R Stevens is BRILLIANT! (and Harry Slack is right)

Maybe like me you caught Scott’s post today reiterating the latest webcomics mantra of “get Diesel Sweeties in more newspapers, plz KTHXBYE!” His concern is that the syndicate will stop caring about the New Kid On The Block after a couple months and move onto more aspiring projects, like weaseling more buttons and links into comics.com‘s hideous monstrosity of a navigation template.

If you’re local paper doesn’t run Diesel Sweeties, you should write them a letter. Newspaper’s actually care about letters. A little too much, actually. Maybe we can use that in our favor.

DS doesn’t run in our Des Moines Register (not that I ever expected it to), so I decided to jump over to Stevens’ newspaper page to see what I’ve been missing.

Evidently, not much.

I’ve honestly never cared much for Diesel Sweeties (proper). And yes, I get it. That’s the first thing someone who drapes DS in gold and sings its praises will usually claim: you must not get it! That’s your problem. No. That’s not my problem. I get it. I just don’t think it’s funny.

Then, I realized the truth. The dumbfounding, spellbinding, incomprehensible truth. R Stevens is absolutely BRILLIANT. DS is perfect for newspapers because it isn’t funny! No comic in the newspaper is funny (except maybe Get Fuzzy). It should fit right in!

R Stevens posted some hate mail he received the other day from some ambitious reader named Harry Slack who took the time and effort to spill out his hatred of the newspaper DS to its cartoonist. Here’s something he had to say:

So, sorry to be this way, I’m not usually one to send letters to cartoonists… and I guess I still haven’t (the joke being I think you’re not actually a cartoonist)… but your little strip has just incited so much fear in me… fear that comics are going to cease to exist… due to sucky comics like yours.

I think it was nice of Harry to point out the joke for Stevens.

The painful truth of it is that I agree with Harry. I also don’t think DS is funny, and although it might just fit right into the newspaper comics section alongside such marquee crap as Marmaduke, Family Circus, and Dennis the Menace, it might also just pave the way for more sub-par quality webcomics to get noticed by syndicates and get “promoted” to the funny pages.

Honestly, I still don’t understand everyone’s fascination with getting into the newspaper comics. I thought print was dead! I thought the internet and websites were supposed to be the medium of the future! Why is everyone getting hung up on stumbling their way into the syndicates? Aren’t we supposed to be deriding their ancient and forgotten methods? Aren’t we supposed to be mocking their laughable attempts at clinging to relevance? Aren’t we supposed to be heralding the coming of the new age of information superhighwayness? It’s really disappointing to see so many big name webcartoonists still fighting tooth and nail for some space in an obsolete medium.

In any case, good luck to R Stevens in getting into more dead trees. You’re in good company. I heard BC actually made a joke last month.

Host your webcomic on ComicSpace…today?

Josh has promised us comic hosting on ComicSpace today. I expect this to be monumental news once launched. I’ll probably throw a comic or two up there just to play around with the tools. Could this be a better alternative to Comicgenesis, Web Comics Nation, and Drunk Duck? The community is already there (webcomickers flew to ComicSpace in DROVES the moment it opened), and that’s one part of the good webcomic hosting service equation. The other vital parts are the tools for managing the comics, and the tools for visitors to navigate the comics. Everything else is up to the creator to produce quality content. So, short answer: only time will tell (and I’ll report back here on my findings).

Machine of DOOM! I mean DEATH!

It looks like our good man Ryan North has taken a great idea and gathered a few friends and decided to put together a short story anthology. The concept sounds wonderfully simple:

The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words “DROWNED” or “CANCER” or “OLD AGE” or “CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN”. It let people know how they were going to die.

The concept is deceptively complex, because North makes it very clear that they are looking for a particular type of fiction (potentially a dark comedy of errors of some sort, more than likely containing an hilarious and/or thought-provoking ironic twist).

So, I’m taking up the gauntlet. Since this project has a deadline of March 31st, I’ll be temporarily shelving the historical zombie fiction (which has a May 25th deadline) and working with this writing project for the next couple of months. I brainstormed with my wife, and we came up with a couple of great ideas, and I’m going to see where I can take them. You’re welcome to try it out, too! I’m interested to see what kind of entries something like this might receive.

Good luck!

Nintendo is its own worst enemy

A word of caution: I’m going to rant a bit.

Eurogamer site Games Industry has the current generation version of the same old story that’s been recanted every generation since the days of the Super NES: Nintendo is its own worst enemy. In part, it’s true, but in all honesty, part of this concept is simply stored within the mindset of the game publishers. It’s a perception of the industry, and the funny thing is, the ones with the perception problem are the same ones that can do something about it. I’m sort of sick of the discussion, but it’s actually a fairly important topic to debate, so I’ll continue.

