Monday, February 28, 2005

Digital Strips

The boys over at Digital Strips have included BifSniff Cartoons in their weekly webcomic review podcast. Some very nice things were said too.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Sometimes it's nice to know you're not alone - part two

Ok, so this has nothing to do with our wonderful funny cartoons but it's good to know that there's someone else out there who shares my, near pathological, hatred of chewing gum.

Friday, February 25, 2005

Webcomics Iron men - and well you may wonder

So, so, so another funny cartoon up. I was chatting to Frank about it yesterday and he was talking about how this one is less satisfying from an artistic (ponce!) point of view, while this one just made him swell up with girly like glee. I think he's been a bit harsh, as there's just more you can with a meatlocker and a frightened celebrity, than with a Bunsen burner and a raw heart.

Been following The Daily Dinosaur Comics with particular interest this week. It's been a whole week of guest artists and they've all been pretty interesting. Today's one, by Justin Pierce of Tina and Kilroy, is particularly clever. That's not to disparage the others, of course.

Also just saw this on Questionable Content, one of the others that did a guest spot on Daily Dinosaur. It seems we're not the only ones to think of it.

And to the webcomics Iron Man. The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge is a competition between online comic artists to see who can maintain the longest Monday to Friday update schedule. The competition starts on February the 28th.

Also Joey Manley has been talking about the impending launch of the OpenAd Network and what he hopes to achieve with it. I'm very interested in this, mostly because he seems to be putting a lot of thought into the stats and offering the ability to disseminate between ads that work and don't work for your site. Google Adsense just doesn't do that and sometimes we end up some completely inappropriate ads.

Joey seems to be planning alot more interesting developments through WebcomicsNation and he does seem to have an acute understanding of what webcomic artists need.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Sometimes it's nice to know you're not alone

We use blogger for BifSniff Cartoons. We do this because it's just a pretty effective little content management system and it's free. But for a long time I was beginning to think we were the only ones who'd thought of using it in this way. That is until I found Dead Guy - a pretty simple but funny cartoon strip. Incidently, Dead Guy is very similar to the strip that I was planning to add to BifSniff Cartoons. I guess it's back to the drawing board for me.

A great obituary for Hunter S. Thompson here.

The UK Web and Mini Comix Thing Convention is being held at the Great Hall, Mile End, London on Saturday March 19. Doing pretty much what it says on the tin, it aims to give web and mini comics producers the chance to showcase their work.

A nice new addition to the webcomic review blog sphere is Webcomic Finds. The site specialises in searching out new and/or lesser known webcomics. It's run by Ping Teo who does her own webcomic, The Jaded, at Graphic Smash. She also gives advice on how not to run a webcomic. Maybe one day she'll find her way to BifSniff Cartoons.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Copyfighting and a cry from the voices in his hand

Started reading Freedom of Expression®: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity by Kembrew McLeod. It's a very accessible and interesting thesis on what he terms 'the copyfight'. essentially it charts how large corporations are abusing copyright and trademark laws to censor criticism of their products or views. You can buy a copy at Amazon or download the free PDF from Kembrew's own site.

Also, due to rising hosting costs, Bill Charbonneau of Voices In My Hand has been on a bit of a donation drive recently. In exchange for donations he's offering a selection of goodies, ranging from VIMH trading cards to a custom graveyard worm/tombstone sketch with your name on the grave. So if you're into Bill's dark, horror-influenced style of humour, do drop by and slip a few bob in the kitty. He'll make it worth your while.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Happy 300th Birthday

Questionable Content is on it's 300th strip and to celebrate Jeph has made it bigger.

Beaver and Steve is fifty and he is celebrating with a brand new site design.

A number of things

A couple of interesting bits and pieces today. There's an interesting little article over at Editor and Publisher, which asks is print dead. Apparently the Washington Post thinks it is.

In a very interesting move, Holland now has a webcomic foundation. I think it's a fantastic idea and, hopefully, we'll see it mirrored in other regions before too long.

Tim Buckley, the man behind Ctrl+Alt+Del, is auctioning off a piece of original artwork. The bidding, so far, has gone up to $500 and there's still two days left. So impressed was Buckley that he is now throwing in a signed copy of Volume One of Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Death of Gonzo

Hunter S. Thompson is dead. The hows, whys and wherefores of it are largely irrelevant at this point. The writer of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, the first book that ever made me laugh out loud in a public place, is dead but his legacy is almost immeasurable. He is one of the main reasons that I got into writing (and substance abuse) and if any of you ever read my prose style, I think you'd notice. Anyone who still hasn't read any of his stuff, I strongly suggest you do.

