Previous News01.28.2007 - Terrence Marks:Firstly, Bardsworth. Read it. We discovered each others' comics through ComicSpace, and I enjoyed it very much. It's about a high-school student who finds a gateway to a magical world, where he goes to learn magic. It's quite charming, interesting, and easy to get in to. There are about 150 comics in the archive, so it's established but can be read in one sitting. So why don't you?
Secondly, I recommend any manga by Mitsuru Adachi. He's...if I say that he's the halfway point between Osamu Tezuka and Rumiko Takahashi, it's probably a disservice to all three of them. It's a decent starting point, artistically, at least. His name is synonymous with Sports Romance, a genre that doesn't really exist here. I haven't read all of his stories, but almost all of them involve high school students, relationships, and team sports. His main strength is his ability to create rounded but well-defined characters. There's a lot of manga out there that have a certain fluidity and wispiness to the events and characters. His don't. He's amazingly popular in Japan, but only two of his books have been published in the US - Short Program and Short Program 2. They're collections of short (30-60 page) stories and quite accessible. A lot of his work has been scanned and translated by other groups; as usual Manga Johou is a very good place to start. I'll be honest, I've never finished any of his longer works, but they all seem interesting. The first chapter of Rough is one of the best first chapters I've read (and that's as far as I get with a lot of series), so I suggest starting there. I'm not sure if it's his best series overall, but there's no need to restrict oneself to an artist's best series. On the downside, he works exclusively within one genre, tends towards longer series, and there's (probably) a strong similarity between many of his works. I've never minded authors who write one great book then proceed to rewrite variations upon it. I strongly recommend his work to anyone interested.
I wish there were a stronger drive to translate older manga, officially or unofficially. Maybe it's out there and I can't find it. Maybe I have found it but couldn't recognize it. There's got to be a lot of good manga from the 1980s and earlier, but the only ones I see in the US are the ones that were licensed back in the 1980s. Assuming that quality is consistant across time, there's an awful lot of good stuff that the english-speaking world is missing out on, and I can't stand missing out on good stuff.
Thirdly, I'll be starting a journal comic. I resolve to produce at least 200 updates this year. It's still January. It counts. I'm also going to write at least one chapter each of four new-to-you projects. Those who pay really close attention will recall that I've spent the last couple years dropping hints about working on other comics. Well, I'm going to actually do something about it this year. I'd rather not be the guy who wishes he wrote more, but didn't. And listen to every episode of This American Life that I haven't yet heard.01.15.2007 - Terrence Marks:About a week ago, Namir Deiter's wikipedia article was deleted for "failing to assert notability". Now, I feel that Namir Deiter is notable. If you're reading this far down, you probably do too.
This isn't one of those "go register and vote against our article being deleted" kind of things. I've never been fond of that and, more importantly, there wasn't a vote. It was summarily deleted. I think the idea is that if an article doesn't justify its existence in the first paragraph or two, then they delete it to encourage the others. I wouldn't've minded if it were put up to a vote and lost, or if it were tagged for non-notability. But we're dealing with someone who deletes about 1,000 items a day. It's like turning in homework only to have it torn up and be told to do it again. And it wasn't even homework that we did (disclaimer: I did some minor cleanup and editing). We do greatly appreciate those of you who had created, edited and kept the Namir Deiter article up to date.
I'm not sure exactly what counts as an acceptable webcomics article, and I'm starting to believe that just about any article we create would be deleted regardless of its quality. I see that someone has requested a Deletion Review. If someone here understands wikipedia procedure and can help, that'd be appreciated.
At this point, we have two options: create an article that meets Wikipedia's standards or improve our articles on Comixpedia. Now, about fifty webcomics articles have been deleted in the last two
weeks. Good webcomics articles. Not stubs. Not articles about comics with 10 strips and 5 readers.
The Class Menagerie, Dragon Tails, Gene Catlow, Living in Greytown, Misfile, The Suburban Jungle, and Zortic, to name a few.
The advantage of wikipedia is prestige - or at least it looked prestigious before we became embroiled in all of this - and exposure. The average person looking for an article isn't likely to check comixpedia first. And they have more contributors (which, as you see above, cuts both ways).
The advantage of comixpedia.org is that we'd be able to create articles for our Spare Parts and You Say it First (and, possibly, our older comics) without worrying about them disappearing the next morning. There are fewer people who'd edit the articles, but that's where you-all come in. ND's Comixpedia page is based on a year-old verson of the wikipedia page and has a list of our other comics, all of which are in need of articles.
Anyhow, this is important to us. We don't have the time to do this right and do everything else we do. Why is it important? There's very little journalism about online comics, and we seem to be outside the loop of what there is. A lot of what we do, and what we've done isn't being documented. The page that comes closest to listing all the things I've done is my ComicSpace profile, and I'd rather have a more definite source out there. So, a little help?
