I’m holding a contest to get the word out on Haunted.  There is about a week and a half left to get orders in to comic shops (the end of November).  You may be aware that I’m publishing Haunted myself so this is all new to me and I really could use your help with the final push.

Grand Prize:  An original 8x10 Haunted watercolor painting.  Haunted is drawn completely on the computer so this is truly a unique item.  The grand prize winner also receives a signed copy of Haunted with a sketch inside. 

Runner up:  A signed copy of Haunted with a sketch inside. 

The details:  The winners will be chosen randomly but you can increase your odds.  All the entrants names will go in a pot then 2 winners pulled.  You enter by posting about Haunted.  You can enter with as many posts as you like.  Facebook, Myspace and Twitter count as 1 entry each.  Mentions on blogs and websites count for 2 entries.  The blog and website entries have to include one of the banners from below. 

All the entries have to say what it is and include a link back to www.hauntedcomic.com The idea is to get people to check it out and hopefully order the book.  So if you’d like to personalize your post that would be great.

To let me know you’re in you can leave a comment HERE or email me at jdsmeaton@hotmail.com  And let me know where you’ve posted so I can count you for however many entries. 

Thanks for your help.  I sincerely appreciate it.

-Josh Smeaton

This Lucy Knisley comic "Downloading Optimism (Pessimism Virus Detected)" is a great bit of commentary on the transition between an all paper world to the multimedia, digital world Lucy is already a native in.  There are generational issues as well as the massive discomfort anyone feels when they are in effect "losing their job" (what else to call the dying models of the daily big city and alternative weekly newpapers and the diminishing number of cartoonists who can make a living from their checks?).  You have to hope that cartoonists recognize that losing a "job" (i.e. a business model) is not the same as losing your talent and that as old opportunities go away there are new opportunities to create and exploit.

Last time we talked to Andi Ewington, the creator of Forty Five – a graphic novel in which a fictional James Stanley’s unborn child may have the Super-S gene which grants super powers. Mr. Stanley decides to interview forty five supers to answer the question of what is in store for the child, the parents and the family.

I previously asked about some of the behind the scenes effort that went into publishing this book. In this interview, let’s talk to some of the artists involved and get their side of the story.

The artists who have answered my five questions include Boo Cook, Matt Timson and Sean O’ Conner.

1. What led you to choose your interview to illustrate?

Boo Cook : By the time I signed up for the project there were only a few slots left up for grabs, around 8 I think. I read them all through, and strangely the interview concerning the bad-ass junkie addicted to super pills leapt out at me. Also I was watching “The Wire” at the time, so my mind instantly became flooded with images of this brooding hoody wearing street dude.

Matt Timson: I think that a lot of the interviews had been taken by the time I was asked – but ‘Zip’ stood out immediately as being interesting for me to draw, as well as hitting an emotional note with me. I was able to put myself in Zip’s shoes and really feel that despair. I knew instantly that that was the one I wanted to do- and I would’ve been gutted if it’d already been taken.

Sean O’ Conner: I didn’t really choose the interview as such; I came on board relatively late, by which time most of the pages had already been done. Initially I was told I’d probably be given the Psychosis interview, although I was then given the choice of two others, neither of which appealed to me as much.

2. How many of the interviews did you want to do upon reading them?

Boo Cook: Well obviously they were all good, but some appealed more to my artistic style and sensibilities than others – for example, I just couldn’t picture myself illustrating the interview with the superbaby flying around the maternity ward, although the artist (Dan Brereton) responsible for that one did a wicked job! In the end I just went with the one I thought I could try and do justice to.

Matt Timson: I seem to recall only seeing a list of what was left (although my memory might be a bit wonky on that one) and I only ever really wanted to draw Zip out of that list. There was nothing wrong with the others, but that was the only one that really made me feel like I could do it real justice.

Sean O’ Conner: I haven’t really thought about this…I’m not sure really….I can say though that having now read all the interviews, if I was given a choice of any I’d go for the one I actually did; despite not having much choice – see above – it seems I ended up with the one I found most interesting…

3. Many artists might feel a desire to tweak their art to reflect what those before them had created. Did you feel that way?

Boo Cook: I think mine was one of the earlier pieces to be completed, but certainly Jock’s was already done so the bar was raised pretty high already. I definitely tried as hard as my abilities would permit, but Andi’s tactic of staying in touch with the whole group of artists throughout and showing the freshly turned out pages as and when they were done really helped to spur me on – I’m sure the other artists would agree.

Matt Timson: Heh- who doesn’t?!? Fortunately, I was way too busy to indulge myself at the time- but yeah, I saw a lot of work come in after mine that made me want to go back to it and tweak it a bit! I think that’s pretty normal.

