Monthly Archives: September 2011

Webcomic goes Facebook

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Robot 6 reports that Ricardo Proven’s webcomic, cheerfully entitled Donnie Goth, claims to be the first webcomic entirely distributed via Facebook app! Brigid Alverson, though, has her reservations:

…putting all your eggs in the Facebook basket seems to limit the potential audience somewhat. Aside from that handful of folks who aren’t on Facebook, many users (myself included) shy away from apps because they require you to turn over personal information. When I clicked on the Donnie Goth app, Facebook requested permission to share my “basic information,” which includes my name, gender, user ID, list of friends and “any other information I’ve shared with everyone.” Admittedly, all of that is already out there on my Facebook page, but the idea of handing it over in a neat package to an outside entity give me a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. On the other hand, if I could simply click over to the page, I’d do it — and maybe even “like” it.

I guess I can understand the appeal of distributing solely on Facebook. My brother-in-law is a Mary Kay consultant who (at the urging of the parent company) uses Facebook as his prime website. Still, Ms. Alverson’s criticisms are very valid. I’m something of a Facebook luddite myself (I signed up some years back, but haven’t gone back since), so the thrilling adventures of Donnie Goth will be lost on me.

Also, I’m not sure if I want to give Donnie my A/S/L. Dude looks like the sort of guy who can mess you up with some tragic poetry, know what I’m sayin’?

The Webcomic Overlook #183: Turbo Defiant Kimecan

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It’s been almost a decade since I’ve last watched anime. At some point, I think, I just got too old. I began prioritizing artistic and storytelling cues that anime was just not delivering. The characters were just too … young now. The complexions were too smooth and attractive. Nowadays I enjoy visual imperfections that give some character. And, for the most part, the hallmarks of youth — the uncertainty for the future, the need to define one’s destiny, the feeling of invincibility one gets when at one’s peak physique — are now concerns that I haven’t though about for years. Anime and adolescence are intricately tied.

More than anything, though, I think you get to be a certain age where staring at pictures of teenage girls in short skirts gets to be a little creepy. You think “Read Comics In Public Day” is some sort of brave stand against societal norms? Wait until I establish “Grown-Ass Men Read Shoujo Manga Day.”

Westernized manga, though, tends to solve a lot of my most pertinent issues. They retain the art style, the trappings, and the story beats from their Japanese originators. At the same time, they are more likely to mirror attitudes and mores less embarrassing for Western audiences. Take, for example, Ferran Daniel’s Turbo Defiant Kimecan, a manga-style webcomic that hails from Mexico. (For you readers from a primarily Spanish-speaking country, you may be happy to hear that there is a Spanish version of the comic.)

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James Kochalka Superstar

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Fans of American Elf‘s James Kochalka won’t want to miss out on the interview AV Club did, which answers several pertinent questions: what does a junior high comic war look like? What’s it like working on a video game side-scroller? And was that really Andy Samberg in the monkey suit for that music video he did?

He was the monkey. It was before he was famous; he was in college with the filmmaker who made the movie, and they made it while they were friends in college.

A guy who’s played in my band, Neil Cleary, was at a bar trivia contest, and a question came up, “What music video stars Andy Samberg in a gorilla suit?” It was a 50-point question or something, and he was like, “I can’t believe they wrote this question just for me!” He won the contest.

Know Thy History: Rube Goldberg

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Rube Goldberg is one of the most accomplished cartoonists in history. He was a founding member and first president of the National Cartoonists society. He won a Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 1948. In 1959, he won the Banshee’s Silver Lady Award.

Goldberg was a highly prolific busybody. He drew cartoons for five papers, including the New York Evening Journal and the New York Evening Mail. He was responsible for several cartoon series with colorful titles like Mike and Ike (They Look Alike), Boob McNutt (some sort of comic about a porn star, I’m guessing), Foolish Questions, Lala Palooza (no relation to the music festival), and The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women’s Club (no relation to The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency … I think).

Late in his career, Rube Goldberg took up sculpting. It turned out he was good at that, too. In fact, he was so good that one of his pieces won him his first ever Rueben Award … which, incidentally, was named after him. The statuette used for the award, in fact, is based on one of Goldberg’s pieces.

