Archive - Mar 2008 - Article
March 30th
The April Fools Issue
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This post will get rewritten (for now I'm just too tired!) but for now I just want to point out that the center of the new site design will display our longer articles: features, columns, reviews and interviews. Daily news and blogging will now appear on the right column (with tabs to choose between "featured" which displays a combination of staff posts and selected user talk posts and "talk posts" which displays the five most recent user posts).
March 29th
Le Cute Nouveau
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Michael Payne examines new examples of the "new cute" in comics: Dreamleak by Greg Fraser, Fuzzy Things by Jonathan Sario, and Ghost Farm by Jessica McLeod. The "new cute" is using the tropes of "cute" to tell stories that are richer, deeper, and more heartfelt than anyone would've thought fluffy bunnies, towheaded kids, and smiling asparagus could support.
Decoding Mr. Roboto: An Interview with Chris Harding
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Chris Harding was kind enough to do the February cover art for ComixTalk and it gave me a great excuse to hit him up for an interview. Harding is the creator of the new webcomic We The Robots which offers a cynical, bemused take on work and family.
March 17th
Panels & Pictures: Definition Redux
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Last month, Derik Badman posited his thoughts on defining comics and essayist (and ComixTalk contributor) Neil Cohn wrote a response to it. In this month's Panels & Pixels, Badman examines Cohn's response and follows a few articles to expand on definitions and methods for identifying works as "comics."
March 16th
Is This A Comic? Closure and Synthesis (Part 1)
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So far on our quest to define comics, I have set out my four criteria that I believe best determines whether a given work is a comic or not. The Four Criteria are: The Intent of the Creator, Audience Experience, Closure and Synthesis, and The Use of Visual Language. In previous months, we’ve delved further into The Intent of the Creator and Audience Experience. This brings us to our third criteria, Closure and Synthesis.
What is Closure and Synthesis? Why does this criteria include two distinct concepts? And just how are these two things related?
Police Procedural with a Twist
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This month the good Doctor Haus investigates the crime scene at the webcomic Paradigm Shift. Paradigm Shift is written and drawn by Dirk I. Tiede.
March 10th
Crosbys Consolidate Control of Keenspot: An Interview with Chris Crosby
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At the tail end of February Chris Crosby announced that he had closed a deal to buy out the shares of Darren "Gav" Bleuel and Nate Stone in Keenspot Entertainment. Although Bleuel and Stone are to provide technical support to Keenspot through the summer, from now on Keenspot will be strictly the Crosby show. And following on the heels of this announcement, Keenspot has moved to offer to its roster of creators a new advertising split. In this brief interview we catch up with Crosby on these recent announcements, the 8th anniversary of Keenspot itself, and the 9th anniversary of Crosby's webcomic Superosity.
March 9th
Templar, Arizona, by Spike, reviewed by Larry "El Santo" Cruz
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Late last year, my girlfriend and I took a nice roadtrip down the 101 to that City by the Bay, San Francisco. One of the many sights I wanted to see was Haight-Ashbury, the geographical flashpoint of the 1960's hippie movement. I was a little disappointed with what I saw. Haight-Ashbury was a rundown little ghetto frequented by people who may or may not be homeless. There were some colorful murals here and there, but nothing you couldn't see in some of the skeezier neighborhoods of Flint, Michigan. Haight-Ashbury was gritty, uncharacteristically quiet for a San Francisco district, and, most depressing of all, it failed to live up to the vibrant personality created by its own mythology.
What did I expect to see? Probably something like the town depicted in Templar, Arizona, a webcomic written and illustrated by Charlie "Spike" Trotman.
The Road Less Traveled: Money and Contracts
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Your book has been accepted by a publisher. The hard work's over!
Well, no. You've pretty much just entered the Twilight Zone and that means dealing with contracts.
But what kind of contract you get depends on the publisher you're negotiating with, and you need to set your expectations accordingly.
I was actually going to talk a bit about marketing this month, but the recent discussions over Bookscan numbers in a number of comics blogs made me change my mind. You can read my take on how language can shape expectations here.
For this column, we're going to look at some key details of a typical contract written for a larger publisher and the kind of thing you can expect when dealing with a small publisher.
