Dean Haspiel is editing a new online comics anthology for SMITH Magazine:

“Everybody has one. And, no matter how close or how far, we all live next to someone, and we all have a Next-Door Neighbor story,” says NDN Editor Dean Haspiel. “With this in mind, I asked some of my favorite storytellers and cartoonists to create their favorite NDN stories so that we at SMITH Magazine could share them with you over the next year.”

New installments of Next-Door Neighbor will appear every two weeks on online storytelling community, SMITH Magazine.

The first wave of stories launches with an urban “daymare” titled “Next-Door Neighborless” written by novelist Jonathan Ames and illustrated by Nick Bertozzi, whose graphic novel The Salon, was hailed as among the best comics of 2007. Upcoming stories feature the talents of Kevin Colden, John Cebollero, Joan Reilly, Ed Piskor, and Miss Lasko-Gross. The second wave will be announced in June and includes a super-secret, special first-time writer/artist matchup.

While the April Zuda competition won’t be up until next week, the December winner, Pray for Death by Nick Doan and Daniele Serra is now updating, with a significant change to the art style.

March’s winner was Black Cherry Bombshells by Johnny Zito, Tony Trov, Sacha Borisich and Alex Bruno. Frankly, we’re a little sad that a strip about “Ultra-violent girl gangs fight for supremacy of a doomed future where all men have been mutated into flesh eating zombies” beat Wes Molebach’s Litterbox Chronicles, because nothing is funnier than a cat searching for a litterbox, but it’s a new era in webcomics.

After coming in fourth in their Zuda competition, Jim Dougan and Hyeondo Park’s SAM & LILAH is moving over to ACT-I-VATE starting May 1. The Dougan/Park team began collaborating at the Chemistry Set and will continue to appear there, as well. Sam & Lilah is a “romantic modern-day mythology with a touch of manga flavor. When a budding love affair between two fashionable urban twentysomethings is imperiled by a gypsy curse, slice-of-life meets the supernatural - in Technicolor.”

Girl-a-matic, the female-friendly webcomics site was five yesterday. We were sick and couldn’t post, but we still wanted to mark the occasion with a press release:

It’s been an entertaining ride these last five years. GAM has seen it’s share of ups and downs and has happily been the online home of many an excellent comics creator. Sure, we’ve had some growing pains and toddler tantrums, but we’ve also had some supremely shining moments, and I wouldn’t trade a minute of it for anything.

For the rest of this week, March 31st through April 6th, GAMmers will be posting their birthday cards to the site. At the end of our anniversary week, readers everywhere will have the chance to vote for their favorites in the following categories:

Most “HOLLYWOOD-SHOULD-TOTALLY-BE-ON-MY-SPEED-DIAL”

Most “I-AM-MY-OWN-EVIL-TWIN”

Most “MADE-ME-SNORT-X-BEVERAGE-OUT-MY-NOSE”

Most “I-TOTALLY-PWN-THOSE-MENSA-DORKS”

Most “ISH-KA-BIBBLE”

GAM’s next open call for submissions begins on May 1st, 2008. Ladies and gentleman, sharpen your pencils.

Dark Horse has been kind enough to give us a peek at the cover of their first collection of Achewood strips by Chris Onstad: The Great Outdoor Fight.
This will look strong on our shelves!

Fresh off the news that his AMULET gn is getting the movie treatment, Kazu Kibuishi’s long running COPPER webcomic has been sold to Scholastic, ICv2 reports.

The Copper collection, planned for Spring 2010, will include both existing and new material. It will be released in both trade paperback and library hardcover editions. Judith Hansen of Hansen Literary Agency represented Kibuishi.

We would guess that the huge success of DIARY OF A WIMPY KID has webcomics on many book editors’ radar these days (yes yes it is not really a webcomic, but creator Jeff Kinney usually refers to it as such), and the idea of putting out a book based on something that people have been reading free for years is not really so daunting at all. Ya hear that?

Technorati Tags: Scholastic

Mike Cavallero has posted a teaser for his new ACT-I-VATE comicsLOVIATHAN, Coming in April.

Wow, there are more free things than EVER on the internet! What is the use of playing softball in the park or brunching with the girls when there is so much cool free shit?