Thanks01.01.2007 - Isabel Marks:Welcome to 2007, aka... year four for Spare Parts and You Say it First and year eight for Namir Deiter. I hope you've enjoyed your year so far.Bonus Book status:
October - The Babysitter, part 1 - now available
Special bonus - Taimoor and Dahlia - now available (and filed under "November")
November/December - The Babysitter, part 2 - in progress.
So, that's two bonus books that came out in the last week - if you donated, please read them.
After way too long (over a year in Spare Parts' case) all the archive pages for our three web comics have been updated! Also, the fan centers for Spare Parts and Namir Deiter have been updated with some really cool holiday-related pieces, please be sure to check them out!
NamirDeiter.net, our thank-you site for the people who help keep our web comics going, has gotten an update as well! The page got a non-Holiday related site design, and January's monthly wallpapers have been updated!
We made our goal for the combined months of November and December- which means for the month of January we will have the bonus updating schedule of seven Namir Deiter comics a week, six You Say it First comics a week, three Spare Parts comics a week, plus two bonus comics a week over at NamirDeiter.net. The November/December bonus book has yet to be added to the bonus comic library, but as we're still a bit behind. But till then, please enjoy the fashionably late October book plus the bonus-bonus book for the month of November, brought to you by a very generous donator who wishes to be known as "V".
The bonus book for January will be announced some time later this week!
So, why all the big delays? A little under a month ago Terrence (you may know him as the co-author of You Say it First and Spare Parts, I know him as my husband) went from having a day shift to a grave yard shift. We've been trying to get used to this schedule, but the cold weather and doing nothing but trying to sleep when Terrence is home, it left me with a bit more to do on my own than before, which has made the comicing process... slow to say the least. We're trying to get used to the schedule and get everything back on track, but who knows when that will be. We're very sorry for this and thank you all for your patience, we try to have the comics, at the latest, up at 5am PST on the updating day.Well, 2007 is off to a rough start, as far as updates go- hope your year is great!
12.28.2006 - Terrence Marks:We have a late Christmas present to all of our donors from us and a patron who prefers to remain known as "V". It's a 20-page set of bonus comics showing the past, present, and future of Taimoor and Dahlia. If you've ever had a NamirDeiter.net account, you should go to the NamirDeiter.net Bonus Comic Library and read it!Thank you very much to V for providing an opportunity for us to work on it. We hope everyone enjoys it.
And yes, this is one of the reasons why there was a bit of a backlog for the bonus books a couple months back - we've got a number of the other books in varying states of completion and expect to be caught up soon. Please note that this is not the scheduled November/December bonus book - that one is also in production. Premium donors will not receive any of the originals for Taimoor & Dahlia - they're already spoken for. We were originally going to have just one book for the two-month period, but this happened and, well, here you go. Premium donors will receive pages from the regular December book, however.
And yes, everything is back up to date. Enjoy Friday's comics!12.25.2006 - Isabel Marks:Merry Christmas everyone! And to everyone who has already celebrated their holiday or have yet to do so or don't at all... well, have a happy what-have-you.
Sorry for the lack of news... there really hasn't been much news lately... we made the goal for the past two months (thank you to everyone who donated!) and plan on working on the previous book really soon (as I hope those of you who had Internet access and time to read comics last week despite holiday plans have noticed) I'm slowly getting used to the new schedule and have been getting the comics updated closer and closer to the time I should be updating... we're going to going on a trip next month, so somehow I have to actually get ahead... not sure how I'm going to do it, but I have to. Terrence is doing a little better as well, so hopefully everything will falling back into place soon.
I hope to have extra goodies in store for namirdeiter.net in 2007, but one thing at a time... happy the rest of 2006, everyone!
12.11.2006 - Isabel Marks:The fan center has been updated, for both Namir Deiter and You Say it First! Thanks to everyone who sent in art!
Ok, now onto some bad news... as some of you may recall, Terrence's day job is now his... very early in the day job. To put it easily: before he used to go to work at 6am in the morning. Now he gets home from work at 8am in the morning... his schedule was just about exactly flipped around. Being the kind of wife who enjoys spending time with her husband, I have had to flip my schedule as well. Unfortunately this shifts the time of day I work on the comics around and was not able to get ahead enough in my schedule where you all would not notice it- so instead of starting work early in the day like I used to, I usually start work on the comics around 9 pm or later (sometimes not even until Terrence is off at work). This has caused the comics to be updated at wonky times (mainly between 2 and 5 am on the update day instead of Midnight PST). Unfortunately I am at my brink's end. I'm exhausted and annoyed all the time (it's really hard to feel rested after sleeping in a room we can never quite get dark enough) and as hard as I work it never seems fast enough. So, until Terrence's job decides it's time to put him back on a semi-normal schedule (which they say should happen by the end of the year- but then again, they DID say he was going to have to go on his current schedule for about half a year now) comics will update as soon as they are done, no sooner, no later. I am really sorry and will try really hard to get myself used to this schedule and actually ahead again. Thank you all for your understanding through this very annoying time in my comics's history.
12.09.2006 - Terrence Marks:The fan center has been updated, for both Namir Deiter and You Say it First! Thanks to everyone who sent in art!