This week in Smithson: Chuck and Micki make their way to safety through the campus steam tunnels.

Now you can get to the site by typing in http://www.smithsoncomic.com. Tell your friends!

I just rediscovered one of the more creative "remix" projects in webomics: Arbuckle. Essentially an effort to re-do all of the Garfield comics without Garfield's thought bubbles. Why?

In 1978, Jim Davis began a newspaper comic strip called "Garfield". For almost thirty years, this strip has endured, primarily because its inoffensive, storyless humour is immediately accessible. It is, if not quite the Lowest Common Denominator of the comic world, at least as close to it as one can get without being obviously mediocre.

The comic changes dramatically when one removes the thought bubbles.

"Garfield" changes from being a comic about a sassy, corpulent feline, and becomes a compelling picture of a lonely, pathetic, delusional man who talks to his pets. Consider that Jon, according to Garfield canon, cannot hear his cat's thoughts. This is the world as he sees it. This is his story.

“There’s no better textbook example of the Web reinvigorating an old-school medium than the humble comic strip. (Um, besides porn, that is.) Comic strips in newspapers are dying. They’re starved for space, crushed down to a fraction of their original size. They’re choked creatively by ironfisted syndicates and the 1950s-era family values that newspapers impose.

• Publishers' Weekly interviews Nicholas Gurewitch of Perry Bible Fellowship fame. Dark Horse, who seem to be keeping a close eye on webcomics lately, is publishing a hardcover collection slated for August with an initial print run of 10 000.

• PW:The Beat has the pressrelease from IGN about their new venture selling downloadable comics from publisher Top Cow.

  Pricing for Top Cow Comics on Direct2Drive will be similar to the volume pricing offered for Top Cow’s recent Compendium collections, as well as and other trade collections. Top Cow’s backlist will also be offered through Direct2Drive, with material up to a year old available for download.

• I was rereading the Time's article on webcomics when I realized that Penny Arcade is now up to a staff of eight people, last figure I heard was five but that was a while ago. Not bad for a company whose core business is a three times a week comic strip and blog.

The third installment of Draven: The Vampire Chronicle has begun!

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/draven/draven/series.php

You can access the archived chapters by clicking "Table of Contents" above the comic. =D