First off, some that is NOT FREE, repeat NOT FREE, but it is pretty affordable: yesterday’s news BOMBSHELL: TEZUKA ON THE WEB! Japanese bookstore Papyless will make 448 stories from manga forefather Osamu Tezuka available, including ASTROBOY, BLACK JACK and NEW TREASURE ISLAND. Starting March 18th it will cost 105 yen, or about one dollar, to read a volume over 48 hours. You can buy it for keeps for 315 yen per volume. Hopefully with a little Googling and Paypaling we can finally read NEW TREASURE ISLAND which was to manga what D. W. Griffith was to filmmaking, technically speaking.

Technorati Tags: Dr. Goldfoot, Tezuka

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ESSEX COUNTY’s Jeff Lemire (interviewed this week in PW Comics Week by Laurel Maury) has a new mini comic up at his blog:THE HORSELESS RIDER.:

The Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards were announced yesterday and you should just go to the link becayse it has links to all he nominated comics, and they deserve a click-through if you’ve never checked them out. Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio won many awards, including “Outstanding Comic.” Lackadaisy by Tracy J. Butler won several awards as well.

We think you will want to read this Kare Kare comic by Andrew Drilon at The Chemistry Set. Let’s just say it updates the “Incredible Journey” story for cryptozoologists.

Haven’t you always wanted a Marvel application for Facebook? Oh, of course you have! Marvel is getting deeper and deeper into this risky internet thing. It’s crazy!

What are you supposed to do with these things, anyway? Apparently our abandoned zombie mogul gets attacked scores of times a day. We just don’t have time to place WoW or Facebook, sadly. Anyway here’s Marvel’s exciting announcement:

On the heels of Marvel Entertainment opening its comic book vault to the masses in November with the launch of its online subscription service Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, today Marvel announced the launch of its first digital comics application on Facebook Platform, Facebook is the sixth most trafficked website in the United States. Marvel’s first official Facebook application immerses fans in the world of Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, the home of the greatest collection of Marvel Comics ever assembled online. This new application page will serve as a hub to the Marvel Universe on Facebook.

With the new Digital Comics application, fans can peruse the entire Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited collection—currently numbering more than 3000 comics, read synopses of many of the titles, pick favorites and share thoughts about the books with all of their Facebook friends.

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It’s the beginning of the month and that means a new bunch of Zuda comics. Eddie Sharam and James Woodhead’s ROAD was the winner, as voted by readers, for February.

This month’s line-up includes a new comics by Jim Dougan and Hyeondo Park — worth checking out. Also one called “The LItterbox Chronicles” and it’s what it sounds like, but we like kitty kats, so there. More in jump.

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Fox 2000 has optioned the phenomenally successful WIMPY KID books. Nina Jacobson will produce. According to the article, five books are eventually planned, with Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw to be published later this year.

Via PW

Big news for webcomics as Nicholas Gurewitch announces the strip is going on hiatus.

“It’s really not as big a deal as it might seem,” Nicholas said today. “I’ll simply be producing comics at a pace I’m more comfortable with.” Monday newspapers publishing his strip received the surprising announcement from the cartoonist. “I’m making this decision for a variety of reasons,” Nicholas told them in an email, “but mainly because I want to do other things besides be a cartoonist.”

Gurewitch cites the success of the PBF collection as part of the reason for the move, and in fact will live at least partially off the proceeds. The fact that he can do this at age 25 is about as big an indicator of the new metrics of cartooning as anything we’ve seen lately.
THe link above includes a hilarious account of an appearance by Gurewitch on Fox News (!) in which he reenacted one of our very favorite PBF strips. Does Gurewitch have a big future as a television personality? We wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

Last Friday Freakangels the new webcomic by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield debuted. It’s a steampunk tale of 12 specially powered 20-somethings that will appear in weekly installments of 6 pages. Ellis has already written several hundred pages, so hopefully Duffield is up to the task. More in this brief interview with Ellis.

Technorati Tags: Warren Ellis, Avatar

MySpace continues to put up some surprisingly cool comics, including, now a new story by Gilbert Hernandez for Dark Horse Presents . It’s called “Manga.”

