Several new webcomics announcements that we need to catch up on:

Jeremy Love’s BAYOU is the first Zuda instant winner, it’s been announced.. The strip has already been awarded a 1-year contract, and was a solicited submission.

Bayou
Writer/Artist: Jeremy Love

Summary: South of the Mason-Dixon lurks a strange world of gods and monsters born of years of slavery, civil war, innocent blood, hate and strife. The daughter of a poor black sharecropper, Lee Wagstaff, joins a blues-singing swamp monster name Bayou on a southern odyssey through a mythic combination of depression era Mississippi, African mythology and American folklore in order to rescue her childhood friend and save her father’s life.

Daniel Kibblesmith & K. Thor Jensen join The Chemistry Set with ‘Threads of Red Jack’:

In a city called Flint, almost as ugly as the real one, something has begun to stir in the pockets of wet shadow. Under hood and mask and clad to the toetips in red, a man has emerged in the alleyways with no memories of his person, his place, or his purpose. A prophecy-mangling amputee has taken to holding court in the street. Several stories above it all, a selfless psychiatric visionary is about to unleash a catastrophic new weapon in the battle with mental illness. Threads of Red Jack is a search for identity, a fable about anger that has outlived its usefulness, and a throwdown between the madmen in power and the madmen with none.

Tony Lee and Dan Boultwood have also joined the Chemistry Set with their mini-series THE GLOOM.

The Gloom is the tale of Carson Kane, a 1940’s industrialist who, by night, takes to the street as an Angel of Vengeance, his two hellfire pistols in his hands. But, although it pulls from the best of 40’s pulp iconology, it’s been dubbed ‘A Mel Brooks movie of a comic’ for its parody and humor. From Nazis to talking monkeys in fez’s, to atomic terrorists to Britain’s first super team, The Gloom has it all. Silver Bullet Comic Books reviewer Reggie Rigby even said of it “buy this book – sell a kidney if you have to.”

Finally, Molly Crabapple and her Dr. Sketchy’s co-author John Leavitt are doing a webcomic on Act-i-vate. Backstage is a comedy/murder mystery set in the burlesque halls of old New York.