Friday, February 18, 2005

The Internet

What The Internet Is And How To Stop Mistaking It For Something Else

Boing Boing it's ska for the skeptical

Well Eric Burns over at Websnark posted up something on this Boing Boing site, which is basically just a blog of really interesting links. In itself it's well worth a look but from my perspective it was even better because it led me to this - Ska For The Skeptical. Now I'm not that big a music buff, I actually don't even own a stereo, but I do love ska and reggae - especially that old 9-piece band crammed in a cupboard-cum-recording studio type sound. Anyone who still equates ska to the likes of No Doubt should have a blast of Toot's And The Maytals doing Sweet And Dandy, Addis Ababa by The Skatalites, Laurel Aitken's Hey, Bartender, Night Boat To Cairo by Madness or Desmond Dekker's It Mek. That's SKA.

Sorry Frank, I know it's got nothing to do with funny cartoons or online comics but there you go.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

IRA banner campaign

Four posts in the one day, I'm beginning to get worried. But this I had to mention before I forgot. Last night I logged onto to the site to check something and I was confronted with a banner for the IRA. Now for those who don't know I live in Ireland and over here those three letters mean only one thing. Somehow I can't see this crowd catching on around these parts. Also on their site I spotted this link - Join The New IRA Pro Safe List - which I reckon could be the new media friendly term for provo protection rackets.

Bill Watterson

As if guided by the hand of fate, I just stumbled across this piece by Bill Watterson - the creator of Calvin and Hobbes. To be honest I don't know when it was written but it's a pretty scathing attack on the syndicates and, to a certain degree, other cartoonists. In my opinion he just underlines what I have believed for some time - if cartoonists stopped fawning to the syndicates and started looking for other options, then we would see a genuine sea change in the industry. But if anyone can remember back to the reactions amongst certain cartoonists when Scott Kurtz announced his plans for self-syndication and you'll know we could be a while off yet.

From bootlegging to Captain America

The LA Times ran an interesting editorial on Tuesday regarding the bleak future of the American comics industry. It relates the history of the comics industry and how it all started out as, basically, a quick scam for ex-bootleggers and the likes. Then, using the recent Stan Lee court case, it shows how the industry has never really shaken off those old business principles. The point of the article was that very little genuine innovation or originality is breaching the walls of mainstream comics and therefore the industry is really just lumbering to a slow death. Unlike in Japan and mainland Europe where creators are afforded far more rights. Of course to a degree he's right but, by and large, he does seem to regard DC and Marvel as the be all and end all of the business. Surely all that's really going to happen is that the big two are going to continue to concede ground to the smaller players. In a similar way to how the large syndicates are going to start losing ground to independent players over their attitude to creator rights.

BFX joins 360ep

360ep, an entertainment property management firm, have signed up another webcomic, The BFX Project, for their HeroRealm site.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

An iPod changed his life

Some writer, who I'm not even going to pretend I've ever heard of, wrote an article on Comic World News about how his new iPod, and his subsequent introduction to iTunes, changed his view of paying for comics online. It's interesting, as he discusses how his priorities have shifted with regards his comic collection. He talks about how he used to have a huge collection, that he would never have had the time to read, but has since reduced it down because he's now more interested in the reading than the actual ownership. While I'd argue that that's more a symptom of him growing up, the idea that services like iTunes might open peoples eyes to the notion of online subscriptions is worth considering.

It was not so long ago, and there are still a few around, that certain muso types were complaining about cds replacing their beloved vinyl. The quality of sound was better and they were a much easier to transport around but these people argued on a more philosophical plain. The same thing, kind of, is happening with mp3s. People are talking about ownership, in it's most abstract form, and the pleasure of reading sleeve notes - which, oddly enough, was one of the arguments the old vinyl heads used. At least we're being spared the old "smell" argument. Still, the sheer convenience, and cost effectiveness, of services like iTunes is slowly winning more and more people over.