Sean O’ Conner: No; even if I had seen any other pages before doing mine, it seemed to me that the whole point was for each page to be distinctive, to reflect a variety of styles…otherwise, what would be the point of using different artists and leaving things open ended? Having said that, perhaps I should add that I was asked to make my work a single, large image to fit with the work already done as ComX were after a specific balance…

4. Being that the transcript was left mostly open ended for you to illustrate, did your initial ideas about what to illustrate spring fully to life or did you feel a need to dwell on it?

Boo Cook: With my piece there were a few parameters set before I began, so they had to be taken into account – many of the interviews that had been snapped up by other artists were being illustrated as single splash images so Andi asked if I would mind making my image more panel/strip based. I broke the interview down in thumbnail form, the same way as I would any traditional comic script, but decided to dispense with a rigid panel layout and go for something with more organic flow in order to get the page to work as a stand alone image as well. As I mentioned before, watching “The Wire” at the time was a strong visual influence and led me to produce some amusing reference photos! The interview also contained some strong visual concepts that I was able to latch onto, such as the whole 21 second theme – I tried to cram as many 21 based visual references in there as possible, and Andi even helped with a few suggestions there too.

Matt Timson: I think I pretty much knew from the outset what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to show Zip using his powers, but also knew that the story didn’t really call for it, so that left using a picture of him running at super-speed as a backdrop for the page, with the story overlaid on top. In that sense, the background dictated what the rest of the page would look like- which is a bit of an arse-backwards way of working, I suppose. I also knew how I was going to depict the baby’s fate (trying not to give too much away here!). Sometimes, I really struggle with how a page will look- but this came to me quite easily and I like the way that it hangs together.

Sean O’ Conner: The image I did occurred to me straight away even before reading the interview; at first I was given a brief outline and the image popped into my head pretty much fully formed…it was simply a matter of doing it. I did think of adding extra, secondary panels once I read the interview, but I was asked to do a single image…

5. What element of your piece are you most proud of?

Boo Cook: I think its probably the overall design of the page that I got into the most. Also there’s just something iconic about bright red pills tumbling through space, isn’t there? Maybe its just me… I have to say, I’m rather proud to have been invited on board – a great gig, and a very unique and well put together project! cheers!

Matt Timson: The backdrop. I liked all of it as a whole, but I really enjoyed drawing the backdrop. It’s a cover for a Flash comic waiting to happen.

Sean O’ Conner: Hmmm….The colours (By Matt Wilson)! To be honest, I’m a little disappointed with what I did…I had to rush a little to get it finished, and while its ok, I felt it could have been better…

Thank you for answering these questions and thanks to Andi Ewington and Benjamin Shahrabani for helping to arrange both this and the previous Forty Five interview. Also, please visit the sites of Boo Cook, Matt Timson and Sean O’Conner to see more of their fabulous work.

Forty Five was spotlighted in the October 2009 Diamond Previews catalog (under DCD#OCT090823 for retailers). For more news about Forty Five, please visit the Forty Five comic blog and ComX.

Issue 4 of Inbound, the anthology of the Boston Comics Roundtable, is now available for pre-order! Our biggest issue yet, number 4 is an educational romp through the history of the great city of Boston. Reserve your issue now, and spread the world!

The Boston Comics Roundtable presents Inbound 4: A Comic-Book History of Boston.
38 tales from Boston’s past, as written and drawn by local independent comics creators!

Since 2006, the Boston Comics Roundtable has been bringing comics artists and writers together to collaborate on Inbound, a twice-yearly anthology of “Comics from Boston.”

Now we’ve asked this diverse pool of comics talent to choose their favorite characters and incidents from local history. The result is “A Comic Book History of Boston,” an entertaining tour through three centuries of important social and political events, bigger-than-life personalities, and colorful New England lore.

From Shay’s Rebellion and the great Molasses Flood, to Charles Ponzi’s original “scheme” and Mark Twain’s disastrous encounter with Boston literary society, to the 1970s busing crisis, the Gardner Museum heist and many more, the “Comic Book History of Boston” is an opportunity for readers of all ages to take a fresh look at our historical heritage and be introduced to the area’s thriving independent comics scene.

I tweeted this, but forgot to blog it:  Ryan Sohmers announced last week, the Rayne Summers Webcomic Scholarship at The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont.  It's being set up by the creators of Least I Could Do and will pay the tuition for a budding webcomic artist to attend CCS.

Very generous and a great idea as well.  Kudos to Sohmers and his partners at Blind Ferret.

Check out the new webcomic from Wes Molebash, Max vs Max.  Style-wise it appears to be a successor to his last webcomic, You'll Have That (for a recap of past work, check out this interview from earlier this year with Wes).

