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July 8th, 2011

Comix Talk Is In The House Tonight

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 8, 2011 - 09:03

Some comics-related stories for your perusal this morning:

INTERVIEW: TalkProgress has a great interview with Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots.

ALL AGES: Ryan Estrada finished and posted his all ages webcomic Aki Alliance. Estrada's sense of humor works really well on an all ages title and this is a fun read.

CONVENTIONAL THINKING: ComicsDC blog posted that DC-area convention SPX announced that the Pizza Island collective would all be guests at this year's edition:Kate Beaton, Sarah Glidden, Lisa Hanawalt, Domitille Collardey, Julia Wertz and Meredith Gran.

HYPE: I really liked Jason Turner's True Love and True Loves 2.  He's serializing True Loves 3 online so be sure to check it out (if you're not already reading).

KICKSTART MY ART:  Diana Nock has launched a kickstarter project to fund a print version of her webcomic, The Intrepid Girlbot.  Winner of the Friends of Lulu "Leah Adezio Award for Best Kid-Friendly Work" of 2010, Girlbot is the all ages story of a little-girl-shaped robot trying to find her place in a strange world of robots and woodland creatures.

FROM THE MAILBAG: Johnny Tay, a creator from Singapore, wrote in about his digital comic, Seven Years in Dog-Land, for sale on Graphicly. The black and white graphic novel follows the adventures of a little girl in an alternate world where dogs are the masters, and humans, their pets. Through her trials and adventures, Dog-Land explores humans’ relationship with nature and the human condition itself.

July 5th

Comix Talk for July 5, 2011

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 5, 2011 - 08:50

I survived National Gunpowder Day with only slight burns so... yeah that's probably good!  Here's some interesting stories about web + comics I perused this morning: 

INTERVIEW: Guerilla Geek has an interview with Danielle Corsetto of Girls with Slingshots.

iWEBCOMICS: Warren Ellis on his Freak Angels/Avatar digital strategy; DC Comics' digital strategy and Marvel's digital strategy.

TECHNOLOGY: Boing Boing points to a really cool Warren Ellis project called SVK.  It's not web or digital but it plays around with technology and comics.  SVK is a modern detective story, described by Ellis as “Franz Kafka’s Bourne Identity”.  

SVK is a collaboration between writer Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Planetary, Crooked Little Vein, RED), artist Matt "D'Israeli" Brooker (Stickleback, Lazarus Churchyard, 2000AD) and London-based design studio BERG.  An experimental publication, SVK comprises the SVK object and a comic book.  Litho printed on 115gsm silk paper in tones of black and blue, SVK uses a third ink invisible without the SVK object. The object is a UV light source which unlocks hidden layers woven throughout the comic book. Reading SVK becomes a unique and strange experience as you see the story unfold through the eyes of Thomas Woodwind.

DUN DUN DUN DUN! Ryan Estrada posted online the entirety of his all ages Aki Alliance graphic novel (h/t FLEEN).

AWKWARD! Why Dora needs Faye around to provide the last word.

July 4th

Pandora: End of Days, Volume 1 by Peter J. Ang and Jin Song Kim

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 5, 2011 - 00:00

Pandora: End of Days is a digital comic from Real Interface Studio available for download to your computer and also for most mobile e-reader devices, tablets, and smart phones with the barnesandnoble.com's NOOK App or on Amazon.com’s Kindle.  There's a short promotional website for the comic but unfortunately it plays music without asking (you can turn it off by clicking on "off" at the bottom of the page).

It's a zombie manga.  

Indigo Kelleigh Kickstarter Drive for Ellie Connelly Graphic Novel

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 4, 2011 - 16:02

 

Indigo Kelleigh has launched a Kickstarter campaign for 124 page graphic novel version of his Victorian adventure comic Ellie Connelly and the Eye of the Vortex. Ellie Connelly, her friend Henry Button, and her Uncle Everett must race to discover the location of a legendary vortex of mystical energy, before the dark and mysterious Mystic Legion can take control of it for their own malevolent purposes! An adventure in the mold of Indiana Jones and Tintin, the first 32 pages have been published online.

