PLATINUM-WOWIO
Tim Tyler calculates the new site launches July 31st and Gordon McAlpin adds his two cents in a comment to this thread at FLEEN.

INTERVIEWS
Lore Sjorberg interviewed R. Stevens at Comic Con about the end of newspaper Diesel Sweeties and what he's going do with all of his newfound free time.

Shaenon Garrity interviews writer Stephen Geigen-Miller and artist Patrick Heinicke on their new series on Modern Tales, Cold Iron Badge, which combines fairy-tale fantasy with police procedural.

WRITING
Christopher Moshier writes about writing webcomics (link via Journalista!)

CONTESTS
The Webcomics Beacon posted the winners of the Jenny Everywhere cartoon contest.

DEAD TREES ON THE LCD SCREEN
Slave Labor Graphics new webcomic program is working - check out the comics at their website.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Have you checked out Gisele Legace's new webcomic yet?  Menage a 3 is kind of like Porky's meets 3's Company.

I'll admit it -- I'm a big fan of Cat and Girl. Still this very recent one is one of my favorites.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

I think I forgot to link to this - Sean Tevis is running for office in Kansas and he used an xkcd-style comic as part of his fundraising efforts.

Another jam comic from the guys at Boxcar comics.

I laughed at this webcomic featured on Joystiq's webcomic wrap-up.  I'm sure the  age of web-savvy cartoonists is still heavily skewed towards the twenties but I'll wager it's much more diverse than it was at the beginning of the naughts decade.

By Sandra Tayler

That whole post about potential problems with the schlock site is now moot. We made sure that Mr. Murphy and his rules couldn’t take the Schlock comic out of commission, so he instead opted for making me look like Chicken Little. The domain registration renewal went through mere hours after I ran around making posts anywhere and everywhere I could think that fans might go looking for information. Now I get to run around and spam every place again to say “Never mind.”

This is the State of Things, I'm Frank Stasio.

The term comic strip may bring to mind the Sunday morning funnies, Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Baby Blues, or Doonesbury, but these days comic strip are hardly confined to the pages of newspapers.
More and more comics are on-line and artists exposure on the Internet have made it easier than ever to make a career out of drawing in frames.

A friend of mine sent along a link to this lecture by Andy Clarke about how comics can inform webdesign. Most of the talk is a regurgitation of McCloud's theories, but he has some interesting parallels and ideas. (There's an mp3 of the talk that you can flip through the slides with). Also, while I don't necessarily agree with the ideas, Gary Sullivan ruminates a bit on Closure. Finally...I was

Note from Sandra Tayler
If you have any difficulties reaching www.schlockmercenary.com over the next few days, please click over to www.schlocktroops.com. It has been set up as an alternate location for fans to get their daily Schlock fix. Please spread the word in the event of a problem. That is the important information. Like any good reporter, I’ve put it first in case people don’t care to read the rest of the story.

I have a book I'm working on a review for that I think would be a really useful tool for many artists.  It's called Facial Expressions: Babies to Teens.  Mark Simon has put together a huge book filled with head shots of babies to teens from all kinds of angles and with all kinds of expressions. I've already put my review copy to use -- using it in drawing different characters and adding a bit more variety to how I compose panels.

Here's a link to Mark Simon's site -- he has created several reference books actually and I'd imagine there all quite useful.

Courtesy of ComixTalk’s Xaviar Xerexes, we now know the winner of the 2008 Eisner Award for Best Digital Webcomic. Envelope, please! The award goes to… Joss Whedon’s SugarShock! Longtime readers of The Webcomic Overlook may remember that I totally called it on the review that I posted at the ComixTalk site. Not that it [...]