Strewth! from Josh Way certainly has a funny first comic (although just barely injected enough needed life into the now completely shark-jumped, shattered the fourth-wall trope of a first comic being about the fact that it is the first comic of the webcomic).  Nice art, decent pacing -- impossible to judge after one comic but I for one, will be back to check more out.

Not sure I'm hyping this or not - AMC made a remake of the classic teevee series The Prisoner and also made a comic to accompany it.  I am probably going to read it but messing with such a classic program makes me a bit nervous...

I actually like Ted Rall's cartooning - don't always agree with him but to me if you're going to put yourself out there as an editorial cartoonist it helps to actually editorialize in the cartoon.  Rall does that fearlessly.

But apparently Rall seems to think the only way to success in comics is through the narrow prism of his own experiences.  He can't seem to stand thinking about any other avenue to a sustainable career in comics despite his clear understanding that the newspaper biz is dying and killing off editorial (and all) comics in the newspaper even faster.  There's a somewhat over-long interview between Ted Rall and Rall protege Matt Bors in the recent issue of TCJ (available online now) where Rall just can't leave "webcomics" alone:

How can we be "alternative"? There are more political cartoons drawn and published in "alternative" styles — in altweeklies — than there are in dailies. Indeed, the only thing more annoying than the lame posturing of a few ridiculous tools like Scott Kurtz (PVP) and the Penny Arcade guys (who apparently have Roman orgies every time a staff editorial cartoonist loses his job and winds up unemployed) is the term "webcartoonist." What the fuck does that mean? Oh, I know: Cartoonists who post their stuff online for free and sell visitors to their websites merchandise like T-shirts and books. And who attend lots of comics conventions. Well, gee, what cartoonist doesn't do that? We all do. We all have been. Everyone is a webcartoonist now.

What's disconcerting beyond the ridiculous Amway-like rhetoric ("You too can make BIG CASH MONEY making comics FROM HOME!") is that free has become a religion for the e-vangelists. They give cartoons away for free that they could sell — simply by asking! You and I were on a group phone chat a while back with webcartoonists like Kurtz and someone — I forget who — said he wouldn't even know how to ask for money. I said: "You just ask, 'Do you have a budget for this?'" It really is that simple. Not only are these guys driving down the prices for all of us who are trying to make a living, they're doing the same thing editorial cartoonists are doing by lowering the quality. Look at webcartoons like PVP and Penny Arcade, by all accounts the most successful webcomics around. Kurtz tried to give PVP away for free to newspapers a while back and there were no takers. Why? Because it's terrible. Incompetently written. Awful characterization. Plastic, cold artwork. Syndication 1.0 had flaws. It kept out good, daring work. But now that there's no gatekeeper, all the shit is everywhere. It used to be off the page. Now it's damned near impossible for readers to distinguish what's good because it's surrounded by crap. That's not good for the profession. A terrible mainstream comic like Tumbleweeds had a base level of competence. Only a half-dozen webcomics, like Diesel Sweeties, Cat and Girl, etc. do.

You want to know what’s really subjective? Top ten lists. No two people will ever agree on what the best ten of anything is as long as people have the ability to think for themselves. Isn’t merely the act of putting together such a list an example of arrogance? Probably.

Still, we love lists like the one I’m compiling below for one big reason: its fun to argue why something made the list, and why things were left off.

So, as we head into the Holiday Season and close out the aughts, here’s my list of what I think are the Ten Best Webcomics of the Decade (2000-2009): The Second Decade of Webcomics.

These aren’t the most influential — otherwise Penny Arcade would be a shoe-in. And since we’re talking about The Decade, longetivity counts — so, sorry Gastrophobia. This is a list of webcomics I enjoyed because they told great stories, opened readers to different sorts of humor, and basically stuck with me for some reason or other.

Each of these are a great credit to the new genre/medium known as “webcomics” and show that, in some cases, the outlaw world of webcomics can produce comics that are heads and shoulders superior to their boring, predictable print counterparts.

1.) Gunnerkrigg Court (reviewed here)

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of this webcomic. Gunnerkrigg Court’s artwork is beautiful and unique. Tom Siddell tells a mysterious story set in a sprawling Gormenghast-style city that mashes up fantasy with science fiction. While this is the sort of place where fairies and robots coexist, Gunnerkrigg Court feels natural and not at all contrived. The highly likable cast includes Antimony, a wide-eyed girl with destiny written all over her, and Reynardine, a stuffed animal who is more than meets the eye. I loved this comic so much, I reviewed it twice. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: if there is only one webcomic you will read in your entire life, read Gunnerkrigg Court.

