Multiplex Celebrates 5th Anniversary

This week marks the 5th year of Gordon McAlpin's movie-theater comic Multiplex, and Multiplex is celebrating with a week of daily updates. In addition to its usual Monday and Thursday updates, it's bringing guest strips and guest art (today's update even includes a poetic ode written by a Multiplex fan!). You can check out this week's guest updates in the guest strip section.

There will be a guest strip on Friday, and even a few more bonus updates next week, so be sure to head over to Multiplex and check out the festivities. Congrats to Gordon on five years of webcartooning!

On Guest Strips

Long day at work? Check.
Delicious root beer float? Check.
TWIW post about guest strips as promised? Check.

Guest Strips are, for the most part, a phenomenon particular to webcomics. I could go into the reasons why the practice is so foreign to newspaper strips or comic books, but suffice it to say that when real life strikes and events interfere with a webcartoonist's production, it's much more feasible for him to enlist the help of his cartoonist colleagues in order to provide comic content.

Brandon Bolt of Nobody Scores has gone on record as "not believing in guest comics," arguing that guest cartoonists rarely produce something consistent with the original cartoonist's idea for his comic. There's some merit to this critique--guest strips pretty much necessarily have to be non-canon, and might even be viewed as little more than glorified fan art. And though not impossible, it's certainly hard to bring dignity to the task of creating fan art for a webcomic. Additionally, as one reader recently stated, "Guest strips can be fun, but I doubt any of us signed up so as to see more guest strips."

But me? I actually like the guest-strip phenomenon. I enjoy seeing familiar characters in a different artistic style, for starters. Additionally, it's a way for an artist to basically share his comic with another artist, a kind of circumscribed collaboration project. From a practical standpoint, it's a feasible way to take a brief sabbatical when necessary, or keep one's comic updated when one gets hit with one of life's little crises. Plus, guest strips can introduce readers to cartoonists that they may not have been aware of.

So, the "guest strip" concept has its critics, but in my estimation there's also some merit to it. That said, let's look at what guest strips we have this week.

• Scott Kurtz of PVP is currently taking time off from his strip to mourn the loss of his basset hound, Kirby. Pets are often like family members, and their death is no light thing. You can read Scott's reflections on Kirby in the PVP blog and check out the two weeks of PVP guest strips from several prominent webcartoonists.


• Gordon McAlpin of Multiplex, in order to allow himself time and space for moving, ran guest comics on this past Monday and Wednesday, which take advantage of their guest-strip nature to deliver some very silly Multiplex scenarios. For today's Multiplex update, however, Gordon provided a normal in-continuity strip, and next week will show one or two more guest strips before Multiplex resumes as normal. Interestingly, Brandon J. Carr's Wednesday update provides timely commentary on Earth Day and Disney's recently-released documentary "Earth."


• Putting a rarely-seen twist on the "guest strip" concept, Luke Surl is set to deliver a month of guest artists; while Luke himself will provide characteristically witty writing for his comics this month, we'll see these concepts illustrated in a variety of artistic styles by a broad spectrum of cartoonists. The collaborations began with Wednesday's update, drawn by Cedric Atizado of Familiar Ground.


• Finally, Penny and Aggie is preparing to make permanent changes to its resident artist. As T Campbell recently announced to P&A's fan community, artist Gisele Lagace, while continuing to be involved with P&A in a consultative capacity, will cede the role of artist to Jason Waltrip (Fans!) and use her time to pursue other creative projects. As Jason prepares to take the reins, P&A will employ a number of other guest artists until he settles in. The most recent story arc, beginning with this comic, is drawn by Sam Romero, and today's comic was created by Erica Henderson.

So, the above guest strips should provide you with some interesting reading, but equally interesting is the idea of the guest strip itself. What do you think about the concept of "guest strips" and their role in webcomics culture? As always, I welcome your comments.

3/27: Week in Review

Happy Friday, all. It's time to take a look at what's happened this week, webcomics-wise.

First: I know this blog focuses less on "webcomics industry news" and more on "comics I liked this week," but it would almost certainly be remiss if I did not mention the New England Webcomics Weekend which happened this weekend. Three metric buttloads of cartoonists were in attendance, and many of them chose to create comics about their NEWW experience. Jeffrey Rowland, in his not-really-autobiographical strip Overcompensating, has particularly had a whole lot to say about it. Read his comic: he has a crazy knack for dialogue and I do not give his comic enough love.

