I'll start the ball running with this one from Penny Arcade.

A belated note that Tastes Like Gravel ended its run this month, although it hadn't posted a new comic since early November. Creator Todd Oliver cited a not uncommon reason for the end of a webcomic: creating it went from something he wanted to do to something he had to do.

A recent thread in Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Light blog, Varieties of insanity known to affect authors, might prove equally useful and amusing to comix writers.

Warning: comments are often important parts of Making Light threads, and that's certainly true here.

How many webcomics are running with Holiday storylines? At least a few. Be sure to check out Sluggy Freelance's War of the Holidays; Zortic's It's a Wonderful Strife; and of course Tatsuya Ishida offers a hymm to the holidays in his Notes from the Resistance column.

Post your favorite current holiday webcomics.

Tapestry reports that UComics requested the removal of the unofficial RSS Feed Tapestry had created for Calvin and Hobbes.

Timed to coincide with the one week in the whole universe people are least likely to notice, BoxJam's Doodle will return on Monday, December 22.

BoxJam will, as always, be experimenting with form and content.

The price of James Kochalka's American Elf will go up on January 1, 2004 for ModernTales.com subscribers. This price change does not affect current subscribers (or anyone who subscribes before January 1).

Before January 1, any current Modern Tales subscriber who adds American Elf to his/her subscription is able to do so for only $1/month. After January 1, any MT subscriber who chooses to add American Elf will pay full price ($1.95/month).

Altbrand has dug up some old webcomic nuggets from its Altertainment files. Check out Taking Up Space by David Wright (Todd and Penguin) and the 24 Hour Webcomic Event--Solitary Confinement. You can also scan the webcomics from the 2002 Altbrand Webcomic Telethon for MDA.

Lore Sjoberg, of the defunct Brunching Shuttlecocks, is now in the webcomics business. And he's holding a contest with a treasured Slumbering Lungfish t-shirt as the prize.

All you have to do is find the URLs that point to the seven (7) webcomics that featured one of these quotes:

"I like Zombie Revenge because, frankly, I loathe the undead."

"Do you think zombies can shoot ink, like a squid?"

"Last month alone, over 3,000 zombies filed for unemployment with the New York Department of Labor."

"Why Me? Get one of the zombies to get it."

"Who are you to question Zombie Joseph Beuys?"

"You didn't tell me these zombies could talk and think for themselves!"

"And it's zen, not some conspiracy to make brainless zombies."

This is just cool. It's a Flash-based kit where you can make your own medieval comic strip. Images are scalable, type can be colored. You can send your images as ecards to the medievalists of your acquaintance. Click to visit the site.