It basically plays out like this. Nintendo creates game consoles. They also create fantastic, high-quality games based on their unique IP franchises. They have their Mario games, their Zelda games, their Metroid games, and their Smash Bros. games, and various other lesser IPs (lesser in overall importance, not necessarily lesser in quality). Historically speaking, 90+% of the consumers planning to purchase any Nintendo console has does so for the games. This is a general percentage I’m just throwing out there; there is absolutely no science to it. But any Nintendo console owner would likely tell you the same thing. No one bought the GameCube to play the next installment of Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell franchise. Just like no one bought the Wii just to play Red Steel. Most people buy Nintendo consoles to play Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Smash Bros. It’s just that simple. This, theoretically, makes other developers/publishers nervous.

Looking at the roster of games slated to be released on the Wii in 2007, I see only one–maybe two–non-Nintendo games that I will even bother looking at. And a majority of Wii-owners would like agree with me. Why? Because Nintendo console owners know that any Nintendo game is guaranteed quality. The preconceived notion in our minds is that third party developers are so apprehensive about the longevity of a Nintendo console, they are equally apprehensive in developing their Nintendo releases. The development could be skimped, the quality sub par, because they are afraid to devote all their energy into developing something that a large subset of the Nintendo console owning audience may never play. (For those curious, the two non-Nintendo games catching my eye include EA’s SSX Blur and Square Enix’ Dragon Quest Swords. If Codemasters could be trusted with any quality titles at all, I might add Heatseeker to the list, but I’m not holding my breath)

And that preconceived notion appears to hold true. In this current generation we got a half-assed Red Steel and an unplayable Far Cry from Ubisoft. It’s like they wanted it to look like they were trying, just to appease Nintendo, but they didn’t devote the time and effort into actually creating a quality product.

The problem also occurs when quality products do hit the shelves. The titles immediately get overshadowed by Nintendo titles, or overlooked because Nintendo console owners aren’t familiar with the companies or the IP. This unfortunately happened quite frequently on the GameCube, with fantastic games such as Capcom’s Viewtiful Joe, Ubisoft’s Beyond Good and Evil, and Silicon Knights’ Eternal Darkness all receiving excellent review scores, but simply floundering at retail.

The hope is that with an expanded audience, Nintendo can also expand the third party developer support base. Their hope is that the Wii will introduce gaming to people that have never gamed before, and set the precedence for more publishers to hop on board and release titles on the system they wouldn’t have previously. The belief is that with a wider audience, there will be an increased acceptance of new and fresh IP. This could open the doors for all sorts of quality titles to appear on the system. But in order for this to happen, cautious publishers need to take the initiative.  If they allow Nintendo games to dominate on the Nintendo console early in the Wii’s lifecycle, this dominance will only become even more established as time goes on. They need to believe in Nintendo’s vision, create some quality material, and get it on the shelves for the consumers to check out. And they need to actually market this stuff right so the consumers know about it. Marketing for Nintendo console games has always been historically weak.

And this push needs to come from more publishers than just Ubisoft.

/end rant

Halfpixel: Origin Story

Man, this blog is becoming a World of Halfpixel alert system. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

This time, Kris has put together a new comic called Origin Story. Along with this, comes yet another comic creator. I’ve submitted my own entry into this Web You.0 venture, but it has yet to be approved. Once it is, I’ll get it linked here. Because, you know, it’s rather humorous.

Domain map complete

For at least a majority of the internet-roving public, this should now officially be nerdflood.com, and no longer a simple redirect to nerdflood.wordpress.com. Some others of you may still be seeing a weird, bright red GoDaddy web parking space, in which case you couldn’t actually read this blog post. Which means this is basically the equivalent of me asking “if you can’t read this, please let me know.”

So, I’m shutting up now.

It’s better to be good than fast

At least, that’s part of John Scalzi‘s opinion in his entry into the ongoing debate regarding how long is too long (or, alternatively, how short is to short) an amount of time to be working on a particular piece of fiction.

I mean, look: George R.R. Martin took five years to write A Feast For Crows; I took three months to write Old Man’s War. Both books got nominated for the Hugo, and both books got beat by Spin, which I rather strongly suspect was written by Bob Wilson in a space of time that was longer than three months but shorter than five years. To the extent that the Hugos are an arbiter of quality writing at all, what does this tell us about how long it takes to make good writing? If you are thinking to yourself “why, not a goddamned thing! Not a goddamned thing at all!” then congratulations, you’ve landed on truth.

Thanks go to to Wil Wheaton for pointing out this nugget of superb enlightenment.