Month: November 2006

Justin Pierce is stopping Kilroy & Tina – a very funny comic about an alien and a young girl that is currently running on Graphic Smash. It doesn't sound like burnout so much as the realization that K&T as currently structured could take years to finish.

K&T is often very funny and as a premise, it's excellent. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems very original.) It's entirely possible after a break, Pierce will find another way to return to the project.

Fleen catches that it's also the end of Ali Graham’s HOUSD.

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Winter McCloud interviews Rich Stevens (Diesel Sweeties). Each "winterview" is a videocast interview conducted by Scott McCloud's daughter Winter and edited by his older daughter Sky.

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A recurring comment that popped up in discussions about the announcement of the new animated PvP series was whether or not Scott Kurtz was being hypocritical for embracing almost in total a project and business plan that he had criticized previously when rival videogame webcomic creator Tim Buckley had launched Ctrl-Alt-Del: The Animated Series.

I expected Buckley to post some kind of comment but blogger Gilead Pellaeon beat him to it:

Ok. Not to rag on Scott Kurtz or anything, but someone's got to say it. We've seen lots of announcement posts, some discussion, and a somewhat tangential piece by Eric Burns on voice acting, and people have been dancing around the topic, so I'm just going to come right out and say it:

Scott Kurtz is a hypocritical man and he's ripping Tim Buckley off.

It's a gross oversimplification of actual events, completely one-sided, and a half-truth at best, but someone had to say it.

Is Kurtz being hypocritical? Arguably yeah. Should anyone care? Probably not so much. People can change their minds, people can be inconsistent over time. Would it be better to acknowledge a change in opinion or if possible explain the differences between this PvP project and the CAD project that inspired so much criticism? Probably, but it's understandable why talking about CAD wouldn't be the first thing on Kurtz's mind yesterday.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Joey Manley is migrating WebcomicNation to a new server set up. Creators will have a brief window where they can't update although there should be no downtime for readers.
• FLEEN has an interview with Spike, creator of Templar, Arizona.
• Comics Worth Reading comments on a post from Gisèle Lagacé, artist of the terrific webcomic Penny and Aggie, about trying out for Archie. They're still publishing Archie?
• Eric Burns on the animated PvP The Series and appreciation for voice acting. Well one voice actor in particular but a theme of his post (I do recall some of my English schoolin') is how our oh-so-rational society often overvalues celebrity versus actual talent.
• Gabe and Tycho review the new videogame platforms at Wired. Gabe art abounds.
• Lost in the hubbub yesterday: Kris Straub has a new site featuring comics and blogging: Halfpixel.

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This is what I get for waking up early to write the news this morning. About 8:00 AM today Scott Kurtz announced that he's launching an animated version of PvP in conjunction with Blind Ferret Entertainment, the company that is already producing the animated Ctrl-Alt-Del series. Kris Straub will also have a big hand in the series as co-producer and co-writer. (hat tip to Fleen for the quick write-up of this story.)

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NEWS

• The New York Times covers DC Comics’ latest attempt to expand beyond it’s core demographic for superhero comics. The article discusses DC’s planned launch in 2007 of a new series of titles under the Minx label aimed at young women. Newsarama fills in the rest of the creative line-up:
  • Novelist Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof) and artist Jim Rugg (Street Angel), on The P.L.A.I.N. Janes
  • Clubbing, by Andi Watson (Geisha, Love Fights) and Josh Howard (Dead@17);
  • Good as Lily, by Derek Kirk Kim (Same Difference and Other Stories) and Jesse Hamm (Comics to Bore and Confuse You);
  • Re-Gifters, which reunites the My Faith in Frankie team of Mike Carey, Sonny Liew and Marc Hempel.

• Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub announce PVP: Animated, a monthly series launching in February 2007. They have also posted a new Blamimation! episode titled Hallway Hijinks.

MILESTONES

• Happy Birthday!? to Jon Rosenberg, creator of the hilarious comic, Goats. Apparently, I was half-asleep when I wrote this morning. Happy 33rd Birthday + 2000 Episode of Goats!

INTERVIEWS

• An interview with Jeff Knooran, the creator of A Murder Of Crows.
• A podcast interview with the creators in the Act-I-Vate collective.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• Rob Balder: Eternal optimist…

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• The Comics Reporter links to this scan of an official U.S. government comic book about President John F. Kennedy.
• The Comics Reporter posts a "holiday shopping guide" for comics. Interesting picks…
• Drawn! links to a great multi-step painting tutorial from Bob MacNeil. He covers everything from the initial planning stages and composition to painting and software methods and tips.
• Webcomics In Print rounds up the latest webcomic books. Git along li”l webcomic doggies!

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On most some Sundays on her Narbonic webcomic site, Shaenon Garrity has featured a sort of companion piece to the main comic – a Victorian age tale featuring characters similar to the Narbonic comic titled "The Astonishing Excursions of Helen Narbon & Co., or A Trip to the Moon." Today seems to be the last installment. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to read just the Victorian age comics in order but it's worth it. They're charming and the comic as a whole would be worthy of a main project for most cartoonists.

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REVIEWS

• I might have linked to this before, but this is a good review of Scott McCloud's book, Making Comics with a scan of the very interesting page on primary and secondary expressions.