Scott Kurtz also weighed in with an autobiographical NEWW comic that is perhaps funnier to webcartoonists than webcomic readers, and Kris Straub further celebrates with a suitably crazy Chainsawsuit comic. If you happen across any other shareworthy NEWW comics, feel free to share 'em in a comment.

Perhaps facilitated in part by the Webcomics Weekend, this has also been a big week for guest comics. Meredith Gran of Octopus Pie kicked off a guest week on Monday with this excellent strip from David Willis, Questionable Content dropped an enormous and exceptionally well-drawn guest strip from Lucid TV (lucid-tv.com), and Bobwhite rocked a guest week that included an F-Chords/Bobwhite crossover from the Straub. If you miss F Chords as much as I do, it was a welcome visit from Ash and Wade, however brief.

Also running guest weeks recently were Allan Wood's daily journal comic Allan and Unwinder's Tall Comics by Eli Parker. Typically, Allan stays painfully close to the ups and downs of its author's real life, but Allan's guest week (starting here) featured a bevy of comics with a hilarious disregard for reality. Celebrating a year of Unwinder's misguided adventures, the Tall Comics guest week featured a variety of really extremely tall comics, including a truly inspired foray into clay-model photocomics. I myself even collaborated with my friend Joe Harris on a Tall Guest Comic! I am hardly an objective journalist, so go check it out.

And finally, at the emailed recommendation of one Sanjay Kulkarni (creator of Cowbirds in Love), I have begun tuning in to Moe. Moe features a unique art style, with bold linework, earthtone colors, and a kind of calculated sloppiness to it. This week's comics feature everyman Moe's clueless and solipsistic forays into the world of organized religion, starting with confession. I definitely recommend it--I laughed out loud at each of this week's updates, especially this one.

And with that, this update draws to a close. I'll see you next week, with more to say about webcomics as always. Got a good comic to share from this past week? Drop a comment!

Animation and Gaming Ohio 2009: A Guest's Experience

Well, here I am delivering the Convention Report--two days after the fact. This weekend, I had the pleasure and privilege of attending Animation and Gaming Ohio as a guest. As the second convention I've ever attended, it was still a very new and odd experience. Some people live for these things, to the point where conventions are like a second home. To me, they still feel like stepping into another world, an alternate reality.

This being an animation and gaming convention, comics and cartooning received very little direct focus: anime and video games took center stage. I talked to several people who read webcomics, but found very few enthusiasts: most were either casual browsers who didn't really follow specific titles regularly, or gaming enthusiasts who read easily-recognized titles like PA and CAD. Still, people enjoyed talking about webcomics, and passion is contagious. If you're enthusiastic about something, then as long as the other person has even a passing interest, they'll generally perk right up and get into the conversation too.

A number of cool things happened at the convention, and I got to meet several cool people. Here are some highlights.

My Panel, "The Harsh Truth about Webcomics"
On Saturday morning at 9 AM, I delivered a panel on the challenges of monetizing a webcomic. Five people showed up! I'd planned to speak to a larger crowd, so I ended up chucking my notes and simply talking about webcomics with the handful of panel attendees. We had a good conversation, and as we started bouncing ideas off each other, we had some valuable insights into turning online cartooning into a paying job. For example--why do you never see the online equivalent of a "funny pages" gathering several comic strips together in a single place? Would people subscribe to such a service?
For the follow-up panel on Sunday afternoon, we scrapped the premise of discussing webcomics at all and ended up talking about how Japan is weird. Not that the United States isn't also weird. But man, Japan is pretty weird.

Meeting DM Ashura
Bill Shillito, better known as DM Ashura, is a talented electronic musician whose music has been featured in various mixes of Dance Dance Revolution. He's also a very cool guy to hang out with. He and I talked about the value of a public space for gaming and what DDR has done to keep the arcade scene alive; I listened to his music and grooved out at the Saturday night rave that he hosted; we randomly sang bits of "Still Alive" at the closing ceremonies. All in all, it was cool to meet this guy, even if we only briefly discussed webcomics. Hopefully our paths will cross again in the future.

