Need a little bit of music with your webcomic? Well, look no further!

Matthew Petz, creator of the supernatural western adventure The Corpse Carries A Gun, has written a nice little theme song for his Zuda comic.

You can rock out to the song here, and learn more about the series by clicking here!

Sidewise, an online comic by Dwight MacPherson and Igor Noronha which is in this month’s Zuda competition, has unveiled this new trailer for the comic:

All I can say is, while I’m pretty new to the webcomic, that’s a pretty slick trailer from a motion comics standpoint. Is it weird that I think this looks more put together than the BET Black Panther cartoon? What do you think, Rama readers? While I can’t endorse the comic over its competition (there’s so many to choose from!), you can read more about this time-traveling steampunk comic here.

[Tip of the hat to Steve Ekstrom for showing me this]

Zuda Comics, the online imprint of DC Comics, has posted the following tease about what looks like a new series, called Bottle of Awesome:

This tease, called “The Unattainable,” looks very… bald. There’s another teaser here.

While there’s very little information past the author, Transmission-X creator of “Raising Hell” Andy Belanger, we’ll keep you posted on any and all updates of this seemingly tongue-in-cheek series.

UPDATE: As soon as I sent this blog post, another, more retro tease came out. What is in that Bottle of Awesome?

Laura Lee, who does a pretty rad rendition of “My Sharona” in addition to her artistic skills, was introduced to me as another new New Yorker at the CBLDF party on Saturday night.

Her comic, Sealed: Growing Up Tupperware, is up on the Act-I-Vate site (if you aren’t checking out their webcomics regularly, you are missing out). It’s a quirky tale of growing up in a home defined by her mother’s Tupperware sales career, and the effects on her burgeoning feminism.

Sealed is destined for inclusion in an upcoming anthology called “The Big Feminist But” that is collecting comics about navigating the strange “post-feminist” world we live in. If it’s any indication of the type of work they’re getting, I’m going to love the collection.

Lee’s comic is full of hilarious little footnotes that made me giggle out loud in between observations about her family history with Tupperware. Versions of Tupperware ads are layered into the panels, which might feel parodic if Lee didn’t have a deep love for her subject that comes from having really thought about its effects on her character.

Her pages flow nicely, her panels layered and blended into one another and her art charming and distinctive–it reminds me of something I’ve seen before, but at the same time I can’t think of anything it looks like. The soft green tones have the comforting feeling of Tupperware itself.

Rumor has it that Lee is working on a graphic novel, and I for one am looking forward to it. There’s no good reason, though, for you not to check out her work on the Web. It’s free!

This is kind of a short’n’sweet rundown on the articles I bookmarked this week, as I’m knee-deep in so much stuff right now I don’t have time to do them justice.

The Hathor Legacy on Warren Ellis’s Freakangels.

The Angry Black Woman says she would make a terrible superhero girlfriend. She also takes on being a sci-fi/comics fan and being a woman of color.

Johanna Draper Carlson wants to know what your geekiest thing is.

Racialicious revisits Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology and finds a few identities still missing.

Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, prone to outrageous statements, will be the latest politician to star in her own comic book.

Todd Klein does the Library of Dream.

Splash Page has five out and proud heroes who’d oppose Proposition 8.

Daryl Cagle sticks it to the Huffington Post on comics and editorial cartoons.

Congratulations to all the winners of the 2009 Glyph Comics awards.

From the press release: The Glyph Comics Awards recognize the best in comics made by, for, and about people of color from the preceding calendar year. While it is not exclusive to black creators, it does strive to honor those who have made the greatest contributions to the comics medium in terms of both critical and commercial impact. By doing so, the goal is to encourage more diverse and high quality work across the board and to inspire new creators to add their voices to the field.

As Johanna noted, it is both a good and a bad thing for one comic, in this case Zuda’s Bayou, to sweep these awards. It’s great for a webcomic about to be released in print to be so acclaimed, but does it just point to a dearth of comics about nonwhite people?

G. Willow Wilson’s Vixen took Fan Favorite, Black Lightning from Final Crisis was chosen best male character, and Unknown Soldier #1 (which I just read this week and which will get its own post soon, I promise) won best cover. The Rising Star and Best Reprint were The Hole: Consumer Culture and Me and the Devil Blues V1, respectively, but Bayou took as many awards as the other books put together, winning Story of the Year, Best Writer, Best Artist, Best Female Character, and Best Comic Strip.

Clearly, I’ve been missing an excellent comic, so I’ll be sure to make up for it by picking up the print book when it comes out.

I had the wonderful opportunity to chat it up with iPhone/iPod developer Olivier Yiptong about his new app Comicstrips. It’s the best comic reader for the tech! Check out their site for the straight poop.

download original audio source

First Second’s editorial director, Mark Siegel, has drawn a pretty witty graphic review of Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe for the webcomic Unshelved, which has been linked over on the company’s web site.

I’d show more on this post, but your head might explode because of how fun this review is, especially as it is in the style of Bryan Lee O’Malley himself. But click here to see what Siegel and the First Second crew had to say.

