"Return of the Mad Bun" by Rachel Hartman
The most beautiful Madbun page yet. See it now, before it vanishes behind the subscription wall!
Recently in Webcomics Category
Geeks the world over rejoice at the return of Sam & Max... as a web-comic!
I may weep openly
Can I hear a w00t? A-men!
hat tip Comics Worth Reading
The Seraph Inn - Inverloch Webcomic
I've only read the first chapter or so, so I don't know what direction it's going in, but I just can't get over how pretty it is.
In Focused Totality: An Open Letter To Larry Young, Mark Fossen writes:
It is my sincere belief that critics matter. I think it now, and I can remember thinking it at 18 when I first read Kott's Shakespeare Our Contemporary. In my theatre days, I greedily devoured book after book of criticism: Brecht, Grotowski, Artaud, Bentley. I think that a good critical essay is art in and of itself - it is simply non-fiction writing, and can rise much higher than the simple level of a consumer review.
My problem is that on a good day, when I'm feeling optimistic, I can barely persuade myself that comics matter. That critics matter is a leap of faith that I can't really take. That's not to say there's no difference between good criticism and bad criticism. Websnark is good, for instance, because it leads me to new comics that I enjoy, and because it sometimes leads me to see something in a comic that I hadn't noticed before. But that the critical enterprise itself matters...nah.
Eric Burns has a nice discussion going on the way that Wikipedia is utterly failing when it comes to webcomics (and probably other things). Basically, the Request For Deletion process is broken, and a bunch of know-nothings are using that to delete pages on various webcomics for "not being noteworthy." He suggests moving on to Comixpedia, which at least has the goal of being an encyclopedic reference on comics so you won't have to continuously justify and rejustify the fact that the article even exists.
I wonder, though, whether there's any point to Wikipedia or Comixpedia anyway. I just created an account on Comixpedia but I don't know if I'll ever use it. Why? Because I'm not at all convinced that these online user-edited encyclopedias do anything that Google doesn't do better.
Think about it: as a user, if you're not particularly concerned with the reliability or completeness of the information, or you think you're in a good position to judge it, then the first few entries that Google returns on any topic will almost certainly be at least as authoritative and useful as the Wikipedia entry. If you are concerned, though, you need a site that actually has editors or an institutional affiliation that you can trust.
On the other hand, as an author of reference material, if you spend effort updating Wikipedia, you not only face editing by people who are likely to know less than you on the subject, but you can lose your work entirely when somebody with a grudge against the topic comes along and sets up a Vote to Delete. You might be able to fend it off, but you'll need constant vigilance to keep fending them off--because they're persistent, and because the process is broken, even if you manage to alert people who actually use your article to come defend it, their votes are likely to be thrown out (as being "self-interested") while the votes of people who have never even read the article or know anything about the subject will likely count (particularly if they've voted to delete a lot of things). On the other hand, if you had spent that effort writing your own web page, or blog entry, on the topic, that's it. Thanks to Google you have every chance that people looking for information on the topic will be able to find your page, you don't have to face hostile edits by the ignorant, and the information is there as long as you want it to be.
So what the hell is the point of Wikipedia again?
Several webcomics, including one of my favorites--Wapsi Square, have formed their own cooperative. Personally, I think they're making too big a deal of the fact they're all moving from Keenspot, with motto "Spotless." That's the kind of thing that may feel good at the time, but is likely to be embarrassing a couple years down the road. But whatever.
Blank Label Comics proudly announces a new approach to self-publishing for cartoonists. Blank Label is a cooperative group of cartoonists who are helping one another succeed as independents.
These six cartoonists, previously hosted at Keenspot, are banding together for cross-promotion and advertising. Each is using his proficiency in a particular aspect of the cartooning business to help the others — who are doing the same in return.
Six cartoonists form Blank Label Comics: Brad Guigar of Greystone Inn and Courting Disaster, Paul Southworth of Krazy Larry and Ugly Hill, Kristofer Straub of Checkerboard Nightmare and Starshift Crisis, Paul Taylor of Wapsi Square, Steve Troop of Melonpool, and David Willis of Shortpacked! and It's Walky.
Randy Milholland, of Something Positive fame (if fame is the right word), has a new comic:Midnight Macabre - Updating Monday Through Friday. It's set in 1981 and it'a about a young guy taking over a local TV station's late night hosted horror movie show (think Elvira, or SCTV's Count Floyd) when the old host dies on air. So far it's mostly set-up, but the real reason I bring it up is today's blog comment by Randy, apropos of publicists:
I want a publicist so I'll have someone to make things up for me. "Mr. Milholland was, of course, only kidding when he punched the reporter's child in the forehead and then had sexual relations with that piano. And, of course, it was completely an inside joke when my client hamstringed Noam Chomsky and pulled him into an alley way to feast upon the good professor's leathery flesh."
No idea what brought Chomsky to his mind in this context, but I bet that's a rarer1 sentence than "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
crossposted to Logomacy
1 - though not a less probable one
Brooke McEldowney is taking a break to do some research for his next Pibgorn story, he's rereleasing the first Pibgorn story with annotations, which I think makes for a pretty interesting behind the scenes look at the mind of a cartoonist. Brooke is the writer artist behind two of my daily reads: 9 Chickweed Lane, and Pibgorn.
Well, Sonny, so square that I don't even recognize the trends that Questionable Content mocks
But that's ok, 'cause it's almost time for Matlock.
Maaaaaaatloooooock!