2.) Hark! A Vagrant (reviewed here)

Kate Beaton’s comic has achieved the impossible: she’s managed to make Canadian history interesting. Man, I doubt Canadians even find Canadian history interesting. She pokes fun at other events in history as well by showing us that, really, were those bygone figures really different from us? Is it so implausible that the Bronte sisters would be dishing on distasteful men or that, as above, suffragettes would spend just as much time hitting on the dudes as they would protesting? Hark! A Vagrant makes jokes based on a weird, universal truth: human nature is pretty much the same, no matter what era.

3.) Horribleville/Gunshow (reviewed here and here)

Can old school cartooning can be adapted to and be made new for audiences online? Now, Gunshow and its predecessor, Horribleville aren’t for everyone. They’re vulgar and crass; the fart jokes of webcomics. Still, anyone can make a poop joke. What make’s KC Green’s webcomics so special is his unique brand of rubbery and hyperkinetic artwork. KC’s drawings — in some ways reminiscent of Looney Tunes and Spumco — is goddamned hilarious. It’s great to know that in a webcomic world where everything seems to rely on sterile Flash drawings, there’s someone out there who can make you laugh the old-fashioned way: by drawing someone with a smile that’s goofy as hell.

4.) Scary Go Round (reviewed here)

It’s too bad that the last years of Scary Go Round got super bland, because everything John Allison wrote up to “Super Crisis Quests” was bursting with creativity and energy unparalleled by anything else outh there. The world of Scary Go Round, anchored by the fetching Shelley Winters, was one where anything that could happen, did happen. Trips to the undead, zombie resurrections, robot ambassadors, creepy children: it was all there! The art was fantastic, whether it was the clean Adobe Illustrator look or the more elongated and pliant hand-drawn look. And, above all, Scary Go Round was very, very British. Quite the dog’s bollocks, what what!

5.) Achewood (reviewed here)

You wouldn’t think a cat in a thong would make a compelling character, but Chris Onstad will prove you wrong. Achewood proves that there’s a lot of power in using a simplistic and off-putting art style. A portion of the story takes place in an inky black underworld, and it’s unsettling and eerie as get out. The comics’ vulgar jokes are probably the ones that get the most attention. That’s fine, but it’s not why I like Achewood. The best Achewood jokes are often the sneaky ones that reward readers who’ve been paying attention. Onstad’s magnum opus, “The Great Outdoor Fight,” is a strong contender for Best Webcomic Story Arc of the Decade.

6.) Perry Bible Fellowship (reviewed here)

Now that it’s on semi-hiatus, it’s easy to forget the influence PBF had on webcomic humor. With PBF, humor went upscale. Sure, Nicolas Gurewitch tended to lean too strongly on the Twilight Zone twist at the end, where happiness and joy is subverted by horror. Still, give Gurewitch credit: the guy told jokes that seemed fresh and new because, really, no one had told them before. And then there’s that art. You’ve got to love all the different art styles Gurewitch juggled. The painterly Euro-style, which PBF became most strongly indentified, is incredibly attractive, and it was something no one had ever really seen in a popular webcomic before. Just because you’re doing a 3-to-4 panel gag comic doesn’t mean it can’t be pretty.

7.) Girl Genius (reviewed here)

This webcomic beat out Fables, Y: The Last Man, and Serenity for the Hugo Award. You know what’s weird? Phil and Kaja Foglio deserved it. You can easily get sucked into their world of mad science and revisionist European history. In fact, I will go so far as to say that, Girl Genius marks the only time that “steampunk” has provided a backdrop for great storytelling in any medium. It’s got everything you could want in a fantasy epic: romance, action, and lots and lots of fun.

8.) High Moon (reviewed here)

Will the Zuda Comics business model be the future of webcomics? Time will tell. However, you can’t fault the content. David Gallaher and Steve Ellis’ Harvey Award-winning High Moon shows where superhero-style action might headed and the Big Two comic companies transition to the digital format. And yet … where else buton the internet could a high concept mix of Westerns and horror possibly succeed? High Moon’s much better than a lot of its superhero ilk, too, by virtue of its originality and its willingness to subvert reader expectations.

9.) Sexy Losers

This is the only comic on this list I haven’t reviewed, nor will I link to it for fear of running afoul of WordPress’ obsenity rules. Sexy Losers comes with a hard triple X rating. It would be one thing if the comic was simply NSFW but … wow. Ever read a comic where a guy forincates into a headless girl’s throat? Or a woman decides to get it on with a former lover’s ashes? Sexy Losers makes the list for being so audacious that in manages to get past the merely repulsive and reaches a strange (and uncomfortable) level that redefines “dark humor.” Like South Park’s Scott Tenorman episode, he mental scars this webcomic inflicts stay with you long, long after you’re done reading it.

