Free Comic Book Day 2004 is tomorrow, July 3. Stop by your local shop to get free promotional editions of selected comics, including Keenspot and Keenspace samplers. It's all part of a desperate, last gasp attempt to lure normal humans into these funk dungeons.

If you can't make it to the event, try looking online. There might be a few free comics you can download on the Web.

Seq Tart wrote up it's tongue in cheek awards this issue and here's the webcomic ones:

Best Webcomic About a Ten-Year-Old Hasidic Girl Who Picks a Fight with Her Argumentative Stepmother About the Ethics of Killing (Real) Dragons In Order to Get Out of Knitting Lessons/Next Best Thing Until a New Issue of Amy Unbounded Becomes Available: Barry Deutsch's Hereville, on Girlamatic (www.girlamatic.com).

Best Use of a) Canine Ghosts and b) the Princes in the Tower in a Webcomic About a Slightly Shady Middle-Aged British Magician and His Gun-Wielding American Expatriate Sidekick: Barb Lien and Ryan Howe's Gun Street Girl at Graphic Smash (www.graphicsmash.com).

Best Use of Hellboy as a Guest Star in a Webcomic About a Nonchalantly Slackerish Superhero: Dave (the Knave) White's The Japanese Beetle at Graphic Smash.

Best Webcomic About a Pragmatic But Tough Talking Wombat, the Semi-Ectoplasmic Shadowling Who Keeps Following Her Around, and the Various Warrior Clerics, Rat-Keeping Librarians, and Sentient Statues of Elephant-Headed Deities She Encounters When the Latest Tunnel She's Digging Accidentally Takes Her to a Very Foreign Country: Ursula Vernon's Digger at Graphic Smash.

New Student Least Likely to Fit In in Junior High: A toss-up between Emma (who regards other teenagers as aliens and communicates by ventriloquizing through her cow hand puppet) and her elementary school best friend Anna (who is dying to be a typical teenager, but finds herself announcing on the first day of school "These are my psycho [sentient] toys. They embarrassed me in front of the boy I like"), both of Adrian Ramos' The Wisdom of Moo webcomic (Girlamatic), and Jupiter, the twelve-year-old title character of Lynn Lau's Jupiter (also at Girlamatic), who has to run away from the circus her family works for in order to physically attend school at all.

Best "Paranormal Investigators in the 1920's" Webcomic About an Amiably Sleazy Boston Private Eye, a Stuffy Harvard Professor, and an Irrepressible Shopgirl (Among Others) Currently Investigating How One of Their Previous Adventures Seems to Have Wound Up Being Satirized in a Newspaper Comic Strip: Ted Slampyak's Jazz Age at www.jazzagecomics.com.

Heidi Macdonald's The Beat is now a blog, still hosted by Comicon. Not sure why the spin off for Heidi from the Pulse but the new site looks good, and is easier to follow than the old format.

Plus she's linking to Comixpedia in the blogroll! 2 points right there.

hey everyone--- i'm sorry to say that after doing a web strip for two years that i have yet to make myself know on these message boards--- maybe i'm a little shy--- maybe i realize there's not much goofing off involved in doing a 6 day a week strip--- just thought i'd bite the bullet and post---

my name is frank page--- i do the strip bob the squirrel--- which can be seen at http://www.bobthesquirrel.com---- my strip recently got picked up by ucomics.com---which was pretty cool--- i work at a newspaper doing graphic design and editorial cartoons--- but my real ambition is to become a dancer (insert chuckle here)

it is my intention to become more involved in this community--- you all seem to be having a ball doing what you love and talking about it--- swapping horror stories and trading secrets---

cheers!!!

Sluggy Freelance

What's the common theme?
Bunnies? Pop spoofs? Zo&#235? Slugs?
Freelancing? Nope. Fun.

An update from our Keenspace rorrespondent, achim:

Keenspace "Forum Games" is a very active section of the Keenspace forum.

It's speciality are ongoing comic jams where various artists contribute to a topic with their artwork, with a very few rules applied. Such are "Keenspace cluedo", "Keenspace Sitcom", "Continue My Story", various local fights and specially interesting, "Keenspace Colloseum".

It all started with an inspired comic jam called "Battle Royale", not available in it's original, forum form, but you can read most of it on a new site SpaceJams. All other jams will probably be available on this site too.
"Keenspace cluedo" is a standard cluedo game, with Keenspace artists as acters, suspects and victims. "Keenspace Sitcom" is a sitcom parody, again, with artists as main acters. "Continue My Story" is freshly started jam that may lead to interesting things in future.

"Keenspace Colloseum", under the conduction of ChibiArtStudios, might be the best organized jam so far. Pairings are already done, and we can see the start of the first duel here.