Hourly Comic Day 2019

Bringing you only the hottest of hot takes, today we’re talking about “Hourly Comic Day”, the yearly event which happens on… Feb 1?! Aw, man.

Missed the boat again! (Photo credit, Kai Schreiber, used under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Hourly Comic Day is a tradition that first began in 2005, when John Campbell (of Pictures for Sad Children fame—or, perhaps, notoriety). This first outing for the event occurred when Campbell posted a journal page with a series of doodles he had taken every hour throughout the course of the day. Over the following few years, more webcomic artists picked up on the trend, until it finally became An Event To Look Forward To on Feb 1st every year, from 2008 onwards.

1 Feb 2019 was no exception, and many webcomic artists jumped on the wagon to journal their days in comic form: here are a few to whet your appetite if you missed seeing the event unfold this year (like, apparently, some webcomic columnists out there…)

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Where do you read your Webcomics?

Webtoon. Tapas. Comic Rocket. Comic Chameleon. Twitter. Facebook. Or for we old-timers on the Webcomics scene, the good ol’ .com. There’s so many ways and places to read webcomics these days, it gets hard to keep up.

But for the last couple of months, I’ve been noticing something new. Something cropping up in the place I least expected it…

Something that’s… Explosm-ing my mind!

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Save Me, Time-Travelling K-pop Boy Band, You’re My Only Hope!

If you were on Line Webtoon anytime last week, then it’s a pretty sure bet you were treated to the news that:

“Save Me” BU (BTS Universe) has launched on Webtoon!

Webtoon’s synopsis of the comic runs as follows:

Seven boys. Best friends. Their fates intertwined through the good times together, but also the tough times, as they have gone their separate ways and suffered greatly as a result. When all is almost lost for these boys, one is given a special chance to go back in time and help his friends fix the mistakes that led them down this path. He’ll do anything to save them, but can he? Or is he too late?

So far, so good. But who are these seven boys, you might wonder—and what… on earth… is the “BTS Universe”? It’s okay! You wouldn’t be the only one, especially if you’re not living in South Korea or the United States right now, where BTS Fever is hitting epidemic proportions.

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An App(arition) for Modern Horror

Happy… *checks calendar* What? November?! When did this happen?

Oh, right – I’ve been lost in the all-consuming vortex which is Tales of the Unusual by Seongdae Oh.

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What’s in a (spooky) name?

We’re back!

And just in time, too – with October winding down, we’re getting closer and closer to that time of year where Webcomics and their creators take on the dark powers of the night to theme all webcomic things Halloween.

In fact, if you’re on Twitter, you might already have noticed one of the October trends that have remained part of the webcomics landscape since the practice began back in 2013: Halloween-themed name changes.

It didn’t take long for the trend, which started across various writer and celebrity accounts in the first week of October 2013 then gained popularity following the #SpookyCelebs game on that year’s All Hallow’s Eve, to spread into the Webcomics community. Creators such as Jeph Jacques and David Malki jumped in early (and are still in the game) and were joined by a growing host of others that have continued to make Webcomic Twitter a spooky place each October.

Whilst the practice still spreads across a number of other Twitter communities – such as the aforementioned writers and celebrities – Webcomics have the distinct advantage of their art to help differentiate their changes from others’. Many creators have taken to updating not only their names for October but also their profile pictures and colour themes to give off just the right spoooooky vibes!

Below, we’ve compiled thirteen (ooooh!) accounts which are still playing along five years later for you to check out and follow – Have you or your favourite creators spookified your Twitter names this year? Continue reading

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These Webcomics have CHANGED! Five great comics already using Jason Brubaker’s approach

It is the end of the world (as we know it) for webcomics.

Over the past few years, the Digital Strips podcast has highlighted time and again how the way we interact with, discover, and read webcomics has changed. And now, it seems others are listening as well! Jason Brubaker’s (reMIND, Sithrahrecent YouTube manifesto on the changes and challenges to webcomics has been making the rounds, so we’ve gathered here five of the best webcomics (and their creators) that have already embraced the five elements of change Brubaker highlights in his video. Continue reading

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How Mary Worth Beat Superman

Anyone on the street will tell you that “comics” mean “superhero comics.” With the rise of Batman, Captain America and the Avengers from the back of the dingily-lit comic store, to the summer blockbuster every year (forever) that person on the street might even be able to tell you everything about their favourite Hero, without ever having seen a comic book.

By Yale Stewart – JL8 #2

Online, it’s a different matter. Sure, superhero webcomics exist, but how many of them do you see in a given ‘Top 10″ or ‘best of‘ list? How many of them do you read?

Not many – because Superhero comics lack something special, something integral to digital success: something comics like Mary Worth figured out a long time ago. Continue reading

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[Edit: OMG! This is my first top comment! Ty, Ty (UwU)] The Psychology Behind a Webtoons Phenomenon

If you’ve been following the podcast’s recommendations over the past few years, then odds are you’ve ended up somewhere on Line Webtoon once or twice.

Webtoons offer a great reading experience for webcomics: posting multiple pages for each chapter means you can blitz through really meaty chunks of a comic each update, and the way the posts flow into one another (particularly on mobile devices) leads to a real sense of ‘just-one-more’ishness equalled only by a packet of crisps or free booze at a work Christmas party.

Many regrets were had. Photo credit: istolethetv

But as you’re scrolling to the bottom, waiting for that little arrow to bump and tick you over into the next strip, you go past the comments. And inevitably, you see some variant of the following:

Witty comment pertaining to the latest update. (Edit: OMG! This is my first top comment you guys! Thank you, thank you, please remember that [cartoonist] is the real hero here, please like and support their work. Who thought this little thing I dashed off with barely any thought would be so popular haha I love you alllllllllllllll)”

The psychology behind commenting on the internet has been subject to a number of investigations, articles and academic papers over the years – but it seemed to me that this phenomenon was a little different to the standard trolling or ‘First!’ comments that plague other creative platforms like YouTube. So why do people feel the need to edit their comments once the original achieves some popularity? Continue reading

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The End of Something Wonderful

Clicking through the world of webcomics any time since 2006 there has been one small bit of text, so omnipresent that you might not even have noticed it, that has been with you as surely as the pixels on the screen translating colour and shape into humour and drama:

These nine words (plus a price tag) have been the staple of every self-respecting cartoonist or comic artist who’ve placed their work on the web (and even some of the not-so-self-respecting ones). However, an announcement by Project Wonderful creator Ryan North on June 11 2018 that the service was shutting down for good has brought this experiment in independent advertising and democratisation of ad revenue to a close.

So if you only know of the service as someone seeing the ads, what even was Project Wonderful – and what made it so different to the other advertising options out there? Today, we’re looking back on the service, what it promised, and what it means for webcomic creators to see the service go extinct.

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