Blank Label Comics Podcast

I've never been a huge fan of podcasts, much like I've never been a huge fan of blogs. Just like writing a blog gives you the illusion that you're a legitimate journalist of some kind, it seems that recording a podcast makes people believe they have a radio show. It's all pretty ridiculous.

What is a podcast, anyways? It's just an mp3 file attached to an RSS feed. Oooooh... makes me feel all warm and snuggly inside. But people seem to flock to these "new technologies" like raccoons to bright shiny objects, and who am I to pronounce myself the "enlightened raccoon" who is above all this? Besides, I attended the San Diego Comicon this year, and my favorite part of the con was attending the three panel discussions about webcomics, each of which were basically like the equivalent of a radio show anyways, so I figured, maybe a webcomics podcast could be interesting.

So I checked out the most recent Blank Label Comics Podcast. I did it the old fashioned way, mind you, by simply downloading it off their site rather than setting up Itunes or whatever to receive the files as the RSS feed updated, but whatever. It caught my eye because they were interviewing Eric Burns of Websnark, and although I know he's been interviewed before (Digital Strips comes to mind), I've never bothered to actually listen to it.

And I've gotta say, it was pretty interesting. Eric Burns in real life sounds nothing like I expected him to (but who does, you know? You always imagine people having much more animated voices than they typically do), and the actual content of the show was nothing I hadn't heard before from reading Websnark (he even included the obligatory bashing of poor old Fred at Megatokyo, which made me smile), but just hearing the "trade talk", so to speak, between people in the webcomics community who basically qualify as "professionals" was enough to hold my attention. It reminded me a lot of the panels at the Comicon and why I enjoyed them so much. It gives you some insight into what these people deal with on a day to day basis, especially what Burns deals with as a critical commentator of a relatively new medium. It certainly gave me some insight into what readers are looking for and how to get people interested in what you do.

So while I don't really plan on making podcasts a part of my everyday life, I do see the allure of them. I suppose if you subscribed to enough podcasts that were actually good about updating on a regular basis, you could almost feel as if you were attending conventions every week and getting a chance to hear from the artists. And we all know that conventions are a lot of fun.

So check it out.