On Webcomic Beacon #81, Melissa Kaercher (Tin Lizard Productions) joins Fes, Tanya, and Mark to discuss Fonts and Lettering. Melissa had also drawn this week’s cover art (see the whole thing in our Art Section!)  Font resources discussed, include: Your Fonts custom font creator tool, Ninja Lettering, High-Logic FontCreator, ComicCraft, Blambot, 1001 Free Fonts, Darwinatrix, and identifont.

Shaenon [Garrity] is self-publishing the first volume of Skin Horse, and she's getting a submission packet together for Diamond Comics Distributors. This is a line from their submission guidelines: 

If you publish comics, Diamond generally receives a discount in the range of 60-70% off the US retail (cover) price.

If we offer a 70% discount, I'm sure that Diamond is more likely to consider listing Skin Horse in their catalog, but we'll only get $4.20 per copy sold (minus whatever shipping costs we incur getting the books to Diamond). If we offer a 60% discount, we'll make $5.60 per copy sold -- still not great, since we're self-publishing this, but I always prefer making more money instead of less money when possible.

So, the question is: Is offering a 70% discount going to greatly improve our chances of getting listed in Diamond's catalog? Is only offering a 50% discount a guarantee that they won't even look at the book and will automatically reject it?

So many pink comic bunnies to see…

It's that time again. I talk about the quick pitch or the high concept in my latest article over at Comic Related. Check it out!

I wanted to express some thoughts about the history of comics.  Please keep in mind that I am not a comic historian.  What I am is someone who has read comics since childhood and continues to do so in my adult life.  I am writing this history based on my experiences. 

First and foremost (to me) comics are a visual medium.  Even before I could read the words I remember pouring over the illustrations on the covers.  My cousin Charlie always had tons of comics that his Mom gave away when we visited.  She would let my brother and I take stacks of comics home.  This was late sixties early seventies.  Lots of great Marvel stuff.  After a while I got to know the artist’s names like:  Jack “King” Kirby; “Big” John Buscema; Gil “Sugarlips” Kane; Don Heck;  Gene Colan and Neal Adams.  These were my first art instructors. 

Brian Carroll, the artist behind Instant Classic, is in Florida right now working on his first feature film, Natalie, Queen of Scots.  

I'm reporting live from the production house, since Brian was nice enough to bring me in all the way from Korea to help out. Brian's even using a webcomic to help finance the film.

It's been an important couple of days around here. First of all, I turned in SMILE this morning! The whole thing is colored and ready to print, and I couldn't be more pleased with the way it turned out.

I also discovered yesterday that you can pre-order a copy on Amazon! (Book's not out till February, but if you order now it'll ship when it's in stock.) Paperback or Hardcover.

It's Wednesday and that means it's July.  We'll have new art from Isabel Marks up top of the site there for July sometime this evening.  Also you all already read webcomics.com, right? Well one more reason to add it to your daily feed - that site just got a website design refresh, plus it now bills Brad Guigar as "editor-in-chief".  Good stuff!

AWARDS
There was a lot of hubbub yesterday about the nominees for the Harveys, including this story on how Gemstone publishing provided pre-filled in ballots for its employees in past years.  The Harveys, like the WCCAs, rely on counting up nominations for comics to determine the list of nominees for each category.  How many people participate is really important to the strength of the award.  I don't think the Harvey's released that information - but if anyone knows the number of votes for nominees please forward it on to me.  On this note Johanna Draper Carlson offers her tips for fixing the Harveys.  UPDATE: Tom Spurgeon pens an essay on why The Harvey awards should pack it in.

Also just in - Reuben Bolling just won just won the 2009 AAN Award for the Best Cartoon in Alternative Newsweeklies for his comic Tom the Dancing Bug.

INTERVIEWS
Newsarama has an interview with another Zuda cartoonist - this time it's Andy Belanger.  His comic strip Bottle of Awesome started this week.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
James Duncan's adaptation of The Decemberists' "The Mariner's Revenge Song" is all kinds of creepy awesome.

I just uploaded my webcomic on Saturday.

I'm going for a supernatural story that's serious but also makes fun of itself. The main character is deeply intwined in all of the things going on but his attitude is to look around at everyone else and point out how insane or stupid they all are. I'll be writing about all kinds of supernatural happenings as the protagonist meets and mocks them. Hopefully people will enjoy it and it should be interesting anyway.

The nominees for the 2009 Harvey Awards are out -- all comics creators (those who write, draw, ink, letter, color, design, edit or are otherwise involved in a creative capacity in the comics field) are eligible to vote for the award winners from now through August 8th.  Ballots for voting are available online here.  There are a lot of webcomic angles to the list of nominees this year, including the seven nominations for Jeff Kinney's Diary of A Wimpy Kid (a comic with a webcomic origin) and 10 noninations for John Gallagher's Buzzboy which also has it origins in an online version.

In the online category, the nominees include three comics on DC's Zuda website: BLACK CHERRY BOMBSHELLS, HIGH MOON, NIGHT OWLS, plus PVP, and LEAST I COULD DO.  Interestingly enough three webcomics from Zuda also received nominations for Best New Series: HIGH MOON, NIGHT OWLS, and SUPERTRON.  (Check out CBR's recent interview with High Moon artist Steve Ellis)

Least I Could Do artist Lar deSouza also snagged nominations for Best Cartoonist and in the Special Award for Humor in Comics.  David Malki! of Wondermark also got a nod in the Special Award for Humor category and another one in the SPECIAL AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN PRESENTATION category for his book WONDERMARK, VOL. 1: BEARDS OF OUR FOREFATHERS (which I own a copy of and agree is absolutely deserving of this recognition).

In the BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL OR JOURNALISTIC PRESENTATION category HOW TO MAKE WEBCOMICS, by Brad Guigar, Dave Kellett, Scott Kurtz, and Kris Straub received a nomination.  In the Best Anthology category, FLIGHT VOLUME 5, edited by Kazu Kibuishi received a nomination.