Month: June 2010

Sean Collins has an "aha" moment reading a recent interview with Meredith Gran, creator of Octopus Pie.  Yeah, webcomics has its own center of gravity and there's a whole generation of creators and readers who've grown up in that gravity well.

CONVENTION: Brigid Alverson files a report on the recent annual American Library Association meeting — lots of graphic novels in the mix.

INTERVIEW: The Avoid the Future blog (great name for a blog!) interviews Box Brown on the release of his third Everything Dies book. (h/t Journalista!)

REVIEWS: El Santo covers Wendy Pini's Masque of the Red Death and Lauren Davis reviews The Meek.

HYPE: Justin Madson just released the fifth book in his self-published Breathers series – it's available at his website. Below is a short trailer for the series (dramatizing a scene from the first book) which has shots of the comic interspersed in the live action.

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A quick update this AM.  First — MTV Splashmeister and all-around purveyor of quality journalism, Rick Marshall, is helming the helm at USA Today's Pop Candy blog this week.  Be sure to check it out! 

AROUND THE BLOGS!

• FLEEN praises cartoonist Darryl Cunningham who popped into the news recently with an investigative comic on the history of the debunked study linking autism and childhood vaccination and is now back with another comic dealing with the subject of homeopathy.
• THE BEAT looks at book bloggers reviews of graphic novels.  Apparently book bloggers had a "Graphic Novel Challenge 2010" and many of them were reading comics for the first time.
• Lauren Davis writes about "what I've learned from print comics" which mixes and matches some web versus dead tree practices.  Interesting read.
• Comic Riffs writes about how Lincoln Pierce (Big Nate) mentored Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) early on and later Kinney helped get Pierce a Big Nate game on kid's site Poptropica.com — which Pierce credits with leading to his first book deal for Big Nate.  The book Big Nate: In a Class by Himself has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 11 straight weeks.

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I wanted to hit this DC-area event with Mike Rhode, Andrew Cohen, Evan Keeling (DC Conspiracy), Ben Claassen, Shannon Gallant and Matt Wuerker, but during the World Cup: futbol first, comics second.  Check out Comic Girl's write-up of the panel and Mike Rhodes' comments here. I was also going to turn this site black for a couple of weeks to mourn Team America's loss to Ghana but that's probably taking it too far (plus, you know, it'd be more work!).

INTERVIEW:  The Washington Post has an interview with Tracy White on her new graphic novel memoir, How I Made It To Eighteen.

CODEPRESS:  In the land of webcomic mods of Wordpress, we've had updates from ComicPress and Webcomic/Inkblot recently, but not from stripShow.  I did see this recent announcement from MangaPress that it does work with Wordpress 3.0.  Those are the four main Wordpress-for-webcomic packages I'm aware of – but let me know if I'm overlooking a worthy alternative.

CRAFT

• Ed Piskor, creator of the comic Wizzywig, has a great post on comic panels that show both the cause and effect of an action.  This is harder to pull off well than it looks.
• More tutorials on using Manga Studio from Lincy Chan.

DEAD TREES ON THE HORIZON

• Captain Excelsior by Zach Weiner and Chris Jones.  This was a very funny spin on superhero comics but basically a FOX sitcom at heart.
• Fantagraphics is going to put out a book collecting Drew Weing's Set To Sea.  It's a masterful comic from Weing and I'm really looking forward to getting it in print.

AROUND THE BLOGS

• Comics Worth Reading plugs Rick Smith's webcomic, Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery as "an attractive strip about two guys who ride a lot and run a bicycle shop…. Since I’m not a cyclist, I like the strips about stupid customers best, since I can better relate to those, but there’s also some lovely mood work and some funny cycling and recycling gags."  You may remember Smith from his Shuck comics.
• Apparently Morgan "Supersized" Spurlock is making a documentary about Comic-Con.  Bleeding Edge posts a call from Spurlock for people interested in being in it.

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Hey it's Friday — let's do this thing and then blow this popsicle stand!

HYPEY MCHYPE: I've been meaning to link Lost in Comics for awhile now — a very nice comic inspired by the now-ended teevee series Lost. I really like the art from JJ Harrison on this.

