Scottmccloud.com Reboot
Scott McCloud gave his website a refresh and has started blogging again. Check it out already!
Month: February 2009
Comicbrush goes Rogue
Rogue Trooper, the genetically engineered super soldier from the pages of the sci-fi comic 2000 AD, has invaded Comicbrush.com.
Rogue’s dominance of Comicbrush coincides with the launch of ‘Rogue Trooper: Quartz Zone Massacre’ videogame on the Nintendo Wii, and together with the videogames publisher Ubisoft and 2000 AD, Comicbrush has announced a ‘create your own Rogue Trooper comic’ competition, with some fantastic prizes* up for grabs.
Anyone Want to do the March Cover For ComixTalk
If anyone is interested in doing the cover art for ComixTalk for March shoot me an email at xerexes AT gmail DOT com (or post a comment to this post). It’s the artwork that appears at the top of every page of the site (look up there!).
Two Non-Reviews: French Milk and The Arcade of Cruelty
I get books in the mail from time to time and I always make an effort to review them. Sometimes though I just can’t find a hook to the review or something I really want to say about the book which makes it hard to write a proper review. And then the books just sit there on my desk asking me "why!?" "why?!" until I either write the review or not. Hence the "non-review" (or maybe I"ll call them "unreviews").
The first book is French Milk by Lucy Knisley which is basically a diary of her six week stay in Paris. Knisley is clearly pretty talented, but I just didn’t connect with the book – I found it often disjointed and I didn’t feel like I got a handle on Knisley (as a character in the book) or her mother (who was also there during the stay in Paris). Maybe I was put off by the almost panel-less style of comic Knisley employs in the book. That plus the inclusion of photos of the trip made me feel more like I was reading her actual journal rather than a book about the trip (slim difference in the journal comic tradition perhaps but a difference I think worth noting).
I’m probably wrong – others loved the book – Whitney Matheson (who has pretty good pop comic tastes) called it "Wonderful". Other reviews include Andrew Wheeler at ComicMix; Laura Lutz at Pinot and Prose; and Marie at the Boston Biliophile.
The second book is The Arcade of Cruelty: A Tender Cry For Help In Words & Pictures, created by Joseph J.P. Larkin. This one is not really a comic (there are some comics in it though) so much as a scrapbook of various materials compiled together in one volume. It’s hard to describe — it’s either a huge goof (something Andy Kaufman would approve of) on any of its readers or if not maybe someone should be taking that cry for help part of the title seriously. Either way it’s an unusual take on autobiography (so there’s the parallel with journal comic French Milk — see I didn’t just match up these two books randomly!).
The book itself is extremely well put together in terms of production values but the contents inside feel like Larkin put in anything he could find in his files. Of course maybe he just wants us to think that he put in anything he could find in his files… As far as the comics part of it goes there are some funny riffs, albeit mean-spirited, on Chris Ware and some other famous cartoonists. Then there’s lots of other stuff…
Want another opinion? Some liked it, others didn’t — check out reviews by Rod Lott at Bookgasm, Kevin Bramer at Optical Sloth, and Paul Constant in The Stranger.
Help Ryan Estrada Get His Dream Job
You may have read about this job on the intertubes — Australia is looking for a "Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef" which is mostly a job that involves exploring the area and writing (and taping) a weekly blog about it. It’s a tourism promotion job in an area where the tourism is pretty adventurous (I just finished reading Bill Bryson’s book on Austrailia – who knew that continent had so many interesting, and novel!, ways to die) so if you know anything about Ryan Estrada you know he’s just perfect for the job.
Plus Ryan’s a pretty kick-ass cartoonist and an all-around nicest guy on the planet so he’s got that going for him too.
Go check out Ryan’s application here or watch his video below:
User Friendly and MetaFilter
I saw this on TechDirt recently – the denizens of MetaFilter caught several swipes of comments at MetaFilter turned into the punchlines of User Friendly comics. The actual MeFi thread is pretty long, and checking out some of the cited examples — it appears that creator J.D. "Illiad" Frasier has deleted several of the comics in his archives as a result (he admits to some of the plagerism in the MeFi thread).
I have no doubt that people accidentally regurgitate punchlines all the time but it’s a pretty bad idea to copy nearly verbatim from others without permission — putting aside any copyright issues, as TechDirt points out it’s going to hurt your reputation.
500 Episodes of Applegeeks
Congrats to Hawk and Ananth for reaching the 500 comic milestone for Applegeeks. Great strip, AMAZING art.
The Return of Todd & Penguin
Dave Wright’s Todd and Penguin is back from an unannounced semi-hiatus with a special mystery guest artist penning new strips for the next month. The comic, which returned last week is kicking things off with a contest. The first eight people to guess who the mystery artist is and email the strip’s creator, David Wright (email link found at website), will get a free autographed original comic drawn by the mystery artist. Continue Reading
Waltz With Bashir
Waltz With Bashir (subtitled "A Lebanon War Story") by Ari Folman and David Polonsky is a graphic novel adaptation of the animated film of the same name. I have not seen the film yet (although I fully intend to – the trailer looks quite intense). Ari Folman, wrote, produced, and directed the animated documentary and wrote this graphic novel version as well. David Polonsky was the art director and chief illustrator for the movie from which the art in the comic comes from (it’s not entirely clear whether the images in the book are altered in any way from their appearance in the movie). It is Folman’s own story and it appears it is a pretty faithful attempt to chronicle his attempts to fill in his memories of his own military service in the Israel-Lebanan war.
Tales from Shaun Tan
Tales from Outer Suburbia is the latest book from uber-talented artist Shaun Tan, following his wordless graphic novel, The Arrival. Tan is not really an experimental cartoonist – these are highly satisfying books that don’t really feel like they’re pushing formalist boundaries and yet his two books each refuse to stay within the expectations of the "graphic novel" format. I’m not sure Scott McCloud would concede that either one is actually a comic!
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