[Image and permission courtesy of Mark Siegel]

Invincible Super-Blogger, Punisher enthusiast and Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter annotator Chris Sims doesn’t just write about comics, he can also write the damn things too. Witness, for example, The Chronicles of Solomon Stone, a new webcomic written by Sims, drawn by Matthew Allen Smith and lettered by Benjamin Birdie. The first eight-page installment is up now and awaiting your perusal, and the plan is to follow it up with two more chapters on the next two Wednesdays (Wednesday being new comics day, naturally) until the entire 24-page book, including a pin-up and letter column, is completely complete. Check it out; you have my personal guarantee that it will be the very best comic about a half vampire private detective skateboard champion you read today.

While I don’t think the Commander in Chief will be sprouting adamantium claws anytime soon, he certainly has been getting his fair share of comics coverage. Well, there’s more!

Dean Trippe and Evan Bryce have announced the release of their new webcomic, President Awesome. In the authors’ own words: “President Awesome is a weekly political comic about President Barack Obama! Basically, it’s The Daily Show meets The Far Side, but you know, way better.”

When adding onto the digitial comics explosion, perhaps its fitting that BOOM! Studios has staked out new territory for online distribution. (Note: I said “ironic” earlier just because it’s an explosion tied to a company called BOOM… get it? …Well, at least my mother understands me.)

The publisher announced today that their release of HEXED #1 on Google Android is the first comic ever to be released on the mobile operating system. According to their release, “in less than 48 hours the free comic had been downloaded more than 10,000 times, and received a stellar 4.72 out of 5 rating from over 600 user reviews.”

“The ‘HEXED #1′ release on Android has gone above and beyond our wildest expectations. ” said iVerse Media founder Michael Murphey in the release. “In less than 24 hours we received 100s of emails from Google Android users not only praising the software, but — more importantly — raving about the quality of the story and art… and it just keeps coming. The book has been reviewed over 900 times now, and people not only love it… they want more.” Furthermore, the series will also be available on the iPhone starting this week.

For all you folks in Massachusetts, convention season can get kind of sad. New York has NYCC, Philly has a con, but what about Beantown? Well, if you’re willing to drive to Pioneer Valley in Western Mass., are you in for a treat!

While the creators call this more a gathering than a convention, webcomics creators such as Scott Kurtz, Steven Cloud, R. Stevens, and a whole lot more are going to be in attendance for the March 20-22 New England Webcomics Weekend. And it’s free! You can read more about it here.

By David Gallaher

Friends help you move, but real friends help you move your comics. I don’t know about you, but I’ve moved around a lot. I have friends who move around a lot too. And, I’ll be honest; nothing is more cumbersome than moving some 25 long boxes of comics up six flights of stairs. Really, it’s tremendous pain in the ass. And, if you’ve never had the pleasure, I really don’t recommend it.

(more…)

So I opened up my e-mail today and got an interesting e-mail — Drew, the New Guy, was following me on Twitter.

After Googling the Newsarama boards as well as all of my past jobs to try to figure out if there was some “new guy” at the office, I realized the joke was on me, as the team behind Zuda Comics’ We Make Clouds has come up with a low-intensive, yet fairly amusing form of web marketing: the Twitter feed.

By joining here, you can see the exploits of Drew, a recent college grad working at the fictional marketing company Vantacor, as he deals with the stresses of the working world.

Some amusing highlights thus far:

So Ted tells me this is some sort of “work diary” that I can use to track my progress. Nobody can see this, right? 7:51 PM Jan 6th from web

I’m beginning to suspect that this isn’t a work tool. And why does the number keep going down when I type? I need more room to track my prog 11:01 AM Jan 7th from web

So I’ve been thinking about doing a weekly webcomic column here, but it occurred to me that I’m not actually that up on the webcomic scene. That said, I’ve got a few thoughts on the whole concept, as well as a couple of favorites.

I wrote below that print is dying, and I’m sticking by that assertion. However, to clarify, I would like to note that newspapers will be the first to go, and that magazines and books will be sticking around far longer. It just isn’t pleasant to read long articles or books on a computer screen, and I’ve only met one person who owned a Kindle–and that guy also had three cell phones and two laptops just in his bag.

Comics, I think, will maintain a print following for quite a while. The art looks better on paper, and comics fans tend to be the type of people who like the tangible items to collect. We’re pack rats. We see nothing wrong with buying all the single issues of a book, the trades, and then the fancy reissues when those come out, too.

Still, the Web has a place in the comics community, and not just as a place for talking about comics.

Webcomics seem to come in a couple of varieties (bear in mind that, as I noted above, I’m not really up on the webcomics world, and I’d love your input). There’s the comic strip, which seems to be taking over for newspaper comic strips the way Web sites are taking over for newspapers. Most of you are probably familiar with them, and some of your favorite print comic creators do webcomic strips too–I happen to love Becky Cloonan’s Comic Attacks.

These are bite-size comics that don’t tie into a longer narrative, and can be consumed quickly, like an mp3 or a blog post. Many media critics, Warren Ellis among them, have noted that the Web is a place for short bits of information. Ellis called it “burst culture.” Webcomics like this fit perfectly into that picture. (more…)

While The Dark Knight was only released this summer, it racked nearly a billion dollars, putting it as the second-highest grossing film behind Titanic. And the main reason the film succeeded as well as it did?

