So little did I imagine when I logged in this morning to Netvibes I'd see him. But there he was staring my face - Max, from the wonderful Sam & Max comic by Steve Purcell (now also available a monthly episodic game from our pals at Telltale Games).

As you may know I have a history with Sam & Max . My hot new comic Welcome to Pixelton is inspired by a combo of Purcell's genius and Calvin and Hobbes heartbreaking honesty. I was afraid the rabbit-thing was some sort of virtual tell-tale heart...but I'll side with sanity and guess "Best Damn Easter Egg Ever".

After a bit of digging it looks like Max only appears with a column of 1, and you can click on him but nothing happens. He eventually falls off the edge to his demise and doesn't appear unless you reload Netvibes. Enjoy!

I have an confession to make: I'm addicted to registering domain names.

It all started innocently enough back in the grand ol' year 2000. Those were the days with plucky young dreams of magic flying cars and internets as far as one could see. Our only hopes were for bigger, stronger boy bands featuring possibly seven awkwardly aging youth. In these modest times I registered RefreshingContent.com and immediately declared a national holiday. Even worse, at the time I passed up quite a few other cool names but $10 is a heck of a lot of money for a college kid. (Little did I know that the virtual land rush was far from over and only beginning to get profitable.)

Looking at this list compiled by Read/Write Web only fuels my addiction. A dot mobi domain, which went on sale for the first time less than six months ago, sold for $200,000! Dot nets, and infos, and US...my rage cannot be adequately expressed even through emoticons.

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Nope, nothing. Now I'm haunted by the ghosts of domain searches past. Every lost name was a missed opportunity. And with this crippling obsession comes a bigger responsibility, to never make the same mistake again. Even if I must let them sit blank, I must register whatever random name pops into my head and live with my awkward child. This is the way of the domain samurai.

This blathering does come to a point though (eventually) and that point shows where my mind is. I'm working hard on inking my upcoming book "Welcome to Pixelton", and I've been thinking quite a bit about how to launch it with style. How can I bring in new comics fans? How do I show off what I feel is a new genre of comics? Only time will tell, but take a gander at but a few of the domains that I have obsessively snapped while waiting:

ComicArt.mobi
FreeComics.mobi
HighDefComics.com
HighDefinitionComics.com
PaperfreeComics.com
Xbox360Comics.com
PS3Comics.com
NintendoDSComics.com
NintendoWiiComics.com

Sadly...these are only a few. But you probably get the idea.

I'm a big believer that it is all of the little stuff that impacts how we view and react to the many ambiguous corporate entities around us.

Google is the king of the "feel good" per square pixel. I tried to test out their Pages, website creation software and got the following error. It is the first time an error has made me smile uncontrollably.



-Josh

You know "For Better or For Worse", the daily newspaper cartoon right? They get 1,500,000 hits a month on their site and it reaches over 220 million readers each day.

If info like that isn't enough to put a bullet in your head I don't know what is.

I know when reading their fairly intensive overview on how their strip is made I should have walked away with grander ideas. Something along the lines of "Why would they choose to split 55 hours of work across 5 different people?" or maybe "How does the inker's creepy fetish glove protect her artwork from smearing?" but I keep gravitating on the fact that a group the size of the United States has access to this daily.

Did you know: People will eat crap and smile if you let them. The masses expect comics to be bad and we cartoonists do a great job of matching expectations. "For Better and For Worse" exists on the sole principle of being something different. It isn't an animal strip, it isn't about kids, or politics, or non-sequiters - it is about a flawed family. And on that sole principle alone it reaches 220 million readers a day.

I don't mean to rag so heavily on FBoFW. I'm sure many, many people enjoy it each day, but I can't think of a weaker example of the comic model to strive for. How?

1. The comic strip has a writer.

This is a very bad sign as comic art is a very visual medium and creating a harsh divide between the two disciplines ends up with stilted comics. I'm very happy to say this isn't always the case (Alan Moore and Warren Ellis are great examples) but it is a strike against it from the start. I never knew this about FBoFW but I always felt the disjointed nature between each aspect. This also tends to create text heavy strips that feel more like illustrated short stories as they are compelled to stick to the script as to not offend the writer.

2. There are multiple people working on a strip.

Since writing, directing, and painting are respected as solo arts since when is comics the only form in history to benefit from multiple cooks in the kitchen? I don't believe comics are a group activity.

3. This is a day job for them.

Have you ever loved something with all of your heart? Now imagine that you are asked to work with a team of 5 others with varying viewpoints on the subject. Now imagine that you need to work with them to find a clear vision even it isn't the one you had in mind. Now do this 9-5 everyday for the rest of your life. Did you enjoy what you loved more before, or after the change? Imagine how this affects the quality of the work and their love of it.

4. It feels like someone crapped on face after reading this comic.

Yep, re-read the above. I get less than nothing from this strip. It makes me wish they printed patches of blank newsprint just to save the potential.

The lesson I'm trying to take away from this is that if these... artists (shiver)...can do it any one of us can. In what ways did they succeed and how can we do it one step better?

Josh

I recently came into possession of the single greatest souvenier in existence. In a time where you have to take off your shoes, get aggressively fondled, and then remove all liquids within a 48 mile radius just to view an airplane, the irony bathed photos above are delightful.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

This crappy paper weight/snow globe/pencil eraser shows "Washington - The Nations's Capital" and a floating plane which you can ram into it. Seriously. I can see it now, Osama and friends hiding in the rocks training for their next great assault using these crappy $2 novelties. For shame corporate America, for shame... :P

On a recent trip to GameFaqs.com to do some academic research on how to properly destroy something in Shadow of the Colossus I stumbled upon the following poll.



Ouch! It appears that brand loyalty has about as much ability to destroy a product as it does to exhalt one. May those poor 25% that plan to buy one "off the shelf" see the error of their ways by June 2007. (Right about the time PS3's will be able for purchase without starting a riot.)

Your hard earned money in action folks. The longtail works both ways, with a billion idiots spending trillions on Adwords.

Get your Butt Face Towels while they're hot!

Facetags.com has a few big announcements coming in the next two weeks. Watch the Facetags 2006 Telethon below for a scoop on the exciting changes. Large, unwieldly kudos to Mr. Nate Kuhn for rocking out the slickest informercial starring action figures this side of the Mississippi.

He is living proof that the internet generation is better than every other. Take that Medieval Renaissance!