Sheldon Vella’s SUPERTRON was the January winner and now ten new contestants have entered the swimsuit competition! As usual, the entrants are a fairly obscure bunch except for Kevin Colden, whom we’ve mentioned here many times before. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check out all the lovely contestants!

Title: Everyone Laughs at the Crocodile Man
Writer/Artist: Steve Steiner
Summary: Some people view The Crocodile Man as an oddity. Some view him as a menace and a monster. Yet others see him as no different than any other person. He deals with the same problems as any of us. He pays bills, goes to work, and has problems in his love life. Every once in a while though, his reptilian personality overwhelms his civilized side.

Title: Joe Comics
Writer/Artist: Chachi & Gabe Hernandez
Summary: Joe Comics is a satirical celebration of just how ridiculous super heroes and villains can be.

Title: Mountains of Dusk
Writer/Artist: Mani Magalhaes
Summary: Two tribes - the K´Tahi and the Elgyk – enemies, want to both rule the mountains. Who will win?

Title: The Passenger
Writer/Artist: Alexandre Vidal
Summary: Meet Alberto, an ordinary man who, in a drunken night, catches the wrong taxi and stops by an inter-dimensional crossroads. Now he has to find his way back home.

Title: Reno
Writer/Artist: Dan Thompson
Summary: Reno, a big rig trucker, defends a kind, young service station owner and her son who are victimized by a mysterious outlaw.

Title: Road
Writer/Artist: Eddie Sharam
Summary: Felix lives in a futuristic world where there is a road that you can travel down your whole life that will never end or repeat. Felix will attempt to solve the riddle of this Road.

Title: Starfish
Writer/Artist: Miguel Angel Sanchez
Summary: A 13 year old girl and her jet pack are the last hope against a dark energy influencing our world and ripping its way across the cosmos.

Title: Strangle/Switch
Writer/Artist: Kevin Colden
Summary: A chance meeting with a mysterious stranger, the arrival of a ghost from his past and an electric guitar of mysterious origin will put Geoffrey Blake in contact with a power he has never imagined.

Title: Teachers
Writer/Artist: Gabe Ostley
Summary: Only these eccentrics are brave enough to face the ancient evil that lurks on campus and be back in time to grade all of those papers before Friday!

Title: Will Wrestle: For Science
Writer: Jim Dedieu
Artist: Geoff Beaulieu
Colors: Alex Donnard
Summary: Today, just like any other day in the tumultuous life of Will Wrestle and his fellow Wrestlers, is the Future. Which means: Saving Your World.

Have we mentioned lately how much we love Apelad aka Adam Koford? Actually we did, but we want to say it again. His LAUGH-OUT-LOUD CATS webcomic is a multi-leveled satire that mixes the rich line work of classic comic strips with the patois of internet cat speak along with timeless hobo humor. In case you’ve missed it, Apelad’s conceit is that the strip is a recently unearthed comic strip from the turn of the 20th century that was the first appearance of all that “I can has cheezburger” kitty-net crap.

Plus, a “bindle’ is always funny.

Well, now a BOOK collection is available. Want!

Meet the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats! Kitteh and Pip, the hobo cat stars of the old timey comic strip featured on HOBOTOPIA.com, in their first compendium of over 250 comics. Also includes comments by Aloysius Koford and never before seen drawings.

Koford reports that his entries in the New Yorker’s Eustace Tilley contest also fared well — two will be featured on the New Yorker website and one will be published in the magazine. Go, kitteh!

We hear that DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: RODRICK RULES, the second volume of Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid series, will debut at #1 on this Sunday’s NY Times Bestseller list. Wimpy Kid book 1 holds steady at the number two spot. With Hugo Cabret at #3, picture books definitely rule.

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid phenomenon is one that hasn’t been overanalyzed by the comics blogosphere — the books are very text heavy and are more truly called comics/text hybrids than straight out comics. However, the series has long been labeled a webcomic, and its sales success does prove you can give something away on the internet for free for a long time and still sell loads and loads of books — as long as someone wants to read it in the first place!

Alex Cox does Project Runway

Benchilada does Hemingway

We larfed.

