Webcomics

Webcomics collective Act-i-vate is celebrating its sixth year with a bunch of new comics and returning old favorites, including new work by Daryl Cunningham and Igor Kordey. If you've forgotten how impressive Hyeondo Park is or how funny John Kerschbaum is, it might be good to take a look again.

Artist Tommie Kelly sent us a link to his webcomic Ouija: A Panelplay, which uses what he calls "PanelPlay" which is basically clicking for the next panel, along with some subtle, appropriate animation effects. The story is nothing great, but it is a nice demo. I know panel-click advance comics have been around for a while, so in the comments, throw up some links to other recent Future Comics of note.

Well, that went faster than I was expecting. At 2:50 PM PST, the Order of the Stick Reprint Drive is over the $1M mark.

It sounds a little strange when you say it out loud: "Will Order of the Stick hit $1 million on Kickstarter?" But it is NOT a strange thing to ponder.

It's a story of twists and turns as only a 9-7 season can be, but perhaps the most incredible thing about this online graphic novel chronicling the New York Giants' championship season is that it is being created by someone known as Chris in Philly. Preferring to remain anonymous—surely because his fellow Philadelphians would egg bomb his house if they knew about it—Chris is using Photoshopped archival materials to tell the exciting story of how Eli Manning led his team to a Super Bowl upset of the New England Patriots. It's a classic story of the underdog coming out on top.

As a tribute, of sorts, to the deceased musician everyone has been mourning this week, Top Shelf has posted I Think About Whitney by Liv Strömquist. It was originally published in 2010 and collected in the Top Shelf/Galago anthology FROM THE SHADOW OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS, vol 2.

While this doesn't look like it will quite get to the amazing funding levels of of the Order of the Stick Reprint Project (nearly $650K with 8 days left), there's another webcomic with an even more modest goal that's making some serious coin at the crowdfunding game, this week. R Stevens is about to hit 3000 strips in his Diesel Sweeties webcomic. All he wanted was $3K to buy him some time to compile the entire run of the strip into ebook format. Right now, he's got a bit over $22K pledged for the project.

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:

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.

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

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.