10.) The Princess Planet (reviewed here)

And for the final spot of my Top Ten Best Webcomics of the Decade, something that’s much, much cleaner. Can puns be funny? Yes … as long as you persevere at them. Brian McLachlan proves that he can wear you down until you raise the white flag and admit that, yes, sometimes all you really were in the mood for was a good clean joke and a chipper, adventure-seeking princess in a pink leotard.

Honorable mention: Megatokyo, The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Minus, A Lesson Is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible

Posted in The Webcomic Overlook, webcomics Tagged: Achewood, Girl Genius, Gunnerkrigg Court, Gunshow, hark! a vagrant, Horribleville, Kate Beaton, KC Green, Perry Bible Fellowship, Scary Go Round, sexy losers, The Princess Planet

Ah, 100 reviews.

This is truly a milestone in the annals of The Webcomic Overlook lore. True, I’ve also written 20+ smaller reviews, which are actually longer an more elaborate than the earlier Webcomic Overlooks. Plus all those reviews I wrote for ComixTalk and Comic Fencing (all lovingly catalogued on this very site).

Still, 100 reviews and 500k page views is a hell of a milestone. So a big thank you to all the readers who have been following The Webcomic Overlook all this time. I seriously would not be writing these columns if it were not for you, your input, and your enthusiasm.

Now, let’s get past the valedictorian speech and on with the review. To commemorate the 100th, I asked you, the readers, on the Twittersphere — and if that term hasn’t been coined yet, I’m totally going to claim it — which webcomic I should review: xkcd or PHD? In an awesome demonstration of my Twitter prowess, I got four whole replies. One vote went to PHD, one vote went to Girls With Slingshots (automatically disqualified because it was not one of the options), one vote went to xkcd, and one vote went to something called kxcd.

Yay me?

I think the latter was written by bRYAN NOORSOOMAIKXCD. (And yes, that reply WAS from Sarah Zero writer Ace Plughead.)

I had strong inclinations to do a review of PHD. It’s a curious, long-lived webcomic in its own right, attracts audiences beyond the typical webcomic spectrum, and yet doesn’t typically get much attention when discussion turns to webcomics. I may still review it some day. But I decided to settle on Randall Munroe’s xkcd after all. Because deep down inside, I really am a glutton for page visits.

Why would I do this? Hasn’t everyone and their brother talked about xkcd already? I typed “xkcd review” in Google and got some 533,000 results (though only about 2,700 if I enclose it in quotation marks — which is probably more accurate but nevertheless still impressive from a webcomics standpoint). Why, this is more reviews than for, say, the Partridge Family! And who doesn’t love the Partridge Family? So really … does the world need another xkcd review?

For one, the power of this webcomic fascinates me. It has an audience that other webcomics cannot come close to touching. Let me tell you something about myself. In real life, I am an aersopace engineer. I work in a fairly large engineering department. Yes, seriously! And like any office environment, sometimes people print out comics strips and post them at their desks. The most common, is, unsurprisingly, Dilbert. It’s like sticking it to the man, only in a socially acceptable way. There’s also no shortage of Far Sidebooks and day-by-day calendars. Habitual coffee drinkers (an typically office assistants) put up an Adam@Home toon. There’s even a weirdo (i.e., me) who puts up the defunct They’ll Do It Every Time.

There’s also xkcd. In fact, xkcd is the only webcomic anyone in our offices ever puts up. (Well, except for my desk, which, in addition to my previous example, also sports a Savage Chickens comic.) xkcd is patronized by people who have advanced engineering degrees and folks who spend their days hunched over their computers and typing long strings of code. They are what the outside world calls “smart people.” I don’t know if they read xkcd regularly or if they’re aware of the existence of any other webcomics. My suspicion is “no.” Yet the comic speaks to them like Dilbert spoke to the masses of misbegotten cubicle dwellers scattered in artificially-lighted offices all across the land.

A comic this popular, which is perhaps THE most read webcomic on the internet, is bound to attract a lot of playa haters. Mention xkcd anywhere online — like say in an interview with Neal Stephenson — and you’ll find comments like “Randall Munroe is a creepy sperging manchild who built a goddamn chuck-e-cheese ballpit in his living room in place of a sofa and in any sane society would be looked down upon as the human garbage he is.” Ouch. Elsewhere, there’s an xkcd sucks blog dedicated to the full time hating of xkcd. xkcd even has an entry on the bad webcomics wiki, which sneers: “this comic is the very picture of Asperger’s disorder.”

And yet, none of that stops the xkcd juggernaut. The comic gathers readers like it’s going out of fashion.

