A whole year of webcomic news wrapped up in a pretty package with cookies and milk commentary provided by Comixpedia contributors: Alexander Danner, Ping Teo, Kristofer Straub, T Campbell and Phil Kahn.

John Lynch reviews Beaver & Steve, by James Turner, the winner of this year's WCCA Outstanding Newcomer Award.From Laurel and Hardy to Asterix and Obelix pairing up a straightman with an idiot has been a successful trope in comics for decades. James Turner's Beaver & Steve matches straight, um, beaver, Beaver with the agressively idiotic Steve.

The Perry Bible Fellowship has been called outrageous, morbid, hysterical, surreal... In this interview, creator Nicholas Gurewitch elaborates on all of the above.

A Lesson is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversable has attracted a lot of attention with its vibrant, often extremely colorful art and its surreal style. This interview with its creators is very in keeping with the spirit of the webcomic.

John Allison's Scary Go Round is an odd strip, full of bafflement at the world of Tackleford. It is a strip that makes you go "Huh."

A freewheeling discussion about the wide world of webcomics with Eric Burns, Wednesday White, Phil Kahn, Giland Pellaeon, Bob Stevenson, Ping Teo, Daku, Karl Kuras, Doctor Setebos and William G, moderated by Xaviar Xerexes.

A simple list of people of webcomics based on their contributions to the medium in 2005. And we have no doubt that we left off someone we shouldn't have. We're sorry. We'll try harder next year.

These webcomic kids today, they just love drawing other people's comics for them. They can't make their own updates, but they seem to make time to make other people's. Well heck, if they wanna do my work for me for a week, that's fine by me.

NOTE: This is a parallel review in which we have two reviewers looking at the same comic. The other review is by Xaviar Xerexes.

During the 1940s, when pulps were at their height, the concept of the hardboiled detective (usually a private eye but occasionally a police investigator) was ingrained in the public imagination. Since that time, the atmosphere, the language, and the characters have been evoked in pastiche and parody.

Will Eisner’s John Law by Gary Chaloner (whose current strips can be found here, and whose main site, with cast info and extras, is here) is one of the few modern detective comics to focus so heavily on that mode, at least in style, using the stark grays of the best film noirs. Though scripted and drawn by Gary Chaloner, the character himself was created by the late great Will Eisner.

The game is afoot.

— Sherlock Holmes

There's just one more question I'd like to ask you.

— Columbo

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those nosy kids and their mangy dog!

— innumerable Scooby-Doo villains

Forget about making a hundred, forget about the victim, forget about the suspect and focus on the only thing that can't lie: the evidence.

— Gil Grissom, CSI

O photoprocessing machine, I command you to reveal to me that which is hidden!

— Bee

Like most good ideas, mysteries and detective stories have many ancestors, but they didn't really get to take a place in entertainment until the Industrial Revolution. It's not hard to see why. The underlying message behind the traditional mystery—and the traditional detective story, its most famous subgenre—is always the same. That message: our world may seem confusing, but patience, pluck, and especially reason can lay its secrets bare, punish the guilty, and reveal the monsters as aged men in latex or clockwork springs.