Slashdot Mirror

(Also this one)

(Also this one)

You'd probably like Sluggy Freelance, they're obviously heavily influenced by Bloom County and the later Outland. Musing on grassy knolls and what not - plus, it's a great strip overall.

"And I'm nuts!"

Maybe if they actually sold Ginger they could make money. There is a lot of evidence supporting that the IT-Segway is NOT Ginger.

In other news Sluggy Freelance just finished up a Segway spoof strip.

Maybe if they actually sold Ginger they could make money. There is a lot of evidence supporting that the IT-Segway is NOT Ginger.

In other news Sluggy Freelance just finished up a Segway spoof strip.

...but.... Smegways explode when they tip over.

Well, since he doesn't want the guvmint to enforce your private property rights, I can only assume that he wants you to enforce them yourself a la Bun-Bun.

"Nobody's saying they are exactly like us. In fact, on average they have larger breasts, greener skin, heavier mascera, and wear shorter miniskirts."

And that's just the male of the species!

Of course, he could be referring to Sluggy Freelance, too.

Why would the machines opt to make a smaller-framed, less physically imposing killing machine?

RIFF. What kind of scientist would make a robot look like that and instill her with puritan views?

TORG. An evil scientist. Try to keep up here.

RIFF. I wonder if she's fully biologically functional.

TORG. Either that or she's full of sharp jagged metal parts and...

RIFF. YEAAAAHH! Question withdrawn!

Well, the T-Shirt for the last one is out there (but probably OOP).

Of course, Sluggites have known for almost two years. Worship the comic!

(The future is scary... scare it back!)

This brings to mind a story about a hungry alien...

(you may want to back up a few days to establish the plot)

But I guess the Florida blue-hairs would take exception to "Mice-flavored catfood - now with real pieces of rat!"...

I just went to thefifthimperium.com, and there I see an excerpt from Sluggy Freelance. After reading When the Devil Dances, I had to find out who "Bun-Bun" was, and I spent a couple of weeks catching up on the online comic (folks, stick with it for the first 2 years, it's worth it for the backstory when you get to the good stuff.) So I see Bun-Bun on the Baen site, the comic gets a lot of press in John Ringo's book, and now I see some of it at David Weber's website. Is there some hidden cosmic connection that links them all?

Here's some online comics that might be worth checking out:

Sluggy - Students, aliens, ghosts, psychotic rabbits, evil kittens. One of the oldest and niftiest comics online.
User Friendly - Linux, geeks. You get the idea.
Megatokyo - An online manga following Piro and Largo whilst stranded in Tokyo.
Schlock Mercenary - Not too good art, but usually a very good and suitably sci-fi-ish plot.
Clan of the Cats - A modern-day witch cursed to change into a panther. Good artwork.
RPG World - Great art. A parody of almost any role playing game (the console variety) you'd care to play.
Ghost Cat - It's a cat! It's a ghost! It's ghost cat!
Elf Life - Elves, fairies, barbarians, time travel, romance, comedy, and very well drawn as well.
Exploitation Now! - An anime-ish comic with good art and an interesting, if sporadic, plot.
Real Life - It's real life. Except it's not. Reasonably funny.
Penny Arcade - The mother of all gaming comics. Very funny :)
Sephen - A relative newcomer, but wow! Great pencil-work!
8-bit Theater - The grandpappy of all sprite comics. I think. It's funny anyway. Go read :)
Demonology 101 - Fantastic art, fantastic plot! If only it came out more often! Ah well, the world isn't perfect.

Oh, and I can't really get away without mentioning my brother's sprite comic, Pixelated!. It really isn't bad. No, really! :)

BunBun could kick Lobo's ass: Worship the Comic

Chloroform

is a pair of emergency pants!

Is there a possiblity that we could get a "Winux?"

Sluggy Freelance

(And coincidence or not, Pete Abrams has been doing a Potter parody at Sluggy Freelance for the last couple of weeks, based weakly off the first book/movie).

Was I the only one who thought of Sluggy Freelance's Dr. Schlock and his futuristic "inflatable technology"?

