Award Nominees Announced

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 1, 2007 - 16:30

I don't know much about the Weblog awards for blogs, but this [edit:] is the second year they've included a "comic strip" category. The nominees are:

Girl Genius - Phil and Kaja Foglio
Day By Day - Chris Muir
Extra Life - Scott Johnson
PvP - Scott Kurtz
Penny Arcade - Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins
Attack - John Bergstrom
Least I Could Do - Ryan Sohmer and Lar Desouza
Sluggy Freelance - Pete Abrams
xkcd - Randall Munroe
Basic Instructions - Scott Meyer

And here's a link to the full list of award nominees if you're interested.

UPDATE: I've gone ahead and fixed the list of nominees here to add the creators' names and webcomic URLs. ~~I have no idea about "Attack" though - please post a comment here if you know which comic the nomination is for.~~ As noted in the comments below it appears that the "final nominees" are selected subjectively by someone(s) at the Weblog Awards (from a list of nominations by the public). Last year's winner - Least I Could Do plus Day by Day and Sluggy Freelance are all repeat nominees (they were on the 2006 list of final nominees). [I guess it's also somewhat interesting that both years two conservatively-slanted opinion comics have been included in the nomination list, but no progressively-slanted comics have been picked for inclusion.]

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