But first, let’s get into the legend behind xkcd. Randall Munroe, the creator, has a degree in physics from the Christopher Newport University. He worked as a programmer at NASA in the the Langley Research Center before his contract lapsed and he decided to take up doing webcomics full time. I have, by the way, a high degree of respect for people who abandon high-respected fields in science to follow dreams that most people would ridicule. (Other heroes: Peter Adkinson, a former Boeing engineer who founded Wizards of the Coast and David Morgan-Mar, a Ph.D. graduate who also creates webcomics — which I reviewed here and here — and writes RPG manuals.)

xkcd, according to its subtitle, is “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” And what do the letters stand for? Is it some sort of obscure axis system only known to people with advanced physics degrees? It is a name of one of the less heralded sub-atomic particles? Or is the word some sort of Linux command that inspires peals of laughter in programmers? Again, Wikipedia, aggregator for the wisdom of the masses, has the answers: “He had originally used xkcd as an instant messaging screenname because he wanted a name without a meaning so he wouldn’t eventually grow tired of it.”

That’s fairly clever, actually. I’m pretty much doomed doing a Mexican luchador gimmick for all eternity. Oh, if I’d only picked out a more nonsense moniker… like “Lady Gaga”, for example. Surely I would’ve conquered the internet singlehandedly by naptime.

So here’s how the typical xkcd joke: setup, obscure nerd reference, and punchline. It’s telling jokes to a subset of people that don’t usually hear humor targeted at them … in much the same way gaming comics found popularity in the early days of webcomics. I mean, before Penny Arcade, was anyone really making jokes about, say, Team Fortress? In the same way, xkcd is telling jokes to a subset of geekdom that’s even nerdier than gamers: programmers, physicists, and engineers. The only reason that imitators haven’t really followed in xkcd’s wake — and I mean in the sense of content rather than aesthetics, since the webcomic world is not exactly lacking in lazy stick-figure webcomics these days — is that the barrier to entry is high: there are few are as comfortably conversant and keenly humorous about physics and computers as Randall Munroe.

I don’t think Munroe has ever claimed that his comic was only going to be about physics, math, and programming. Here’s how he describes xkcd in an interview with the New Yorker: “a webcomic about stick figures who do math, play with staple guns, mess around on the Internet, and have lots of sex. It’s about three-fourths autobiographical.” Assuming that “have lots of sex” was the one-fourth non-autobiographical, that still leaves two-thirds of the comic about being a giddy manchild. It doens’t matter, though: xkcd is basically saddled with the reputation that it’s the smart webcomic with obscure physics stuff.

I did a random sample of 20 comics, though, by clicking the site’s random button. (Disclaimer: I didn’t read the entire comic before writing this review. However, I must’ve read 50% of it and frankly a lot of it is the same.) Only 2 could really qualify as obscure physics-based jokes. There were 7 jokes based on obscure computer commands, so I guess that can count as smart, but those are typically divided between “the punchline is Linux” jokes and “look at me I am applying video game logic to everyday life” jokes.

So, how about those 11 other comics? The “romance” ones don’t get much play. They only appear 2 times, and they’re clearly the weakest of the bunch. More on that later. The rest are split out among nerdy pop culture references, nerd fantasies acted out, and things that look like they were written by, er, a “creepy sperging manchild”.

In fact, once you expand the sample size, you get a fairly clear understanding what xkcd really is. It’s not a webcomic about math and physics. For the most part, it’s a nerd’s whiny journal comic. Like when Munroe goes on about how much he hates DRM protection. Or when he rants about the Federal bailout and talks about a strawman issue that no one in the world was even angry about. (Long story short: he thinks people were mad at “billions” as opposed to “millions.” This puts severe doubts about Munroe’s status as an egghead.) Or one of the many times he epically rails against society by publishing a furious and ill thought out essay:

The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I’m sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out before us. We see the same things every day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us. And no, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn’t involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of some day easing my fit into a mold. It doesn’t involve tempering my life to better fit someone’s expectations. It doesn’t involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up. This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

Uh huh.

You know, Randall Munroe might not know it, but he’s inadvertently provided pretty solid evidence that us nerds deserves to be shoved into lockers. And given wedgies every day. If our extremely knowledge-based culture was responsible for bringing about a rant that sounds like it came straight out of the mouth of “a creepy sperging manchild,” then we deserve that punishment as atonement for our sins and much much more.

And, Jesus Christ, if I have to hear one more Browncoat talk about thier obsession with Summer Glau and/or Firefly, I’m going to have to join in on the locker-stuffing shenanigans myself.

