It's been an interesting month over at the Comic Genesis Forums- people have been reviewing each other's comics. What's so interesting about that? Just how many bad comics there are, how many improving comics there are and how many comics really just need a good archive scrubbing.

Over at Fleen David Maliki has written a guest article that argues for trying to get webcomics to sell themselves as funny, interesting things on the web in general rather than comics in particular. Unfortunately this reader think it will work because they are not as accessible and easy entry as youtube videos. On the face of it this sounds like a good idea. Everybody likes funny things on the web. Webcomics are funny or interesting, sometimes even both. So everybody should like webcomics right? Its that vile label, comics that is holding us back, associated as it is with smelly fatbeards and smelly hipster kids. If we could just mainstream webcomics, then everybody who made them would be rich and everybody I tried to talk to about them would know what the heck I was talking about.

A new Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan story, Invasion, began yesterday, both on the ROCR.net site and on the Chronicles of the Witch Queen website. The story is about an invasion of nightmarish creatures in the peaceful Clwydian town of Dungill Fens, and about the search for the faerie Abúi, who has gone missing from her home in the capital of the Gnomian Republic. It reunites Jodoque, Kel, Ragnarok, Jake and Hildegard with some of Kel's friends and family from the Gnomian Republic, last seen in The Rite of Serfdom. The action of the first chapter is set in a forest on the farthest edges of the Gnomian Republic, where humans do not go. We will see humans in the second chapter though, as well as some very strange creatures indeed...

What's your budget like in making your webcomic?

Care to break down on materials, tools, software or hardware you spend on to make your webcomic?

How long does it take for you to make one page of your webcomic?

Care to breakdown your production schedule on things like planning, scripting, drawing and so on?

I've heard a lot of positive and negative things said about the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards. Since the 2007 awards were just announced, you'll hear all that criticism and support regurgitated once again -- but not here. But I do look forward to seeing the awards every year, for one specific reason: Every year, I find at least one new webcomic to read and love.

This guy has a good post on free webcomic services (he lists the "big 5" - he's probably right although you never know what you don't know) worth checking out.

In importing articles from Wikipedia for Comixpedia I've run across the fact that we don't seem to have a reference template set up at Comixpedia that mimics the Notes and References formatting at Wikipedia.

We need some help setting this up. If you can tackle it please post in the forums explaining how to include it in articles. Thanks!

I had a notion to work on the WCCA entries at Comixpedia.org and checked in on whether or not there was still an entry at Wikipedia. There is, but it's up for deletion again (history-to-date: in, out, in, ?... call it the usual Wikipedia-webcomic hokey-pokey) and leading the charge is our old pal Dragonfiend:

Delete, has not garnered the type of verifiable coverage in reputable independent sources one would expect of a seven-year-old supposedly "notable" award, let alone enough to write from a neutral point of view. What, if we really stretch our standards, we might possibly almost have two reputable sources? We have better sources for last year's revisions to the Chelsea High School Perfect attendance award. [1] [2] [3] [4]. Also, the point of view that this is "the singularly most prominent and admired awards within an entire genre of art" is ridiculous when you have the awards' committee members blogging things like "The WCCAs are horribly mismanaged, they are not well organized and they don't do what they are supposed to. I know this because I have been part of the administrative process."[5] With a dearth of reputable sources, I don't see how to write this article without giving undue weight to wikipedia editor's personal points of view and original research about this topic. -- Dragonfiend 04:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

How much coverage do the annual pr0n awards get in the NY Times btw? Putting snark aside, if you're at all inclined to improve articles on the WCCAs please do it at Comixpedia.org - Wikipedia can always import our articles later if they come to their senses.

The 2007 Glyph Awards recognizing black comic creators achievements in the various aspects of comic/webcomic medium from writing and artwork, to cover design, and character developement have just been announced.

Notable webcomic creators getting recognized for their work are Darryl Hughes and Monique MacNaughton (nominees "Rising Star" category) for G.A.A.K: Groovy Ass Alien Kreatures and Spike (nominee "Best comic strip" category) for Templar, Arizona.

Since I haven't been contributing much to Comixpedia in a while I feel a bit iffy about promoting my own posts to the frontpage so I thought I'd just compile a short list of newsitems here for the taking.

• Retailer Brian Hibbs' analysis of 2006 Bookscan numbers (graphic novels sold through bookstores) is available at Newsarama. Megatokyo is fourth best selling among DC titles with its volume 4 selling 16,331 copies. Penny Arcade, from publisher Dark Horse, scores 13,213 copies for volume 1 and 7280 for volume 2.
• Am I the only one who've missed that Les McClaine's Johnny Crossbones, which was nominated for the 2005 Eisner award for digital comics, has been picked up by Dark Horse as well.
• Oops one more, Newsarama interviews Gina Briggs, whose webcomic Red String has also been picked up by Dark Horse (a pattern emerging?)