Rediscover Your Inner Child's Joy and Win Prizes By Participating In Coloring Contest FUNd-raiser

Alexa features xkcd as one of its "Movers & Shakers" today. (Usual Alexa caveats, etc, etc) xkcd's Alexa ranking is 3,541 which is really good for any website, let alone a webcomic.

HEADLINES

• Christopher Wright of Help Desk is leaving Keenspot to go independent.

BUSINESS

• Comic Screw has an article called Digital Distribution that lays out how the comic book industry has helped fuel the rise of file-trading of illegal scans of comics. In the sense that currently there is no legal alternative currently available it's seems to be part of the same puzzle at issue in Joel Fagin's recent article for Comixpedia titled Reinventing Micropayments.
  

ADVERTISING

• Schlock Mercenary adds Project Wonderful ads. It sounds like the new features at Project Wonderful (like the ability to set a minimum bid price) helped convince Howard Tayler to give it a try. (The Weirdlings webcomic also recently added PW ads)
  

INTERVIEWS

• Wizard talks to David Willis of Shortpacked.
• Pink Raygun interviews Paige Braddock of Jane’s World.
• Daily Cross Hatch has a three part interview with Raina Telgemeier. (part 1, part 2, part 3)
• Gigcast talks to D.J. Coffman.
• Jack Carter interviews Renee Katz of The Nineteenth Century Industrialist.

REVIEWS

• Mr. Myth reviewed Zap! and Abstract Gender.
• Zhi reviewed Zero Hunters.
• Aarin reviewed School Spirit and Bear and Kitten.
• Jack reviewed Annhilicious, Bug Report, and Bear and Kitten.
  
• Time Well Wasted reviewed Real Life.
• The Ferrett reviewed The Mansion of E. (review links from a Talkaboutcomics post)

DEAD TREES

• Pre-orders for the dead tree collection of David Willis' Shortpacked! end this coming Monday.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• T Campbell muses about the high-webcomics-profile of writer/actor Wesley Crusher Wil Wheaton (with copious linkage to webcomic cameos included).
• Reinder Dijkhuis incorporates the latest Intertubes meme into some nifty advertising buttons for his comic ROCR.
• Toon Brew reproduces what may well be the first episode of the first webcomic: David Farley’s Doctor Fun. (link from Journalista!)
• Shaenon Garrity observes that the Eisner's Digital Comics category "cruelly and unfairly overlooked this year... Templar, Dicebox, Family Man, [and] Grace...."
• FLEEN's Anne Thalheimer muses on webcomic references in random places in a short column.
• Famed videogame designer, Ron Gilbert, to help out with Penny Arcade's forthcoming videogame.

On Gigcast 89 DJ Coffman Stops by to talk about his webcomic history, Hero by Night, Platnium Studios Drunk Duck and the currently running Comic

As Part of the CROSSOVER WARS, Lightning Lady from EVIL INC. throws a thunderbolt or two in Mindmistress' way at my comic at this page. It's a shocking reception from a super-powered receptionist!

I'm trying to get the word out that the PvP server had some hardware issues that my host Speakeasy is working on. We've been down for about a day. We had planned to run maintenance over the slow part of the weekend but apparently the server had other plans and crapped out early yesterday.

It's all a part of running your own website I guess. It's been rare I've had server issues so I guess I was due.

I'll be posting strips over at halfpixel.com until my site is back up again. But it might be a long weekend. Thanks!

It is a print comic but Strangers in Paradise, Terry Moore's magnum action comedy soap opera epic about two women with very confusing personal lives, has come to an end. Moore has self published SiP since 1993, and it is one of the most successful independant comics in print. Honestly, I'm a little broken up about it.