Worse is pretty much any strip that dwells on the “romance” part of equation. I think I speak for many readers when I say that xkcd would be much, much more tolerable if he’d left “romance” out completely. One of the most famous xkcd strips is “Angular Momentum,” a strip that’s hyperlinked straight from he main page and which gave the world: “Spinning counterclockwise / Each turn robs the planet of angular momentum / Slowing its spin by the tiniest bit / Lengthening the night, pushing back the dawn / Giving me a little more time here / With you.” No doubt many of you readers find this particular sentiment to be sweet. I, however, am firmly in the camp of the opposition, who finds its very nausea-inducing. My BS-meter only goes so high, you see.

There’s also Munroe’s incessant white knighting. Does he white knight Twilight fans? Oh yes he can! You can count on Randall Munroe to clumsily protect the maiden honor of girl geeks everywhere from weird and creepy nerds like … well, you know. (Noted xkcd critic Kris Straub addressed this issue far more succinctly.) Overall, romantic xkcds are either pathetic and kinda creepy or unfunny and kinda embarrassing.

Despite all that, I don’t think xkcd is a bad webcomic.

When Munroe does have a hit, he smashes it out of the ballpark with a force unmatched by other webcomics. There’s a reason why many would rank xkcd as the best webcomic of all time. One of my personal favorites included an Ender’s Game vignette and the likely result that the Locke-Demothenes would have on today’s world. This is the inside baseball stuff that I alluded to earlier, catering to nerds because, hey, look at me, I get the reference! But you know what? I laughed. The comic showed keen insight into Ender’s Game beyond the superficial. At that moment, I understood why Firefly fans might love the Firefly strips so much.

I liked his recent tribute to Geocities, where Munroe converted the site into a confusing morass of tables, animated gifs, as ugly wallpapers. I thought hismap of online communities was fun, especially trying to mentally catalog all the sites I was familiar with. A similar strip mapping space from a logarithmic scale was, despite all the cutesy nerd references sprinkled throughout, was pretty damn fantastic at illustrating the magnitude of the universe. And he gets the romance thing right once in a while.

As for the art… yes, nothing to write home about. It’s guilty of convincing thousands of webcomic creators out there that they don’t actually need any modicum of artistic talent to do a webcomic. When you think about it, though, could xkcd have been done any other way? I tried imagining what xkcd would look like with slightly stronger art — say, clip art — and it just wouldn’t work. If xkcd incorporated anything aesthetic, it would be simply distracting.

With stick figures and minimal art, the writing becomes the focal point for the reader. Most stick figure comics are total failures because the writing isn’t great either. With xkcd, though, the writing will at least provide something interesting, whether it’s a humorous twist on a textbook equation or whether it’s Munroe being a “creepy sperging manchild” again.

In the end, though, this review is probably the most superfluous that I’ve ever written. Anyone who has ever read webcomics knows about xkcd, and they know whether they love it with the passion of a thousand suns or hate it with the fury of a thousand storms. I’d actually like to hear from you.

For xkcd?

Against xkcd?

Who cares?

100 episodes!

Recently I've been stumbling around with the whole "how do I keep this drawing comics thing fun when it is my job?' thing. I know it sounds kind of weird, because drawing comics IS fun, but once the thing that you used to do "for fun" becomes the thing you do for work ... okay, it's not like it STOPS being fun, I LOVE doing it, but it becomes something ... else.

I went to school for animation, and have worked in the animation industry for a few years, and all during that time I drew comics for fun. I always thought that drawing would be something hard to keep going with once I started pursing it as a career, but animation is different enough from comics so that wasn't a problem. I have an animation friend in Ontario who I like to meet up with and talk shop whenever I'm back there visiting and he works in animation to pay the bills, and does comics on the side. When I last saw him he was drawing storyboards for an animated show, and having a hard time working on his comics. He said it was difficult to find motivation to work on his comics while he was drawing storyboards because when you storyboard "you use the same part of your brain you use for comics. It's just too similar." I kind of know how he feels now.

I love doing comics, but when I take a few hours off on the weekend, and think about the things I want to do during my off time, and how oh gosh, it'd be nice to draw some comics for fun, the minute I think that some slightly exhausted person inside me shrieks (usually in a British accent, because I have a British interior monologue) "NNNNNNOOOOO you just did that for the past EIGHTY HOUUURRRRSS!" ... and that is why I end up dreamily staring at the TV for several hours on a Saturday without my sketchbook in hand, something Past Me would be horrified at, since previously I would never sit in front of the television without a sketchbook on which to sketch furiously.

Comics are so much fun. But they are also my work. But they're fun... I want to do more of them, but I've been drawing so many pages of them the thought of picking up my pencil and drawing another is a terrible drag, and shouldn't I be doing something fun during my downtime? Something fun like drawing comics?

