Month: August 2010

One Page from Freewheel, by Liz Baillie

Alexander Danner Leave a Comment

I’ve been very much enjoying Liz Baillie’s Freewheel, a sort of Alice’s Adventures in Hobo-Wonderland, about a runaway foster child named Jamie on a quest to find her missing older brother, Jack.  At the moment, Jamie is lost in a series of tunnels, which can only be traversed by following a series of arcane rules that no one has taken the time to explain to her.  As a result, she is now at the mercy of Wrigley and Chewbie, a pair of odd, but seemingly well-meaning tunnel guides, who insist that Jamie must be blindfolded (more seemingly-arbitrary rules) if they are to help her find the next gate along her way.

Here’s a page from the blindfold sequence:

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Otakon 2010 Part 2

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In addition to having a lot of webcomic creators in the artist alley, Otakon 2010 had a number of webcomic-related events. While Otakon doesn't formally invite webcomic people as guests, it does let us be panelists and workshop leaders and large group of attendees (almost 30,000 this year!) makes it a great place. This part covers two of the webcomic events held that weekend: Iron Artist by Jessi Bavolack and Happy Hyper Hentai Drawing Party by some of the girls from FilthyFigments.com.

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Advice for Writers: Write What You Know (Because Learning Something New Would be TERRIBLE.)

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“Write What You Know” is probably the most common advice writers receive, so much so that it is accepted wisdom; and yet this is quite possibly the worst advice ever given to a writer.  Here is what I understand this advice to mean: writers should be lazy and ignorant, and we should never, ever challenge ourselves to try to understand people who aren’t ourselves.

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Advice for Writers: Write Every Day. Or Don’t. Either Way, Really.

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One of the standard bits of advice that gets trotted out for writers, whether in writing workshops, or seminars, or just at author Q&As, in response to the inevitable “what advice would you give a young writer” question is this: write very day.  Set aside a particular block of time each day, during which you will write.  Even if you have no ideas, you will write.  Even if every sentence you type is worse than the last, you will write.  Treat it like it’s your job, because it is, and if you give into letting yourself off the hook because you don’t have an idea one day, you will inevitably do the same the next, and the day after that, and so on, ad infinitum.

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Webcomics in Germany

Max Vaehling Leave a Comment

In my first post, I called webcomics in Germany “a fringe experience”. If that makes it sound like there isn’t much going on out here in terms of webcomics and that we’re a little behind on things, I can assure you – about half of that is exaggerated.

It’s not like we don’t have good and popular webcomics. Quite a lot, actually, including several Internationally-known titles. If you’ve been around in the scene, you might well know Arne Schulenberg’s superhero photo comic Union of Heroes, Sarah Burrini’s semi-(if you don’t count the talking mushroom and the jazz-loving elephant, or maybe, what do I know)autobiographical Life Ain’t no Pony Farm or Sandra and Woo by Powree and Oliver Knörzer (which makes it only half-German, actually – Powree is from Indonesia). Maybe you remember demian5’s ‘Classic’ When I Am King, from way back when Infinite Canvasses were all the rage. (Actually, demian5 is Swiss. But when I say ‘German’, I usually mean the language rather than the nationality. It’s really a small scene as is.)

If you’re looking for new German-language titles, Das Webcomic-Verzeichnis is a good place to start. It lists more than 200 titles, both old and new, cartoon and long-form. You might also want to check web 2.0 platforms like MyComics, toonsUp and Comicstars.
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Science Comics Adapted by Ariyana Suvarnasuddhi from the Writing of Mary Roach

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Found via Boing Boing, illustrator Ariyana Suvarnasuddhi has adapted two short sequences from the books of pop-science author Mary Roach.  The newer piece, taken from Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, details the stages of human decomposition, juxtaposed against a trip to a sushi restaraunt.  It's a great way of evoking the unsettling images of human decomposition without actually showing the literal process.

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Interview: Jim Ottaviani

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[Note: The following interview was conducted in July 2009, but has not previously been published.]

Since the 1997 release of his first graphic novel, Two-Fisted Science, writer, librarian, and one-time nuclear engineer Jim Ottaviani, has been telling compelling stories about the lives and work of scientists.  He’s written about everything from J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work on the atomic bomb (Fallout, 2001), to Hedy Lamarr’s invention of an early “frequency hopping” communication sytem (Dignifying Science, 2003), to  Harry Harlow’s investigations into the necessity of love (Wire Mothers, 2007).  Along the way, he’s worked with more than two dozen artists, including Donna Barr, Roberta Gregory, Roger Langridge, Steve Lieber, Dylan Meconis, Linda Medley, and many others.

His eighth and most recent book, T-Minus: The Race to the Moon, illustrated by Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon, relates the dual stories of the US and Soviet space programs through the late 1950s and 1960s, as they competed to be first to the lunar surface.  But true to form, Ottaviani’s telling of the story focuses less on the astronauts who made the journey than on the engineers and rocket scientists who made the journey possible.

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Otakon 2010 Part 1

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One of my favorite things about Otakon is that, as the largest anime convention on the east coast, it attracts a lot of webcomic creators. I always love seeing familiar faces and meeting new attendees. This part will focus on some of the webcomic creators who were at Otakon, many of whom are also members of the Create a Comic Project.

But wait there's more! This post also has one of the best costume team-ups ever photographed!

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Continued Introductions

Max Vaehling Leave a Comment

My turn! Hello there, guest blog readers! I’m Max Vähling, one of your guest hosts this week, and I’m guest posting this to introduce myself and get aqquainted with the Comixtalk tech. The last time I posted here, it all looked quite different, that’s how long ago that was. Also, I didn’t post to the front page.

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