Boing Boing » webcomics

Kickstarting an omnibus edition of the Digger webcomic

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:48:19 +0000

Carl sez, "Remember Digger, Ursula Vernon's Eisner award nominated/Hugo Award winning webcomic about a wombat searching for a way home? Publisher Sofa Wolf has launched a Kickstarter for an all-in-one omnibus edition. It's currently available in six individual volumes or free online, but this will put it all in one convenient book. Plus it's the first kickstarter to offer a wombat-sized pickaxe as a reward (in foam or metal)."

Digger Omnibus (Thanks, Carl!)

Oh Joy Sex Toy: dildo funnies

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 27 May 2013 18:16:32 +0000

Oh Joy Sex Toy is a weekly webcomic that features reviews of sex toys, porn, pinups, sex clubs -- basically, the whole pervy gamut. It is written and drawn with such gosh-darn sweet enthusiasm by Erika Moen (with the occasional guest-shot from husband Matthew, who provides a dude's perspective) that even if your tastes are tamer than Moen's, I think you'll find it a perfectly wonderful read.

Oh Joy Sex Toy - Introduction [NSFW] [Duh]

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Geeky tornado relief fundraisers

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:30:45 +0000

Alan sez, "Two items here on the same theme: Ruben Bolling, comic author of Tom The Dancing Bug, contributor to JoCo Funnies, etc. has a raffle posted on his blog. If you donate to the American National Red Cross through a page he has set up, you will be entered into a drawing for a personal comic from Bolling; Greg Pak, creator of the 'Code Monkey Save World' visuals and co-conspirator in the recent Kickstarter with Jonathan Coulton is offering free CMSW stickers to people who make a donation to any recognized organization helping tornado victims."

Kickstarting the next Girl Genius volume with Kaja and Phil Foglio

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:00:09 +0000

Kaja and Phil Foglio have launched a Kickstarter to fund the printing of volume 12 of the wonderful Girl Genius webcomic, and to reprint the older books. These are multi-award-winning, independent steampunk delights, and $30 gets you "an actual, dead-tree, SOFTCOVER copy of Girl Genius Volume 12: Agatha Heterodyne and the Siege of Mechanicsburg. 192 pages in full color. Shipped to you by means of one of the largest government agencies on Earth!"

Printing the actual books is our biggest single expense. The first print run of a typical volume costs in excess of US$25,000. If that seems high, you must remember that we print eight thousand of them, and they usually run to around 120 pages. Our latest volume, number 12, will be even more expensive, as it comes in at 192 pages, and we’ll be printing nine thousand of them, because eight thousand wasn’t enough last time. Exciting? Yes, but one can’t pay the printer with excitement.
We also have to ship the books. Actually, we have to ship them twice. Once from the printer to the fulfillment center, and once again from the fulfillment center to the customer. And whether a book is shrink–wrapped with thousands of its friends onto a pallet and loaded into a truck, or carefully packaged for individual shipping, several thousand pounds of books cost serious money to transport.

It's got a short fuse on it because they want to get the books in hand in time for San Diego Comic-Con. Act now!

Girl Genius Volume 12 Printing and Reprint Frenzy! (Thanks, Phil!)

Patrick "Electric Sheep" Farley returns with a new webcomic: Steve & Steve

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 11 May 2013 01:00:12 +0000

Stefan Jones sez, "Web comic master Patrick "Electric Sheep" Farley switches styles with frightening ease. The First Word, an enigmatic story about australopithecine, was done in lovely photorealistic CGI. His new work, Steve and Steve, is sharp line art with sepia-tones. It's about . . . Steve and Steve. Jobs and Wozniak, BSing about evolution, witchcraft, and the cold war under the skeleton of a ruined geodesic dome. I hope he can keep this one going."

Steve & Steve | Prelude: Electric Funeral (Thanks, Stefan!)

Hyperbole and a Half returns with another episode on depression

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:22:21 +0000

The amazing and wonderful Hyperbole and a Half is back, with the long-overdue continuation of the 2011 post on depression. This isn't an entirely upbeat post (as you might expect), but it is every bit as indispensable and smart and great as the previous entries. And it's an ultimately hopeful one, too.