Now that whole argument has crossed over to print vs. web. It's not new but, realistically, it's only now seeming like a serious argument. The argument from the print side is, and has always been, that people prefer reading from print. You can't sit down in your favourite armchair, put your feet up and flick through your desktop. That's true but it's missing the point. The reason the internet is a threat to the print media is because it allows us to discriminate in a way the papers don't. More and more people are going to sacrifice the pleasure of reading from print, so that they can get the information they want. Portable devices are now also making it possible for people to read online media away from the desktop, so that argument is getting weaker and weaker. It won't be that long before it will be the general practice of most people to access their news through the internet and most newspapers will be focused on delivering in that direction. If print papers want to survive they will have to adapt and start splitting their content into sections because, for example, while I always read the culture section of the Sunday Times, the rest of the paper holds absolutely no interest for me.

So how does this all relate to online comics and the business of funny cartoons. Ok the first thing is, this doesn't actually relate to BifSniff Cartoons. As Frank points out, traditionally funny cartoons and cartoon strips belong alongside other content. They are a side-note and that's fine. We'll never be asking you to subscribe to BifSniff Cartoons. We might on the other hand, sometime in the future, realistically expect to be able to charge other sites for publishing our cartoons. This more relates to the likes of Theater Hopper, Jet Set Revolution, Questionable Content, Order Of The Stick and Bad Blood - all picked completely off the top of my head. These are all long running stories that, obviously, take alot of time and effort. So why shouldn't they charge? There are all sorts of arguments about business models etc etc and certainly the internet has opened things up alot over the years. But the fact remains that these people work at what they do and have every right to expect to be paid for it. I actually flicked through some old copies of Deadline, a print comic I used to collect, and realised that there really was only ever two or three stories in it that interested me. Now a days I just wouldn't buy it. I'd sooner pay for the ones I want to read and not have to pay extra for guff I've no interest in. Of course for the moment, I can get plenty of what I want for free but, really, eventually that's got to come to an end.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Jimmy Stewarts parole officer

The latest Digital Strips Podcast went up yesterday.

Also found a very funny cartoon today. Unfortunately it seems like it only ran for eight strips - beginning and ending in July last year. Shame.

Monday, February 14, 2005

BadBlood

And, of course, it would only be proper order to mention Liriel's own webcomic BadBlood.

buzzBugle

Ok, as ever, I seem to have jumped the gun a bit with my last post. So just to add to it, buzzBugle has just been relaunched, as a webcomics news portal, by the ever so helpful Liriel from BuzzComix. There you go now.

Ninja stck figures, skinny pandas and the infinite canvas

Just a few things worth looking at today. Comixpedia has an article on the Infinite Canvas. It's an idea I've never really taken to but, you know, each to his own. A more interesting piece, from my perspective, is The History Of Online Comics (part 9). In it T. Campbell discusses the business of webcomics and the various models available for generating an income from a webcomic. Of course, none of these really work for BifSniff Cartoons but there you go, we're not bitter or anything. There's also a new Feeding Snarky up, which is, almost, always worth a read.

On the subject of snarky, Websnark has a review of a really funny comic that I'd never come across before. Skinny Panda is just a pretty good example of what the comic strip format can acheive - simple, clever and effective. It also occasionally digresses into stories about stickmen, which is no bad thing.

Friday, February 11, 2005

From dinosaurs to God

After we'd come up with today's exceptionally funny cartoon, I stumbled across this on the buzzcomix forum. I nearly pulled it but Frank actually snuck it in, working on the basis that they're both just different jokes on the same phrase. So I let it slide.

Also, if you've never checked it before, today's Daily Dinosaur is one of the best I've read in a while.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

The Order Of The Stick

I've never been into role-playing or gaming, or whatever it's called, so alot of The Order Of The Stick is lost on me. Still there's a certain amount of charm in there that anyone can appreciate. Anyway, to the point, it's creater Rich Burlew has announced that since he'd received over 2000 pre-orders of their first book, he is now planning on quiting his job to do the comic full-time and I, for one, say fair fucks to him.

More news than you can shake a stick at

Right...well...where to start? Okay, first the, apparently, acclaimed San Francisco comics retailer James Sime has announced the launch of the 2005 Isotope Award For Excellence In Mini-Comics. Sime, proprieter of Isotope - The Comic Book Lounge, is now accepting submissions for the award, which first saw the light of day back in 2003. You can read the official press release, which gives you far more info than I can be bothered typing, here.

Some radio show that I've never heard of, which broadcasts on some radio network/station jobby that I've never heard of, did a piece recently on the current state of the newspaper comic strip. You can read a transcript of the show here and there's also a link there so you can listen to it. At one stage in it Hilary Price, who created a cartoon strip I'd never heard of, complained about the threat posed by online comics.

