The deadline for early exhibitor registration at this year's Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, Ore. has been extended by a full month, allowing a greater number of small press, independent, and professional comics creators a chance to snag a table at the extremely low price of only $10 for a half table, or $20 for a full table.

It's a bit of work to do a whole alphabet, but if you'd like to make your own font, BitFontMaker will let you design your own and download the file to use on your PC or Mac.

From the SPACE-NOT-SPOT department: Artists, authors, and an admin will be invading Washington, DC this July 9th in a general meeting open for all 'Space members and webcomic authors. The genesis for the idea came from this forum thread and final details are here.

The DC Webtoonists have schemed up another gathering of mass proportions. OK, maybe not mass proportion, but still a proportion of grand excitement. With a new meet up spot, this time in Maryland!

This article raises an interesting question about the lack of serious spirituality in comics, but a.) doesn't really answer it, and b.) mostly deals with mainstream superhero comics.

But this is something I notice - very few comics deal with religion in any way, and the ones that do are usually either hostile, or, much more rarely, heavily evangelical. One of my goals with my comic is to explore what it's like for a person with strong religious beliefs to exist in the modern world. As a result, I got (mostly when my comic was new and there was less nudity and pot smoking) a lot of comments along the lines of 'this isn't going to turn into a Chick tract, is it?' Which of course, no, it isn't. But I guess these things make people nervous.

So I have two questions:

1.) Why, given that most people believe in some kind of God, gods or absolute being, is spirituality of any kind (Christian, Jewish, Moslem, Pagan, Satanist, whatever) such an unpopular topic in comics?

2.) Do you know of any good web comics that deal with spirituality intelligently?

Best,
Charles

I hope the ads at Comixpedia, particularly the ones for webcomics, often lead you, the readers, to discover new webcomics that you enjoy. That even happens for me (and I already read A LOT of webcomics) and Marilith by Krazy Krow is one I had never checked out before, but really enjoyed reading this week.

It's the story of Marilith Millions, an assassin, and her sidekick (who in a Stockholm syndrone twist was originally kidnapped by Marilith) and their efforts to escape the law and a crazed adversary named Valentino. They're a bit like the evil anti-Dynamic Duo. It's actually even more complicated then that, but Krow keeps the plot clear enough and does a fantastic job balancing plot with well-choreographed action. My only complaint is that Marilith and Valentino look a little too similar, but maybe there'll be a reason for that down the road. Actually my other complaint is after reading the archives, I now have to wait for new updates just like every other reader of Marilith.

ClickWheel is the world's first desktop application for downloading digital comics — or 'podstrips' — to the iPod photo. Central to Clickwheel's design is an RSS feed that allows you to search, grab and display comics or toons that have been created for the iPod photo.

Available for download are webcomics from demian.5, Ted Dewan, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, Colin White and more recentlycoming soon, T Campbell and Gisele Lagace.

Newsarama has an interview with Amy Kim Ganter about her upcoming graphic novel Sorcerers and Secretaries published by Tokyopop.

Svetlana Chmakova has also announced a new series for Tokyopop, Dramacon. A 25-page preview is available.

In the NOT A WEBCOMIC dept. this morning be sure to check out two links in your free time: FIRST, a two years too late version of the ALL YOUR BASE BELONG TO US nonsense, only this version is newly animated and scored to Bohemian Rhapsody which is... different.

SECOND, a long but fascinating article on the first great 'zine of the web: Suck. The Suck feature, "Filler" featured some of the first webcomics published ever (art by Terry Colon and words by Heather Havrilesky).

Cold Servings is set in Indianapolis in the present. All my major characters, and minor ones too, for that matter (at least so far) are purely fictional, created for the comic. However, the nature of some of the people is that they would naturally interact with "real" people in Indianapolis in ways that affect the story. Police would expect to interact with the State Prosecutor, with the Mayor, with the Chief of Police. And since Indianapolis is also the state capitol, you've got the Governor, etc.

As I see it, there are two ways to handle it. Keep appearances by "real world" public figures to cameo's and real minor, mostly "off screen" interaction. The other is to create fictional people to fill the real world slots. That gets farther away from my "somebody seriously trying to make a go of the 'costumed crimefighter' idea in the real world" basis for the story.

Thoughts?