Daily Bits

This is a guest post by Heather Johnson.

Even if you aren’t familiar with Creative Commons (CC), you have no doubt spotted one of its various badges at the bottom of Websites. CC is a non-profit organization that allows you to license your work with very specific attributions. Rather than the standard “All Rights Reserved,” your creative work can allow some rights to others, such as non-commercial distribution. Many bloggers have embraced CC licensing, though others have wondered how useful it really is.

Just like anything else related to copyright law, the average Internet user doesn’t quite understand how CC works. If you are new to the concept, here is a useful comic book that explains the basic concepts of CC. (No, I’m not patronizing you. Those comics are official guides to the licensing service.)

CC licenses can be applied to both online and offline work. Writers, musicians, artists and scientists are using CC. Licensing your blog, however, is as simple as cutting and pasting a license badge into your sidebar. This simplicity has drawn heavy skepticism from some in the blogosphere.

PC Magazine’s John C. Dvorak writes:

…this system is some sort of secondary copyright license that, as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous ‘fair use’ provisos of existing copyright law. This is one of the dumbest initiatives ever put forth by the tech community. I mean seriously dumb. Eye-rolling dumb on the same scale as believing the Emperor is wearing fabulous new clothes.

Wow, he doesn’t pull any punches there. However, CC could be a bit more useful than he gives it credit for. According to the well-meaning company, CC licenses were drafted with the intention of holding up in court. Although they can’t legally promise anything (who can?), they have taken the time to draft proper fine print for your free licenses. Also, each license comes with “severability” clauses – meaning that, if a provision of your license can’t be enforced in court, that provision can be dropped, leaving the rest of the license intact.

The CC organization is a byproduct of the open source movement, as many writers and developers wish to reasonably share their work with the world. Is the licensing really useful for protecting creative works? Weighing both sides of the CC argument, my personal opinion (as a professional blogger) is that it couldn’t hurt. However, if you have any doubts about copyright issues and your work, it is always best to consult an attorney.

Heather Johnson is a freelance business, finance and credit writer, as well as a regular contributor for Business Credit Cards, a site for comparing the best business credit cards around.

One popular image of the internet is of a wonderful utopia, allowing creators worldwide to share their genius without “The Establishment” holding them back. The only problem is that most people aren’t geniuses, and huge sections of that “Establishment” are filters designed to protect the innocent public from a never-ending torrent of terrible music, garbage writing and – worst of all – comics so bad they’d make Marvel back off and re-launch as a house painting firm.

While some simple rules can help you avoid the worst of the filth (e.g. “If it’s a gaming comic not called Penny Arcade then it sucks”), finding the few nuggets of gold can be hard work. Which is why we’ve done it for you, sifting some high-quality but lesser-known strips out for you. You’re welcome.

1. Basic Instructions

Basic Instructions, a weekly humor strip, has two things most web “comics” don’t have. One: An actual comic – author Scott Meyer spent several years as a professional comedian before turning his hand to webcomickry, meaning he has actual knowledge of “comic timing” and “being funny” that most hopeful-humorists lack. Two: a valid excuse to use copy and paste, the cardinal sin of comic laziness. In the fake-printed-instructions style of the strip the repeated graphics are actually appropriate, and new graphics are drawn when needed.

There’s a clear feeling that Scott actually cares about the audience – since he used to work in a field where they could physically attack him that’s unsurprising – and with recent extensions into newspapers and a book in the works, it seems the audience cares back.

2. Dr McNinja

Dr McNinja achieves the impossible and makes internet memes funny. He doesn’t make them funny because they’re memes – he makes them funny despite being memes, with an incredible internet alchemical ingredient known as “great writing”. Most “jokes” based on pirates, zombies or ninjas are the desperate recycling of attention-starved idiots (with some honorable exceptions like Real Ultimate Power and Dinosaur Comics).

Chris Hastings and Kent Archer produce fast-paced and funny action stories containing every single one of those elements (and a few robots, lumberjacks and vampires besides) which somehow never feel less than fresh. Another strip that’s made the difficult transition to “Actually asking people to pay for it”, with two volumes available for sale: “The Adventures of Dr McNinja” and “Surgical Strike”. One volume means the makers thought people might buy it – two means those people did. You should too.

3. Freakangels

Freakangels is one of the wonderful and diseased brainchildren of Warren Ellis, comic writer extraordinaire. Some comic shops have sections devoted entirely to him, he produces umpty-billion actual-for-sale comics for Marvel, Avatar and others – and he decided to do one completely for free online. Because he could. A post-apocalyptic tale with steampunk elements and the well developed characters that populate all Ellis’s stories, rendered in rich, full-color art by Paul Duffield.

Sidestepping the usual “one page per whatever” web schedule that destroys dramatic tension (or leads to a cliffhanger every four panels), they upload an episode of six pages every Friday. This is a free comic by master professionals who could have charged for it if they wanted, but they decided not to. You should decide to read it.

4. Diesel Sweeties

There is talk that author Richard Stevens is not of our Earth, but has been sent back in time from a hyper-productive future to embarrass the hell out of the lazy “When I feel like it” crowd. Since starting pixel-art humor strip Diesel Sweeties in 2000, he has never decided “I’m playing Grand Theft Auto instead”, never run a “Dead Pixels Day” of filler, and as well as maintaining a rich cast of characters and comics over two leap years has tripled his output over that time.

As well as expanding into newspapers (the real acid test of any newly popular comic strip), books, t-shirts and even socks. The trademark aspects of Diesel Sweeties, fantastic punchlines and the lost art of punning, translate well to almost anything that can be written on.

5. Witch Doctor

Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner. Finally, two aspiring creators who understand how the web should be used to break into an industry. Witch Doctor, a medical horror comic, is clearly designed with the goal of being picked up and printed by a publisher. But rather than running around with cards clutched to their chest and demanding “IF we get a deal THEN we’ll do some actual work”, Messrs Seifert and Ketner thought “Well, how can we prove we can produce a full high quality comic?”

Simple. By making an full, high quality comic. And releasing it entirely online, for free, in a single great big burst – instead of holding the readers hostage for more pageviews, trickling out bits and pieces over a period of months, they wrapped it all up in one big ball of awesome and said “Here! Enjoy!” I did.

With classic high-detail black & white art (reminiscent of the good old days of 2000 AD) and a story combining characters, action, imaginative ideas and a very undignified use for the Holy Grail it’s a terrific read. It’s clear right from the get-go that there’s more here than is written on the pages. These guys aren’t scraping the barrels of their brains trying to fill up an issue; there’s obviously an entire imagined world hovering just behind the page, evolving all the time, and hopefully we’ll get to see more. Go enjoy your first incision.