No, really – a webcomic based around video games, massive violence, sex and dirty words is so freaking huge and has guys creating it who are so freaking decent, they just gave away their first $10,000 scholarship. To make things even more interesting, it’s (naturally) a video game related scholarship, and they gave it to a girl. Gabe and Tycho: taking names and breaking down walls.

Penny Arcade today announced Diane Melville of Babson College as the winner of the 2008 Penny Arcade Scholarship for students intending to pursue a career in the game industry. Ms. Melville will receive a $10,000 award to apply towards her education and professional goals.

For the 2008-2009 academic year, Penny Arcade received hundreds of applications from students at schools across the country. Eligible students must be currently attending an accredited US college or university and be full time during the academic school year for which the scholarship is applicable. Selection criteria include GPA, service record, leadership, character, financial need and gaming skillz. After months of review and deliberation, Ms. Melville was selected for this year’s scholarship, based on her history of and dedication to using games for positive social impact.

Those interested in learning more about the Penny Arcade Scholarship, scholarship winners, or submitting applications for the 2009-2010 academic year can visit http://www.penny-arcade.com/pas/ for further information.

About Penny Arcade: Equal parts online comic and commentary, Penny Arcade ( www.penny-arcade.com) keeps its finger on the pulse of the gaming industry, prompting conversation and controversy alike. What started as a hobby in 1998 for Jerry “Tycho” Holkins and Mike “Gabe” Krahulik has grown into an online phenomenon serving over 70 million page views a month to millions of readers worldwide. In addition to the comic strip, Penny Arcade has expanded its reach to include merchandise, the annual PAX gaming festival ( www.pennyarcadeexpo.com), a video game and management of Child’s Play ( www.childsplaycharity.org), a gamer-driven charity for children that spans the globe.

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The other day, whilst reading through the epic Mark Waid interview over at Comics Should Be Good, I was momentarily stoked when I read the following:

Brian Cronin: “What do you think of digital distribution of comics? Is it a viable additional outlet to print comics?�


Mark Waid: No. It’s the future outlet for comics, period. Not tomorrow, not next week, but soon. Which is a shame, and the end of an era, and I’m not necessarily advocating it–I’m just being realistic.


But then I read this, and my heart sank.

Mark Waid: Paul Levitz had a great quote about digital comics, though. If I may paraphrase– the reason we’re not “there� yet has a lot to do with trying to find the right synthesis of format and delivery. For the first decade of its existence, television was really nothing more than radio with pictures. Everything was still dialogue driven, and you didn’t really have to WATCH it. You could just listen. But then Lucille Ball came along and wedded the visual comedy of vaudeville to the structure of radio comedy, and the whole medium transformed.


Mark Waid: And that’s what we’re waiting for vis-a-vis cybercomics. That ‘x’ factor that turns it into its own medium and not just pictures of comic books.


Brian Cronin: Right.


Mark Waid: That’s one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard, but then, Paul’s really smart.

People are not waiting for webcomics to become limited animation cartoons. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have web strips like Penny Arcade or Achewood or PvP or Diesel Sweeties being read by people in numbers that DC and Marvel would kill their collective grandmothers for. Homestarrunner.com isn’t popular because it’s an animated webcomic – it’s popular because it’s a site with a ton of funny cartoons. Anyone who truly believes that animated word balloons, pulsating sound effects and swiveling arms, legs and torsos are the way to bigger success with digital comics is completely missing the point of them.

People want to be able to read comics, at a reasonable price, wherever they go, at any time. They don’t want the Zuda-esque flash interface or the need for a special browser plug-in to read a daily strip. They don’t want to be able to have access to 20,000 comics on Marvel.com, but only when you have a net connection and only once the newest comics are 6 months old. They want to be able to download their comics the week they come out and be able to use one of the pre-existing comic book reader programs already out there.

The “x-factor” is already in existence – it’s the ability to capture a worldwide audience at a fraction of the overhead of print comics. It’s the ability to charge so little – in many cases nothing – in order to draw in more fans than you ever would at $2.99-plus a book. It’s the ability to get back to the days when if one person read a comic, they could easily and without regret pass it on to their friends, and so on and so on. I said it before, and I’m more convinced of it now than ever, DC screwed the pooch by not converting Blue Beetle into their first print-to-web Zuda comic. They could still reap the rewards of such a move, but the longer they wait, the lesser the benefits will be.

People download comics illegally for free right now, but if the comic companies would develop some sort of fair and equitable subscription program, it would be a almost overnight success. I’d gladly pay $9.99 a month for access to Marvel or DC’s complete catalog, and I would still continue to buy the TPB editions of series I really like. Believe me, once the first full-color e-book reader comes to market, DC, Marvel, Image and the rest had best get themselves correct, because as soon as it hits a reasonable price, it’s gonna be game over, and no amount of animation, sound or any other bell or whistle is gonna help.

EDIT: Mark Waid responds in the comments, and corrects my misunderstanding about what he was saying.

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I can’t seem to shake this topic for some reason, despite not collecting the title past the first year, but please bear with me (and forgive me if this is a road already traveled – I don’t have time to track the blogosphere like I used to these days). Fact is, DC could come out of this smelling like a rose, possibly making some cash and looking like a mad hero to fans of the recently canceled “Blue Beetle” by thinking juuuuust slightly outside of the box.

My suggestion is simple – continue to publish the series, but do it online through Zuda.

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Not only does today’s “Sinfest” nail the election in a nutshell, but Itchida also manages to beautifully channel the hand of Charles Schulz to do so. I wish I was half the illustrator this guy is.

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As KFR reported back at the end of August, Virgin Comics went tits up with no further comics being published out of NYC. But when I was looking up The Psycho by Dan Brereton at the old Amazon, I noticed one of their cross-selling internal links offering Virgin Comics’ Dan Dare for $0.49. After doing some minor clicking around, I came upon eleven Virgin titles (all #1s) under the exclusive Amazon Shorts program ready to purchase for the aforementioned price of $0.49 available in HTML format and PDF download.

Could this be a viable business model for the electronic version of print comics like the mess that is Platinum Studios’ Wowio and Marvel’s current Digital Comics Unlimited sub service? Or could it just be a means of getting as much money out of a deceased comic book line as possible? Until there are more titles from different publishers offered, I would have to subscribe to the latter theory.

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Last Friday, John Allison provided a guest strip for his own daily strip, Scary Go Round (yep, you read that correctly). As enjoyable as SGR is on a regular basis, Allison’s “guest strip” proves the mathematical theory once again that “X + Batman = More Awesome.”

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Sinfest is always one of the best looking strips on the web, and it’s always enjoyable if not as sharp-edged with it’s humor as you may expect. However, from this strip on, it’s been nailing it’s mark almost every day as Tatsuya Ishida has decided to take the strip on a more political trip than it’s been in the past. Good, sometimes great, strips on a consistent basis for the last few weeks, with no end in sight.

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Come on – this…this is gold! Might be the first time I actually go for the signed print of the strip option Onstad offers.

Click the comic to see it in it’s full-sized glory.

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