And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.
It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.

Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two

How much time should you spend automating a routine task?

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:28:37 +0000

Today's XKCD really tickles me. "Is It Worth the Time?" is a handy chart showing how much time you can invest in automating any recurring task in order to save time, on balance, over five years. I am an inveterate automator of recurring task, always looking for ways to shave seconds.

On the other hand, I think I'd halve the figures Randy gives in this chart, because many of the routine tasks you automate will change in some significant way in less than five years and require further work. Also, the chart fails to account for the losses in innovation and serendipity you suffer when you over-optimize a routine task so that you effectively can only do it in one highly constrained way.

Finally, there's the opportunity cost of clearing a relatively scarce large block of time to spend on automation, which may be a better bargain than giving the task more time overall, where that time comes out of a pool of more abundant small snips of time.

In other words, a five day block of time given to automating a task might cost more (that is, might crowd out more productive work) than ten half-day blocks of time or 40 one-hour blocks.

Still: this is crack for me.

Is It Worth the Time?

Time: XKCD's slo-mo time-lapse comic

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 01:00:42 +0000

On March 25, Randall Munroe ran a strip called Time, an enigmatic, wordless image whose tool-tip was "Wait for it." Ever since, the strip has been updating with subsequent frames, all of them making up a time-lapse animation of a lovely story about a day of sand-castle building at the beach.

The XKCD Wikia entry for the post has animated GIFs and a slideshow showing the progress to date. It's really coming along nicely, and Randall's done some clever things with the back-end to stop people from previewing future frames.

Human condition, with email

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 04:14:00 +0000

Hidden in the tooltip for today's XKCD, a piece of important existential philosophy:

A human is a system for converting dust billions of years ago into dust billions of years from now via a roundabout process which involves checking email a lot.

Steroids

Webcomics in The Economist

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:17:26 +0000

A Dec 22 article in the Economist looks at the thriving world of webcomics and suggests that they have broken the awful cycle of mediocre newspaper comics -- a cycle that Bill Watterson decried when he gave up on Calvin and Hobbes. It's a great piece:

Many of these comics are expanding outwards into little media empires of their own. “XKCD”, probably the most innovative, now features a separate blog called “What If?”, on which Mr Munroe answers questions sent in by readers. One recent post asked “if every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?” (The answer is no, unless you can borrow 6 billion one-megawatt lasers from the Pentagon.) “SMBC” and “Ctrl Alt Del” have both experimented with sketch shows and animated comics. “Penny Arcade” has become a sprawling video-games industry phenomenon, hosting games conventions and fund-raising campaigns.
One thing they have in common is how they make their money. The typical audience for one of the leading web comics is between 1m and 10m unique browser visits per month, comparable to a medium-sized newspaper website (the website of the Daily Mail, the best-read newspaper on the web, gets 100m per month). But unlike on newspaper websites, where advertising is the main source of revenue, the audience on web comics are not just readers—they are also customers. Most artists sell T-shirts, books, mouse mats, posters and other paraphernalia. The most successful at monetising content is said to be Mr Inman: his site, “The Oatmeal” made $500,000 in 2011 from its audience of around 7m unique visitors per month.
Amplified by social media—Mr Inman has some 700,000 Facebook followers—this audience can be powerful. One extremely long and exceptionally geeky comic last summer on “The Oatmeal”, extolling the virtues of the inventor Nikola Tesla and attacking his better-known rival, Thomas Edison, somehow snowballed into a campaign to save one of Tesla’s labs on the outskirts of New York. By leveraging his immense traffic to attract donations and to sell T-shirts and other gear, Mr Inman raised $1m in nine days—enough, with matching funding from New York State, to buy the building.

Triumph of the nerds (Thanks, Martin!)

XKCD on New Year's resolutions

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 21:36:03 +0000

Today's XKCD is holds wise advice for those of us contemplating New Year's resolutions. Be sure to click through for the tool-tip bonus punchline.

Resolution

Great comic on creative work in the Internet age

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:39:16 +0000

The Oatmeal's "Some thoughts and musings about making things for the web" really captures a lot of the joys and sorrows of working in a creative field in the age of the Internet, especially the toxicity of spending too much time reading nasty comments, and the difficulty of maintaining self discipline. My one quibble -- and it's a major one -- is the business about "inspiration."

