In this month's Panels & Pictures, Derik A Badman discusses the idea of constraint in creative work and a number of comics examples in print and around the web.

There's an incredible wealth of articles in the ComixTalk archives: features and columns on craft, theory and business, insightful reviews and interviews with some of the most interesting folks in webcomics. We'll be taking a regular look back at past issues and catching up with creators we've previously covered.

Stephen Notley is the creator of Bob the Angry Flower which I'm sure is still the angriest angiosperm character in comics today. I caught up with Notley via email last month.

There's an incredible wealth of articles in the ComixTalk archives: features and columns on craft, theory and business, insightful reviews and interviews with some of the most interesting folks in webcomics. We'll be taking a regular look back at past issues and catching up with creators we've previously covered.

Brad Hawkins is the creator of the progressively-minded, primate-populated webcomic, Monkey Law and the technical genuis behind stripshow the webcomic-focused plug-in for WordPress.  I caught up with him via email last month.

Last month Tim Broderick, began a series of articles detailing the path to publication of his graphic novel, "Cash & Carry" (based on his webcomic Odd Jobs, featured at Moderntales and Timbroderick.net). In his first article at ComixTalk last month, Tim covered how he signed with a traditional prose publisher as opposed to a comics publisher. This month Tim dives into the specifics of how he constructed his ultimately successful query letter for "Cash & Carry".

There's an incredible wealth of articles in the ComixTalk archives: features and columns on craft, theory and business, insightful reviews and interviews with some of the most interesting folks in webcomics. We'll be taking a regular look back at past issues and catching up with creators we've previously covered.

We interviewed Ramón Pérez and Rob Coughler in our November 2004 issue and Ramón Pérez did the cover for Comixpedia's 2004 End of the Year issue. Pérez and Coughler have had a busy year between their webcomic Butternutsquash and helping to found the new webcomics collective Transmission-X so it was a good time to catch up on what they're up to as we head towards 2008...

Doctor Haus tries to review the comic Slackerz -- a one-shot gag strip that has fallen into treading where many other comics have treaded before. Can the comic be saved? Is Slackerz doomed to being "just another gaming comic?"

Read on as the Doctor tries to help bring Slackerz back from the brink of gaming addiction.

I don't quite remember how I first discovered Debbie Ridpath Ohi's webcomic Will Write For Chocolate but as a procrastinating writer of several novels-to-be, I instantly "got" this funny comic about writers and their lives. And then I learned that Ridpath Ohi not only creates comics but writes all the time.

Ridpath Ohi is a freelance writer and illustrator living in Toronto with her husband, Jeff. In addition to creating several webcomics, she blogs online at Inkygirl: Daily Diversions For Writers and has written a nonfiction book (The Writer's Online Marketplace, published by Writer's Digest Books), magazine articles (print and online), poetry, and short stories. She's also a part of the band Urban Tapestry. As you'll see from the interview, she is prodigiously productive!

Is this a comic?

Admittedly, that is probably the last question a reader consciously asks themselves when reading a comic. Yet, subconsciously, most readers have already asked and answered that very question each and every time they view a piece of work.

In part one of a series, Patric Lewandowski takes a look at some of the most well-known efforts to define "comics" and explains what's wrong with them. Lewandowski then introduces a new approach to defining a comic. In part two of this series, Lewandowski will then explain this new approach in greater depth.

Earlier this week ComixTalk posted an interview with the new line-up of Halfpixel (Scott Kurtz, Kris Straub, Brad Guigar and Dave Kellett). Since as part of the creation of the new Halfpixel, Kris, Brad and Dave left the Blank Label Comics collective, I wanted to get a comment from someone on the Blank Label team. Howard Tayler, the creator of Schlock Mercenary, was kind enough to answer quickly some questions about this week's changes and the future of Blank Label Comics.

Today, Brad Guigar (Evil, Inc.), Dave Kellett (Sheldon) Scott Kurtz (PvP), and Kris Straub (Starslip Crisis) are announcing that they will be working together under the Half Pixel brand. Part and parcel of this announcement is that Guigar and Kellett are leaving Blank Label Comics, the webcomics collective that they both have been associated with in recent years.

I got a chance to interview the four of them at the end of October about this and other projects on the horizon for them. At their request I've delayed publishing this interview until the day of their announcement regarding the new Half Pixel. It's an interesting move for all four involved and hopefully the interview that follows conveys some of the excitement all of these guys seem to have for this new partnership.