Today we launched our first original animated series from Next New Networks, Channel Frederator’s Meth Minute 39, by genius animator Dan Meth. The first episode — Internet People! — is a tribute to everyone who’s entertained all of us on the web the last couple of years. Here’s the whole story behind its birth, but what’s untold (for now) is the amazing support the NNN team gave Dan and company to make this thing internet-ubiquitous in less than 12 hours. We published at noon, and right now the video is already on the front of MySpace, YouTube, DailyMotion, climbing on Digg, and embedded on dozens of sites and blogs… and I feel like it’s just getting started.

Hope you like it, and stay tuned for more episodes of Meth Minute 39, coming soon. Believe me, they actually get better than this one.

http://www.InternetPeople.tv

p.s., If your first thought was, “This is just like We Didn’t Start the Fire,” congratulations, you’re officially old.

(cross-posted from the NNN Blog)

A Comicbook Orange is a comic book review show on Pulp Secret by our friends Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan (Galacticast), which I blogged about the other day. Feedback on the first episode so far has been great, and Rudy and Casey have been really building some great word of mouth — you can join an official Facebook group, find A Comicbook Orange on MySpace, and they’ve even built a cool site for the show where people can submit their own reviews.

Check it out below, and if you’re looking for more good comics to read, let us know what you’d like to see more of on A Comicbook Orange.

On a side note, this is also the first time we’ve put out an episode in a widescreen ratio — if you try to view the show fullscreen on the site, or download the iTunes-compatible file, you’ll see what we mean. It’s the little things that sometimes get us pumped.

Smith Mag is currently putting out another online graphic novel (after last year’s astounding Shooting War) called A.D., dealing with the survivors of Katrina and its aftermath. It’s a must-read, and Ana from Pulp Secret went down to talk to everyone involved — here’s the video.

Fred Seibert, one of my partners at Next New, let a pretty amazing thing slip the other day — that over at his other company, Frederator Studios, he’s making the new Castlevania movie with none other than Warren Ellis and James Jean.

The funny part was how I found out: in one of our regular, free-wheeling meetings where we talk about creative, I was showing him the mini-social network recently set up on Ning for members of Ellis’ message board, The Engine, as an example of an easy way to create basic community features around a show (which, by the way, our friends at JETSET just did) and Fred did a bit of a double take, and said, “Warren Ellis? I’m making a movie with him!”

Apparently Fred had no idea I’m a fan of Ellis’ writing and part of the loose (and large) community of people whom he’s pulled together on places like The Engine and the Bad Signal mailing list. And it wasn’t until Fred blogged about it tonight that I checked out the Castlevania production blog Ellis is writing and saw that James freaking Jean is providing art direction. This is the sort of thing I could completely geek out over, despite the fact that I missed Castlevania as a game growing up — hopefully, by knowing Fred, I’ll get a peek at the process every once in a while.

It’s hard to resist just turning this blog into a place where I embed all the Next New Networks show episodes (hmm, maybe we should do that somewhere on a separate blog and feed, for the people who would want it).

That said, it’s really hard not to do it on Fridays, as each Thread Heads and Pulp Secret Report gets better and better, and both deserve a much wider audience. I’m buckling to the impulse today, and embedding them both here.

In Friday’s Thread Heads, we visit Etsy Labs and Bre from Make Magazine.

In Friday’s Pulp Secret Report, we have the usual comics insanity.

Hope you like ‘em. Anything you’d like to see, please email the shows or leave a comment on the site. We’ll be happy to listen.

We’re having a lot of fun producing promos for our networks (like my favorite so far, “Bill Hayes,” now playing on PulpSecret). I got a kick out of this one today, though — a promo for Fast Lane Daily, our car news show, based on the popular Line Rider videos.

Rob and Corinne, featured above, were the first people to walk into Next New Networks to meet with us about a show, and I couldn’t be happier that they were the first people to launch on one of our networks. Anchoring ThreadBanger, our network for people who make their own fashion, Rob and Corinne have put up three great episodes of Thread Heads so far, and I really look forward to seeing each new one come in.