Paul Slade writes to tell us that his creepy collaboration with Hans Rickheit has now been posted in creepy full color. If you ever picked up a rock to see what was underneath you will appreciate this webcomic.

Read it all here.

Given that she was the Person of the Year for 2011, and enjoyed a bestseller with her Hark! A Vagrant collection, it’s no surprise that Kate Beaton has been getting lots of offers lately, ranging from children’s books to television work.

Thus it will also come as no surprise that she’s going to be spending less time on her webcomics to work on some of these opportunities:

This is a funny job. Webcomics are often cited as the future of comics and the internet and I don’t know what else, but the fact that no one has retired from them yet means that I, at least, rest a little uneasy in these shoes sometimes if only for the lack of having a dependable compass by which to steer the ship. I just want to make the best decisions I can, so that I will be around longer, making drawings and comics and writing and other things that I hope people will enjoy. I’m not sure what will work out with these opportunities that have come my way, and I guess I can’t really say much about them, but I think I’d be a fool if I didn’t give them a try. So I am going to! Whatever I can let you know, I will.

You would be a fool, indeed, Kate Beaton. While Rich Burlew’s $350,000 and counting Kickstarter campaign for Order of the Stick suggests that the crowdfunding option for the post popular webcomickers is a viable one, the retirement element makes a very good point. Stuff that Keogh account (or whatever they call it in Canada) while you can!

In the meantime, Beaton’s tumblr will be posting sketches, hilarious research materials, and more. Bookmark!

Another birthday being celebrated today is the web collective ACT-I-VATE which launched six years ago. Meaning a baby born that day would now be in school. Yikes.

Founder Dean Haspiel celebrates here. It’s been six years of some outstanding comics and memorable parties; THE ACT-I-VATE PRIMER is a really gorgeous book well worth tracking down if you don’t have a copy.

Congrats and here’s to many more.

In honor of his birthday yesterday R. Stevens released a DRM-free ebook of his very first Diesel Sweeties collection.

It’s my birthday today, so I’m releasing a free ebook version of my first book: Diesel Sweeties: Pocket Sweeties Volume 1. You can buy a hard copy of this or my other books right here in my store.

I originally published this book in 2003 and it features the first hundred+ comics with introductions to the main cast and a wonderful foreword from John Allison. Every strip in the book has been recolored and relettered and you can read along and compare them to the originals on my site if you start reading here.

As he notes, the hard copy is still available. A strong example of the webcartoonist’s confidence in the free sampling model. Indeed, after downloading the book, you’ll probably be hooked.

The video game company behind the popular PROTOTYPE series — NOT the comics company. Dark Horse will create a three-part story bridging the gap between the original Prototype and PROTOTYPE 2 which comes out this year. The series will be released digitally, starting February 15th.

Creators include Paco Díaz, Chris Staggs, and Victor Drujiniu.

Radical Entertainment, the creators behind one of 2012’s most anticipated open-world/action games – PROTOTYPE 2 – and Dark Horse Comics, the leading publisher of gaming comics and graphic novels, have joined forces to create an all-new comic series set in the PROTOTYPE universe.  With the game due out April 24, 2012 from Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI), fans looking for a jumpstart at getting a deeper look into the world of PROTOTYPE 2 should keep an eye out for this exciting collaboration launching February 15, 2012.
 
The all-new digital comic series will be broken into three original stories that bridge the gap between the original blockbuster game and the highly anticipated sequel, PROTOTYPE 2.  The first entry, “The Anchor,” illustrated by Paco Díaz, continues the story of Alex Mercer, the protagonist from the first game, while the second story, “The Survivors,” illustrated by Chris Staggs, follows a small group of residents of New York trying to escape the city after it has been transformed into NYZ with the outbreak of the Blacklight virus.  The third and final story, illustrated by Victor Drujiniu, is “The Labyrinth” and provides fans a deeper look into the backstory of PROTOTYPE 2’s new protagonist, Sgt. James Heller.  Each comic in the series will be available at Digital.Darkhorse.com every other week beginning February 15, 2012.
 
“We’re always looking for meaningful ways to expand the PROTOTYPE universe, and Dark Horse Comics is an industry-leading creative powerhouse delivering best-in-class graphic storytelling that integrates deeply to the core of our IP,” said Ken Rosman, Studio Head, Radical Entertainment.  “With this partnership, our fans will finally be given answers to some dramatic loose ends from the first PROTOTYPE game, as well as the truth behind Alex Mercer’s descent and evolution into a twisted shadow of his former self for PROTOTYPE 2.”
 
“Sgt. James Heller’s heart wrenching backstory meshed with the sheer amount of over-the-top shape-shifting action in PROTOTYPE 2 lend themselves perfectly to a comic book series,” said Dave Marshall, Editor, Dark Horse Comics.  “We worked extremely close with Radical Entertainment’s story team for PROTOTYPE 2, and can’t wait to visually walk fans through the many dark secrets strewn throughout the tattered world of New York Zero!”
 
The sequel to Radical Entertainment’s best-selling open-world action game of 2009, PROTOTYPE 2 takes the unsurpassed carnage of the original PROTOTYPE and continues the experience of becoming the ultimate shape-shifting weapon.  As the game’s all-new infected protagonist, Sgt. James Heller, players will cut a bloody swathe through the wastelands of post-viral New York Zero with unparalleled locomotion, building up a vast genetic arsenal of deadly, biological weapons and abilities as they hunt, kill and consume their way toward the ultimate goal – to kill…Alex…Mercer!
 
