If you were dithering about adding an RSS feed to your comic's website, now's the time. Support for the syndication technology is now a part of Mozilla Firefox as of yesterday's 1.0 Preview Release. The browser will attempt to autodetect an RSS feed when you visit any given site, and pop up a little orange icon in the status bar should it find one. From there, you can click on the icon and subscribe to any feed it discovers (and you get a choice when it discovers several). You then follow the update status of your subscribed feeds in a sidebar. It's not the first attempt to integrate the RSS reader and the browser, but it's arguably the first one likely to reach the mass market.

Windows users in particular are switching to Firefox (registration possibly required) at a brisk rate, given both the stagnation and rampant security issues which plague Internet Explorer. Even Microsoft-owned Slate recommended this strategy back in July of this year. But it's not just Firefox you'll be contending with if you want to captivate users in this fashion; Safari 2.0 will have rather yummy-looking RSS support when it ships with Mac OS X Tiger early next year. (Much to the consternation of us Panther users, I might add...)

I keep saying this, and it's true: there's no good reason to make your readers keep refreshing your index page, waiting for an update, when you can bring the update notification to them.

Michael Jantze has announced that he has ended his relationship with his syndicate, King Features. The last installment of The Norm appeared in newspapers this past Sunday. Jantze had already begun to follow in the footsteps of Frank Cho by reprinting The Norm strips in comic book format and Jantze announced that The Norm Magazine would continue its bi-monthly publishing schedule (Issue #5 is due next month).

Catherine Harrell's webcomic, Jen, is now available in print. Her new book, "The Best of Jen," highlights the most recent samples of the strip, with over three hundred comics collected from the 2004 archives.

Jen is a humorous comic about the adventures of four children, a quirky group of friends named Jen, Madison, Sparkle, and Avery. The characters encounter peculiar situations throughout the book, including radical haircuts, lost cats, irresistible soap bubbles, and missing smoothies. The strip appears in soft pastel colors with simple line art, and each cartoon is kid-friendly.

"It's the world as I'd like it to be," says Adrian Ramos, author of the popular webcomic Count Your Sheep. "It's very brave. It has no edge, it's just purely soft and sweet and pastel."

Recently Jamie Robertson of Clan of the Cats lost his job. What else is new in this economy?

His unemployment may lead to the demise of the five year old fantasy comic, Clan of the Cats. Currently a donation drive is underway, however, Robertson has also put forth another idea to help. For $2.50 a month, you can subscribe to Sebo's Kitty Klub which will garnish you 4 Sebastian oriented B&W strips and one COTC wallpaper a month. Other things may get thrown in with time. Yearly subscriptions are available for $25.00. The humor of SEBO, the weekly SKK strip, is very reminiscent of the early days of COTC only with better art. That means it's funny and looks good too.

"I don't want to end COTC." said Robertson. "I don't think anyone would want to end their dream, but if something doesn't change by Christmas I'll have to."

Maybe its just me, but I've noticed quite a few comic artists are having troubles lately, whether due to work or maybe life has just kicked them in the balls(or whatever would hurt a woman most). It seems like everywhere I turn there's a new comic asking readers to spend some cash or the comic will die.

I'm not saying some of the claims aren't legitimate(hell I think there's plenty of online comics that are worth MORE than a few bucks a month). But why now? Is it because Something Positive is now a paying job that people think they can do the same? Or maybe there's a few out there who think they can turn a little profit.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Also, just a side note, anyone want to place some bets on when we can find "Donate to keep this comic alive" buttons(as opposed to the "tip jar" idea many places have) on irregularly updating sprite comics?
:D 5 bucks says it's already being done I just can't find it yet.

-24

Apparently Michael Jantze recently decided to retire his comic strip "The Norm". But on his site there is now an open letter from his wife, Nicole.

As you know, Michael decided to retire THE NORM. After eight years of battling the syndicate-newspaper corporations, he felt it was time to move on. It wasn't an easy decision, trust me.

She continues:

If enough people became members of TheNorm.com, I think we can convince Michael to keep drawing the strip -- NEW STRIPS -- beginning on November 1. So, in the short-term, you would get to keep reading a comic strip you love and in the long-term, we just might change the world of comics. Most of us don't read our comics in newspapers anyway, so let's break the chain and let's make THE NORM the hammer that does it.

Appealing to readers/customers has certainly had a number of success stories in the recent years, such as R K Milholland and Fantagraphics.

Hey guys I'm Raven. I Have reacently started up a new webcomic over at http://www.gameunder.com if anyone is interested. So anyways, just thought I'd say hi.

Any romances in webcomics where enemies fell in love not unlike Buffy & Angel, or at least, Romeo & Juliet?

Any examples of interracial (or interspecies) romances in webcomics? Meanwhile, can we discuss the topic? Like how can we promote such romances in webcomics?