DEAD TREES: Dylan Meconis shows off the book version of her webcomic Family Man.

CODE:  Frumph, the lead programming developer for ComicPress is going to appear at the Intervention convention to host panels and hands-on workshops for CSS, WordPress, and ComicPress set up and tweaking.

BUSINESS: The Daily Cartoonist reports that 8 newspaper cartoonists have created a website together.  The eight cartoonists are: Tom Batiuk (Funky Winkerbean), Dave Coverly (Speed Bump), Greg Evans (Luanne), Peter Guren (Ask Shagg), Jeff Keane (The Family Circus), Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues), Mike Luckovich (editorial cartoonist/Atlanta Journal Constitution) and Jerry Scott (Baby Blues, Zits).

FROM THE MAILBAG

• Paul Dwyer writes that he has two new books coming out collecting his experimental comics. Full previews of both books (and links to where to purchase) are available at Comex Books: Comics Experiments features various short comics stories, ranging from one page abstract pieces to the thirty-page "Omega", a comic based on images from old public domain movies; and Codex Optica, volume 1 collects the first arc of Dwyer's ongoing webcomic which consists of a progressively changing five-by-five grid of photographic images.  Dwyer is also the creator of the webcomics I Shot Roy!.
• Chuck Whelon writes that he's been illustrating board and card games for Minion Games including: Those Pesky Humans, Nile, Sturgeon, and Legitimacy. They'll be available for purchase in late July 2010.  Lots more details at Chuck blog here — including a way to get a 10% discount.  Chuck is the creator of the very funny, fantasy webcomic, Pewfell.
• Shaun Gardiner writes that the next part of The Boy with Nails for Eyes is available online. ComixTalk looked at the first chapter of this webcomic back in April.
• Sam Costello writes that Departing for the Third Heaven is now up at the Split Lip website.  It tells the tale of a cat given by one friend to another and the strange bond that cat develops with his new owner – one that extends beyond the grave.  The new webcomic in the Split Lip horror series was written by Sam Costello and drawn by Providence-based painter and illustrator Josie Morway.

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Bring on Ghana!  (Just an aside, I think a lot of cartoonists would get more work done if after every time they finished an excellent piece of work they heard something like this.)

FINAL FLIGHT IN SIGHT: Scott McCloud remembers buying the very first installment of the Flight anthology at SDCC in 2004. It really is an impressive roster of talent when you look back on the contributors to the entire series.  Looking forward to the seventh and final volume!

iWEBCOMIC: The Beat has a short post on the new DC Comics iPhone/Pad/Pod app. All the early reaction stuff is probably better spent just downloading and trying the dang thing — although I might wait until all bugs get squashed.

CONTEST: The Washington Post's comics blogger, Michael Cavna, announces the five finalists of his "Next Greatest Cartoonist" contest.

INTERVIEW: Graphic NYC has an interview with Nick Abadzis.

REVIEWS: Cory Doctorow with a positive review of David Malki!'s Dapper Caps & Peddle-copters.  El Santo reviews Bottle of Awesome. 

AROUND DEM BLOGS: The Beat links to an online posting of the Beasts of Burden story by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson.

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USA versus Algeria.  I'm not even sure this site gets any traffic from Algeria but regardless… go USA!

Let's start off with a bit of hypey mchype today.  Webcomics went through a phase of experimenting with comic-ness without necessarily worrying about the story or appeal of the comic and more lately maybe the impression is that expermentation is dead. Well I'm not sure, but when I do see someone smartly taking advantage of the web in webcomics without letting it get in the way of making a good comic I think we should pay attention.  So, Ornery Boy by Michael Lalonde which is really already a very funny comic – a sort of slacker version of the Adams Family (not really but that'd be my teevee pitch).  Lalonde actually uses Flash to add little bits of animatin' and other layered in stuff that adds to the comic without sacrificing the comicness of it.  Do you need the extras to enjoy the comic — probably not, but I guess you don't need color in comics either and yet…  Lalonde is using what could be just obnoxious experimental techniques in a very intregated way that completely serves a very funny and accomplished comic.  Check out these two recent installments: #432 and #431 for some examples of what I mean.

