Today is a sad day, but I have to stop regular updates to my webcomic Shadensmilen so that I can concentrate on other projects. Shadensmilen is one year old and as time permits I will continue to slaughter smiley faces.

Harvey Award Nominating Ballots are due at midnight, April 4th. (The actual final Harvey Awards are presented at a banquet held Saturday, Sep 8^th in Baltimore, MD in conjunction with the Baltimore Comic-Con.)

$$$ I have finished scripts for a six issue/chapter story. Now I'd like to get 4-6 finished pages of artwork and character sketches completed so I can submit to publishers. You should be good with normal people, backgrounds, kids faces. Story is about a brother and sister searching for their lost mother. Supernatural elements.

WHERE: Qwest Field Event Center in Seattle, WA.

More information and a complete list of participating guests, programming at the website here.

I've got another update up at web comics nation, I'll try to update it everyday this week we'll see how it goes...Thanks to everybody who has checked it out!

INTERVIEWS

• Newsarama interviews Kean Soo, creator of Jellaby which started out as a webcomics, but is scheduled to be published in print by Disney's "Hyperion for Kids" impring.
• Comicsnob interviews Michael Poe and Hilary Hatch of Caffeine Angels Studio and Errant Story.

BUSINESS

• Zach Miller's Joe and Monkey has been picked up for online syndication by GoComics according to a recent news post.
• Have you checked out the trailer for the Penny Arcade game yet? In a news post Gabe talks about the game, hinting that it will sell for less than $20 and be a RPG/Adventure.

AWARDS

• Gene Yang's American Born Chinese continues to garner critical acclaim with a nomination for a Reuben awards.

Well, okay, it's not really in a bath. And it's only one spider. In fact, it's not really a spider so much as a guy in a chair with big metal legs. Oh, and he spells it "Spyder".

Ah, what the hey - if you happen to be Boo (our heroine in Shades), none of that matters. You still just want to squish 'em! You can pay her a visit in the latest instalment at Broken Voice Comics and maybe even give her a hand. Well, unless you're scared of creepy crawlies, obviously!

Indie Comics, its creators and publishers, is the grassroots level of the comic book industry.

Indie or independent comics are mostly photocopied mini-comics (though there are offset printed ones that can still be categorically called Indies) sold at conventions, events, and some specialty stores and marketed mostly by word-of-mouth.

One of the most common problems an artist encounters after getting an overseas gig for the first time is determining the page rate. There’s the danger of the artist getting underpaid so some idea of the general range of what a penciller, inker, colorist, and a letterer gets as a page rate would be helpful, especially for someone who’s just starting out.

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