"The only way that cartoonists make money is by the number of papers that they're in, not by their Internet presence. So if you learn about the cartoon by seeing it in the Globe and then you look at it on line, and then the Globe cancels it, there's not a lot of incentive for you to call up the Globe and shake your fists at them and scream and cry and that kind of thing."

Now while I can sympathise with this point of view, as no one likes to see their livelihood threatened, all I can really say is tough luck. If you can't move with the times you'll become obsolete and if all you're going to do is complain about it and try to fight it, like the music industry, you'll deserve to be. I should point out that one look at the Rhymes With Orange website clearly indicates that Ms/Mrs Price is attempting to adapt.

Questionable Content gets a mention again. Today's strip has a cat theme and since my mother has about 50 million cats, I can really get this one. In his post at the side Jeph pretty much sums up the difference between cats and dogs. Except for the fact that I think the real reason cats aren't given positions of power, is because they have much smaller brains than us and would be completely incapable of executing their duties. Other than that - well observed.

And finally, Happy Burt Reynolds Day.

Ok, that might not have been more news than you can shake a stick at, but surely it was enough to keep you occupied for a small while.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Questionable Content

I really like today's Questionable Content. It's nothing ground-breaking but it is just so well constructed and paced. Actually, I've become quite fond of Questionable Content, even though I was determined not to. Don't ask me why I was determined not to because I can't actually remember.

Garfield online

In an interesting(?) twist in the online/off-line syndication argument, having been dropped by the L.A. Times for being - for want of a better word - crap, Garfield has signed to run new strips on Sparktop. Spartop is a site for children with learning disabilities run by Charles Schwab. It hardly heralds a revolution in how we view online comics but why shouldn't websites pay to have new strips on their site. Arguably they offer more value to an online enterprise than they do to a print one. I know I'm far more likely to drop by a site just to see a funny cartoon I like, than I am to bother my arse buying a magazine for the same reason. I remember reading before about how John Gleneicki had signed an exclusive deal with Netrition.com for his Musclehedz cartoon. I don't know how much he gets, so I can't say how good a deal it is, but it makes sense. Someone will stop by to see the toon and notice something that interests him. If you then consider how much traffic something like PVP gets, it's got to make sense for tech/game/geek websites to run fresh ones on their site. The crux of it is, folks come to our site or a number of others to view one cartoon or comic and then leave. Why not utilise that traffic to entice them somewhere else?

Of course, Frank went over this in his article the other day. So I'll just say funny cartoons again in the vain hope that I've haven't just been wasting my time.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Clickburg 2005

I just read on Comixpedia that the Clickburg comic expo is being held in Tilburg on May 1st. The Clickies, an award for best Dutch or Flemish webcomics, will be awarded at the event. An early list of nominations have been posted here at the weblog of Dutch comic journaslist Joeren Mirck. Why not check them out, even if you can't understand most of them.

Gary Larson

This is really quite old news but I'd forgotten about it until Frank sent me this link. Firstly, let me just state that Gary Larson is a comic genius. I can't think of anyone, before or since, who could produce funny cartoons as consistently as him. I have the utmost respect for him and if our cartoons could be anywhere near as funny, then I'd be a very happy man.

But...

I must say I think he's wrong on a couple of points. To start with, and just to get the facetious side of my argument out of the way, the whole cartoon/child analogy is way off. If those cartoons were his children, they'd have been taken off him long ago, the way he pimps them out. However, other than the shoddiness of his analogy, I don't for one minute begrudge his right to get the most from his licensing. But please call a spade a spade. Don't use my cartoons without permission - they're my livelihood, thank you very much. And any argument that because he's rich, he's some how obligated to give them away is horse-shit. He did a job of work and did very well out of it. He doesn't owe anyone anything more than what he has given.