For me the major turning point in my working life was when I figured out that the work I produced when I felt inspired wasn't any different from the work I produced when I felt uninspired -- at least a few months later. I think that "inspiration" has to do with your own confidence in your ideas, your blood sugar, the external pressures in your life, and a million other factors only tangentially related to the actual quality of the work. If creative work makes you sane and happy (and if it supports you financially), it's terrible to harness it to something you can't control, like "inspiration" -- it sucks to only be happy when something you can't control occurs.

Some thoughts and musings about making things for the web (via Neatorama)

Solving Laugh Out Loud Cats #2100

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 23:00:53 +0000

Apelad sez, "I posted the 2100th Laugh-Out-Loud Cats comic last night. My kids had me print it out so they could cut out each panel to try and recreate the tunnel route. It's not easy!"

Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2100

Five more books join the Humble Ebook Bundle!

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 19:29:40 +0000

We've hit the halfway mark on the Humble Ebook Bundle, a name-your-price, support-for-charity, DRM-free ebook promotion. With one week to go, we've added in FIVE more books: XKCD Volume 0; Zach Weiner's Save Yourself, Mammal and The Most Dangerous Game; Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots; and Penny Arcade: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings.

If you've already bought the bundle ~~and paid more than the average,~~ these are unlocked and ready for you to download. If you're new to the bundle, you have seven days to buy these ones. Don't miss out!

Update: Derp -- misunderstood who got the new titles! If you've paid, they're yours.

Humble Ebook Bundle

Toothpaste for Dinner needs your business

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 19:35:52 +0000

Complexin writes, "Drew, of daily webcomic 'Toothpaste for Dinner' and 'Married to the Sea,' among other sites, seems in danger of going offline. He's offering special discounts on t-shirts, a book, and original music in hopes of generating enough revenue to keep it going. According to his Twitter stream he's not interested in donations... but if you enjoy the comics consider purchasing some of the associated items from the Sharing Machine store. I own a few of the t-shirts, and they are well-made, sized correctly for women, AND bitingly hilarious. Bonus: comes in men's styles, too."

I don't own any of Drew's tees, but I do own, cherish and highly recommend his book.

Toothpaste For Dinner: Daily comics by Drew (Thanks, Complexin)

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong: YA webcomic "full of teenagers building homemade robots in their basement"

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 19:48:54 +0000

Comics awesomecreator Faith Erin Hicks (Zombies Calling, Friends With Boys) is serializing a new comic online called "Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong," adapted from a Prudence Shen YA novel. When the serialization is done, the whole thing will be published between covers by the marvellous FirstSecond books. FirstSecond's Gina Gagliano describes it as "full of teenagers building homemade robots in their basement." Sounds like my kind of thing!

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong (Thanks, Gina!)

Wormwood webcomic merch -- a Kickstarter

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:15:51 +0000

Back in 2011, Mark blogged about the Wormworld Saga, a free, beautiful, multilingual webcomic created by Daniel Lieske. Now, Lieske has produced a world of beautiful merchandise for people who want to support his project, show off their fandom, and look stylin'. He's structured the merch production as a Kickstarter -- back it at different levels to get different items.

At the core of the Wormworld Saga are its fans. They support the project in many ways including donations, fan artwork and translations. The fans made the development of the Wormworld Saga App possible and the fans are the ones that spread the word about the Wormworld Saga on the internet so that over a million people have already become aware of it.
Funding an independent project like the Wormworld Saga is a huge challenge. And although we've already made huge steps, the financial future of the project is still not secure over the long run. With this kickstarter campaign we want to turn our focus on an aspect that we've largely neglected up to this point: there are virtually no fan items available for the fans of the Wormworld Saga! And we finally want to change that.

The Wormworld Saga Treasure Chest by Daniel Lieske — Kickstarter (Thanks, Dave!)

