Cartoonist Detained at Border

Over the past week cartoonist Jorge Cham has been sharing in his online comic PhD the true story of how we was recently detained at Heathrow airport when trying to enter the UK to give a series of lectures:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Definitely worth reading, especially if you're into Kafka-esque legal nightmares.

Shameless Friend Promotion: Better Zombies Through Physics

The secret is secret no longer: pal Jim Ottaviani & his pal Sean Bieri have a Webcomic on Tor.com: "Better Zombies Through Physics."

While Jim is best known for his non-Fiction comics about science & scientists, this is I believe his first comic fiction.

"Join us for chills, thrills, and pulse-pounding scientific breakthroughs as we embark on a tour of the Quantum Zombie, Inc. facility, courtesy of a guy who bears a striking resemblance to famed scientist and cat-lover Erwin Schrödinger. Hijinks, hilarity, and an abundance of felines await you in Tor.com’s newest comic strip."

Shameless Friend Promotion: Redacted???

EDIT:

Sources at G.T. Labs and Tor have alerted us to the fact that the project previously described in this post is at this point in time neither confirmed nor denied. Thank you for your attention
-- Management Services

PHD #1000

Piled Higher & Deeper, Jorge Cham's fantastically fun Webcomic strip about life in grad school, has reached its milestone 1000th strip, featuring a milestone (of sorts) for long-running character Mike Slackenerny.

Congratulations to Jorge, and here's hoping for at least 1000 more!

Webcomic Product Placement

One of my favorite Webcomics, the library-themed Unshelved, is doing something that I don't particularly like. This week's entire run of strips is basically a running ad for a sponsor, with the characters extolling the virtues of the sponsor's service.

Unshelved has long had weekly sponsors, with ads running in the feed above the strips, but until now the editorial content of the strips has seemed to be independent.

I understand that it's a tough world out there, and that when creators are trying to make a living at producing a free Webcomic it must be tempting to grab at any source of revenue that comes along. Advertising, merchandise, and personal appearances are all accepted ways of keeping the cash-flow coming; but selling out the actual content of the strip seems like, well, selling out.

Worse, it calls into question the integrity of the rest of the strip. One of Unshelved's most popular features is the Sunday "Book Club" strips, wherein one of the characters of the strip will "book talk" a recommended book. How long until these "Book Club" strips become paid-for by publishers?

Hopefully the Unshelved creators will see that the long-term negatives for doing such a deal outweigh any short-term financial gain.

Making Rain Online

Way back in 2004, one of the very first comics I reviewed on YACB was Making Rain, a graphic novella by Ursula Murray Husted. I gave it 4.5 stars and named it one of the Best of 2004. At the time I stated that the only drawback to Making Rain was its relatively high price. But now Husted has put Making Rain up online, for free! That's a price that cannot be beat. So if you haven't read it yet, go and give it a try.

From Atoms to Bytes

Johanna brings word that two fun comics (both with varying degrees of manga influences) are now online: Super Information Hijinks: Reality Check by Rosearik Rikki Simons and Tavisha Wolfgarth-Simons is up in its entirety; and Little White Mouse by Paul Sizer is going up at the rate of three pages per week.

This seems to be a growing trend, with cartoonists repurposing their old print works to the Web. While I still prefer the dead tree mode of experiencing long-form comics, I definitely like the idea of these works finding a new audience online.

Review: The Dreamer

Time travel romance seems to be a big thing these days in the world of popular romance fiction, so it was only a matter of time before it made its way to the world of comics.

Near as I can tell, The Dreamer—a Webcomic by Lora Innes (not the actor, I presume), hits all the right notes for the genre. Beatrice is a pretty and talented high school theater geek who is having vivid dreams of romance and adventure back in 1776, complete with a dashingly handsome soldier.

At only 18 pages in I can't be sure where the story is going for sure. But the art is attractive and the set-up for the coming story is done well.

The only problem I have with The Dreamer is the problem I have with most long-form Webcomics: reading pages as they come in dribs and drabs over a length of time isn't my preferred way to read comics. I'd suggest to Innes that she make an RSS feed to announce when new installments are available, as I fear I won't be the sort to " Check back regularly" to see if there are any new pages. But should she finish all three 'issues' and collect them into a trade paperback, I'll be there.

Rating: 3.5 (of 5).

(discovered from JC via Dirk)

Go Read: Flytrap episode 2

The second installment of Sara Ryan's Flytrap is now available online. Art this time out is provided by Ron Chan, who does a great job.

(The first episode, with art by Steve Lieber, is also online.)

My Current Fave Online Strips

My Current Favorite Online Comic Strips are:

* The Joy of Tech
* The Perry Bible Fellowship
* Piled Higher and Deeper
* A Softer World
* Unshelved
* XKCD

What are yours?

YACB Bulletins

ITEM! "Capes, flying, and eye lasers are important plot points to a kid." - Eric Powell talks about his upcoming gig on Action Comics.

ITEM! Saw Ghost Rider Saturday night with a group of friends. We laughed a lot. Not because the movie was trying to be funny, but because it was so ridiculous. They trotted out every single super-hero cliche, and possibly even invented a new one or two. It's one of those so-bad-it's-good movies if you're in the right frame of mind.

ITEM! When did scrotum become a bad word?

ITEM! My new favorite Webcomic is XKCD. Very funny.

Galaxion

Back in the late 90s one of my favorite comics at the time, Tara Tallan's Galaxion, folded due to a hostile market. But now Tallan has brought Galaxion back as a Webcomic at Girl-a-Matic. The first page of a new story is up: go take a look.

(BTW: Tara, if by chance you're reading this: the 11 existing issues of Galaxion would make a killing I think as a 'manga format' collection...)

(link via Laura)

Star Drop

Yesterday I recommended as my Pick of the Week the paper-based collection of Mark Oakley's The Walking Mage Webcomic.

I recently discovered that Oakley has a new (well, new-ish) Webcomic called Star Drop, now up to sixteen installments. It's a scifi story about Achelle, a intergalactic princess who runs away to modern-day Earth, and it's a lot of fun. The first few episodes get all meta as Oakley tries to figure out what the strip is about and his characters complain, but around about episode six the story settles in and it's a lot of fun.