Pixel Pages: Michael Poe needs help, webcomics heading to TV

Pixel Pages covers webcomics news. The Monday holiday helped me catch up. Still not exactly sure on what kind of frequency I’ll be able to manage, ideally weekly or more, maybe bi-weekly, but we’ll keep this thing going as often as possible, and running out-of-cycle if a particularly big story calls for it. As ever, feedback is welcome (email, Facebook, Twitter).

Top Stories

An excerpt from Errant Story by Michael Poe

# Michael Poe of Errant Story and Does Not Play Well with Others was admitted to the hospital for acute renal failure earlier this month. He’s home now, but the medical costs will surely continue. If you’d like to help them out, donations could actually do more harm then good due to financial assistance terms, so instead please consider buying original art pages from his Etsy store and/or online store. Errant Story concluded on March 19, 2012, but the entire story has been re-running on the site with new author commentary from Poe. A sequel series of short stories called Errant Tales will follow. Poe was one of the early innovators of webcomics, his cult hit Exploitation Now was one of the first to have a print release.

Strip Search

# Penny Arcade’s Strip Search, an American Idol-style reality show but with webcomic creators, announced their contestants, selected from over 1,000 applicants:

Abby Howard, age 20, from Montreal, Quebec
Alex Hobbs, age 22, from Tempe, Arizona
Amy Falcone, age 24, from Noank, Connecticut
Erika Moen, age 29, from Portland, Oregon
Katie Rice, age 31, from Burbank, California
Lexxy Douglass, 27, from Carmel, Indiana
MacKenzie Schubert, age 26, from Portland, Oregon
Maki Naro, age 31, from Brooklyn, New York
Monica Ray, age 22, Northbrook, Illinois
Nick Trujillo, age 30, from Walnut Creek, California
Tavis Maiden, age 31, from Mesa, Arizona
Ty Halley, age 25, from Portsmouth, Ohio

Each artist has a short video of them introducing themselves, apparently recorded soon after they arrived for the show’s recording. I’m wondering how accurate of a snapshot this group is of the webcomics artists demographics. Portland’s cartooning vitality is certainly represented by being the only city with two contestants. With no one over 31 years old, is webcomics really a twenty-something field? A 50/50 gender split is pretty common for these types of shows, which could also explain the age thing as well (although they claim in this interview with Michael Cavna that they weren’t looking at that kind of stuff and were surprised when they ended up with six males and six females). Either way, should be interesting, and hopefully not too reality TV-ish. The winner will get $15,000 and a year of job security being “integrated into the Penny Arcade machine”. Winners will not be voted on by viewers, but instead by the judges and Penny Arcade’s Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Episodes will air online Tuesdays and Fridays starting later this month.

# The creators of Cyanide & Happiness launched a Kickstarter campaign on Thursday, February 14th, to finance an animated series of the webcomic. Kris Wilson, Rob DenBleyker, Matt Melvin and Dave McElfatrick set an ambitious goal of $250,000 for The Cyanide & Happiness Show but it doesn’t look like they need to worry because within 24 hours they received over 3,000 pledges. As of this writing, they’re well over halfway to their goal. The creators had several opportunities to sign with Hollywood networks, but each deal required they release control and ownership over the finished product. They announced last month that they would instead go it alone using Kickstarter so they could provide an online show that could reach a global audience.

# Spotlight on… Our Adventure Continues by Steevan Orr and Harold C. Jennett III can be about anything. Whether it’s a superhero story, a western adventure, or a farcical strip about making comics, Our Adventure Continues is about whatever the creators feel like creating. First up is an 8-page story called “Priorities” starring Captain Might. It’s the tale of a super hero just trying to make everything in his life work and just what is really important. Following that is “Variety Smack,” a strip about a couple of fellas going through the trials and tribulations of making a webcomic. The two struggle to create something new and fresh but usually wind up just getting in each other’s way. Our Adventure Continues is also running a contest to appear in a strip this July, so check it out and see if you can win!

In Other News

# Nokia has been using webcomics to promote their phones. The anonymously-created #Switch Comics (they were made by people at the marketing firm Wunderman and an unnamed illustrator at the graphic design agency Jelly London) recently finished a weekly run on Nokia UK’s social media sites. Nokia UK’s Digital Marketing Manager Selena Harrington spoke with the blog NokNok about how successful they were for the company.

# Digital comics and webcomics are on the rise in India based on a look at their presence at Comic-Con India, according to this overview from Times of India. The Beast Legion by Jazyl Homavazir and Sufi Comics are featured.

# The Night Belongs to Us by L.R. Hale has launched Chapter II with a new schedule of every Mondays and Fridays. It used to be Wednesdays, so now we get twice a week of this great looking comic.

# Solstoria by Angelica Maria also has a new schedule, now updating Mondays and Wednesdays. Great coloring on this fantasy series.

# Michael David Johnson has released Negative Space: Year Two, which puts into print all 365 comics from his daily autobio comic Negative Space in one hardcover book.

# Zoe Coughlin (The Last Cowboy) contributed the short story “Ghosts on the Water” in the print anthology Seqapunch Quarterly. Here’s a preview, which looks as beautiful as The Last Cowboy.

# Missed it: HillSide Campus by Vince Matinde and Movin Were is considered Kenya’s first digital comic. It launched last month on Capital Campus, a Kenyan site about college life. (via Robot 6)

Events

# Little Fish Comic Book Studio presents How’d You Do That?: A Step by Step Demonstration of Different Digital Comic Creation Processes on Monday, March 18 at 6:00 PM PST. As part of their monthly Google+ Hangout, this live video conference hosted by Patrick Yurick (American BOOOM!) will present five different digital comic creators walking through their comic creating process. Announced guest panelists include the following experienced artists: