Flipping through the pages of this issue: an article on the recently announced ICAA, International Comics Arts Association which turns out to be the brainchild of three guys in Illinois. It's a long story, listing all of the plans made by the principal guy and noting that it's just a few guys but not really weighing in on the potential disconnect between the promise of it and the reality of it today, just after its launch. A disappointing article that mostly reads as a press release for ICAA.

A brief article on the annual meeting of the American Editorial Cartoonists Association. Is there no more tired sub-genre of comic than the American editorial cartoon. What other art form so timidly sticks to 18th century forms and label and conceits as this one does?

A short mention that IDT, a telecommunications company has bought up a bunch of comic and animation companies recently. Weird.

TCJ digs up the now ancient Micah Wright scandal story. Wright is quoted, not surprisingly, as expressing a desire that TCJ not mention the story at all.

All in all TCJ should seriously consider ditching its news roundup and resurrecting some sort of blog or news dept. online where it could report daily or weekly on stories when they're still current. Maybe it could limit it to subscribers but at least it would be relevent. Having read 3 issues now I have to say that LOTS of the news stories in TCJ are old and/or not interesting enough to read through the lengthy space they give to them.

Massive interviews in it. One with Jay Hosler and one with Phoebe Gloeckner. Get to them later.

And Goats ad on page 91. Full page, full color one. Cool.

PvPonline.com announced it will be holding "Guest Week 2004" during the San Diego Comicon.

Well it's that time again, so anyone and everyone who would like to do a guest strip this year should start sending them in to me. The only requirement is that the strip can not be any wider than 850 pixels.

I'll pick the strips I like the best to run during our guest week. Depending on how many I get, it could run longer than a week.

LINES ON PAPER is a comics awareness/promotion type group. They have a cool gallery of their business cards that comic artists have signed with words and art.

Alexander Danner has a big fat report, or several big fat reports depending on how you look at it, from this years MOCCA at his blog.

Evil Network Comics is back? There was a brief period where all the cool kids wanted to be on the Evil Network List O' Webcomics. Than the evil network disappeared, probably to its lair of evilness, I suppose.

Now it appears the goodevil Doctor Setebos has returned.

I do a tri-weekly comic at my site, half-decent.com, that is not the major focus of the website. The staff also does reviews of music and videogames and write columns. While not having the comic out on the front page of the site, it is mentioned on the front page every time it is new. I have found that I get alot of visitors who come for another section of the site who may not have even heard of webcomics who see mine and may like it and come back for it. Also, I get the same response in reverse from traffic generated through people looking for the comic.

I do pretty well hit-wise, a couple hundred returning visitors and I don't advertise, so far I have only used word of mouth, onlinecomics.net, and board posting like this.

I was wondering if anyone else has a similar site or situation, and whether or not it has worked for them.

Peppercoin has released the next version of its small (but not quite 'micro') payment system. Peppercoin 2.0 promises smaller per-transaction fees, no required user signup, per-use and subscription models, and easy payment through credit and debit cards.

Chris Bishop, the creator of Her!, has a new blog code-named "Double Agent" that focuses on webcomics.

From the site:
Double Agent is a site where I can review webcomics, comment on trends and experiment with ideas and techniques. I've wanted to do this for a while. It was important that I keep it separate from my webcomic HER! - although my experiences doing that strip since 1998 and exclusively on the web since 2001 would definitely influence my views. That is why I decided to call this site Double Agent. I'm sort of playing both sides - creator and analyst.

He's already posted interviews with Michael Lalonde, Joycelyn Yik and Michael Zole. Bishop is a talented illustrator, web designer and webcomicker. This should be a great site to watch.

White Hydra can be dumb but it's bright, cheery and funny. Although it's about 75 or so on the bCx List I "discovered" it and checked it out b/c I liked the author's banner in his sig line here at the forums on Comixpedia.

So, um, make funny banners and witty signature lines I guess.

Neil Gaiman's speech at the Harvey Awards is available at his blog. A good read, of course, both the general parts that I found quite interesting, but also that he dedicates three paragraphs to the internet and webcomics, specifically R K Milholland's Something Positive.