In webcomics, "the funny" is a rare commodity that too often sadly gives way to a focus on characterization and plot. Pure gag comics can be hard to find since creators often decide, despite starting in the humor aisle, that the plot department is where to be. It’s pretty refreshing then to find that Bigger Than Cheeses by Desmond Seah is, was and hopefully will always be a gag webcomic.

Jeff Rowland is a serial webcomic creator. His first work was the old school When I Grow Up, his second the popular and well-received WIGU and his most recent work includes a journal comic called Overcompensating and a new webcomic called WIGU TV.

Read on for nine questions with Jeff Rowland. Why only nine? Because The Man wouldn't let Rowland have ten questions.

 

How did you know the time was right to end WIGU?--alschroeder

So. You want to do a webcomic, you have the drawing skills, you just want to know the magical way to get it from the paper to the screen. It's pretty basic, and I can show you how! Join me on this magical journey of... magicness (thesauruses are for chumps).

For years now Kristofer Straub has been chronicling the ambitious publicity-hungry doings of Chex in Checkerboard Nightmare. Whenever webcomics is beginning to take itself too serioiusly, Chex is there, to remind us to laugh. Up until now Straub and Chex have never appeared in an interview together but now we bring you this Comixpedia exclusive: the first joint Straub/Chex interview.

Ten days after 9/11 (which would make it 9/21, for those of you with some arithmetical deficiencies), Goats took the first step towards returning to normal life. They didn’t do it with a long, poignant speech, the way David Letterman and Jon Stewart did. They did it with a short acknowledgment, and a joke.

In the first installment of a new column "Essence Of...", contributor Ping Teo distills the essence from one of the web's most popular and long-running webcomics, GPF.

Feeding Snarky on The Funny.

This is "the Funny issue" of Comixpedia, and that's a good excuse to talk about a question that gets asked of me a lot, these days. "Gosh, Eric," the questioner asks -- said questioner apparently having just bussed in from a Hollywood version of 1952 -- "what makes a funny comic strip... you know... funny?"

In many ways a webcomic is a lot like a baby. You cradle it. You nurture it. It's a part of you, and you're a part of it. You can't starve it, and you can't spoil it.

In even more ways a webcomic is a lot like a hooker. You're your own webcomic's pimp. A webcomic by itself, with all its sexiness, isn't always enough on its own to attract patrons. It needs someone like you to do some big pimpin' and work it up and down from dusk 'till dawn. Here are some tried and true methods I’ve used when promoting my own webcomic.

Pixel Art is, by definition, "art created on the computer through the use of a raster graphics software that allow images to be edited on the pixel level."

Have I mentioned that I love roundtables? See, all you need to do is think of four or five good questions and ask them to some of the foremost talents in webcomics today, many of whom are surprisingly willing to share their wisdom. Then just sit back and let the intellectual capital flood in. It’s a great racket.

This roundtable, incidentally, is about humor.