Well take with a grain of salt, but ComicList noticed some twittering that WOWIO hadn't made its second quarter payments ot creators.  If true, well, that's not a good sign...

Lots of coverage of Apple banning a comic from distribution thruough iTunes (even more links to stories on it at the comic publisher's site here).  Apple says the content can't "offend" but The Register correctly notes that Apple doesn't seem to apply the same standards to movies or tv shows (and I'll add music as well).  The comic called Murderdrome was put out by Infurious Comics (and is available at their website now if you're curious at to it's "offensive" content)..

TechRadar has an interview with the creators -- England-based Al Ewing and Belfast-based Paul J Holden, where they seem to be asking Apple to adopt some kind of rating system.  I have no idea if that's a good idea or not at this point but given the iPod/iPhone dominance these days, it's troubling to me that Apple is setting itself up as a censor for comics content on a platform that potentially could be huge if handled right. (Although Charlie Sorrel at Wired says no thanks to comics on the iPhone. h/t Journalista!)

I exchanged emails with Tim Demeter, the Editor-In-Chief of iPod/iPhone comics pubhlisher Clickwheel this morning, asking about how Clickwheel's model was different and if he had any reaction to the story.  Here's his comment:

Clickwheel's iPhone App is a free reader while our content is sold via the Clickwheel site, not the App Store, so it's a different set of rules.  The truth is, the App Store is something new for all involved and everyone still seems to be feeling out what can be done - including Apple.  Either way, I'm confident Apple will ultimately resolve this situation.  Anything that helps them sell iPods is in their best interests and there's a big cross over between the comic reading and gizmo buying audiences so I wouldn't expect this to be an issue for long.

Publisher's Weekly has an interview with Paul Levitz of DC on the digital future of comics.  Nothing particularly revealing in it although Levitz imagines the current print to digital relationship to be something like radio to tv at the begining of television where television borrrowed from radio shows for awhile until ideas native to tv alone took off.  I wouldn't think that would be particularly comforting to DC and other print-heavy entities, although I suppose that having Zuda might be one of DC's strategies to be part of "digital comics taking off".  It's not a great analogy but it's interesting to see Levitz continue to talk about DC's digital strategies.

INTERVIEWS
Wizard is doing webcomic stuff again - an interview with Tom Siddell of Gunnerkrigg Court, John Allison of Scary Go Round, a roundtable with a pretty cool cast of creators (from ComicCon).

Laura Hudson who works for the magazine Comic Foundry has a blog with some good webcomic-related posts.  Most recently she interviewed Leigh Walton of Top Shelf 2.0, and Rantz Hosely of the Long Box Project.

CONVENTIONS

Ted the Robot asks how many books he should bring to this year's SPX.  Good question -- surely there's some collective common sense advice out there on this?

STRETCHING COMICS?
Michael Jantze of the webcomic The Norm tries creating an "audio comic".  I guess it's for people too lazy to read the words themselves?

GREATER F-WAD THEORY OF THE INTERNET
So the Daily Cartoonists hits a civility crisis.  I can relate having had it rip through Comixpedia/ComixTalk in earlier years.  It's hard to come up with "rules" for conversation but you can kind of tell when a place is working and when it's starting to deteriorate.  The sad thing is it really always seems to be a small number of people who either like to pretend to be or probably really are borderline psychotic that cause the most damage to a site.  </soapbox>

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Rob Balder's Partially Clips gets a shout out from blogger and biologist PZ Myers.

This Week in Webcomics is a pretty cool new blog you might want to bookmark.

Brandon J. Carr has a new project with David These Stories Are True - check it out.

I love John Allison's take on Batman.

What is this - the fifth annual PAX (Penny Arcade Expo)?  It seems like just yesterday that Mike and Jerry hung out with a few fans at a game center (that was the year before the first PAX) and now they're bigger than John Lennon!

The local newsprint has a pretty good feature story on the amazing success story that is Penny Arcade Inc:

PAX, or Penny Arcade Expo, taking place Aug. 29-31 at the Washington Convention Center in Seattle, is the largest video-game conference, rivaling others like E3 and earning the nickname the "Woodstock for gamers." Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Blizzard and Nintendo will be exhibitors there.

INTERVIEWS
Some new interviews right here at COMIXTALK - with Barry T Smith of Inktank, Clint Hollingsworth of The Wandering Ones and Peter Spicer of WordOwl. 

Elsewhere, Jennifer Contino talks to Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots, and Patrick Montero talks to Scott McCloud of ZOT! (h/t to Journalista!).

DEAD TREES
Sunday's Washington Post had a good article on the graphic novel publishing boom written by Bob Thompson (who is self-described in the article as "Prose Guy" so you know a bit about where he's coming from).  Be sure to check out the comics that are part of the otherwise text story. 

PORTRAITS OF CREATORS
Photographer Seth Kushner has been taking portraits of the many great NYC-based graphic novelists.  There are some wonderful photos in this series and it's just kind of cool to put a face to the name for many of these creators.

COPYRIGHT
This is interesting -- according to this story by Joseph Menn, Disney may NOT have the rights to the very earliest versions of Mickey Mouse.

Help Out Kazu

Kazu Kibuishi is racing to finish his graphic novel (which one!?!) and is asking for volunteers to help him with the flatting (and perhaps painting) of the pages.  My lead assistant, Alan Beadle, will still be joining me on this journey, as will Amy, Shadi, and Tim, but we'll definitely need some more brave souls to join the party.  If you are interested, send an email to kazu(at)boltcity.com with some examples of your work. 

