Spoiler warning

A front-page article in today's Indianapolis Star features interviews several local webcomic creators, including Jason Dunstan of Ardra, Samantha Allen of Random Assembly, and Lee Cherolis of Better You Than Me, among others. Scott McCloud, who will be giving a lecture in Indianapolis today, also contributes a few quotes.

Zed Reckoning joins the action family of webcomics known as Graphic Smash today. It can be found on Graphic Smash here.

Before I get to today's news & views -- don't forget we had three new articles published in the magazine this week:

• Terrence Marks interviews married creators, Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier. This is actually the first in a series of five such interviews we'll be publishing this month.
• New columnist Brigid Alverson covers five short story web manga this month in Small Packages.
• Bryant Paul Johnson returns with another installment of his historically accurate series at Comixpedia: The Antecedent.
• And of course a big thanks to Meghan Murphy of Kawaii Not for doing this month's cover art.

HEADLINES

• Here's a great opportunity (and a clever idea for a book): Howard Tayler is planning to publish the 2000-01 run of Schlock Mercenary in a book and he's put out a public call for guest art to include in the book. I hope he gets a wide range of interest on this - I'd love to see some of the Schlock characters done well in different styles.
• Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub announce a more formal creative relationship (including Straub relocating to Dallas, TX). Help them pick a name for their new partnership here. (Also I missed that PvP character Skull has a blog now...)
• Good question from R. Stevens and a good discussion in the comments there: "In a webcomic, each page of comics read is a 'pageview'. In a comic book, each page of comics read is a 'pageview'.... Has the webcomics readership outgrown the American comic book market?"

INTERVIEWS

• Daily Cross Hatch blog interviews Perry Bible Fellowship creator Nicholas Gurewitch.
• Bookslut interviews Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel. (both interviews caught by Journalista!)
  

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• Mike Russell is rerunning his CulturePulp comics at his WebcomicsNation site. Most of these have appeared before in the newspaper, but not on the web in one convenient location like this - worth checking out - funny, insightful journalism in comic form.
• The Comics Reporter likes Lukewarm Tales.
• The Webcomicker likes the second episode of the animated PvP series. In contrast to pre-premeire complaints from PvP fans, Gilead says the voice actor behind the character Skull is the star of the production.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• FLEEN reports that You Damn Kid! creator Owen Dunne has redone his website(s) and created a video based on his Beevnicks comic.
• The For Better or For Worse "Hybrid" idea apparently came from Universal Press Synidicate which convinced creator Lynn Johnston to go with it rather than simply hanging it up later this year.
• FLIGHT reports on the lineup for Flight, Vol. 4. Also, Kazu Kibuishi posted cover art for the series at his website.
• The Comics Reporter points to a discussion at Comics Worth Reading on this year's Free Comic Book Day (May 5th).
• Over at TalkAboutComics is a post about a movie coming out with the same name (and apparently very similar content) as an existing Serializer comic. Creator Scott Ewen (the comic is Flight of the Living Dead) seems pretty stoic about it.

Warren Ellis' forum The Engine has a thread on webcomics and the direct market (i.e. comic book shops). The discussion ends up being more about the problem retailers see with creators debuting their comics at cons without offering them at shops at the same time, but also has some interesting discussion for webcomics with an eye on the traditional comics market.

Retailer Brian Hibbs:

In most cases, my knee-jerk reaction to something (anything) that is being made available to me secondarily is going to be minimal if not nil orders. [...]I've got no real concern about creators having an equal or better crack at the hardcopy sales, but where the advantage directly turns against me (ie: offering for sale BEFORE I have a fair crack at the work... be that on-line, or, yup, even in person at a convention or something), then I'm way way WAY less likely to support that work with my purchasing dollars as a retailer.

Hibbs elaborates a bit on this saying that he does not see as big a problem with comics offered free online. The problem is if the consumer has already paid for the comic in some format, which would make him/her less likely to buy it again through a store.

If you've been following the online graphic novel Shades (and, if you haven't, why on Earth not!?) you'll remember we promised that Chapter 5 would see some of the early plot threads starting to come together.

So, if you're still wondering who those guys in ski-masks were in Chapter 1, then you'll want to know they're back in today's instalment at Broken Voice Comics and so this is where you begin to find out!

It’s that time of year again. We’re not talking about Single’s Appreciation Day but the annual We Love Web Comics contest. The past two years have been successes and this year promises to be even bigger. What is the WLWC contest?