Hey, please note we are giving up our P.O. Box -- do not send anything anymore to it!  Go ahead and cross it out! P.O. Box 3362, Arlington, Virginia 22203  Just like that!  If you do want to send a physical object to ComixTalk please email us beforehand and we'll provide you with information on where to send it.  Thanks!

I'm playing WORLD TRAVELER in Real Life(tm) this week with THE LAYOVER in Frankfurt, Germany.  Thank you webcomics for providing me with something more entertaining to do then read translated REPORTS while waiting for the last leg of my travels today.

Once again I am on the wrong coast for what looks like a really cool event.  Sarra Scherb is the curator of "Morning Serial: Webcomics Come to the Table," a webcomics exhibition that launched this month and will run through June 2012.  The exhibit is at the Henry Art Gallery, a contemporary art museum in Seattle with additional work online at Morning Serial Dot Org.  

I haven't met Sarra but she's clear got great taste.  The exhibit features work from Evan Dahm, Aaron Diaz, Erika Moen, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, Emily Ivie, Dylan Meconis, Sutu, and Spike Trotman  Her'es her description of the exhibit:

Webcomics are a new step in the evolution of independent comics art. Experimenting with digital tools and innovating new narrative structures, webcomics artists create and distribute comics freed from the printed page.  Webcomics are a continuation of the anti-establishment comix of the 1960s and 1990s ‘zine culture. As their own editors and publishers, these artists contribute to a diversification of genres, while closing the artist/reader gap. Spike Trotman’s multi-layered city of Templar, AZ, Aaron Diaz’s Dresden Codak, and Dylan Meconis’ sumptuous Family Man carve out genre niches, build complex worlds and push artistic boundaries. Works incorporating sound, animation and interactivity—such as Nawlzby Sutu—prompt us to reconsider our definition of a comic.

And on March 29th -- the night before Emerald City Comic Con -- the exhibition will host a panel of six webcomics artists: Dylan Meconis, Erika Moen, Spike Trotman, Aaron Diaz, Evan Dahm and Emily Ivie, so if you're attending that convention this year you might want to get there early to check out the panel and the exhibit.

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WEBSITE SIGHTING: Scott Kurtz changed up his PvP website design -- now the comic is not on the landing page.  For me I never really like that -- I put up with it for Penny Arcade but only because Jerry writes magic on a regular basis.  Or was it he plays magic? Whatever... Also rumor has it that Gabe and Tycho are commandeering Scott's script next week.  Yeah rumor has it, wooooah!

NEW STUFF LAUNCHING: Fucking Bleeding Cool has an interview with Simon Spurrier who is launching March 14th a new webcomic Wish You Were Here as part of the Crossed universe.  I have no idea what the "Crossed" universe is (MINUS A ZILLION NERD CREDS) but Spurrier name checks Warren Ellis and his FreakAngels series as a template and the art looks good so I will check it out. Maybe you should too.

NOT WEBCOMIC?: Not technically a comic? but I really thought Caldwell Tanner's Office Odyssey Choose Your Own Adventure was funny and well done.

CAUSE HE'S THE SAXMAN, OH YEAH: Gary provoked a discussion on taxes and Kickstarter drives and well, if you are taking any money from folks it's likely going to have tax liability associated with it.  Always better to plan ahead of time then to potentially have to come up with a lot of cash later on.

MAILBAGGINS: Jazyl writes that he is the creator of the webcomic The Beast Legion which is fantasy adventure series about young prince Xeus' journey to save his homeland from the clutches of the Shadow Nexus by mastering his Beast form. Jazyl recently won the Best Webcomic Series at the Comic Con India Awards. First off I had no idea there was a Comic Con India but that's great. Maybe we can make it one of Ryan Estrada's next missions to attend it next year (who by the way has posted online what I think is the graphic novel version of his all ages webcomic Aki Alliance).

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All the news that generates the page views!

STOP COLLABORATE AND LISTEN: The Webcomic Beacon matched some creators up for Webcomic Blind Date 2012 -- five pairs came through with a webcomic.

HYPE: Exactly what happened in A Wrinkle in Time -- a webcomic valentine from Faith Erin Hicks to the famous book.

