I interviewed Nicholas Killewald, and you can read it on the Webcomics Press website!

I suppose the interview is a bit long, but that's because I have never been satisfied by short interviews. They always feel like just when they're starting to ask the interesting questions, the interview ends.

I’m getting mighty sick of Butternut Squash posting their news where the comic is supposed to go. Yes, we get it. You don’t have a comic for today. Fine. But if you’re going to post as to why the comic is late, don’t take away the current comic from the main page, to be replaced with text. Even an old comic is more visually stimulating and less disappointing than textually proclaiming the lack of new update, and making sure we're crystal-clear as to why you haven't delivered. Making the newspost where the comic is supposed to go projects the creators as overly-apologetic for the lack of new comic.

Not only that! Listen to this part of the “newsnoncomic”:

“once again a new guest strip has arrived in our inbox from a lovely fan wanting to lend a hand - check out her contribution amongst others in the bns gallery!”

And! And then! Listen to their actual (2nd) newspost!

“some lovely fans have decided to pitch in due to the lack of updates - check out a guest strip and fan art in the bns gallery!”

For god’s sake, put the guest comics up on the main page, instead of that stupid “newsnoncomic”! Do you not understand what a guest comic even is? It’s a comic… by a guest. Meaning! The whole point of its existence is to be shown to your audience, as though it were a normal strip! The guest comics aren’t doing any good for you if they’re just collecting dust in your out-of-the-way “bns gallery”!

When people show up to your site, and especially to the page where a comic is usually posted, text is nothing more than a let-down disappointment. I can’t understand BNS's logic in redirecting people to their guest comics, which they even cite as a means of keeping the comic afloat.

Of course, then again... look at some of the guest comics in their “bns gallery.” Yeah, I’d be hesitant about putting some of those up, come to think of it.

Ohhh, lord, and there's a CTRL-V comic in there. Don't even get me started.

...

If you make a CTRL-V comic, kill yourself. I'm absolutely serious.

Something new and better

I do believe I've abandoned Livejournal altogether for my webcomic-talking purposes, though you can still go back and view my previous entries. I'm thinking of copying and pasting them into blog posts, but I don't know. We'll see.

Anyway, to start things off right, here's a comic that caught my attention on OnlineComics.net: Sawlogs, by Rick Smith.

Here's the premise of the strip, as it appeared on it's OC.net entry:

"Sawlogs is a comic journal of my dream life. I have been keeping a dream journal off and on for the last fifteen years - here are some of the dreams in comic format."

I myself kept a dream journal up until... 8th grade, I believe, and let me tell you, that thing contained some weird stuff. Reading Sawlogs brings back a lot of memories. Each comic contains the feel of a dream, in that "things aren't making sense but just keep moving" sense that dreams seem to always have. A perfect example of what I mean, and most likely one of my favorite entries, is "Turning on a Buried Light Switch."

Probably one of the most interesting things about Sawlogs is how the top right corner of each comic contains a "Dream fact," which more often than not provides insight into the innerworkings of the comic it's attached to.

But, the comic does have it's drawbacks, most of which lie in the way in which it presents itself. Number one, it's not so much of a comic with an archive, but someone's blog page, with each post containing a hosted image, which just happens to be the comic. That, and the links to the full-sized comics don't always work, so it detracts from the frustrating experience that is going through the "archives" in the first place.

Although I do like it, I don't really get the sense that Sawlogs is a webcomic. Like I said previously, it just feels like someone's blog page, hosting their comics. Without a navigational system, with "forward" and "back" buttons and whatnot, to peruse the archive, it's hard to really get a feel for it. And without that, Sawlogs feels like nothing more than a flight of fancy, a comic without commitment.

He does have a book available through Cafépress, but I've never taken a Cafépress store seriously. And besides, the book only contains the newspost (text) entries. No comics. Where's the fun in that?

I'd suggest Keenspace or Drunk Duck (the latter being a last resort, anyway), but the comics wouldn't be the same without their accompanying newsposts. Otherwise, a website structured like Bigger Than Cheeses, with each strip entry maintaining it's respective newspost, would be the best sort of organizational system. But, seeing as to how he's hosting his comic on a blog, it seems likely he doesn't know PHP, let alone HTML coding in general.