Today Joey Manley announces that “the Modern Tales family of websites (Modern Tales, GirlAMatic, serializer and Graphic Smash) is the first major webcomics network to embrace the downloadable CBR format for full-length, high-resolution digital comic books.”

He says, “CBR format has rapidly become the preferred means of digital comics delivery for people who mostly like to read comic books or graphic novels when they read comics in print … Like MP3 files, CBR’s first gained prominence in the file-sharing world. … CBR format is, far and away, the very best way I’ve discovered to read ‘longform’ comics in digital form.”

First you’ll need some Comic Book Reader software, such as CDisplay (for Windows), FFView (for Macintosh), Qcomicbook (Linux/KDE) or cbrpager (Linux/Gnome).

Once you’ve downloaded one of the software packages linked above, here are the launch CBR’s from the Modern Tales family:

From Modern Tales proper:

Headsmen (Rogues of Clwyd Rhan one-shot) by Reinder Djikhuis

Hotel Fred Vol2 #1 by Roger Langridge

Ballad of Little Monster by Herve Largeaud

Wahoo Morris (Free Comic Book Day issue) by Craig Taillefer

From GirlAMatic:

Galaxion # 1 by Tara Tallen

From serializer:

Make Love the Fetus-X Way by Eric Millikin

From Graphic Smash:

Charity Begins in Hell (Reckless Life) by Tim Demeter

For more, see Joey’s post at Talk About Comics.

Serializer publisher Joey Manley had just moved serializer to a new, better server. It can take several days for the entire Internet to realize we’ve made the change, so you might be seeing the old site for a little while longer. The site will remain “up” at both servers, so you’ll be able to see some version of serializer, but only people whose ISP’s have updated their DNS will be able to see the new site. Joey says that college networks are usually the slowest in terms of updating DNS. Mine has already updated, and it seems like the change has fixed a few things. If anybody notices anything weird, drop a note in our forum.

Speaking of which, our TalkAboutComics forum is pretty quiet. If you post there, I will talk about comics with you.

- Eric

Happy New Year, serializer readers. We are living in the future now. What’s next for serializer? Besides even more of those comics you’ve been enjoying for the past few months of 2006, we have new wonderful comics series coming your way, to join our recent launches like Sascha Hommer’s “Insekt” and Marcel Guldemond’s dot dot dot. This is truly the serializer age of comics, true believers.

Sincerely,
6 a.m. Insomniac Eric

Thank you for visiting the relaunched serializer.net

You can find our update schedule on talkaboutcomics.com

Enjoy!

Attention Comics Readers of the Word Wide Web — Serializer.net, the critically acclaimed site for art comics on the web, is reassembling. These are the facts as we know them:

1) Expect your new serializer.net by the end of this month of October.

2) Serializerists of the future and their works of art include:

• Nick Bertozzi, As Yet Untitled Experimental Comics, then “Drop Ceiling”
• Matt Bors, “Idiot Box”
• Patrick Farley, “Apocamon: The Final Judgement”
• Matt Feazell, “Amazing Cynical Man!”
• Renée French, “micrographica”
• Jenny Gonzalez, “Too Negative”
• Merlin Goodbrey & Douglas Noble, “The Rule of Death”
• Tom Hart, “Hutch Owen”
• Sam Henderson, “The Magic Whistle”
• Jonathan Larabie, “The Minibar Bill”
• Phil McAndrew, “Bean” and/or “Hug the Cactus”
• Metaphrog “Louis - Lying to Clive”
• Eric Millikin, “Fetus-X”
• Jen Sorensen, “Slowpoke”
• Casey Sorrow, “Feral Calf”
• Joda Thayer, “Few and Far Between”
• Jason Turner, “True Loves”
Approximately five other artists to be named later

3) Publisher’s Weekly refers to many of serializer’s artists as “art comics favorites” and “critical darlings.” London’s Sunday Times has called serializer “high art,” and The New York Times thought some of our comics were “Well drawn and funny.” The Comics Journal found some Serializer comics to be “daring, entertainingly perverse” while The Guardian found artwork on serializer that “threatens to seriously tamper with one’s smug equilibrium.”

4) Questions? E-mail ericmillikin-at-gmail-dot-com