Signing Autographs with Steve Blum
I have to admit, I came into this event with only a vague idea of who Steve Blum is. He's done the voices for Spike Spiegel, Wolverine, and a host of other characters: which means that he is a big name in the voice acting industry. And DM Ashura and I had the express pleasure of signing autographs with him.
There was a line practically out the door, and almost immediately I could see why he was so popular with the fans. He was extremely personable, posing for photos with fans, signing personalized autographs on anything and everything they requested, doing voices on command. One guy had a friend whose sore throat kept him from attending the convention; this guy called up the friend and had Steve Blum talk to him as Wolverine. "So I hear you're out with a sore throat. I know how that feels, bub--no fun at all. So listen, take lots of antibiotics, get plenty of rest..." He's really an incredible guy.
Most people came for his autograph, but DM Ashura and I signed a few ourselves. I made a few doodles along with my John Hancock. One girl was cosplaying as Zach from Final Fantasy VII, and I got to draw a cartoon of Zach on her buster sword.

In summary, the con was pretty incredible. I met some very cool and talented people, I got to be a guest judge at a Rock Band Concert, I drew a bunch of ninjas and ate a bunch of delicious free food and played retro video games in the gaming room, and I killed a man with a trident.

Be sure to tune in again on Friday, when it's back to talking about webcomics as usual. See you then!

I Can't Think Of A Clever Title

Okay so Jackson's all busy being awesome and stuff, so I thought I would give a quick low-down on some of my favorite webcomic moments of this week!

• Starslip continues its reboot with the introduction of the new ship's doctor, appropriately named Dahk. Thankfully his doctoring skills are much better than his shape-shifting. (That last panel cracks me up every time.)


• Girls With Slingshots offered readers the opportunity to snag a date with Jamie, who's a total sweetheart and babe, for Valentine's Day. I cannot wait to see who Danielle chooses as the winner, and what they end up doing.


• This week in Bobwhite Ivy had to deal with Marlene and Lewis's dalliances (okay, it was more than that, but I like that word). I am so chanting "I'M TOTALLY OKAY WITH THAT" this entire weekend. ^_^


• And finally, the moment that a lot of Multiplex fans were waiting for: Gretchen's downfall. I personally like her as a character because she adds drama and makes things interesting, so part of me will be sad to see her go.

And now a bit of news: for those of you in the New England area, you do not want to miss the New England Webcomics Weekend. It's from March 20-22, in Easthampton, MA, which is home to Topatoco, Dumbrella, and Octopus Pie. There's going to be a bajillion webcartoonists in attendance, and best of all it's free. If you ever wanted to hang out with a bajillion webcartoonists, here's your chance. More details are on the website.

I guess since I'm posting this past midnight, happy Valentine's Day! If you're single like me, enjoy the opportunity to eat lot of desserts without worrying about post-Valentine's Day gut. Bye!

~Jen

forgive me for not knowing how to do links on this blogthing

Hello, folkses! This is Alec, Jackson's friend, guest posting for this week's scheduled update of This Week in Webcomics. Now, Jackson and I do read a lot of the same comics, but I read a few others as well, so don't be surprised if some of the ones I'm going to be mentioning are familiar and some of them are not. So let's get on to the details then, shall we?

First off, a few comics you might want to take a look at: Nothing Better, by Tyler Page; and Goblins, by Tarol Hunt. These are both one-page-a-week comics, so they don't fit the TWIW paradigm exactly. A college comic, Nothing Better(1) tackles college life, and is currently wrapping up a nightmare sequence where an angry God confronts avowed Atheist Kat of the cast - and Goblins(2) has been in the throes of a confrontation between our heroes and an entire town of guardsmen and goblin killers for quite some time. Head to the main page of Nothing Better and hit the back button once to see all of the current issue up to this point all at once; for Goblins, I wouldn't start reading any earlier than the third book heading in the archives, or maybe even from the beginning :/

Several prominent webcomics have wrapped up some heavy stories this week: I am thinking of Sam and Fuzzy(3), Dr. McNinja(4) and Penny and Aggie(5), to be specific. Sam and Fuzzy just completed a storyline that was years of regular updates long, a feat rarely seen, and of course this means that new is the perfect time to catch up on this wonderful comic. Head to the Noosehead storyline and see for yourself how well all the pieces have been put together - http://www.samandfuzzy.com, people.

Dr. McNinja's plotline completed just today; the Doctor's final thoughts are available for perusal, and we, the readers, can puzzle for ourselves over what the future place of King Rad in the comic universe may end up being. I, for one, am hoping that there will be a bit more pseudo-medical expertise involved in his next caper - not that I'm complaining overly about the extreme antics of his ex-college buddy during the fight scenes in this chapter overmuch.

Penny and Aggie, an old time favorite of mine, is beginning to step into particularly difficult subject matter for me to grasp - girls being awful to girls, terrible cliques plotting school domination, and the like - but the emotional impact in the final pages of the story closing out this week was completely arresting. I won't say that it's undeniably entertaining or anything so ambitious, but I will say that for those of us who have been following the comic from the beginning and wondering what kind of a friend Penny is really, this was a real eye opener.

