Archive - Aug 2008
Happy Labor Day
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 31, 2008 - 21:57
Time to wrap up the August issue and launch the September issue. Happy Labor Day and good luck to those returning to school this week (or even if you're already there!). Our cover art this month is from J.
Sugar Bits, reviewed by Larry "El Santo" Cruz
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I have never met the man named Bleedman, but I imagine that if I met him in real life, he'd be bursting with an epic amount of jittery energy. Like his veins are filled with an unholy combination of Vault, Red Bull, Pop Cola, and Nestle Crunch. His anime-insired drawings are always kinetic ... maybe even hyperkinetic, threatening to throw Newton's First Law of Motion to the ground. An object at rest doesn't stay at rest, boy-ee! With that in mind, you'd think that Sugar Bits, a webcomic about sugar, treats, and mountains of candy would be right up his alley.
Surreal Estate
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I tend to stick to my comfort zone when it comes to webcomics. Reading about a new one here or on one of the other review sites, if I'm not familiar with the creator or if it doesn't sound a little like something I already read, I'm sorry to say that I'm not all that likely to go and take a look. Unadventurous: that's me.
So I'm very glad I took a chance three-and-a-half years ago and signed up for the Daily Grind Contest. It's introduced me to a whole group of comics from my fellow competitors that I doubt I would ever have known about otherwise, and I'd like to mention three of them at some length here -- Trains of Thought by Stephen Burrell (his Livejournal page is at http://stephenwastaken.livejournal.com), Tartpop by Phil Redmon (his Livejournal page at http://destro-simpson.livejournal.com), and Young Adventure Friends by Billis, a.k.a. Bela Whigimill.
August 27th
Awakening Comics #0 by Steve Peters, reviewed by Xaviar Xerexes
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Back in January of this year, I reviewed Runner's Paradox by Steve Peters. I think it's fair to say I didn't love it. Very recently, I received a review copy of Peters' newest book, Awakening Comics #0. You can read a preview of it here.
The Return of Rob Hanes
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Randy Reynaldo is back with another issue of his all ages adventure comic, Rob Hanes Adventures. Issue 11 is titled "Rob Hanes and the Pirates" and is a quick-paced adventure story putting the main character Rob Hanes through an adventure in a thinly veiled version of North Korea and its movie-obsessed dictator. There's a preview up at ComicSpace here.
Visiting Phoenix and Tucson the week of September 15th
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 27, 2008 - 15:15
I may be in Phoenix the first half of the week of Sept. 15th and in Tucson the later half of the week.
Who out there lives in Arizona and might want to meet up to talk comics and pop culture?
WOWIO NON-PAYMENT Rumors
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 27, 2008 - 14:30
Well take with a grain of salt, but ComicList noticed some twittering that WOWIO hadn't made its second quarter payments ot creators. If true, well, that's not a good sign...
APPLE SAYS NYET! TO MURDERDROME
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 27, 2008 - 10:16
Lots of coverage of Apple banning a comic from distribution thruough iTunes (even more links to stories on it at the comic publisher's site here). Apple says the content can't "offend" but The Register correctly notes that Apple doesn't seem to apply the same standards to movies or tv shows (and I'll add music as well). The comic called Murderdrome was put out by Infurious Comics (and is available at their website now if you're curious at to it's "offensive" content)..
TechRadar has an interview with the creators -- England-based Al Ewing and Belfast-based Paul J Holden, where they seem to be asking Apple to adopt some kind of rating system. I have no idea if that's a good idea or not at this point but given the iPod/iPhone dominance these days, it's troubling to me that Apple is setting itself up as a censor for comics content on a platform that potentially could be huge if handled right. (Although Charlie Sorrel at Wired says no thanks to comics on the iPhone. h/t Journalista!)
I exchanged emails with Tim Demeter, the Editor-In-Chief of iPod/iPhone comics pubhlisher Clickwheel this morning, asking about how Clickwheel's model was different and if he had any reaction to the story. Here's his comment:
Clickwheel's iPhone App is a free reader while our content is sold via the Clickwheel site, not the App Store, so it's a different set of rules. The truth is, the App Store is something new for all involved and everyone still seems to be feeling out what can be done - including Apple. Either way, I'm confident Apple will ultimately resolve this situation. Anything that helps them sell iPods is in their best interests and there's a big cross over between the comic reading and gizmo buying audiences so I wouldn't expect this to be an issue for long.
August 26th
Interview with DC's Paul Levitz
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 26, 2008 - 15:33
Publisher's Weekly has an interview with Paul Levitz of DC on the digital future of comics. Nothing particularly revealing in it although Levitz imagines the current print to digital relationship to be something like radio to tv at the begining of television where television borrrowed from radio shows for awhile until ideas native to tv alone took off. I wouldn't think that would be particularly comforting to DC and other print-heavy entities, although I suppose that having Zuda might be one of DC's strategies to be part of "digital comics taking off". It's not a great analogy but it's interesting to see Levitz continue to talk about DC's digital strategies.
Tuesday Mean Random Stories About Webcomics... Doesn't It?
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on August 26, 2008 - 10:42
INTERVIEWS
Wizard is doing webcomic stuff again - an interview with Tom Siddell of Gunnerkrigg Court, John Allison of Scary Go Round, a roundtable with a pretty cool cast of creators (from ComicCon).
Laura Hudson who works for the magazine Comic Foundry has a blog with some good webcomic-related posts. Most recently she interviewed Leigh Walton of Top Shelf 2.0, and Rantz Hosely of the Long Box Project.
CONVENTIONS
Ted the Robot asks how many books he should bring to this year's SPX. Good question -- surely there's some collective common sense advice out there on this?
STRETCHING COMICS?
Michael Jantze of the webcomic The Norm tries creating an "audio comic". I guess it's for people too lazy to read the words themselves?
GREATER F-WAD THEORY OF THE INTERNET
So the Daily Cartoonists hits a civility crisis. I can relate having had it rip through Comixpedia/ComixTalk in earlier years. It's hard to come up with "rules" for conversation but you can kind of tell when a place is working and when it's starting to deteriorate. The sad thing is it really always seems to be a small number of people who either like to pretend to be or probably really are borderline psychotic that cause the most damage to a site. </soapbox>
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Rob Balder's Partially Clips gets a shout out from blogger and biologist PZ Myers.
This Week in Webcomics is a pretty cool new blog you might want to bookmark.
Brandon J. Carr has a new project with David These Stories Are True - check it out.