A bevy of new Zuda contestants are up for the month of January—the entrants seem to have taken a move towards the surreal comedy end of the spectrum and look more polished. And we’re happy to report that many of the Flash problems which so annoyed us last month seem to have been smoothed out for the most part. BTW, last month’s winner was PRAY FOR DEATH; our fave THE CROOKED MAN was #2, but certainly that team will go on to do more stuff…we hope. Anyway, here’s the PR — we’ve added links to the creators where we could find any.

DC Comics announced today the ten entries in the first www.Zudacomics.com contest of the new year. The selected comics are diverse in both their subject matter and tone, spanning a wide variety of genres— from comedy to thrillers, to fantasy and science fiction. Each is the unique vision of an aspiring comics creator.

Fans and fellow creators are invited to vote for one of the ten comics to continue as a regular web comic on the site. Previous winners of the www.Zudacomics.com contest have been Pray for Death by Nicholas Doan and Daniele Serra and High Moon by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis.

The new Zudacomics.com contest features the following webcomics:

Title: A Spelunker’s Guide to the City
Writer/Artist: Gary Epting
Summary: Macbeth, MacHeath, Mabuse, Moriarty, Fu Manchu and Dr. Moreau, all these evil M’s have had their turn. It’s a new day in Null City and it belongs to Odile Moiré. In some stories he is the driving force, in others a bit player. Sometimes he is only referenced; an ominous warning, tagged on a wall. No one can put a face to the name, but the dread is real and overpowering. In Null City, surrealism is a way of life.

Title: Absurdity At Its Best
Writer/Artist: Victor Bonilla
Summary: Whether it is the secret history of the pickle kings of yore, or the maniacal ranting of a communist chair, Absurdity At Its Best aims to inject a little absurdity into your daily life.

Title: Danetropolis
Writer/Artist: David Daneman
Summary: In the world of Danetropolis, David Daneman is king, jester, the cop on the street, and that guy talking to David Daneman on the train because the other guy is David Daneman too.

Title: Demons in the Closet
Writer/Artist: John Zakour
Summary: Demons in the Closet is the story of Sky, who discovers his little sister’s closet is a nexus to another dimension filled with “demons.” The demons insist they are “just here to help,” but of course, they are demons…

Title: The Legend of the Fool King
Writer/Artist: Alexander Kanaris-Sotiriou
Summary: Follow the twisting path of fate as destiny forges a lowly jester into a world’s heroic savior in an epoch-shattering fantasy romp

Title: Pieces of Eden
Writer/Artist: Seth Sherwood
Summary: A serial killer has been stalking women and his latest victim, Eden, has somehow survived. In surviving, Eden absorbed little pieces of each the other victims’ personalities. With this quiet menagerie of voices in her mind, Eden sets out for revenge.

Title: Supertron
Writer/Artist: Sheldon Vella
Summary: Somewhere in the future, robots rule the land. In this harsh mechanical wasteland lives Supertron, a robot of unprecedented power and wit. His only equal is Spinbot; a maniacal bot of style and speed. This is their story…

Title: Thomas: Agent of Chaos
Writer/Artist: Larry Jamal Walton
Summary: Midway through the journey of life, most decide that their life will be greatly improved by a “bundle of joy”. Thomas was one such bundle of joy. Like all kids, Thomas is an Agent of Chaos. His only goal is to be unpredictable, cause mischief, and insert as much uncertainty as possible into the lives of those around him. Couples are always told that life will never be the same after having kids. Agents of Chaos are the prime reason for that statement.

Title: Untrue Tales
Writer/Artist: Sam Little
Summary: These are the untrue tales of Gabriel Stein; his life, his loves, his string of failures. Each story in the series will be a self-contained tale connected to the life of Gabe, the occasionally charming loser.

Title: Urbis Faerie
Writer/Artist: Robert Richardson
Summary: A young woman’s life is complicated when her evil parents demand she leave a town where everyone is descended from fantasy creatures and come back to live with them… all on the same night her would-be boyfriend discovers he is really a werewolf.

As with the inaugural contest, www.Zudacomics.com’s visitors will vote for the webcomics that they want to see continue on the site. The competition winners will, in turn, receive commissions to create a year’s worth of their web comics for the site, and will have their work published in print formats as well.

Herb Trimpe on MySpace.com !

[Thanks, Kurt!]