Goldberg also worked a little in film. Hr wrote a feature film called Soups to Nuts which starred the Three Stooges. He was a man of many talents, too many to list here In fact, there seems to be a fairly big thing he’s known for that I’m forgetting. Was it the US postage stamp series that commemorated the cartoonist? No, that’s not it.

Oh, wait… that’s right.

He’s the man who invented the “Rube Goldberg machine.”

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The Webcomic Overlook #182: Dueling Analogs

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When I bring up Steve Napierski’s Dueling Analogs, your first reactions is probably, “Good Lord, is that comic STILL being updated?”

Followed swiftly by your second reaction: “No, seriously, bro, is that comic still being updated?”

After a bit of research, it should be a surprise the Dueling Analogs is still around. While never as successful as Penny Arcade — and really who could be — the history of Dueling Analogs is filled with relatively impressive achievements. Compete.com calculates that it’s had at least 127K unique visitors. That’s seriously mind boggling. In comparison, PvP only gets a third of those numbers.

Dueling Analogs is also a founding member of the Gamers Pair of Dice collective, which includes prominent titles like Goblins, 2P Start, and Nerf Now!! The comic has been nominated twice in the WCCAs (for Outstanding Gaming Comic and Outstanding Web Design) and has been voted best gaming webcomic by Joystiq readers at least nine times.

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For fans of Know Thy History

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If you’re a fan of the Know Thy History feature I publish around here, the AV Club did a pretty fantastic primer on newspaper comics today. It’s mainly an overview, as comic history is too deep to cover in only a span of two pages, but it’s a highly informative piece about some of the most important strips to see print in newspapers. I was also happy to see The Yellow Kid, Buster Brown, Polly And Her Pals, Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, and Li’l Abner all get mentions, which means I ain’t too far off the rocker when it comes to picking entries for my own feature.

Here are what AV Club considers to be the essentials:

1. Peanuts. At once accessible enough to be widely popular and personal enough to be poignant, Charles Schulz’s long-running, still-funny strip is what just about any newspaper cartoonist would love to have as a legacy.

2. Calvin & Hobbes. Too short-lived by half, Bill Watterson’s beautifully drawn journey into a oft-bratty child’s imagination made comic-strip fans out of people who rarely pick up a newspaper.

3. Gasoline Alley. Tip a cap to Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly and to notable Frank King fans Joe Matt and Chris Ware for reintroducing the lovely, novelistic Gasoline Alley to a generation that had never seen the strip in its heyday. Exciting, funny, and moving, the King run of Gasoline Alley is top-tier entertainment, regardless of the medium.

4. Krazy Kat. Like the best art, Krazy Kat defies easy analysis or explanation; it just emerges from its own peculiar space and proceeds to be.

5. Doonesbury. The longevity of Garry Trudeau’s sprawling, politically astute strip may have worked against its reputation some, as even comic-strip fans have come to take it for granted. But the longevity is also Doonesbury’s strength. Its characters have grown and changed with the world they live in, and there’s scarcely any major event of the past 40 years that hasn’t been dealt with by Trudeau in his strip. It remains as fresh—and important—as today’s news.

The Webcomic Overlook #181: The Noob

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I think I’ve mentioned it on this site before, but I’ve never gotten into MMORPGs. Oh, I’ve played RPGs that bear striking similarities to to modern MMORPGs. I’ve played my share of Ultimas and Final Fantasys and Dragon Ages and Baldur’s Gates, but I’ve never experiences the glories of joining guilds, grinding, and dealing with mods. I’m most familiar with MMORPGs through the South Park World of Warcraft episode, perhaps my favorite South Park episode of all time.

We have a former professional gamer who just joined us at the office, and when he shows us Youtube videos chronicling his World of Warcraft exploits, my eyes completely glaze over. From what I have gleaned from my discussions with him, there are sanctioned competitions and joining a party requires filling out forms in a process that can be more strict than a job interview. This probably strikes to the heart of why I never got into MMORPGs. I love me some fantasy literature and imagery — a love that has endured since I picked up my first Hickman & Weis novel when I was a wee one — and from what I hear about the politics surrounding MMORPGs this seems to be anything but. In fact, it seems like math. And if I wanted more math, I’d go to work. Like, more often.

This makes me seem like I’d be terribly ill-equipped to review Gianna Masetti’s webcomic about life in an MMORPG. Fortunately, the comic is told from the perspective of … The Noob.


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