XKCD's 14-foot-wide CLICK AND DRAG map

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:57:17 +0000

Today's XKCD, "Click and Drag," is a triumph. It's a tribute to House of Leaves, and it treats the punchline as a window to a ginormous, explorable world that you can see by clicking and dragging. Dan Catt puts the artwork at 46 feet wide, assuming it is printed at 300dpi. It's full of Munrovian sly humor and sight gags, and has its own underground civilization. It's not like any other thing I've seen.

If you want to mouse around in a zoomable version of the map, see this mashup. If (when) Randall offers this for sale as a poster, I may have to throw away some furniture to make room for it.

Click and Drag (via Kottke)

Facebook to New Yorker: no nipples in your cartoons!

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:47:47 +0000

Facebook forced The New Yorker to remove a cartoon depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden because the cartoonist drew in two dots representing Eve's nipples, which is a Facebook no-no.

Nipplegate (via JWZ)

Kickstarting a fun card-battling game

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 22:44:15 +0000

Darren sez, "Obsidian Abnormal is the creator of Commissioned, a madcap webcomic with zombies, gnomes, ninjas, cats and nerds. So Obsidian and I made a card game that pits them against each other - 3v3: Commissioned. It's a unique spin on deck-building. While every card has the normal attack values, defense values and special abilities on it, you can only use a third of three different cards to cobble together a hand."

Premiums for this Kickstarter include a ride in an airship! Darren's also the guy who did Monster Alphabet, another great Kickstarter project.

3v3 is a unique battling card game. Every hand you draw three cards. Each card has an attack, a defense and a special ability, but you have to pick which card is your attack, which is your defense and which is your ability. Then you play your three cards against your opponent's three cards.
You can score up to three points in a hand, and the first one to 10 points wins the round. But every time your opponent scores a point, you have to remove a card from your deck. This creates a fast-paced and fun gaming environment, with quick thinking needed to pick which cards to send to the scoreboard.

3v3: The Commissioned Comic Card Game

XKCD with a very boingy punchline

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:42:02 +0000

Daww, that was nice of him: Randall Monroe's made me the punchline of another XKCD!

Update: Hey, this is from 2008! I missed it then. No matter -- it was funny then, it's funny now.

Starwatching

Patrick Farley reboots Cloverfield

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 17:41:09 +0000

The great (and maddeningly erratic) Patrick Farley has a typically awesome new comic up: "Cloverfield Rebooted," in which the monster's true nature is revealed.

Cloverfield Rebooted (via JWZ)

Music industry, in sum

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 01:14:29 +0000

In ~~three~~ four short panels, the Oatmeal does a fine job of capturing the problem and promise of the music industry in the 21st century.

The state of the music industry - The Oatmeal (via Reddit)

Trying to hack the rules of wishing

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:13:56 +0000

Today's XKCD, the "Eyelash Wish Log," is a bit of design fiction that implies the story of a too-clever-for-his-own-good protagonist who tries to hack the rules and regulations of wishing. It reminded me of Stephen Gould's excellent YA novel Jumper, which rigorously and thoroughly maps out the possibilities of teleportation (which was adapted into a movie that, unfortunately, omitted most of its charm).

Eyelash Wish Log

XKCD reveals your visual perception quirks

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:21:30 +0000

Today's XKCD, "Visual Field," is a terrific mind-bender: a series of optical experiments to try with your computer's screen and a rolled-up piece of paper that demonstrate the quirks of your visual field: your blind-spots, your ability to perceive detail, night vision, the ability to perceive polarization, sprites and floaters, color perception and so on.

Visual Field

FunnyJunk's lawyer sues American Cancer Society and National Wildlife Federation

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 12:46:38 +0000

Charles Carreon, the lawyer who sent a legal threat to The Oatmeal on behalf of FunnyJunk (FunnyJunk was upset that The Oatmeal had complained about the undisputed fact that its users routinely post Oatmeal comics to the site and threatened a libel suit unless they got $20,000 from The Oatmeal), has made good on his threat to comb the statute books until he could find something to sue Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman over.

But Mr Carreon has gone much, much farther. He has not only named Inman to the suit, but is also suing IndieGoGo (Inman launched an IndieGoGo fundraiser for a cancer charity and the National Wildlife Federation, and raised over $100,000 for them, with a promise that he would photograph himself standing astride the money and send it as a taunt to Carreon prior to remitting it to the charity). He is also suing the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society.

