All the Cool Kids Are Doin' It!

Print comics to web, or on web to begin with, collecting into print later.

If you compared how long I've been on the web to human history, I showed up around the beginning of the common era and have been hangin' out since, watching people worship the miracle of the Intarweb. (That would be for about a third of the time since computer to computer protocol was reality and not meetings.)
That's right: in one month, it'll be the tenth anniversary of my web prescence.
I started in a small way with my first website, Pink Radio, in 1995, where I put up pages from my never-seen-in-the-US "Monster Friday" story from ComicON.

Did it again in 1997 and 1998 with Cathedral Child and Clockwork Angels, respectively, putting ten pages of each on the web so people could see art before pre-ordering it. (Because those books were functionally DM-only, and therefore only gettable via Previews at a Direct Market store.)
Sometime in 1996, Tara Tallan put all of the first issue of her space opera comic online. (I am blanking on the name--help!)

I moved Rumble Girls to the web in 2003, nearly three years ago, after deciding that was the most efficiant way to finish the story and not lose my shirt. I moved it from Image because I didn't want to be at Image any more. My books were so overprinted (not by me) that trades were far off, and Image STILL didn't have bookstore distro four-five years the publication of Cathedral.
I wanted to finish what I'd started, and not leave readers hanging. I put it up with a current-is-free-archives-are-pay model so the bandwidth would be covered. Anyone interested could read all but the last chapter for free if they visited daily, and have the finale for a couple bucks, STILL less than the cost of a print issue.

Now we have Carla Speed McNeil to thar web. (And man, I was PRODDING her to do something back when GirlAMatic.com launched!) Phil Foglio moved Girl Genius to the web within the last year. They're both free on web, and will be collecting for print.

I wasn't first, but I was among the first. The tricky thing about firsts is that anyone can be first if you split the hair enough.

A Reason to Love Someone

Someone made a 100 MILLION dollar anonymous donation to the Yale School of Music, so that grad students can study for free.

My guess is it's the Walton (as in Wal-Mart) family or Gates, but that's 'cause guessing is fun. What a wonderful thing to see on a Monday.

OEL: "But They Didn't Ask Us"

Maybe it's Rich Johnston's turn to break deh intarwub:

File this under You're shitting me"

As reported in Today's Lying in the Gutters, and discussed at Pseudome' messge boards, TP creators are not happy with "Mangapods", dramatized readings of their TP books.

Ben Roman: (you may remember him as "I thought we were having a discussion" LJ user benjiroman) "I dont know what to think of the mangapods, since I didnt even know they were doing it. wouldve been nice to have been told."
(Ben may have a case, since he and Keith Giffen own "I Luv Halloween", but it's not clear how much of the Halloween Ben luvs is actually his.)

Tony Salvaggio, part of the Psy-comm team: "B.Roman... wow, we got a hush hush preview a while back. It was odd but neat. I'm going to have to listen to all of them and check it out. I dig the sfx on ours."

Amy Kim Gantner: "-Why didn't anyone ask the creators for feedback? I mean, why did Tokyopop hire us? Really, I'm so confused.
-The mangapods have now implanted a voice onto the character before the reader is even allowed to creatively have one of their own, before the books even hit the shelves, and the voices were done in a way that doesn't reflect my intended characterization. Whether it matters to anyone or not, this makes me disapointed as an artist."

Ben Roman to AKG: "My thoughts exactly."

Tim Beedle, TP editor, even makes an appearance on page three of the thread, asking for feedback.

I'm mindful of Rivkah's assertion that a contract that gave TP part ownership meant that they wouldn't have to consult the creator on "every little thing." I guess the results of TP's freedom from bothering creators has borne fruit.

As David Welsh, who alerted me to this by email said, "I just remembered you mentioning a horrible promotional idea that led you to break with a publisher, and I thought, 'Yup. She told 'em so.'"
I did tell them so. I have to admit, even I didn't consider the possibility of ersatz radio dramas. What's ironic (well, one of the things that's ironic) is that these must have been near the end of production (or even finished) about the time the discussion about the ramifications of TP OEL contracts was happening at The Engine and everywhere else. My mental picture is of TP personnel who knew creators don't know about "mangapods", ducking their heads and going, "Oh shit oh shit oh shit."

P.S.: The last post by a TP creator in the thread was made on Wednesday November 2.