Maybe there's something to that, after all...

Now either the search function on my browser is busted, or nobody got the aylee/sluggy freelance reference Michael put in there (the dandruff shampoo part). Bad slashdot!

(well, either that or it wasn't there to begin with and I'm just imagining it... but really, am I the only person who made this connection?)

http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=971018

Actually, better then Jurassic Park, Sluggy has some storylines about Percy, the cloned carnivorous intelligent wooley mammoth who is a bad influence on the series' lovable-but-slightly-dangerous-former-Giger-alien.

When I stumbled across Sluggy Freelance, I traded.

My personal favorite webcomic that everyone should read from the start. Go here and start all the way at the beginning. Its geeky and very funny with INCREDIBLE stories.

It filled the void left by "Calvin and Hobbes" for me

(Disclaimer, I've been clean for about a year or two now)

UF used to be part of my daily Webcomic reading habit, I remember spending close to an entire day reading the archives when I first read it. Then, about a year or two ago, it just stopped being funny. The storylines really just started getting into childish "Windows Sucks! Ha!". Honestly, I don't see how people can still read it.

I have the first book, because there are some good storylines from the first few years, but after that it really started to go downhill. Now I read Sluggy Freelance and I feel much cleaner.

For those who like Computer Comics I recomend Angst Technology and (whenever Jeff gets out of his "I want to be a /real/ artist and have a story arc" phase and begins to produce teh funny again) GPF Comics

OH, THE BEANMANITY!

Mao Tse-Tung: HALLO!

Desmund Tutu: pffft!

Mao Tse-Tung: why?

Desmund Tutu: french.

(check out the above for the greatest thing ever!)

I think this pretty much sums up the convo microsoft is having, and why the DMCA is way to restrictive. Why are we happy that people are doing the right thing? If an insurance company exposes a flaw

I know that they plan to do it with future releases in some of their more popular series, such as John Ringo's Posleen books (I hope they include some Sluggy Freelance on that one :) and Ringo & Weber's March to... books. But I'm uncertain they'd do it with Bujold's next.

For one thing, I doubt they even have them all electronically. Most of her works were published before the start of Webscription.

And Lois Bujold is one of the more hesitant writers of Baen's stables about the benefits of free electronic release. In a New York Times article a year or so ago, she was quoted as having no plans to release anything in the Free Library. Even now, when she at last decided to join the other authors who have released a number of novels, she has only released...a novella, The Mountains of Mourning

Somehow, I can't see her being very excited about putting all her books on a CD-ROM inside of just the one.

japanese girly comics. Like Love Hina. Which have plots VERY like Megatokyo.

Excuse me but the reason Love Hina was a success is because of the humor and not just the Shoujo part. At least Love Hina had some life and the storyline actually moved beyond the pace of "does... she... love... me? Why... am... I... so... shy? Why... do... people... think... I'm... a... pedophile?".

My point is that Fred Gallagher tells a story like William Shatner. Slow, horrid, boring... I love the way he draws, and the early megatokyos were extremely cool because they had a little bit of humor in them, but lately I only catch up with the comic twice a month or so, while others like sluggy freelance get more of my attention.

I'm so dogtired of hearing yet another fanboy exclaim that Megatokyo is the ultimate comic online. I... used... to... think... webcomics... were... supposed... to... be... a... little... more... content... rich... and not just about how well drawn art is.

I'm a nerd/geek, and I like all sorts of anime, from I'm so depressed and I wish I was dead evangelion to look at me titties Mahoromatic, but when I read slashdot and I see yet again how Megatokyo is raised as an icon in webcomics because it's manga, and because it's supposed to be the mother of all webcomics... Face it, this isn't nerdnews, this has no place here. Which occasional reader of slashdot is going to order the book, if they haven't franticly reread every single comic online?

I'm not dissing this mans work (except... for... the... pace... in... the... storyline...), nor his opinions, nor his dead art days (which I love too by the way), but I think that if slashdot links this because it's the mother of all webcomics (so to speak) we should start linking each and every webcomic ranging from Machall (which is btw, a lot more geek-oriented), to Tuesday. (which is completely ungeeky) And what about userfriendly? Or sluggy? Or Bad boys of computer science? Or... (the list goes on and on and on).

