Taking a bit of a breather from reviewing this week, what with it being the 200th review and all.
Meanwhile, the Avengers movie was cool and all (I posted my thoughts about it at my other blog), but I think it would’ve been much more awesome if it had gone something like this:
Hola, compadres! Apologies for the lack of updates lately, but the wife and I were off on a vacation in the happiest place on Earth! Unfortunately, that means no time to read webcomics. I will probably have a review up at the end of the week as this site marches toward the big 200.
I would also like to give a shout out to Travis Hanson, who kindly send me Volumes 1 and 2 or his Eisner-nominated webcomic, The Bean. Thanks! A quote from my review can be spotted on the back cover of the second volume.
And WHILE I’M AT IT, I’m going to go ahead and give a shout out to Matt Moylan’s new webcomic, Bravoman. I reviewed Mr. Moylan’s Lil Formers way back on this site’s early days, and he was kind enough to forward me a press release of his new project. The whole thing about basing this on a Namco character for the Turbo Grafx 16 intrigues me… mainly because it’s mindboggling to imagine anyone feeling nostalgic for something so obscure.
Anyway, it’s nice to be back, and thanks to everyone who’s been checking up on this site!
Well, you knew it was eventually coming. I got sucked into that suddenly popular cellphone game called “Draw Something.” Basically, you’re given a word, you illustrate the word, and your opponent has to figure out what you drew by selecting Scrabble letters.
Which can be lame: there are no real winners, and you can cheat easily by just scribbling the word on the screen. Fortunately Comics Alliance did a couple of pieces on the game, and they pointed out two key things that finally got my interest up:
It’s also more fun when playing with someone who knows how to draw, making it a great game for webcomic creators and amateur schmucks like me. I’ve been playing the game with someone with nifty cartooning skills, and he’s been forcing me to up my game some.
Anyway, just for fun, here are some of my latest doodles, all drawn on my iPhone. My invitation on Twitter is still open. If you’re up for a game, look up elsanto45@yahoo.com, or look for the user named “The Red Bee.”
Edit: one more of utmost relevance:
So apparently a whole bunch of sites are going dark tomorrow as a protest to the SOPA anti-piracy bill being floated around in the US Senate. What is SOPA? That would be the Stop Online Anti-Piracy Act, which is set to come down HARD on anyone using copyrighted material.
So, tomorrow, little known sites like Reddit and Wikipedia are among the sites participating in an online protest that envisions a world with … NO SPRINGS!
Want to view cat photos with misspelled captions in Impact font?
Or use the world’s largest online encyclopedia to complete your term paper?
NO SPRINGS!
Wait. Did I say “springs”? I meant “no internet.” Why did I think of “springs“?
A Softer World is in on the protest, so if you’re looking for photographs with tenuously related captions on ‘em… no dice, my friend. Meanwhile, David Rees of Get Your War On has put together a special Get Your Censor On to show how internet censorship will lead to more Yellow Pages.
WordPress users can apparently join in using a plug-in. The Webcomic Overlook will be open though, partly do to laziness, partly through a fear of plug-ins.
I know, I know. I probably should be more concerned since I reprint webcomic images for my reviews and I use what is quite possibly a copyrighted image on a famous luchador as my avatar. But, well, I prefer to soldier on and adapt to different rules and regulations as time wears on. Man, I’m still suffering combat fatigue from the Napster Wars.
I popped into my stats page this morning to find out that the page view count on this site is (switching to gravelly Vegeta voice) OVER 2 MILLION!!!!
That’s … wow. Honestly, when I started out this site, I didn’t think I’d ever break 200,000 page views. Thanks for everyone who has every dropped by to ever hear me talk about this funny phenomenon of comics on the web. I love having you guys drop by, whether you agree with my opinions or not.
Now for another 2 million! We need to to train … IN THE GRAVITY CHAMBER!
(EDIT: Heh. And what do you know. This is also my 700th post. It’s Milestone Thursday, baby!)
Happy New Year’s 2012! Sorry for not being on this site the last couple of weeks. As you may have guessed, the holiday was a busy, busy time.
2012 will bring reviews like normal, but with more and more webcomics transitional to “mainstream” from “obscure” I think I’ll switch my focus to lesser known comics this year. That’s not to say that I’m not going to review some notable Harvey Award winners like … guh … Least I Could Do.
In fact, I did try reading LICD over the Christmas break to get a head start. Worst. Christmas. Ever.
I was also too busy to do an end of the year re-cap like I did last year. Maybe I’ll find time this year … if we survive that long. Just make sure that they’re not building three arks over in China, is all I’m saying.
(As a side note, 2012 is one of those movies that my wife just cannot watch without getting uncomfortable. From my point of view, it’s a goofy movie. It didn’t occur to me until last week, when my relatives and I were looking at old pictures, why watching disaster movies is such a grueling experience. I’d forgotten that, growing up, she was very close to the Mt. Pinatubo eruption, which means she lived through a very tough time of canned sardine rations, ash that was literally knee-deep, and the sense that you could die at any moment. It was a sobering thought.)
Happy 2012, y’all!
Well, I’m almost back. I spent most of October off because I thought I’d be traveling… and that didn’t really happen. (I was really hard at work, though, honest.)
And then November came around and I thought I’d try my hand at NaNoWriMo again. If you want to check it out, 40K words of Lord of the Undersea is online and unfinished. Believe it or not, I was on pace to get at least 50K words of my terrible, terrible novel done by November 20.
Unfortunately, I got word a couple of weeks ago that my mom collapsed from a heart condition, and I booked a last minute flight to visit her so I could be on hand during her surgery. And things were going well, until she started vomiting the day before Thanksgiving and we had to admit her to the emergency room. She’s still in the hospital, and I’m still 2300 miles away from home taking care of her.
Thus, I never really finished my NaNoWriMo novel, being that my brain was clogged up with much more important things. I have been reading up on webomics, though, and I should be back to reviewing sometime next week.
Thanks to everyone for visiting this site even though there was very little new going on!