To find out more about PROTOTYPE 2, follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/radical_ent or check out www.prototypegame.com for the latest trailers, screenshots, special promotions and more!  And for the truly dedicated, go to www.facebook.com/prototype and join the PROTOTYPE Army – a community of over 360,000 (and growing) fans that receive constant updates from the team at Radical, and early sneak peeks at new information and assets.
 
PROTOTYPE 2 is currently in development for Xbox® 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC.  The game is currently rated “RP” (Rating Pending) by the ESRB, with an expected “M” (Mature – Content that may be suitable for persons 17 and older) rating.

The acclaimed Portland-based Study Group 12 anthology is starting up a web comic portal for several of their contributors, with regular series & one-shots included, in addition to regular blog posts like this one on Craig Thompson’s Habibi process.)

From their blog:

We’ll be uploading new comics every weekday at noon EST, with the occasional one-shot story mixed in by our wrecking crew:

The site already has several short stories available for your reading pleasure, including Tom Neely’s thimble theatrical “Doppleganger” and Malachi Ward’s mindbending “Utu,” as well as SG Founding Father Zack Soto’s mystery “Day 34” and art-school confessional “Lost Art.”

Levon Jihanian’s Danger Country is up in color that transforms the pages from the sparse black & white printed versions. Check it out!

This interview with Chris Onstad about his hiatus from ACHEWOOD could almost have come under our previous belt-tightening post.

I’d been going at pretty much full team for about nine years, and that all the comics, the blog writing… There are more blogs than comics, and I really like to do those. Prose is really what I personally enjoy. There’s a f*ckload of content out there, because I was always under the gun. Every second where I’m not writing, I’m not making enough money to live. It’s a weird job and I have no benefits, so I’ve got to make make make. And that was also peppered with the public demand the internet, which 24/7, 365 days a year. So if you take six hours off, someone’s going to be like, “What the f*ck’s the matter with this guy?” So that constant pressure, it accrued very slowly to the point where I was like, A) I think I’ve written pretty everything I know about over the course of 3,000 installments of comics or stories or other varieties of things I did. Merchandise, speeches, personalizations, paintings, freelance gigs. I was like, I don’t want to repeat anything, and I think I’m burned out. I’d be wondering if I was burned out for a very long time. When it got to the point where every night for a month I’d sit at the computer and say, “I want to be anywhere but here,” I knew it was time to take a break.

We’d be lying if we didn’t admit we’re sitting here nodding our head. There’s a lot of fantastic observation about comics and ACHEWOOD in the interview.

Bruce Handy and Dan Goldman give us the lowdown on the ongoing War on Christmas via a webcomic at Vanity Fair.

A war on Christmas? A harrowing and real thing, if you ask the values police. So we sent leathery war correspondent Bruce Handy and grizzled war cartoonist Dan Goldman to record the frontline combat for posterity, in the manner of their Civil War–era Harper’s forebears. Where we lay our scene: a suburban mall, its Santa’s village defended from invaders by his little helpers. (What follows may contain graphic elf violence.)

The Romanian webcomic Fredo and Pid’jin, has been a big success for its creators Eugen Erhan and Tudor Muscalu, this piece at Next Web tells us, if by success you mean lots of links on Reddit and Digg. But:

Despite its popularity, the pair have struggled to make money from Fredo and Pid’jin. Now Erhan has quit his dayjob to make a go of running the comic full time.

What emerges is the story of two guy with a dream and a webcomic about two evil pigeons out to conquer the world. Things looked low, but then a guy who works on the Simpsons came and told them they were on the right track, energizing them to carry on. But…questions remain:

TNW: How is the comic monetized at the moment?

TM: For the first years we believed we should concentrate on growing, and didn’t really try to make any money. We recently started selling merchandise through Neatorama and local Romanian sites. And it took us 6 years, but now we have banner ads on our site.

Although this sounds like slow going, the Romanian comics industry is in its formative stages, although the Cultural Embassy is behind it, and Romanian cartoonists have made a few appearances here at MoCCA and NYCC. Asked for advice in the interview, Muscalu suggests, “Don’t delay the monetization stage too much. One day opportunity will knock at your door faster than you can design ad banners.”

Evidently taking their own advice, Erhan and Muscalu have created a trailer for the strip, below. We wish them luck on that crucial “quitting your day job” moment.

Piskor has a new strip up at Boing Boing that examines the similarities between these two American artforms.

Nick Gurewitch’s seminal webcomic has updated. They are infrequent and thus all the more precious.

In this as always charming outing for Tablet Magazine, Davis explains the ins and outs of engagement rings.

Among the lists of Twitter-base comedies, roast spin-offs and other hapless men in a hostile world of supermarkets and doorknob comedies,Comedy Central announced one deal based on a webcomic, namely CYANIDE AND HAPPINESS, the generally amusing stick-figure theater comic by Kris Wilson, Rob DenBleyker, Matt Melvin and Dave McElfatrick, all of whom will exec produce. The show is described as “a half-hour animated show featuring the twisted humor of a world populated by glorified stick figures.”

The CYANIDE crew has already been producing shorts and an iPhone app, so this is just another step in their world conquest.

Tee hee