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Redrawing pages of the Fantastic Four?  James Kochalka's take here; Ron Rege's page here.

The LA Times science fiction blog gives some love to the webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE.

I've probably linked to it before but it's still useful -- 50 Tools and Resources to Start A Webcomic.

I am on vacation next week and more than likely I'll be bottlenecking up any new "official" content on the site until August 25th.  As always, however check out the stream of all your talk posts (click on the talk post tab on the right hand column) and go nuts in the forums.

I'll be off making some sandcomics on the beach.  Maybe an infinite sandcomic...  I might even try to do a multimedia one with solids and liquids all mixed up in a 3D castle shape...

2007

Creator and entrepreneur Tim Demeter guest blogged at ComixTalk with a series called "It's Business Time" (links to part one, two and three)

The most popular pages at the Comixpedia encyclopedia are Girly, Penny Arcade, Cyanide and Happiness, Melonpool, and PowerPuff Girls Doujinshi.

2006

As Scott Kurtz debuted a new site design for PvP, I wrote asking whether webcomic websites be an artistic extension of the comic, essentially extending the look and feel of the comic, or is that not that important?

2005

Ryan Estrada reaches the 168 hour mark in the Ironbutt comic making event.  In related endurance news, we reported on another entrant dropping out of the Daily Grind contest.

Ali Graham released a print collection of his first webcomic Housd.

2004

Alexander Danner wrote about how to promote your webcomic by not promoting your webcomic.

A group of creators banded together to form Found Hat Press.

2003

Warren Ellis reviewed the very first print collection of David Rees' clip art comic Get Your War On!

BUSINESS
Brigid Alverson reviews the new eManga site which "rents" webcomics.  It's in beta right now, starting off with six yaoi titles and four “Let’s Draw Manga” books.  Johanna comments further about the business model which will be $4 to read a yaoi volume for 72 hours.

AWARDS
FLEEN has news that Nickelodeon Magazine will hold a new “Best Kids’ Graphic Novel” Awards, taking place in spring 2009. The Awards will honor the best comic books and animated novels for kids published across the U.S. The submission process is open through Sept. 30, 2008, and voting will take place in December.  (Good Comics For Kids has the full press release)

EVERYONE GETS A FREE CAR!
Good Comics For Kids blog has a discussion around Oprah Winfrey including Sarah Varon’s Robot Dreams in her recommended reading list for six-to-nine-year-olds.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Have you been reading Next Door Neighbor?  It's Smith Magazine's new webcomic anthology, edited by Dean Haspiel.

We had a bit of downtime with the site after the upgrade to the newest version of PHP5 went a bit off.  All seems okay now (although please email me at xerexes AT gmail DOT com if you notice problems).  Along with some site stuff I'm working on you'll notice that the center aisle of the site is now a daily feed of new stuff -- news from staff, staff-selected talk posts and feature articles from the magazine.  On the right hand side you can get the most recent magazine articles, or click the tab for the most recent talk posts from Comixtalk members.  Two more tabs -- webcomics and creators -- are not active yet so stayed tuned.

Also please check out our new sponsor the art exhibition The Great Great Grand Show featuring artists Graham Annable, Scott Campbell, Jon Klassen, and Israel Sanchez.  The OPENING RECEPTION is this Saturday, August 16 from 7 to 11 pm and it's Free!

Criteria for Criticism Continued
Scott Kurtz wrote a bit about critics (here's the ComixTalk post on it).  El Santo wrote a pretty good post on the ideas percolating through the discussion Kurtz kicked off.  One more thought occurs after reading some of this -- I'm sure Kurtz has encountered plenty of people who do live up to his stereotype of the self-important, uneducated, and/or otherwise useless critic but even if there are a lot of such creatures it doesn't mean every person writing about comics fits that stereotype.  (Just like every webcomic creator isn't craptastic despite the existence of a lot of not-yet-or-never-will-be-decent webcomics).  There is a bit of a disconnect going on here though -- Kurtz is absolutely right that an artist should be looking to get constructive feedback to improve and grow and Kurtz gets that from his friends and colleagues in comics.  I think that's a perfectly valid way to do that.  On the other hand I made some of the biggest leaps in my basic drawing skills in college under an absolute ass of a teacher.  But the times when he didn't blast me in front of the class, I knew I had made real progress.

Comics Curation
FLEEN has a bit more on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign show featuring comics creatorsin October (lots of webcomic creators in the show catalog).  FLEEN also has a link to DIY magazine show creator Oliver Brackenbury recent show on webcomics in general (which has a nice conversation with creator Ryan North).

MILESTONES
Congrats to Derik Badman on the 2nd year anniversary of his webcomic Things Change.

AROUND the WORLD in 80 BLOGS
Buzzcomix is back open for public business.  If anyone has reactions to their new reader/bookmark function please let us know.

Theater Hopper has a donation drive to help creator Tom Brazelton out with the bills for data recovery of his webcomic files.  If you can chip in a bit and than make sure it doesn't happen to you and your files!

David Malki!'s wedding is the must-see movie of 2009! More like 2007 I think.  Still a pretty cool trailer. :)

An interview with uber-blogger, Dirk Deppey of TCJ's Journalista!