Ironic Sans: The Funny Pages in Modern Times. “What I really wanted was to take all those ComicsRSS feeds, pull the most recent comic from each one, and display them all on a single page. But I’m not a coder and I have no idea how to do that. I know, I know. We’re all sick of talking about ChatGPT. But dammit, that thing is useful.”
Ars Technica: US Copyright Office withdraws copyright for AI-generated comic artwork. “On Tuesday, the US Copyright Office declared that images created using the AI-powered Midjourney image generator for the comic book Zarya of the Dawn should not have been granted copyright protection, and the images’ copyright protection will be revoked.”
AI Business: AI-Generated Comic Book Could Lose Copyright Protection. “The Copyright Office (USPTO) granted protection to Kris Kashtanova for the comic book titled Zarya of the Dawn in September…. However, the USPTO has now informed Kashtanova that it has initiated a proceeding to revoke the protection, saying copyrightable works require human authorship.”
BusinessWire: Shueisha to open official website for popular comic series Naruto (PRESS RELEASE). “Along with the latest news and information about the globally popular ninja-action manga series by Masashi Kishimoto, the new website will cover comics, animations, games, and merchandise related to Naruto and the sequel Boruto-Naruto Next Generations. The site will be jointly operated with Bandai Namco Entertainment and all content will be available simultaneously in six languages: Japanese, English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.”
downthetubes: British comic fanzines archive “The Fanscene Project” has a new online home. “Founded back in 2015 as the Classic UK Comic Zines site, artist and comic archivist David Hathaway-Price has been constantly adding to what is now The Fanscene Project… the project is an online, read-only archive of British comic fanzines, published across the last 50 years, including, with the permission of their original editors, titles such as BEM, Comic Media News, Fantasy Trader, Infinity, Speakeasy, and many more.”
Smithsonian: Smithsonian American Art Museum Publishes Online 10 Comics Featuring Trailblazing Women Artists. “The Smithsonian American Art Museum has published online a second set of 10 short comics each celebrating a woman artist with artwork represented in the museum’s permanent collection…. Inspired by graphic novels and web comics, these short takes on artists’ lives were drawn by 10 student-illustrators from the Ringling College of Art and Design.”
PC Gamer: This neat website archives over 700 fan-made Half-Life 2 comics. “One of my favourite parts of the mid-noughties Internet was the thriving Half-Life 2 (opens in new tab)comics scene. Through a combination of Garry’s Mod’s model posing function and a rudimentary knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, it was possible for artistically inept people like myself to create thrilling, amusing, or just plain bizarre comics revolving around the Half-Life 2 universe…. Now, over 700 of these comics have been rescued from the recycling bin of history and archived onto the website Metrocop(opens in new tab).” I glanced through a few of these to see if I needed to provide any content warnings, but the ones I saw were more silly than violent. I did see at least one series marked as horror.
New York Times: Comics That Read Top to Bottom Are Bringing in New Readers. “For decades, the fans who powered the comic book industry made weekly pilgrimages to their local comic shops to buy the latest issues about their favorite caped-and-cowled adventurers. These Wednesday Warriors, named for the day new installments typically land on shelves, still do. Voracious readers of printed comics, they skew older — and are mostly male. But now all it takes is a smartphone, as the world of comics is reshaped by the kind of digital disruption that has transformed journalism, music, movies and television.”
The New Stack: Contra Chrome: A Biting Satire of Google’s 2008 Chrome Comic. “For those of us old enough to remember Web 2.0 in its heyday, one of the classic ‘texts’ of that era was the Chrome comic book, which was released in September 2008 at the same time the first version of the Chrome browser was launched. As a tech blogger at the time, I was lucky enough to receive a paper copy of the comic, which I still have on my bookshelf to this day. Well, this week I got a surprise when I discovered a new online ‘remix’ of that comic.”
Google Blog: Manga Out of the Box: the story of a Japanese art form. “In Manga Out Of The Box – a new collaboration between the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 12 cultural institutions across Japan, and Google Arts & Culture – we take a closer look at this dynamic art form. Through detailed stories, interactive exhibits and exclusive experiments and videos, you’ll be able to immerse yourself in the world of manga. Here are five things you can do as part of this virtual exhibit.”
The Conversation: Comic book introduces kids to key concepts and careers in cybersecurity. “Led by a team of educators and researchers, CryptoComics strategically integrates a digital comic book, apps and unplugged activities, such as painting rocks with ancient symbols and making invisible ink. It also features stories about cybersecurity professionals who are women.”
Down the Tubes: Who remembers “Spellbound”, DC Thomson’s mystery comic? New database launched. “Comics archivist Julia Round has created a guide to DC Thomson’s fondly-remembered girls ‘mystery-thriller’ comic of the 1970s, Spellbound, complementing her ongoing research into gothic comics, which also includes Misty.”
Museum of Modern Art: How to Make Comics: Ideas, Activities, and Resources for Learning and Making. “Over the course of three articles, writer and comics scholar Chris Gavaler helped us understand what comics are, the potential of the art form, and some of the many approaches to making comics. Still, for many of us, starting with a blank sheet of paper can be daunting—even when we know the basic ideas for filling in the page. To conclude the How to Make Comics series, we wanted to offer a step-by-step approach you can follow in order to transform that blank sheet into a visual story that’s all your own.”
Prospect: How intellectual property laws zapped the comic creatives . “To understand the comics industry today—and indeed the derived films, television and video game spin-offs—perhaps requires an understanding of the law more than lore. What can be done with characters and storylines is strictly regulated by an intricate and lucrative system of permissions and licences. This dominance of law is not new; legal issues have dominated from the very beginning of superhero comics in the 1930s, because of the very nature of the creative and commercial process.”
Fossbytes: Best Sites To Read Comics And Manga Online For Free. “We have provided options for the manga, manhwa (webtoons), and American comics altogether in this list. Each website has something different to offer, and not one is similar to another. If you are a fan of anime, you might want to check out how to watch anime free on YouTube.” Excellent annotation.
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