LEGAL

• This video, titled The Disney Trap, features a discussion on how copyright prevents creators from telling new stories about old characters.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Everyone is linking to Chris Ware's "variant" covers for the current New Yorker issue. This comic book marketing gimmick feels a bit less gimmicky in this instance given that it's Chris Ware and the New Yorker, but c'mon… do we really want a world of variant covers of issues of People or Sports Illustrated?
• Boing BOing caught this photo from a 2003 exhibit – a setting of sculptures of superheroes in old age called The Hospice. Cool, weird and total dork-i-tude all in one. Click here for close up photos of the exhibit.
• From the blog Your Mom's Basement comes this Jack Chick-ish comic about Marvel's Eater-Of-Worlds, Galactus.
• Fast Film by Virgil Widrich, is a very interesting piece of animation that uses snippets of famous films to create a sort of moving collage. Cartoon Brew posted this 2003 project here and it's worth seeing (given it's likely conflict with current copyright law it's possible it won't be available forever).
• Finkbot demonstrates how to create an "Art Bot" out of a small motor, batteries, paper cup and markers. It does sound like a cool project for kids to do. Maybe it could also be the conceit for a webcomic 🙂 (If you need to make a motor here's a page on how to make a simple motor from a wire, battery and screw.)
• How to make a mini comic from one sheet of paper.
• A scan of Disney artist Carson Van Osten's Comic Strip Artist's Kit. This is a really good primer to practical problems and fixes for comic strips.
• Can you make an alphabet from scratch? How about in an hour? Here's Ape Lad's effort. (I had to do this as an assignment in college – my final is too big to scan in, but I did it around the oil spill at Huntington Beach, California.)

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Post-Turkey Day looks like slim pickin's for news but here's what we've got:

Not to stir the Most Read Project pot more (plenty of discussion in the thread on the subject of measuring webcomic readership here) but every webcomic host that publishes some kind of "popular" list is another potential data point for the project. This Drunk Duck list is described as "most read strips for the past seven days" (there is a second DD list for "story" comics):

• Elijah and Azuu
• supahnariobros
• Elijah and Azuu Classic
• Life and Death
• Grog
• Culture Shock
• No Need for Bushido Remix
• Mixed Bag Comics
• kirby supah star
• Bird and Worm

UPDATE: I have to believe, based on a long tradition of Little Gamers mocking Comixpedia, that this strip was inspired by our recent discussion of measuring webcomics' audience size.

SOME WEBCOMICS I READ THIS MORNING

• Lucid TV really deserves a spot on the Most Offensive webcomics poll we're running this month. Brutally-funny, medically-flavored comedy.
• Michael LaLonde's Ornery Boy probably is the only webcomic featuring a zombie MC. Today's strip is one of the funnier raps he's penned for the strip.
• Guest month at Todd and Penguin with comics from guest creators such as Jamie Robertson (Clan of the Cats), Phil Cho (Skinny Panda), and Paul Southworth (Ugly Hill).
• If you changed the color of the splotch of lipstick red on Clango's chin and neck in today's Diesel Sweeties to black, you'd have Clango's evil twin brother Bango. Well it could happen!…

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• The San Francisco Society of Illustrators & AIGA San Francisco in conjuction with the Academy of Art Institute presents "Pixar Under the Hood: The Making of Cars" on Friday, December 1 at 7pm at the Morgan Auditorium in San Fransisco. More details at the Drawn! blog.
• Brinkerhoof has collected The Zoo into dead tree form. More details here.
• An animated version of Maakies is coming to the Adult Swim lineup.
• Check out the latest installment of Lighten Up!, the spoof version of Shades.
• A new Gigcast is up.
• UPDATE: Fleen apparently subscribes to Wizard magazine – check out this nice writeup of five webcomics that Gary scanned in.

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Just a heads up: posting will be low through the rest of the week. Be sure to check out the user blogs for updates!

The turkey day image is from A.P. Furtado (you can check out his comic Elf N' Troll every Monday and Wednesday).

NEWS

• FLEEN attended the Scott McCloud Magical Mystery Tour as it stopped in NYC and wrote up the experience.
• Aaron MacGruder: If Boondocks comic comes back, it'll be online.

INTERVIEW

• (UPDATE) Fi-Sci website interviews the creators of Alpha Shade.

DEAD TREES

• McKenzee is making another Sinister Bedfellows anthology: this time it's children's stories (poems too). Click here for more details.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• Andrew Farago (curator of the Cartoon Art Museum, frequent Narbonic guest artist, and Mr. Shaenon Garrity) has started a webcomic: The Chronicles of William Bazillion.
• It's the return of WIGU: Jeff Rowland writes that "It's basically what happened in WIGU the week before the WIGU you know.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• FLEEN has a 47 count comment thread that is largely about whether or not there is a webcomics community. Even Corie Marie Kitley shows up!

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It's the second week of Bomb Shelter Idol. Last week I sang the praises of the fast-paced, buddy-comedy/vampire flick webcomic, Zed Reckoning.

This week I want to highlight a completely different webcomic called What Birds Know. What Birds Know is also incredibly well-rendered with a lot of obvious thought given to the characters, the backgrounds, the "camera angles". It's also well laid-out on the page (each installment is about 660 by 930 pixels which provides enough space to make panel arrangement important). The story of three girls out on an adventure certainly has a much more measured pace then Zed but it doesn't drag even as you read through the fairly solid archives. In fact, Birds seems confident in its pace and its careful layering of foreshadowing and tension is enough to build to what could be a big pay-off. Could be. I have no idea what is going to happen next, but I'm definitely hooked.

So far it looks like both Zed and Birds are safe with the voters in the Bomb Shelter Idol contest. I hope we keep it that way as both of these are great comics in their own ways.

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