TOOLS: Robot6 notes that Ben Towle has moved his webcomic Oyster War from Tumblr to its own website.  He is using WordPress with the Webcomic plug-in. I suspect Comicpress is still more widely in use but I see Webcomic a whole lot too.  I wonder what the actually numbers for both are.

MAILBAG: Colin P. Delaney writes in about The Amazing Adventures of Cat Prentis -- a seven-chapter, serialized graphic novel written by himself and with art from Tony Gazso. It's about teenager Catherine “Cat” Prentis, burdened by magical powers she can barely control, she must hide away her true nature as she muddles through high school, equally desperate to avoid both social stigmatization and the all-too frequent demon attack.  

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The last day of the Kickstarter drive for reprinting Order Of The Stick books is at:

$1,063,398

I am flabbergasted.  Over a million committed from 12716 backers.

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So far 2012 has been a great year but it hasn't left me much time to spend on comics.

MILESTONES:  Bucko, the very funny hipster mystery webcomic is finished. Comics Alliance has an interview with the creators Erica Moen and Jeff Parker. This was a really enjoyable strip and successfully translated a lot of Erica Moen's sensibilities from her diary webcomic to a fictionalized setting.

KICKSTART MY ART: In addition to posting about Christopher Baldwin's Kickstarter campaing for Spacetrawler Volume 2 yesterday, I wanted to write about Rich Stevens' now full-funded kickstarter drive. Stevens is going to put out an ebook compiling his entire run of 3000 Diesel Sweeties comics.  Stevens has been busy experimenting with different approaches to digital comics -- he re-releasing his first book as a free ebook (downloaded over 140,000 times);  he's been putting out a month's worth of comics at a time in magazine format for the iPad (10,000 downloads in three days); and for some time now he's offered PDFs of older comics for download. Stevens asked for $3000, he's north of $20,000 as I write this.  If you're a fan, it's got a great set of rewards for supporters -- go check it out.

HYPE: Lauren Davis writes glowingly about The Wormwood Saga which has two long updates in its archive, with the third one expected in April.

MAILBAG: Marcus Muller writes about his webcomic King of the Unknown - a rock-powered webcomic that’s equal parts supernatural horror, raunchy comedy, action epic, and all-you-can-eat conspiracy theory buffet:

Stygian horrors, alien invasions, covert ops…all just another day at the office for the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.  Ever since a supernatural mishap transformed the King and forced him to fake his own death (and perhaps forced some of his sanity into early retirement), he has dedicated his new secret life to a shadowy government organization known as the Institute for Research and Study of the Unknown (IRSU).  Their mission: to keep our world safe - and blissfully ignorant - from the unknown forces that constantly threaten our very existence.

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Christopher Baldwin has a kickstarter campaign to fund Book 2 of his webcomic Spacetrawler.  Spacetrawler is an epic comedic adventure story about a galactic activist group who recruits six humans to help them liberate a very put-upon species. He already has the printer lined up, the cover designed, and will have the strips for it complete and posted online before the kickstarter campaign is completed. This is a great story and the first book in print (which I have) was really nice -- I am sure this one will be great too..

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Two interesting comics events for kids coming up in March: 

First, publisher Scholastic is putting on a webinar featuring graphic novelists Jeff Smith (Bone), Raina Telgemeier (Smile), and Kazu Kibushi (Amulet). The announcement is aimed at teachers (it is during school hours) for their students to learn about " using words and pictures together to create a narrative" and the publisher has put together a graphic novels teaching guide, webcast lesson plans around the authors' books, and webcast tips for the classroom.  You can register now for the webcast on March 7th at 1PM ET/10AM PT.  I think it's pretty cool -- I don't know how flexible teacher lesson plans are these days with all of the testing and teaching to the test that goes on but I know my kids would love to get to see this.

Also --  Scholastic Book Clubs is hosting a contest to win a special Bone comics prize package! Click here to enter.

Second, Google is holding a Doodle contest for students of Kindergarden through Highschool age (K-12). This year's theme is "If I could travel in time, I'd visit…" One winning student artist will see their artwork appear on the Google homepage and take home some cool prizes. Submissions are due on March 23, 2012 -- more information on rules, forms and dates for the contest are here.