To summarise what has happened so far in Megatokyo:

• Piro and Largo go to E3
• Piro takes Largo to Japan
• Piro and Largo are stuck in Japan
• Piro and Largo shack up with Tsubasa
• They both stay there leeching Tsubasa
• The stay there leeching some more of Tsubasa
• Piro gives a railcard to Kimiko
• Piro loses his bookbag in a bookshop
• Yuki (a 15 yo girl) finds Piros bookbag
• Yuki returns Piros bookbag and turns him into a pedophile in the publics eye
• Tsubasa brings back ping, and leaves Japan away from the leeching Piro and Largo
• Piro goes on a guilt-trip
• Piro gets a job and meets Erika (who still hasn't kicked his you know whats)
• Piro does more guilt-tripping
• Largo goes even more insane when he meets a Zombie queen named Tohya
• Piro is guilt-tripping over spaghetti and makes Kimiko think he's a pedophile
• more undead driveling on Largos mental front lawn
• Yuki wants drawing lessons, but Piro doesn't want to be a pedophile
• Piro takes a long trip to a town called Guilt
• Largo turns out to be mentally unstable (a trait often found in comic characters)
• Piro turns out to be shy (well duh)
• Kimiko thinks Piro's a pedophile (how long does it take to explain that you're living with a bloody robot???)
• Dom and Ed arrive in Japan, get beat up by a droid named Ping
• rabid squirrels take over Japan in attempt to stop Piro from actually becoming Lord of all fanboys

Now, most people (even shoujo-mangaka) take about a month or three worth of comics to sum up these events. Considdering Mr Gallagher has a busy job, family life, etc I'd say about six or seven months. But Piro takes up 70% of these comics either feeling sorry from himself, talking to his conscience (who's no longer funny btw), or banging his head against a counter for being called a pedophile by everyone in the comic except for Largo.

In the meantime however, in sluggy freelance (not shoujo btw), everything turned upside down in only three months, and now the pieces are falling together. This comic is (compared to MT) a little more vintage, and never lost it's pace (except with the elves... no more elves... I beg of you), and suffers less Dead Artist days than Megatokyo. OK, so it doesn't have the artistic manga look, but it's a comic that's going somewhere (really insane)... Summarizing sluggy the way I did with MT would be madmans work.

Can we now please stop with posting every rant Mr Gallagher has made on his site to slashdot? I'll surf to megatokyo.com if I want to read those.

The blog format is just another potential tool for the literary process. It is thus important to consider the properties of this tool to decide how to use it.

What new capabilites does the blog bring to the table? What new stories does it allow you to tell? What new writer-reader dynamics does it allow? Fiction in the form of journal entries is not a new thing. Done well, it can create a sense of intimacy between the writer and the reader. Long running web comic strips such as Sluggy Freelenace show that you can get away with a long running plot in little daily chunks on the web.

At the same time, you have to consider the bad properties of such a tool. As with many serial novels, people may be unlikely to start in the middle, or backtrack years to catch up. Many people tend to find it tiresome or slightly painful to read novel length stretches of text off of a computer screen.

I'd say, if you have a story to tell that fits the form, go ahead. I don't tend to see it as such a breakthrough for literature, just another slight variation in the art of storytelling.

The Web has the potential to make a meaningful buzz but search engines don't friggin cut it. The web will have to be ORGANIZED, INDEXED and cross-referenced the same way that libraries have been since the Great Library of Alexandria. The days of "Cowboy Content Creation" are over. Creatrion of web content will have to be via XML with precise industry standard DTDs. Otherwise you just get lost in the noise.

That all depends on what you're trying to generate buzz for. If you're one of those same Big Media corporations trying harness the Internet to generate artificial buzz, then you're right.

However, if you're an independent creator who just throws his stuff out there for everyone to enjoy, with no obsessions about profit margins or ROI, then you're wrong. The buzz will happen all on it's own.