Hype.

News from the production leaked slowly but surely over the course of development. “Anticipated” didn’t seem to cover it — crowds of makeup-wearing clowns were being photographed in dozens of major cities more than a year before the film’s release. The San Diego Comic Con was the site of one PR stunt regarding the Joker’s mayhem, and it proved to be so popular that servers across the country couldn’t handle the demand.

Indeed, I would argue that The Dark Knight’s success was due in part to stoking the anticipation of the fans to unbelievable heights, driving them out in droves to see the film again and again and again. Viral marketing and hidden clues worked because they piqued viewer’s interests and — most importantly — kept their minds on the product at hand.

So if a three-hour scavenger hunt spanning the 50 States gave you some teaser images… so be it. Because while the show Lost having pioneered much of this style of “alternate reality” gaming, nobody had ever thought to harness this with the sheer enthusiasm and speculation that only comics fans can muster.

And just six months later, I think Marvel is starting to follow suit.

Yes, there is speculation about a crossover between Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk in the upcoming Avengers film, that’s nothing new. (Although as the latter movies are released, I have no doubts that the hype will multiply exponentially.) No, I’m talking about Marvel is introducing this into their comics proper.

In the March solicitations for Secret Warriors #2, Marvel placed a strange note on the cover. Hm… curiouser and curiouser. If you click on www.agentofnothing.com and type in the password, you’re treated to preview art, free digital comics that sum up the backstory of Nick Fury’s latest commandos, as well as a message from the grizzled old spymaster himself.

And I’ll be honest — I think that if Marvel’s web team was creative about it, this could pull in all sorts of revenue, as well as to patch up tangled continuity for new readers. For example, if you’re trying to plug into Primatech Paper Company’s secret files — something that the show Heroes did just a little too late in the first season — you could easily start off at a Mom-and-Pop store web site, complete with product placement. You could have fake advertisements, or even pop-ups en route to whatever site you’ve clicked. And I’m sure the Mighty Marvel Marketing Masterminds could think of something even smarter.

But with comics prices rising all over the place, it seems as though any form of revenue would be conducive. And what is best about this method of marketing is it not only could maintain fan loyalty if monetization could level out prices, but could in fact increase readership by bringing us into the mystery, explaining the backstory, and adding fuel to the thing we fans do best: speculate.

Jesus and Mo is one of my favorite web comics. It features the everyday adventures of Jesus (as in, Christ), and Mohammed (as in, the Prophet). The comic makes the neat concession that both Jesus and Mohammed are real, and they have an apartment together.

You should know before you read Jesus and Mo that it’s definitely not the sort of comic that worries about whose toes it’s stepping on. There are very strong religious themes, obviously, and my favorite part about the comic is the constant interplay between the two main characters and a Barmaid who we never see, but who is an atheist. Some of the philosophical discussions Jesus and Mo have with her are highly entertaining; despite seeing evidence before her eyes that both of the main characters really do exist, she persists in not believing in any sort of higher power.

Readers going to the site expecting the artistic polish of web comics such as Penny Arcade are sure to be disappointed; however, it’s Jesus and Mo’s humor that really shines, much like XKCD (if slightly less full of stick figures). The comic occasionally gets a little over the top, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless.

iPhones — the Final Frontier.

It’s been an interesting few years for comics, with the digitial revolution being mined by Marvel (with its exclusive online content, as well as the DVD archives of many of its comics) and DC (with its Zuda web comic contest). Even web sites with previews like Newsarama have done their part in changing the field of comics through the World Wide Web with four to eight-page previews (which, when you consider most issues are 22 pages, that’s a lot).

But what about the iPhone?

Smartphones are becoming far more than just cellular devices — they’re making the move to becoming mobile computers. So how will comics adapt?

Slowly but surely, comics are hitting the iPhone. It was announced today by Appstore that publisher IDW is issuing reprints for the iPhone of Peter David’s Star Trek series. The first of the five issues will be a rerelease of issue #13, the story known as “Return of the Worthy.” Trekmovie reports that after this run is completed, IDW will move on with other properties such as “Best of the Borg” and “Best of Deep Space 9.”

But the real kicker?

They only cost 99 cents each.

IDW is far from the only comic taking this route. Jeff Smith, long known as a guy ahead of the curve, has already released the first issue of Bone on the iPhone in October — also for 99 cents. And perhaps its no surprise that that app made Apple’s Pick of the Week.

With prices rising from many of the big companies, one question seems to be obvious: will this be a new method of distribution for comics retailers? If they can successfully work out the iPhone’s bugs — and those of you who have worked on just about any high-memory application can relate to the freezing and weird shutdowns that occassionally occur — maybe. With Apple’s stringent policies for the App Store, it’s the first technology that both promotes commerce and deters piracy… at least for now.

While I know I am particularly attached to the paper-and-staple format, if the economy keeps declining and the culture continues to move on-the-go, maybe your ubiquitous iPhone will start to become your ubiquitous comic book reader.