The Comics Reporter
summarizes a letter from the director of the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund covering their work in 2004. As always, there are a number of important speech related cases and bad laws that the CBLDF took on (or is still fighting).

Ashton Cummings, PHP Programmer wrote the Kamikazee Comic Updating script used by Sam And Fuzzy. It looks good from the screen shots but I can't tell if it's a script that let's you load a bunch of comics into a directory where they'll be loaded in the future based on file format or one of those scripts where you have to punch in the date of appearance for each one.

Also key would be whether or not it "hides" future comics prior to their publication date.

The Norm had a proposition for readers after creator Michael Jantze pulled his comic out of the newspaper and left his syndication deal. If he could get 4000 dues-paying members to his website he would keep making new The Norm comic strips.

The amount at issue is (at a minimum) 4000 x $25 or $100,000. That's a lot really in terms of what's been raised by the subscription/fundraising drive model but in some ways it's possible that Jantze is a lot more famous than anyone who has gone this route.

The terms of the drive has always been 4000 or more equals new The Norm and 3999 or less equals a full refund of money to those donating. From the looks of the website they haven't gotten to 4000 yet but I imagine we'll hear the final results at some point in the next couple of days.

Matthew Shepherd has announced that The License will leave Graphic Smash at the end of the current story arc. Apparently, Shepherd and artist Roy Boney Jr intends to eventually try to get it published in print.

Scott Kurtz is once more testing the power of the PvP hordes. He's asked fans of PvP to vote for it as a write-in candidate for best continuing series on the WIZARD FAN AWARDS BALLOT.

Or as he says, Not really. More like "Appreciation for the Websnark" with a nice sketch at the bottom of the post.

Is anyone NOT reading Websnark at this point? :)

Eric Burns has posted the first half of his Shortbread Awards. Websnark.com: 2004 Bringing the Funny Shortbread gives you the big winner for funny and the previous Websnark post gives you the 14 citations for sub-shortbread (I guess). Both posts are a fun read with lots of insightful comments on some of the funniest strips for 2004.

Granted Burns doesn't pretend to consider strips he doesn't read so some worthy candidates are included but given the enormous number of webcomics out there it's amazing how many great strips one man (he is just one man right?) did read in 2004.

From Scott McCloud comes word that Will Eisner is recovering from a successful quadruple bypass surgery which took place on Friday.

At the Webcomic List the Little Gamers are Interviewed by Ash.

Phillip from the Goats team reports that Goats has ditched Interland and moved to VOXROX servers. Here's hoping that the new servers never go down.