I know that none of the really popular webcomics is listed at Comic Rank, but it feels good to be the number 1 among 272 comics nonetheless :-).

Update: Comic Rank seems to have some problem with its system currently, so the visitor numbers of many comics are too low.

I guess the Calvin and Hobbes anthologies sell less units like they used to. Because of this, Andrews McMeel Publishing (aka Universal Press Syndicate) has now resorted to screwing aspiring cartoonists as an additional source of revenue. They and their partner Amazon (Shame on them, too!) have recently announced a new contest called Comic Strip Superstar. The winner gets a $5000 advance for a future book deal. This sounds good at first, but there are more catches in the contract than in your average baseball season. In the end, the “winner” (or rather loser) would end in a lousily paid part time job for Universal while signing away a large portion of his precious rights.

If you’re interested in more details you should read the following article and the comments on Webcomics.com: Comic Strip Superstar contest announced. There is also a large discussion about the subject at The Daily Cartoonist with Tony Piro (the creator of the webcomic Calamities of Nature) making several well-informed remarks.

I think it’s funny that Powree already makes significantly more money of Sandra and Woo for significantly less work. At the very least she does not have to write all those strips on top of drawing them.

I believe most readers think that I’m coming up with all main parts of a new strip at once. That is that an idea pops up in my head and all I have to do after that is to think about some details in the background and to polish the dialog. And if I were a reader of Sandra and Woo instead of its writer, I would think the same.

But this notion is completely wrong! How not to Deal with the Devil was probably the only strip that didn’t require any kind of additional work after I had the basic idea. If you’re taking for example today’s strip High risk of infection, I was struggling for quite some time until I had an idea what Richard could actually say in the last panel. I thought that it would be funny if Sandra would change her clothes in record time after Richard has answered Cloud’s call, but I had no idea what Richard could say to Cloud until “Cooties!” popped up in my head.

Unrelated to this, but worth mentioning nonetheless, is the fact that I usually have no idea if the reaction to a new strip will be particularly positive or rather not. I was surprised several times about the positive feedback that some strips got which got nearly cancelled during the planning stage.

It’s time for another news entry about websites which are worth a visit:

• Flight is the title of a series of comic books which contain short stories of many different artists. While the artwork of most stories is at least decent or even great, a lot of the artists seem to have no idea of proper storytelling. You can read extensive previews of most stories on the Flight website by clicking at the book covers on the right sidebar. If you’re into marvelously drawn action scenes involving anthropomorphic foxes, you should have a look at Reagan Lodge’s story “The Dragon”. However, my personal favorite by far is Svetlana Chmakova’s “On the Importance of Space Travel”, a light-hearted story about a whacky girl called Jeannie during a rough time of her life. But it’s not only a great story, the manga inspired artwork is amazing, too. Sadly, the rest of the story is not available online.
• Things they don’t tell you (But should) is a series of cartoons about things that parents don’t tell their children, but should. It’s not funny at all, but the artwork illustrates perfectly the author’s cynical look at life. This gem seems to be the favorite of most people.
• Our link page already contains a link to Calvin and Hobbes: Magic on Paper, but I believe this site is worth another mention. It contains more background information about Bill Watterson’s legendary comic strip Calvin and Hobbes than you probably ever wanted to know; including rare artwork, old newspaper articles and interviews with Bill Watterson.

I have worked a bit on the design of the website, most notably the rounded edges are gone since they did not work together all too well with the sharp edges of the strips.

Update: I’m sorry, but I had to move the skyscraper ad on the right sidebar to the top to meet the requirements of my ad network Burst Media.