One more piece of comic recommendation for you folks: Princess Planet (6). I don't know if you'll all like it, but I do know if you read the most recent update and love it then you should start scouring the archives immediately.

(1) http://www.webcomicsnation.com/tylerpage/nb/series.php

(2) http://www.goblinscomic.com

(3) http://www.samandfuzzy.com

(4) http://www.drmcninja.com

(5) http://www.pennyandaggie.com

(6) http://www.transmission-x.com/_princess_planet/

Got a lot to talk about for this week! Let's get down to business.

First off, today's the last day of the Sheldon Caption Contest--check out this earlier post for the details and links. Also over at Sheldon, the recent economic downturn has hit Sheldonsoft, so Sheldon's gone to the only place on earth that could conceivably grant him a loan to keep his company afloat: the country of Dubai. All of the strips in the Dubai arc so far have been decently funny, but this one I found especially good. And it wasn't the punchline either! It was the fact that Arthur's approach to gaining wisdom is precisely what someone with a lot of facts but not much wisdom would do. Clever comic there, Mr. Kellett. (Because Dave Kellett is totally reading this blog right now, no really.)

In addition to the Sheldon Caption Contest, I have some other old news that I should have mentioned earlier. A couple weeks back, Thinkin' Lincoln had a guest week, featuring the likes of Eli Parker from Tall Comics, David Malki! of Wondermark, Reprographics' Chris Yates, Justin Pierce from Wonderella, and even the illustrious Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics fame. In case you haven't checked Thinkin' Lincoln in awhile, the guest comickery starts here.

Monday's Thinkin' Lincoln was also noteworthy for cracking me up. It features Amelia Earhart misunderstanding Lincoln's use of a common idiomatic expression. I won't spoil it for you--go check it out.

Nobody Scores finished up another tale of protracted suffering this week: "Nobody Scores with the Chip Invasion." One of the longest Nobody Scores comics to date--and the longest since its Summer Formatting Reboot, clocking in at eight separate installments--The Chip Invasion features an obnoxiously sociable friend of Sara's who turns out to work for the NSA. As the arc spirals toward its inexorable horrific end, we have spy robots, Chad's crush on Jane, insidious marketing schemes, and repeated incidents of police brutality (all of them perpetrated upon Beans). Also, out of nowhere, fungus. The carnage begins here.

Nobody Scores will also be starting another epically huge comic series on Saturday, so we can look forward to even more tales of misfortune and comic violence in the very near future. Hooray!

Another of our favorite long-form infinite-canvas comics nears the end of an extended storyline: none other than Dresden Codak. And I've got to say, Aaron Diaz has kind of made me eat my words. In the most recent installment, we discover that mankind did not evolve to a new level of machine consciousness and merge with the Hob after all; as always, it's difficult to piece together, but the dream sequence that began in Hob #20 apparently didn't end there. Kim's been in the hospital the whole time, left with one arm from her scrape with the time travelers, who seem to have been driven off. As always the art is good, so even if stuff is confusing, it's worth tuning in for that.

Boxer Hockey also updated this week, which has been a rare occurrence lately. And that's unfortunate, because when it does update, the action is quite well-rendered and pretty dang funny. Check out this week's installment to see what's going on with lost-at-sea Not-Gay Chuck, and how the team is faring without him.

So there's been a whole lot of funny this week, but for those wanting something a little deeper, turn your attention to Multiplex. With the release of Bill Maher's Religulous, this week's Multiplex arc picks up where Angie and Jason's dispute about Expelled left off several months ago. Angie finds Maher's go-for-the-throat brand of abrasive comedy insulting, so she walks out of Religulous. She and Jason get to discussing God and science again, and once again they hit a dead end. To be completely honest, I'm feeling kind of tired as I near the end of this entry, but it's customary for me to take note when religion shows up in webcomics, so: there it is. Religion at Multiplex.

And let's wrap it up with some Chainsawsuit. Thursday's comic had a big surprise in the second panel that cracked me up. It was Kris Straub's random standalone humor at its finest. And Chainsawsuit has been generally good lately, so if you're looking for some absurdity and a few good chuckles, take a browse through the recent archives.

So, that's what I liked this week. As always, the comments section is your own open invitation to tell us what you liked this week. Drop us a note and share the funny.

P.S. Real Life continues to be awesome. 'nuff said.