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Neither alive nor dead, ComixTALK lumbers on.  Fire? Fire, bad!!!

ALSO ROBOTMAS IS COMING!!!

iWEBCOMICS:  So Apple made a big education announcement recently that included new tools for making iBooks. Richard Stevens took it as an opportunity to release a batch of his Diesel Sweeties comics as an ibook. I'm not going to add much educated analysis of Apple's new iBook standards in general since I haven't had time to wrap my brain cells around the technical, business and copyright issues of it.

BOOK 'EM DANNO: Free Mars, a webcomic I've been a fan of for quite sometime has signed with Ape Entertainment. Ape will publish a collection in July, which will be available in print and in digital on iVerse's Comics + iOS app.  If you haven't read this one, check it out. Lovely artwork, a fun story.

MORE HYPE: The Situation is all kinds of creepy weird goodness (h/t Lauren Davis).  Get you there to read it and while you're there, remind yourself that Tor Publishing posts some pretty amazing webcomics to its website.

DEAR DIARY: Lauren Davis collects 17 journal webcomics worth paging through furtively.

MAILBAG: Greg Carter writes that the next LOVE IS IN THE BLOOD story is starting up on Valentine's Day! Art on the next story will be from Gina Biggs.  I have to admit I have not read this yet, but Greg has been crafting quality webcomics for sometime now so I have it bookmarked!

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This has been 'round the twitters and I need to post it here too -- Fes of the Webcomic Beacon podcast is organizing a Blind Date webcomic-making event this year.  This is CANON folks! :) We did the first couple of editions of the webcomic Blind Date event here at ComixTALK (the last one was waaay back in 2004) but I just don't have the time to organize it so I'm pretty dang happy Fes is doing this.

Here's the scoop for this year's event from Webcomic Beaconland:

Please email us by JANUARY 27th, 2012, indicating that you are a Writer, Artist, or if you can do either (this will help in the imbalance of entries). Also include if you have any restrictions (such as you can’t work over a PG rating, etc), or any other sort of things you want us to take into consideration. The idea is that the writer would write the comic (or single panel), and the artist would draw it. In the end you will have to work together. We will announce and post the pairings on the website, and also will like the links to the final products in time for Valentine’s Day!

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I have a dream that my comics will one day live in a world where they will not be judged by the means of their delivery but by the content of their... well, content. 

CHANGES: Paul Southworth handed over the art duties on Not Invented Here to Jeff Zugale. It's different, which I imagine is going to be more interesting and successful than simply aping Southworth.  But it will take awhile for me to get used to it.

ALL AGES: Saturday Morning Webtoons is a new portal to several all ages webcomics

NEW(ISH) STUFF

Andrew Bonia has a new webcomic, On the Bounty with a Dinosaur Comics approach to the art (or I guess I should say Angriest Dog in the World approach). Definitely worth clicking on for some funny dialogue.  Reusing the same art is a tough format though -- good luck to Bonia for as long as he can work with it.

Kevin Church's new webcomic is a Star Trek parody called Boldly Gone about another spaceship Captain living in the shadow of one James T. Kirk.

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There are a lot of books on how to draw better and even a few that specialize in drawing emotions: but they all tend to give the same advice, “make a face in a mirror and draw what you see”. While there’ s no arguing that drawing what you see is the only way to advance as an artist, we’ve all seen enough bad acting to know that “making a face” is no way to create the kind of emotional attachment that’s going to draw a viewer into a narrative or a situation. Artists just aren’t taught the most effective ways to make that face in the mirror.

Acting for Artists: Bringing Better Performances to your Cartoons, Comics and Character Illustrations is a book that’s designed to fill that gap.  So, if your New Year’s resolution was to try something to make your art better, then Acting for Artists is the book for you!

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I meant to have something up yesterday but was still feeling the effects of a much-needed vacation. 

AWARDS: Heads up, the Eisners are now accepting nominations up until March 6, 2012.  I don't think the webcomic category requirements have changed but in any event here they are:

The best digital comic category is open to any new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2011. 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. The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to Eisner Awards administrator Jackie Estrada: jackie@comic-con.org.

