i probably should have mentioned scott mccloud.
PS: *crickets chipring*
Yeah, no response so far, but I'll bet somebody will pick up on this.
Paging Dirk Deppey!
I'm probably the wrong person to ask, but my favorites are Wish^3 (www.wish3.com), fallen (http://aido.furvect.com/fallen.htm), and Strings of Fate (stringsoffate.com). Though these three don't get update frequently, I am in awe at their talent. I just wish the comics media would even give a small mention to their existance. Many of these comics are too good to be overlooked.
Hey, Brit, did you notice a few posts back where I posted a link to the Pants Press sketchblog, where Fate's Jen Wang is still posting some stuff? She hasn't updated SoF for a while due to personal reasons, but I don't think she's abandoned it completely.
You should check out Scary-Go-Round, too. I think you'd like it, I do.
The easy answer, I think, is that people still have a mentality that print = legitimacy. Putting comics on the web doesn't count as "publishing" in many people's minds because it's so cheap and easy.
Plus, while Batman and Penny Arcade both use the same "language of comics," they are still two different formats -- the short gag strip and the serial comic book. These formats have diverged over the years on both the producer and readership end of things. (Comic book readers are always complaining that not enough people read comics, but plenty of people still read newspaper funnies; the complaint refers to people not reading comic BOOKS). The majority of comics journalists are more interested, it seems, in longform works than in comic strips.
Well, you have to ask yourself what is there to report? I don't mean that in a snarky way, either: Look at what is getting reported about print comics. Either it is about the business of comics (how much Marvel stock has dropped, who's fired/hired for what book, editorial decisions made at different publishing houses, new imprints, etc) or it's the kind of stuff that falls into that bs/fluff category (can you believe what's happening in [fill in book name here]? can you believe what they're doing to [fill in character name here]).
On the whole, it seems to me that webcomics don't have either of these going on. In the latter case, that's a good thing. But the former:
Compared to cousins like print comics or syndicated comic strips, webcomics lack the larger publishing structure. Some of the very strengths of the medium (freedom to do whatever the hell you want, basically, without editorial supervision) are what deprive it of the "drama" that exists in the other realms of
(damn! I always forget that...)
I think what I said was:
deprive print comics ventures of the "drama" centering around two major things webcomics lack: economics and editorial, and there's not that much left to comment on.
But then again, webcomics journalism needs to evolve just like webcomics did. Just like webcomics had (and still have) to find their way distict from their print cousins, so too does the journalism to cover it. Look at comixpedia.com: some really good stuff is going on there, but also some bewildering randomness.
jce
JCE, that is a very insightful point.
Thanks for the links everyone. Some nice stuff in there. 
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