Drawn from animals observed in the wild… Laika, a new graphic novel tells the story of the first dog in space. Comics with Problems: “Captain Awareness”  Wizard World Texas report. The Beat has more… foo

Drawn from animals observed in the wild… Laika, a new graphic novel tells the story of the first dog in space. Comics with Problems: “Captain Awareness”  Wizard World Texas report. The Beat has more… foo

I'm very (and I mean very!) pleased to announce that my bookie, the road to god knows..., will be serialized on GirlAMatic beginning on December 3rd. The story will update four days a week (Mondays through Thursdays) and, since the story is complete, there should be no missed deadlines. Barring, of course, personal catastrophe. :)

#13 is up. On another note, does anyone have any recommendations for cheap artist allies at Canada cons, looking mainly at Toronto and Montreal areas? Just looking into things a bit in advance is all. Super thonks!

BUSINESS

• Todd Allen has a good overview of recent digital online efforts: comparing Marvel's Digital Comics Unlimited to iTunes and Rhapsody, and then wondering why Zuda and Comic Mix are not maximizing their potential ad revenue.

INTERVIEWS

• Tom Spurgeon has an interesting interview with Rick Marshall, the recently fired former online editor of Wizard. Marshall takes a lot of credit for Wizard's recent online attention to independent webcomics which seems to be continuing through the efforts of staff writer Brian Warmoth.
• Comicgate has a good interview with Dirk Wood, the marketing director for Dark Horse. There's a bit in there about Dark Horse's webcomics on MySpace. Like Marvel's DCU, Wood seems to think that online readers want webcomics to "feel" like reading a comic book. This is, to say the least, wrong. At best, interfaces like this evoke a nostalgia or a "that's cool" feeling for a few days, but then quickly become annoying. If comics can learn anything from the foibles of the music industry, it's that consumers in the intertubes era want maximum flexibility with their content. And there's also this (sadly) accurate description of the direct market demographic (emphasis added): "Whether it's a ten-year-old girl going into a book store or a 40-year-old man going into a comic shop or toystore."