MILESTONES: Tom Brazelton announced yesterday that in six months time he'll be wrapping up Theater Hopper.  One of the nicer fellows I've met online and I wish the best of luck with this year's comics and whatever he turns to next.  Also worth mentioning (because I missed it while away)  Comics Alliance covers the ending of Kevin Church's The Loneliest Astronauts, which is a great concept for a comic.

REVIEWS:  Comics Alliance has a review of Raised on Ritalin, a comic memoir by Tyler Page.  Tyler also does the webcomic Nothing Better, which follows two women students at a small religious college.

INTERVIEWS: Tim O'Shea interviews Thomas Scioli, the creator of the webcomic American Barbarian, which is being collected for a print version coming this year from AdHouse.

HYPE: Comics Worth Reading notes the return of an old comic by Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett, Section Zero, in webcomic format at MadGeniusComics.com. The web/comic is about a group investigating paranormal phenomena. In a blog post, Karl Kesel explains its revival on the web.

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Time to watch Old Man 2011 give Baby 2012 the great high five of life tonight.  I know I got sporadic on the posting schedule this past year, not sure yet what's in store for next year, but I will be AFK for ComixTalk until January 10th.

TOOLS: The Stumpy Pencil blog has some great digital art tools for Photoshop and other art asoftware available to download. These bubble texture brushes for photoshop are pretty cool. (I cannot write "pretty cool" anymore without hearing that SNL woman's impersonation of Miley Cyrus)

ARE WE NOT MEN?  Heard this on the Radio Lab podcast this week and luckily for me everyone blogged it up already.  The podcast is a cute overview of an import tax dispute where Marvel argued that the X-men were not humans so as to get a lower tax rate for toys than one applied to dolls.

WOMEN OF WEBCOMICS: Jezebel had a great list of women comic creators doing pretty cool stuff in 2011.

RANDOM HYPE: Hadn't read cartoonist/engineert Angela Melick's journal webcomic, Wasted Talent, in awhile but it's still pretty cool! INTENSE PORPOISE!

MORE RANDOM HYPE: Check out SCI-ENCE, a pretty cool comic with some actual scientific knowledge imparted.  The art is really good, jumping styles too, and it has a strong point of view (basically skeptical, rational) that is probably more important to the creators than delivering the funny, so it can have a bit of an editorial comic to it at times (but a hipper one like Tom Tomorrow or Ted Rall). Anyhow - good stuff there (h/t BAD ASTONOMY)

NOT QUITE WEBCOMICS: Victor Hertz's parodies of corporate logos are dang funny (and pretty cool!) stuff. And unlike some lazy mockery, Hertz's stuff is all pretty dead on in its skewering of the companies. 

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Thanks to Scholastic for sending the all ages Scooby-Doo: A Merry Scary Holiday which the x-kids enjoyed.  It has a pretty Scooby-Dooish plot (and the villian winds up having a Gary-like appearance, man that guy is everywhere!).  It's labeled Issue #2 so keep an eye out for future issues. Also thanks to Joe Williams and Tina Garceau for sending Monkey & Bird, featuring one of the odder animal romance pairings in comics (although frog and pig doesn't make any more sense when you think of it.

MAILBAG

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Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. I'm an equal opportunity holidayist this year -- I'll take whatever I can get.

INTERVIEWS: I sometimes feel like The Comics Reporter is just a bit intimidating as Tom Spurgeon posts such an enormous amount of stories every day, many of which are as in-depth as his Holiday Interview series.  There's some big names in his interview series this year but don't miss this one with Jeff Parker, currently working with Erica Moen on the webcomic Bucko.

PODCASTANET: Kris Straub chats with Brad Guigar about humor and comics.

HOLIDAZE: Robot6 had a nice round-up of web/comic Christmastime comics.

BE SCENE: TCJ checks out the Austin comics scene.  This is one in a series from TCJ.

ZIPPITYDODAH: The Atlantic has a feature on Zippy the Pinhead and its creator Bill Griffith.

CRAFT: Chris Schweizer's "Guide to Spotting Tangents" is really interesting -- I never focused on tangents in comics art as a topic. And Kevin Huizenga shares his approach to thumbnailing his comics. Both h/t Drawn!