... it's about this time that I attempt to turn off my British interior monologue, and retreat to watching reruns of Law & Order.

I'm not making a huge push really for this (yet) but I'll keep dropping a note here and there for it.  I've set up a GOOGLE calendar for the sole purpose of adding comics events to it.  Conventions, book signings, local meetups -- stuff ComixTalk readers would certainly be interested in.  You can see it on the website here; but even better you can add it to your own Google Calendar or subscribe to its RSS feed.  I'm not sure what the best widget for Wordpress is for displaying it on a Wordpress site (which powers a lot of comics sites these days) -- let us know!

Beyond being easy to use and display -- it's easy to collaborate on -- I'm looking for more folks to help add events and maintain this calendar.  Many hands make light work, right?  Let me know if you have events to add to the calendar or better yet, if you're interested in joining up as a co-maintainer of it.  Email (xerexes AT gmail.com) or Tweet (xerexes) me.

Congrats to all of the winners of this year's Lulu Awards: 

• Kim Yale Award For Best New Talent: Kate Beaton for Hark, a Vagrant
• Lulu of the Year: Danielle Corsetto for Girls with Slingshots
• Woman of Distinction: Joanne Carter Siegel
• Leah Adezio Award for Best Kid-Friendly Work: Rapunzel’s Revenge, by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, and Nathan Hale
• Female Comic Creator’s Hall of Fame: Gail Simone
• Best Female Character: Monica Villarreal, from Wapsi Square by Paul Taylor

Edgar McHerly's The Invisible Hairsuit at first strikes you a bit like the late lamented Perry Bible Fellowship but it really only has one art style (PBF skipped styles likes it was going out of style) and although it has its very dark and funny moments, it also has some just plain dark moments too.  Still when your first impression of a comic is "this feels a bit like PBF" that's a good start.  

# 97 – Plot Lines & Pacing">Webcomic Beacon # 97 – Plot Lines & Pacing: Ben Carver (Point Guardian and  Hero Academy) and Neil Purcell (Dasien and Crossoverlord) join Fes and Mark to discuss multiple plot lines and plot pacing. Vertigo of TGT Webcomics and Jinxtigr of Tally Road (NSWF) call-in and share as well.

Thanks to Zack of Unamused Comics for the cover art! The original Multiple Plot Lines Question can be found on The Webcomic List Forums here.

The good folks at Garden Ninja Painting Studio have received their shipment of Schlock miniatures. This means that those of you who missed out on the first round can now order the mini you wanted.

Kelly Melcher over at Fandomania.com checked out Rival Angels and liked it so much that we did an interview!  Check out one of the coolest Rival Angels interviews yet!

I’ve been meaning to post some SHIMMER pics but my main computer is in the shop and I’m waiting to get it back to go through the hundreds of pictures I took. If I get a chance I’ll  put some up because I got some great ones.

The WCRA Awards are wrapping up on Saturday the 14th.  Have you voted?  It only takes a minute and there’s some great Rival Angels nominations like Best Supporting Character (Sun), Best Antagonist (Brooke/Chloe) but there’s also some other great nominations that deserve some love like Scott Sava of Dreamland Chronicles (Author Congeniality), The Dreamer (Design, Art, Supporting Character-Nathan Hale) or Xylia (Best Antagonist-Tychia).  Good stuff. Participate!!  You’ll be glad you did.

Onezumi Studios (the team behind the webcomics Stupid and Insane Defenders Against Chaos and My Annoying Life) has just released it's own iPhone app. Chaos Central lets you read/view all of our chaotic releases in one place on your iPhone. We're also making a (Stupid and Insane) offer to other webcomics--get your own version of our app for your comic for free! We've always tried to give back to the community and this is our biggest offer so far.

More info on the service is here.

A round of applause for Paul Gadzikowski, creator of Arthur, King of Time and Space, which reached the 2000th update milestone.  And moreover, Paul has updated the comic every single day.  Start updating those ultra-marathoner webcomic lists now! (h/t to Fleen).

Well it's not everyday I get a press release from Slovenia:

Just as a press-release, we would like to inform all comic and webcomic oriented media that the first online weekly comic from tiny Slovenia, called Paradise Misplaced, recently hit the web.

Created by small-time hermit and self-proclaimed holy man Anonymus Gosh, it recounts the goings on in Eden at the beginning of time with a fresh sin being propagated by a different animal every week.  Adam, Eve, God and the gang have not only the old-fashioned snake-and-apple to fear but also monkeys selling tropical fruit, sloths offering comfy beds and bunnies plugging the playboy lifestyle. Read it (and even better, review it publicly in for many readers) every Sunday at www.paradisemisplaced.si