Ken at Popehat and Kevin from Lowering the Bar are offering pro bono counsel to the defendants in the suit, and looking for other First Amendment attorneys to volunteer their time to fight Carreon's lawsuit. Here's Ken's summary of the Courthouse News Service summary of Carreon's suit:

1. The lawsuit is captioned Charles Carreon v. Matthew Inman; IndieGogo Inc.; National Wildlife Federation; American Cancer Society; and Does [Does are as-of-yet-unnamed defendants], Case No. 4:12 cv 3112 DMR.
2. Charles Carreon appears as "attorney pro se," meaning "I am attorney but am representing only myself" and "I will continue to wreak havoc until forcibly medicated."
3. CNS included the following description of the case, which is most likely drafted by CNS upon review of the complaint: "Trademark infringement and incitement to cyber-vandalism. Defendants Inman and IndieGogo are commercial fundraisers that failed to file disclosures or annual reports. Inman launched a Bear Love campaign, which purports to raise money for defendant charitable organizations, but was really designed to revile plaintiff and his client, Funnyjunk.com, and to initiate a campaign of "trolling" and cybervandalism against them, which has caused people to hack Inman's computer and falsely impersonate him. The campaign included obscenities, an obscene comics and a false accusation that FunnyJunk "stole a bunch of my comics and hosted them." Inman runs the comedy website The Oatmeal."

As Ken points out, if the CNS summary is true, then Carreon's suit is especially frivolous:

Now, that summary, most likely written by CNS, may be flawed; thorough analysis must await getting a copy of the complaint. But to the extent the summary is accurate, it suggests a number of patent defects in the complaint. First of all, Carreon — appearing pro se — doesn't have standing to sue for false statements against FunnyJunk, or for trademark violations against FunnyJunk. Second, if the "trademark infringement" is premised on the notion that The Oatmeal violated Charles Carreon's trademark in his own name by criticizing him, it is knowingly frivolous for the reasons set forth in the excellent letter Mr. Inman's attorney sent. Inman's discussion of Charles Carreon was self-evidently on its face classic nominative fair use, because it named him to shame him and not to make commercial use of his name. Similarly, I can say that Charles Carreon remains a petulant, amoral, censorious douchebag without violating his trademark because that's nominative, not commercial.

Ken's post is (as always) full of great analysis, and he recommends that if you want to help fight Mr Carreon's douchebaggery that you donate to the Oatmeal's charity fundraiser (currently standing at $178K and rising) and tell your friends (he also asks that you not send angry emails or calls to Mr Carreon).

Update: Lowering the Bar has the complaint

The Oatmeal v. FunnyJunk, Part IV: Charles Carreon Sues Everybody

XKCD wedding cake

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 28 May 2012 19:02:27 +0000

Mike sez, "Photographed a wedding reception in upstate NY this weekend -- the cake was awesome! The couple are both geeks and have three geeky teenaged daughters who helped design it.... Take a look at the cell phone video!"

Cameraphone MP4 video
(Thanks, Mike!)

India's net-censorship law - webcomic edition

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:55:25 +0000

The Indian webcomic "Crocodile in Water Tiger On Land" has some trenchant commentary on India's Information Technologies Act 2011, a pro-censorship, pro-surveillance Internet regulation.

Information Technologies Act 2011

Webcomic: Face-Skull, a graphic designer with a disembodied, crime-fighting alter-ego

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 05 May 2012 03:23:02 +0000

Pat Dorian sez, "Cory blogged about my t-shirts he saw at NYC Comic Con 2011. I took one of my characters from my t-shirts and made a web comic based on him. I thought you might dig it."

The Face-Skull (Thanks, Pat!)

Utilitarianism's darkly comical pitfalls

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:00:03 +0000

A characteristically great Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal installment explores the hidden pitfalls of extreme utilitarianism. I just re-read Starship Troopers and was once again struck by Heinlein's strange idea of a scientifically provable "moral philosophy" that puts every human situation to the test of being expressed in symbolic logic to weigh its validity.

We created a utilitarian ethics computer to replace government (Thanks, Jamie!)