Now, where I do think he's wrong is believing that this distribution of his cartoons was doing his product harm, in tangible terms as he puts it. Gary Larson retired in the early nineties, his last original Far Side appearing on December 31st 1994. Since then, of course, it's become less and less likely that you'd see it impeding on your day to day life. To emphasis the difference this makes to his business, I was in a large newsagent in town the other day and I was just walking past their greeting cards section. Now when I was in school, before he retired, there was a large part of this section dedicated entirely to Far Side cards. On that day I couldn't find a single one. Why should there be? When I was in school the Far Side was everywhere and now it's nowhere. So who exactly is going to buy these greeting cards, or mugs or videos, anymore? Well, what the internet offered Gary Larson was free marketing for his merchandise. If a few sites were allowed to distribute his cartoons then, maybe, their profile would remain consistently high. None of them are new, so why not just give them away. Regulate it, if you want. Control it, by all means. But by refusing to utilise it you're actually, more likely than not, doing your business more harm than good - in tangible terms of course.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Free Syndication

So we've decided to offer our funny little cartoons free to anyone who wants to put them up on their site. Just insert a little bit of code into your site and all of a sudden you're funny. Magic. Actually, Frank wrote a little article about our thinking behind this. So we may not be the first to do it, but we're certainly the first to get all self-important and thoughtful about it. Either way if you want to put a funny cartoon up on your site, this is your chance.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Mind Numbing

Todays cartoon got me thinking about something Frank mentioned in his little ponderings about whether we make funny cartoons or not. In it Frank wondered about our unusual approach and even suggested that I might well have been able to the cartoons on my own. Well, leaving aside my limited artistic ability and inherent laziness, todays cartoon is a prime example of the main reason why this odd little set up works.

The idea behind Dead End Job came to before Christmas and I sent it on to Frank. Now, at that stage, the caption and the context for the cartoon were hugely different. So Frank sends me back a mail saying something along the lines of "Um, maybe, don't know yet. How do you picture it?" Then I took another look at it and thought I still liked it but I let rest for a couple of weeks. After a couple of weeks I brought it up again and explained it in more detail to Frank. He still wasn't convinced but it was up to me (sulky bastard). We had other cartoons at the ready, so I said we'd leave it. Then, some time last week, I was thinking we should do it next and to hell with Frank. But I'd lost my notebook where I'd written it down and now had to remember the exact wording. Which, of course, is when I realised I'd gotten it all wrong. The caption wasn't right, the context was all bollocks and while it might have been a fairly funny cartoon, it just wouldn't have been a BifSniff Cartoon.

So if I'd have been working on my own this would never have worked out quite as well. It's not the only one, of course, but it is the only one I'm admitting to for the moment.

Some other comic review sites have come to my attention - The Time Waster's Guide, The Webcomic Book Club, Korsil and Kill Boredom. I don't know anything about them but I thought I might as well mention them. Also worth looking at are Sequential Tart and, I can't remember if I listed this before, The Webcomics Examiner.

I have never really understood the buzz around Bunny but I do really like this one and this one.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

pre-madonna

Now I like Alien Loves Predator most of the time anyway but this I particularly liked. I just wish I'd thought of it first.

Pre-emptive strike

Ok, I'm just going to get on with this, before Frank starts complaining that I haven't blogged for a couple of days. Not much to say, except I heard today that the Dublin City Manager had decided to phase out the beeping sound traffic lights made to let blind people know it was safe to cross. His reasoning for this? Apparently, people who could see were getting confused when there were two sets of traffic lights close to each other. Obviously, it's too much to expect us ably sighted people to concentrate on what we're doing, as well as see things.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

And the point...

Actually, what I meant to post earlier, before I got side-tracked by the chance to take a pot shot at Frank, was this. A wee article on what makes something funny by the man behind Websnark. And yes, I think even he'd admit he has way too much time on his hands.

Funny cartoons and intellectual property theft

So a couple of things worth a mention today. Or at least, as worth a mention as any of this shit is. Firstly, we were chatting with Tom Raftery on Sunday and he mentioned he used a couple of our cartoons as part of a talk he did on web standards. Of course, he never asked us could he but we'll leave that for another day. Anyway, he used Apocalypse Now and Alcoholics Anonymous, which I found a bit odd. Then he explained the reasoning behind his choice and really, Tom, the logic was more than just a little Bifsniff. So spot on boss.

Now my second point is in reference to this, Frank's latest attempt at rationalising what we do here. He makes a few point's in there about the nature of funny cartoons and how we put them together. However, he does seem to play down his role in these things and I just thought I'd make a quick point. No, I'm not about to harp on about how Frank plays a far more important role than he's letting on. No, I'm not going to mention that I think certain cartoons wouldn't have been nearly as funny if it wasn't for his input. I'm not even going to extoll his artistic virtues. I'm just going to warn you that it's all an act. He's not that humble at all. He's just playing for sympathy and he wants you all to send him loads of emails telling him how wonderful he is and it's his art that makes Bifsniff cartoons funny. Don't do it, he's difficult enough to work with already.