webcomic roundup: sarah palin, black tower questions and interview madness!

September 14th, 2008 by Rick · No Comments ·

It’s been a busy week on the homefront here, with the new job at MTV’s Splash Page kicking into high gear and our hunt for a new apartment (hopefully) reaching its conclusion. I have a bunch of posts planned for the upcoming week that will more than make up for the last week, though – and a special, giant-size webcomic roundup for this week.

Check it out:

Yeah, so you’ve heard all about the Sarah Palin Action Figure by now. But have you seen DJ Coffman’s version?

Anders Loves Maria creator Rene Engström recently provided a nice peek at her creative process with this series of photos from her sketchbooks. Basically, I’m a sucker for anything ALM – so here’s hoping this won’t be the last of these types of features we see from Engström.

So I’m told that it’s taken more than 10 years for Kelly J. Compeau to launch her new webcomic The Black Tower, an “ad-supported interactive webcomic series targeted at environmentally conscious teens and adults.” I am also quite sure that the press release for this project contains the most mindless corporate-speak and Online Marketing Seminar buzzwords of any webcomic that has ever been the subject of a press release. I haven’t even looked at this comic, but after reading the PR regarding its debut and Compeau’s recent response to a critical comment over at ComixTalk (“… so long as I get product placement sponsors to support the project, it will most definitely become a major success”), I’m not sure my stomach can handle a visit to www.theblacktowercomics.com. Whenever I think about it, I get that same uneasy feeling that gas stations hyping their “environment-friendly initiatives” always give me. *shudder*

Van Jensen has written an excellent article for Publisher’s Weekly that provides a load of details, analysis and insight regarding all of the WOWIO/Platinum non-payment buzz and the changing business model of the webcomic publisher.

Octopus Pie creator Meredith Gran is auctioning the original art from one of her strips. Of special note: It’s the recent strip in which the characters experience some all-too-familiar difficulties driving north from the NYC Metro area to the wilds of Upstate New York. (Full disclosure: I am actually from Upstate New York – and it’s not that bad. I like it quite a bit, in fact.)

It’s becoming interview-palooza around the ‘Net these days, with a heap of quality Q&As popping up in the digital here-and-there. Some highlights include:
Alex Dueben interviews “Girls with Slingshots” creator Danielle Corsetto.
Xaviar Xerexes interviews Daniel “Merlin” Goodbrey about a variety of projects in both the online and print industries.

Anyone catch Jeffrey Rowland channeling just about every movie or television episode made in the last two decades with a story involving computer hackers – all in the hopes of fighting Malaysian t-shirt scammers?

Special thanks go out to Xaviar Xerexes and Gary Tyrrell for a lot of the links I posted here. If you want the latest news from the webcomics world, their sites are the best places to get it. Me? I just try to sift through all of the random bits around their sites and the rest of the ‘Tubes for items I find interesting throughout the week, then post them all here.