Clint Hollingsworth creates the adventure saga, The Wandering Ones, which has been on Keenspot for its entire existence. The comic is set in the future after a manmade disaster leaves most of the world's population dead.  With more than 8 years of updates it's pretty epic in scale now. I caught up with Hollingsworth about still working on the strip, sticking with Keenspot and what's next.

In the early half of the "naughts" Barry T. Smith appeared in webcomics with Angst Technology, a funny webcomic about a small videogame company.  He also created a webcomic about paintball called Weakend Warriors and one about a comic book shop called Sorry, We're Open.  All were pretty solid efforts and he certainly had a decent-sized audience for the time (for example, Angst Technology showed up at #9 on the initial "Most Read" list we did in 2003). He took a pretty big break from comics and only recently returned with his comic called InkTank.  I've been enjoying the new comic and was happy to get a chance to interview Smith about his return.

I noticed this month that the webcomic Ménage à 3 had posted a note that it's archives were now searchable by dialogue and was surprised to see a link not to the OhNoRobot service but one I had not heard of before... WordOwl.  WordOwl was created by Peter Spicer earlier this year and it compiles transcripts and provides a searchable index for several webcomics (11 at present).

Pear Pear is an innovative, wordless webcomic created by Peter Donahue, Erin Donahue and Sal Crivelli.  There is a lot to like from the clean and simple icon-driven website to the intriguing ideograph-in-balloon speech that the characters use.  Maybe most impressive of all is the investment of real personality in a pear and a mug.  Artist Peter Donahue is the creator of this month's cover art at ComixTalk -- I got a chance to interview all three by email.

Andrew "mneonix08" Gomez created the webcomics toplist Buzzcomix back in 2002 and it has long been one of the most popular "top list" sites for webcomics.  After graduating from college mneonix08 has taken apart the code for Buzzcomix and reworked the site adding several features, including a webcomics reader (with bookmarking function) that shows a lot of promise.  Currently in beta, the new version of Buzzcomix is scheduled to launch August 8th.  I caught up with mneonix08 over email last week.

Theater Hopper by Tom Brazelton is a webcomic sort of, but not entirely about Tom, his wife Cami and their friends. The creator, Tom Brazelton (as opposed to his four-color alter ego) is coming up on six years of the webcomic.  Neither fatherhood nor the Star Wars prequels have stopped the man from making fun at and with the movies.  Over the last couple of months I interviewed Tom about the webcomic, his third print collection and other necessary pop culture topics.

Jason Shiga is an inventive cartoonist and the creator of FLEEP, a comic serialized at Modern Tales back in 2003.  Shiga is fairly prolific and has posted to his website many other examples of his work over the years.  His most recent graphic novel Bookhunter was nominated for an Eisner award this year and he's already at work on new comics.

Back in 2003, one of the first webcomics reviewed by ComixTalk was a cute little absurdist riff called Bueno The Bear.  Bueno the Bear was a strange, but sweet-natured aburdist bit of humor; alas it's creator Pendleton Ward took the archives down from the web.  Curious as to what Ward is up to now, I got a chance to interview him via email.

Carol "Klio" Burrell is the Glyph Award nominated creator of SPQR Blues -- a webcomic set in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in the era of the Roman Empire. Burrell is really talented which is a great thing because a historically-based webcomic like SPQR Blues appears to be a really  demanding task:  set in Roman times with a wide-ranging cast;  all of it meshing with our collective sense of the Roman empire both in terms of the writing and the visuals -- it's extremely interesting to say the least and perhaps the education-oriented publishing company (Graphic Universe)  Burrell works for ought to consider putting it out as a book when she's done.

I was really excited to see Burrell's Roman take on "steampunk" for our cover at ComixTalk this month.  I think there's a whole new subgenre of speculative fiction waiting to emerge from that image.  I got a chance to interview Burrell about her and her webcomic via email earlier this month.

Dylan Meconis created the popular and well received webcomic Bite Me!.  ComixTalk reviewed it back in 2003.  Nowadays Meconis is working on the webcomic Family Man.  Family Man is being serialized by Meconis on her website and as she discusses below is a work with a lot more ground to cover before it will be completed.

Meconis also wrote a regular column called Juxtapose This! for ComixTalk in its first years.  Aside from Paul Bryant Johnson's comics, it's the only thing I think we've published that had footnotes.  But really good footnotes! (honest!)  Being the fifth anniversary year of ComixTalk I thought it would be a great idea to catch up with Meconis and see what she's up to in 2008.