A perfect example is Sluggy Freelance. It does almost no appreciable advertising -- and certainly less than MegaTokyo or Penny Arcade -- yet it is arguably one of the most popular and longest running comics on the Web.

How did it happen? Strictly word of mouth.

I think the corporate-driven hyperconsumerism of the last few decades has perverted our fundamental notions of just how the free market is supposed to work. The Internet is simply restoring the universality and equality that we used to enjoy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, when anyone could buy an old printing press and call themselves a newspaper.

However, the trade-off is that we're now facing some devastating economic contraction. The dot.com bust, the slump in the media and advertising industries, the current financial scandals... they're all just symptoms of a larger problem: as the artificiality of hyperconsumerism is increasingly exposed and rejected, many modern corporations are discovering that they have no real reason to exist. They don't fulfill any real human needs. Their only products are novelty and convenience. Without a captive and ignorant audience, they're doomed.

Aiiiieeee!
Great, early Monday and you've soured me on the entire week.

that's it, I'm going back to bed

...at Sluggy Freelance

They should be very, very careful. You never know what might happen with mail-order gene sequences, or genetic material from eBay or such places.

Tad William's Shadowland was serialized but wasn't pay-per-chapter. There was a one time fee associated with it (I can't remember how much I payed but it wasn't a great amount, definately less than a hardcover, probably more than a paperback). The first couple of chapters were and are free.

I had never heard of Tad William's till a friend turned me on to his Otherland series, which I devoured. I still haven't read his other books but I did look up his website to find out when the next book in the series would occur.

That's where I found out about his Shadowmarch experiment. He was making an honest effort at it, unlike Steven King, so I decided to sign up.

I think this fails for one reason: The average internet user isn't willing to pay a meaningful amount for content. If you've got old material which isn't selling well anyway you can probably make a bit of money. If you've got new material you'll probably never make enough to justify the time and effort writing it, assuming you're trying to make a living rather than supplement a living.

Marketing is probably part of his problem, the only time I saw ads was when my ad-free subscription to Sluggy Freelance cookie would expire. I think I've probably seen the ad pop up a couple times on sinfest as well.

Torg and Riff. Is Riff not his brother's keeper? Is he blinded by science? Will he bear the mark of Cain? And what of Torg's innocence? The net is alive with myth and legends in the making while the media slaves feed the machine. Rage, Rage against the machine, brothers and sisters... and... oh... nurse is here with my meds now.

One of Hercules' tasks was to kill the 7-headed Hydra. For each head that was cut off, two more would grow in its place.

Hercules' solution was to use a torch to cauterize the wound. I don't see the RIAA finding anything like that...

An alternate solution that was proposed (I think in the comic strip Sluggy Freelance... I'm not sure) was to keep cutting the heads off until you were left with hundreds or even thousands of heads attached to one body, which then would be unable to move for having so many heads... this may be what the RIAA is going for: splinter the p2p community so many times, and into so many different factions, that nobody can share anything, because everybody is using a different program to share their stuff.

the first time i saw winux used was in this great comic. pretty funny to say the least... i wonder if they still sell those shirts...

Personally, I only pay attention to the SMC. Then again, I can always choose not to agree with the sentiments expreseed therein.

"THIS looks like a job for emergency pants!" - Torg

eww ... at least he's not pimping cattle ...

I actually think that bun-bun would make a kick-ass mascot for any OS.

Reminds me of Sluggy Freelance.

Someday I'll have better things to do with my time than read comics and watch simpsons all day, and make random connections.

Aw, who am I kidding....

So just writing down a song is illegal, yes....

Is the fact that /. is run by OSDN and hosted at OSDN. OSDN is a wholly owned subsidiary of VA Software Corporation. VA Software used to sell hardware, but couldn't make any money on it so now they are selling SourceForge.

So it's not exactly like /. is still this free site that a bunch of people thought would be cool and they are still doing this as just a hobby (I could be wrong though). They are, by association, a business run site. If VA Software can't afford to run /. that's a business problem. They are trying to recoup some of their investment. I'd much rather they move to this kind of "either or" situation than move the articles into "premium content" like Salon did (heck even my local paper the Albuquerque Journal has started charging for their online content, yeah right I'm gonna pay for that when I can just go drop $.50 on the counter at Starbucks and get it when I want it.)