ARE ELECTRIC SHEEP A RENEWAL RESOURCE?  Remember when I kept reminding everyone to consider committing to Patrick Farley's KICKSTARTER drive so we could get him back to making webcomics?  Well it's bearing fruit — Scott McCloud blogged that Farley has started to re-serialize his groundbreaking comic The Spiders.  This alternate history of the Afghan war is fascinating.

CHASING THE TITANTIC:  Gene Weingarten is getting a big push from the Washington Post for his new comic strip Barney & Clyde.  He created it with his son and there was a nice story on their relationship.  Weingarten is actually usually pretty funny in his weekly column but I'm curious to see how that translates to the comics.  Still it looks like it's only getting launched in 3 papers?  There's something horribly, amusingly wrong with a corporately controlled artform (which comics strips in the newspaper definitely is) where a big corporation can't even properly launch a new product…

INDIE ROCK PETE I CHOOSE YOU!  Richard Stevens the 3rd asked YOU and maybe you for questions for his Diesel Sweeties characters to answer in a comic.

THE ADVENTURES OF HANNAH SOLO:  Lucy Knisley's sorta-journal, sorta-musing webcomic is quite good and the latest is great. I do think there seem to be more stories featuring girls doing things (as opposed to just going along for the ride or worse waiting around to be saved) but as a guy it wasn't until I had daughters that I really thought about how tilted the traditional roles in stories were towards guy=action and girl=inaction.  I hope comics is getting better.  From my webcomic perspective, it's actually pretty good.

OH PRETTY PICTURES!  Paul Taylor of Wapsi Square did a great bit of fan art for Mike Malhack's Cleopatra in Space webcomic.

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Can't let this pass without comment: Kate Beaton cartoon in The New Yorker!  

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Scenes From A  Multiverse.  Right now we're in the universe where Jon Rosenberg's new webcomic has been wanged, QC'd and pretty much loved by links to death.  But sooner or later it'll be up for your viewing pleasure.

UPDATED for TUESDAY: It's up, it's funny.  Rosenberg, freed from Goats continuity seems to be having a lot of fun so far with the new webcomic. And the gimmick of voting for which day's "story" to continue next week is a nice twist although I guess it'll take a few weeks to see how it works out in practice.

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Oh bad calls from referees… where would we be without you?  3-2 over Slovenia that's wat!  @#%!@$!

Milestone?:  Wow – a blast from the past: Mr. Furious is bringing Movie Comics back… after a seven year break!  New comics launch next week.

iWEBCOMICS: Brigid Alverson has an interview with Longbox CEO Rantz Hoseley on the public beta of the Longbox "digital comics distribution system" – the latest "itunes for comics" idea.  I've got this installed at home — decent program, but until there's content in it to buy and use, it's basically an overblown .cbz reader.

LEGAL: Storming the Tower blog reports that Dale Zak is bringing back his Web Comics iPhone app which caused a bit of controversy earlier this year.  I meant to write about this back then but never really got a chance to put together my thoughts.  One thing I will note now though is that I don't really agree with Lauren Davis' analysis that the Web Comics app was legal.  I'm not sure it's illegal either, but the nature of copyright and fair use is tricky and one needs to wade carefully through that thicket.  Start with looking at the terms of use of an RSS feed (if there is one)?  What does the law say in the absence of an explicit terms of use?  Is there a difference between consuming an RSS feed and republishing an RSS feed?  If you're going to rely on fair use as an affirmative defense to copying, how do the four factors of fair use shake out in this case (and do you need to apply it to every feed separately?).  There's also good reasons to ask whether regardless of the current law, is this a good thing or a bad thing (one might ask how does it impact incentives towards creative expression in the world) and whether or not independent creators should have a say over this kind of use.

Okay, class with Professor X is over (just call me Socratic Methodman).

FROM THE MAILBAG: Nicholas Dishington writes about his new webcomic Integration.  A photo comic often puts me off immediately but the photography is actually the strength of this creepy, dystopian comic.

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I want to point folks to the Webcomics Auction for the Gulf Coast organized by Carly Monardo.  The actual auction will launch in early July but webcomic artists can look into donating work for the auction now.

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