TOOLS
Scott McCloud has a post (and comment thread) on the ratio of comic to controls (navigatin) to crap (everything else) on the screen.  

BOOKS
An interview with Randall Munroe on the unusual publishing strategy for his first book, xkcd, Volume 0.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

Rebecca Dart illustrates an old murder ballad.  Everyone is linking to this today and with good reason - Dart's imagination and the linework for the comic are both fantastic.

Josh Lesnick gives us an advance preview of next week's FWEEN headlines.

The Boston Comics Roundtable, in partnership with River Bird Studios, is pleased to announce the release of the premier issue of Outbound, a Science Fiction anthology. Outbound is a spin-off of sister publication Inbound, the anthology of comics from Boston. Outbound contains comics and short stories from a mix of Boston-based creators and artists all over the world, from Australia to South America, including a cover from talented Uruguayan artist Marcelo Buchelli.

Outbound #1 retails for US$ 6.99 and is available in every comic book retail location in the greater Boston area and online at
http://OutboundMagazine.blogspot.com/. Outbound is also distributed nationally by Direct Comic Book Service http://www.dcbservice.com/ and Heavy Ink http://heavyink.com/.

The Boston Comics Roundtable was created in 2006 and has produced three issues of the Inbound comics anthology. Outbound is the Roundtable’s second ongoing series and its first foray into science fiction territory. The release of Outbound marks an exciting new chapter for the Boston Comics Roundtable and for the science fiction genre. Fans can expect new issues of Outbound every six months.

Outbound is the brainchild of Roundtable member and Inbound contributor, Roho, the principal of River Bird Studios. More information and publications from the Boston Comics Roundtable can be found at http://www.bostoncomicsroundtable.com/. River Bird Studios is located on the web at http://riverbirdstudios.blogspot.com/.

Each of the comic stories in Outbound #1 will be serialized, with new ongoing stories premiering in each subsequent issue. Issue #1 contents include:

• “The Caerulean Dream” by Roho and Brett Barkley.
• “Space and Time” by Josh Mills, Michael Paoloni, and Alexandra Mills,
• with chapter cover by David Newbold.
• “The Null Device” by David Marshall.
• “Flek” by Erik Heumiller.
• “Scientists Gone Wild” by Eric Boeker.
• “Mark and the Aliens” by Aya Rothwell.
• “Black Fuska” by Roho, with chapter cover by Richard Jenkins.
• Special sneak preview of “The New Kid” by Dan Mazur (to premier in Outbound #2).
• Outbound #1 also includes two tales of short fiction:
• “Breezes of Heaven” by Joe Cannon, with art by Paul Marquis.
• “How I Learned to Tolerate Vegemite” by Aya Rothwell, with art by the author.

And rounding up the issue as extra bonus features:

• Marsnik 6 Paper Model by Marcel Sirer, with design by Roho.
• An interview with Sandy Collora, director of the independent science fiction movie “Hunter/Prey”.
• Endcap essay by Hugo-nominated author Michael A. Burstein.

The Boston Comics Roundtable is an independent organization of comics creators in the Greater Boston area. The group meets weekly to workshop, educate, and network. Meetings are open to the public. Information regarding publications, artist galleries, and meetings can be found at http://www.bostoncomicsroundtable.com/.

• I Am Legend reviewed Nahast and Pheonix Requiem while Webcomics Critique covered Nobody Scores!. Pigs of the Industry critiqued Evil Ain’t Easy and Fly Me From The Moon as the Artiste Manquee talked about School Spirit. Not to be outdone, Webcomic Overlook peered at The Meek and pondered about the thousands of words each image condensed into a story.
• This Week in Webcomics reviewed Theater Hopper books one and two and had a lot of good things to say while Fictions cautiously recommended Spleenal. Digital Strips looked at Evil, Inc volumes one and two and Newsarama snuck in a review of Dark Corners while Optical Sloth reviewed a number of comics by Austin English. Ink Destroyed My Brush analyzed Asterios Polyp and Forbidden Planet speaks in awe of The Man In Black. Speech Balloons covered Here’s to Suzie! and Read About Comics looked at Monsters. MangaBlog also covered Deka Kyoshi, which has a slightly different premise I enjoyed learning about. (I know. It’s probably manga typical but I like to see comics applied to other things beside fantasy, horror, supers and gamer life journals.) For instance, these comic mashups are something different and pretty funny,too.
• Let’s join Odori Park in celebrating a 100 strip milestone. (Check out the temporary switch from inking to ball point pen starting here.) Comic Critics is also getting close, Nahast passed the seven year mark and Silly Daddy reaches 500.  And Tyler James is doing 30 characters in 30 days, which sounds like a fun project. This is now the logical spot to point to Fraggmented’s character analysis of the Marvelous King of Atlantis, the Sub-Mariner.
• Super Show interviewed Shawn Pryor and Thought Bubble talked with Emma Vieceli. A Nickel’s Worth talked with Glenn McCoy and Comic Book Resources talked 45 with Andi Ewington.

♦ Wednesday’s Haul reviewed Box 13; a made for the iphone comic by Gallaher and Ellis. Seven pages of Box 13 will be released every Thursday, if I read this right.
♦ Sometimes I run across supers comics that give me hope that not all is lost. In this well written story, Detective Montoya met up with Two-Face and in this other one Babs faced off against Lois Lane. Both had tension and real character in them.
♦ I was reading this review of Aria 5 and towards the bottom, there is a mention of “a lengthy introduction.” That, through a few uninteresting mental gyrations, brought me to recall every Robotech episode’s insistence on restating ‘how-we-got-here’ at the beginning of every show. I found myself wondering if that would be a useful technique for story oriented online comics as opposed to having to constantly update an about page. It could be worked into the regular updates or back-placed after a new chapter/season/storyline is started. I’m imagining it would educate the reader, catch them up to speed and prep them for the new wonders in the storyline before them – without giving everything current away on the about page. And now, of course, I am starting to think about applying the same principles to cast pages… sometimes you’ll see comics with cast pages included in the updates. For a story based comic, a character update with a brief history and maybe some foreshadowing might be a good thing. At the very least, these things could provide for more interesting filler updates when the main story update isn’t ready yet. Anyway, this is just me thinking out loud again…
♦ But let’s look at some advice that’s a little less theoretical. We get some tips on the four questions to ask about your character, how to create distinct characters like a daring archeologist, how to build and more importantly, talk to your character with some solid advice about the setting you place them in.
♦ And lapsing back into the theoretical, another way we might be able to distribute our free comics is through Scribd. I got the hint from here (#62) and you can already see items like Nosey Parker and Way oF The Samurai on there, plus all this comic stuff. Why not put some of our best webcomic archives (with links to your site) into a pdf and add it there?
♦ A couple of sobering thoughts: Whereof One Can Speak has its last post ever and Robot 6 has an article basically advising that us all to make our comics have an ending.
♦ Charlotte got the axe. Boing Boing brought us a shot from Imaginative Realism and a 400ft long graphic novel.
♦ You probably don’t want to miss the post where Project Fanboy discusses the origins (or rebirth) of grim and gritty comics. It all begins with a quote from Alan Moore…
♦ The Art of Non-Conformity brought us an inspiring artist interview with the quote “I did it with nothing, because nothing is free.” Scott McCloud gets the least word where he shared a text only comic contest. By the time you read this, the contest will be closed to entries but maybe we’ll see something inspiring.

ArtPatient.com