NOT COMICS: This Is My Jam is a kind of hyper-focused twitter-lite thing for music (maybe?). Anyhow it's easy to play and I've had some nice serendipidous discoveries through it. Sign up yourself and follow me there if it sounds interesting.  And speaking of music, hey it's another top 20 album list from John Allison of the webcomic Bad Machinery.

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Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. I'm an equal opportunity holidayist this year -- I'll take whatever I can get.

NOT COMICS: This Is My Jam is a kind of hyper-focused twitter-lite thing for music (maybe?). Anyhow it's easy to play and I've had some nice serendipidous discoveries through it. Sign up yourself and follow me there if it sounds interesting.

I did an interview with the Webcomics Beacon podcast that was posted last week.  It was about Comix Talk stuff which, listening to it, mostly sounds like a bunch of projects I don't have time for anymore. The hosts - Fes and Mark - were nice dudes though.  I talked about Comixpedia.org and its birth from the Wikipedia webcomics purge. I talked about my personal webcomic efforts. (Here's a link to Ira Glass's quote on the gap between taste and ability that I mentioned -- it really is a mantra for me these days).

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Haps to the holidays y'all, as I'm sure no one ever said ever, even back in the day.

HYPE: I saw the writer, Maria Burnham, post about her webcomic Jesus Loves Lesbians Too on Huffington Post.  It's a little disjointed at times, but honest and often touchingly funny. And the art by Maggie Siegel-Berele is really nice.  I wish they had a better archive system but for right now it's not a huge backlog to read.

HYPE: Lauren Davis says, "Hobo Lobo of Hamelinis a witty retelling of The Pied Piper, and the side scrolling effect creates the impression that you're watching the whole thing played inside a diorama."  It is pretty amazing, one of the first webby webcomics I've seen in a few years.  Easily the most impressive experimental webcomic I've read this year.  The 3D effect is excellent (I think there was some Z-layer CSS going on there) and you have to linger and play around with the panels to get the full experience.  Read Lauren's full review at IO9.

BEAR AMERICA: I want to make a movie, video game and Comedy Central animated series out of Ethan Nicolle's Bearmageddon.

OCCUPY PIXELS: Stephanie McMillan has been out occupying Occupy protests and is making comics about her experience.

MILESTONES: Kraig Furtado's Troops of Doom reaches 400 episodes this week. Troops of Doom uses photos of action figures for its visuals and its story is a mashup of Star Wars, G.I. Joe and lego.

GIFT LIST: Comics Alliance assembles a whole bunch of webcomic related stuff any one of your loved or liked ones would be happy to receive.

MAILBAG

• Jason Gurley writes about his new graphic novel Eleanor that he's serializing on the web (two chapters are available on the web site, and a third is in progress). Gurley writes that he was writing this as a novel but felt like it needed to be told as a comic. First off the website is seriously kickass, and I just liked the combination of colors and the virtual "book and a shelf" feel the first page gives you.  Second, the art is surprisingly good, the characters are drawn simply, but Gurley knows what he's doing (or at least is faking it really well!).  Eleanor is hard to describe -- it feels very metaphorical so far.  Gurley described it in an interview as "Eleanor‘s dislocation is really about that search for truth: pawing around in a dark void, sometimes hopelessly, sometimes finding brilliance, looking for anything to hold onto. Her conversation fills that void for her."
   
• Alex Aberle writes that he is restoring the archives of his webcomic Sara and David -- "The World's First 3D Anime Webcomic."  Well I hate to be the one to break the news but I'm not seeing 3D here so I wouldn't bill it like that (and I'd probably refrain from "world" "first" or "anime" as well).  I think it's always a mixed bag to put up old work just to post more things to the 'net.  I'm not talking about the normal course of serializing a webcomic -- by definition you have older work up eventually -- I'm talking about putting up something that never was on the web (or you took down previously). On the other hand I change my mind about this question all the time.

DEAD TREE and OTHER PAPER STUFF:  JT Yost has a new mini-comic, Thinger Dingers, out along with some Snoop Doggy Dog--Snoopy mashup tee shirts for sale.  Check it out at his website.  JT has done some cool comics before - just throw his name in the ComixTALK search box to see some review of his mini-comics.

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