That being said, I don't think I'll pay for an ad-free /. since the majority of their content is provided by us. It's kind of like paying for a pencil and some blank newsprint and having to write your own newspaper.

BTW I'm not against donation type systems, I paid for "Ad-free Sluggy" at Sluggy Freelance because I enjoy the comic.

I am not Kiki. I am, however, a Mac OS X fan.

Here are some of the things I like about Mac OS X:

• I can run my Mac OS 9 applications (albeit a tad slower than native Mac OS 9)
• I can run GNU tools on the command line
• I can use SSH to remotely control my Macintosh
• I can run X Windows Applications locally or remotely
• I can do Java development using command line tools like "vim", "javac"

That's just the things that matter most to me right now, out of the box.

Oh... one final point I almost forgot - the Aqua interface looks pretty cool. For a while. Failing all else, you can pick up "themes" through MetamorphX from CharonSoft.

Mac OS X is very functional. It's as functional for my purposes than Linux on my PC running WindowMaker or Enlightenment.

As for your last statement - can you provide evidence to support this claim? I don't think Sony approaches the topic the same way you do. I don't think the Ubiquitous Computing folks approach this topic the same way you do either.

People are working to make this a success, though it seems to vary.

Kevin and Kell seems to do pretty well. The author, Bill Holbrook, does two other paper strips. I know that he's making a profit - my friend is his colorist, who tells me that Bill is all business, and wouldn't pay my friend if he couldn't afford it. But the strip has a huge variety of revenue sources, like book sales at Plan 9, merchandise, and special "memberships". Most people know Sluggy Freelance, which also does the same thing. It also seems to make a profit.

But other strips like Bruno the Bandit are just as high quality in art and humor (in my opinion at least), but it seems like Ian McDonald has had just no luck in turning it into a profitable business, even though he's a prominent member of Keenspot and has two collected books published. My friend (who colors Kevin and Kell) has also had trouble keeping his strip Unlike Minerva afloat - he just doesn't have the time to juggle the strip and day-to-day living.

Anyway, it seems like the very best can survive, but even the very good like Bruno have difficulty making it. I know of one strip right now trying to make it with "tips", 8-bit theater, which seems to be having some success. Hopefully the author, Brian Clevinger, will pull it off. But even then, he's just struggling to meet the costs of bandwidth.

I don't know what the future of this medium is. But if anybody at all can make it, then I think there's hope for others.

(Warning: This will look like a plug for a bunch of webcomics. It probably is, but I have a valid point. Mod me into oblivion of you wish.)

The big players in the print industry seem to be the only guys getting real attention when it comes to producing "comics" on the web.

What about the Keenspot or the Keenspace groups? They have a valid revenue model, even if they aren't making a ton of money(making money is a secondary concern to them). Heck, they're doing the opposite of the big boys: Moving from the 'net to print media. (Check for Roomies! and Superosity in your local comic store)

Another group is , which hosts, among other comics, Algernons Dilemma.

There are the big ones you've probably heard of, PvP and Sluggy Freelance who are actually making a living on their webcomic.

Heck, /. has Mega Tokyo banners!

Personally, I'd rather these, and others, than the majority of the junk the syndicates, et al, try to push onto the web. Nevermind X-Men, give me it's Walky!

Disclaimer: I run a webcomic, so this story pushed my buttons :)

J. T. MacLeod
-------------
UBERGEEK the Comic. Umlauts be danged.
http://ubergeekthecomic.com
It's neato!
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I think that most webcomic writers do what they do for the fun they have drawing/writing comics. I don't think its much of a business thing. Take PVP. Scott gets profit from writing actual comic books (although, I'm sure, he probably gets some good money from the site also).
And then there's Sluggy Freelance (a GREAT comic if you people havne't read it yet) where he puts collections together and sells them as books.

I don't think there is much profit in the webcomic business....