Kelleigh's Kickstarter goal is to raise money to cover his living expenses for an entire year to complete Eye of the Vortex.  He will continue posting the newly completed pages on the website for free (in both English and French), and will also release the ebook issues when they're completed.

Box Brown Closing in on Funding Goal

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 4, 2011 - 15:18

Box Brown has a kickstarter campaign going to fund Retrofit Comics launch plans to publish 17 32-page floppy-style comics by 17 of the best comic artists in the business. It's specifically aimed at getting indie comics back into the floppy format and giving artists a chance to do smaller stories and experiment. The list of creators is awesome and includes folks such as Retrofit plans to release books monthly from September 2011 to January 2013. James Kochalka; Colleen Frakes; Joe Decie; Tom Hart; Liz Baillie; Noah Van Sciver; Jason Turner among others.

Harvey Nominees Out

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 4, 2011 - 11:28

The Harvey Award nominees have been released and in the category of BEST ONLINE COMICS WORK, the nominees are:

Final ballots are due to the Harvey Awards by Saturday, August 6, 2011.  Voting is open to anyone professionally involved in a creative capacity within the comics field.  The ceremony and banquet for the 2011 Harvey Awards will be held Saturday night, August 20th at the Baltimore Comic-Con.

July 3rd

The Death of Elijah Lovejoy by Noah Van Sciver

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 4, 2011 - 00:00

As long as I am an American citizen and American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write and to publish whatever I please on any subject.

- Elijay Lovejoy

Elijay Lovejoy was a real life abolistionist and newspaper editor who died in Alton, Illinois at the hands of a mob intent on squelching his right to a free press. Lovejoy was in Illinois because a mob had attacked and destroyed three press during his tenure as an editor in St Louis, Missouri.  The Death of Elijay Lovejoy by Noah Van Sciver seemed a good book to tackle for a review on the day we celebrate the American Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights that ultimately flows from the establishment of the United States of America.

June 30th

Support SMBC Theater!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 30, 2011 - 08:28

If you like the comic SMBC you are probably already a fan of the comedy troupe SMBC Theatre (both share Zach Weiner).  SMBC Theatre is now running a kickstarter campaign to raise some scratch for some higher production value web series. Just think what kind of explosions these guys could come up with if they had a few bucks to spend!

June 29th

Comix Talk for Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 29, 2011 - 09:03

Did I mention I have a fairly active tumblr blog too?  Right now I'm enjoying messing around with that. Follow me and let me know if you have a tumblr blog I should be following.  Did anyone get an invite to Google+? I guess Randall Monroe sums up my sense of Google Wave Buzz Plus pretty well.

INTERVIEWS

Moonlighting Syndrome: Eric has a post up at Websnark about the romantic(?) comedy comic Treading Ground and it's dangerous flirtations with a Romantic Comedy Tension Resolution Point.

COMICS IS NOT CORRELATION: Google commissioned a comic from Manu Cornet to explain it's new Google Correlation tool.

MILESTONES: The Drawn Blog notes Pat Grant has completed his webcomic Blue.

HYPE: Check out lots new good stuff on the web including Emily Carroll’s The Prince & The Sea and Dov Torbin’s The Revolution Will Be Televised.  For more hype check out The Beat's open thread on webcomics to read.

CRAFT:  The Drawn blog points to the Animation Archive's free resources section on their site and Tracy J Butler's (Lackadaisy Cats) tips on character drawing.

June 27th

Comix Talk for June 27, 2011

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 27, 2011 - 08:45

Summer vacation! This is the one day of the year when I really really wish I was still a kid getting out of school... So while my posting on ComixTalk the first half of 2011 has been a touch irregular (compared to the last decade!) I picked up my tumblr blog again (inspired by the return of Websnark) and have been posting there.  It's a bit different focus than just comics (but still comics heavy) but still you might want to check it out (my tumblr blog tweets too so you can also just follow me there).

OPINION IS JUST ONION + PI: OMFG - Brian McFadden will be making comics for the NY Times.  The first one is up online here and he’s onboard for the gig for a couple of months.  I met Brian like a decade ago -- an extremely nice guy with buckets of talent.  I'm looking forward to reading his work for the NY Times.

HOW MANY PLATES CAN KRIS STRAUB SPIN: Kris Straub wrote a post about the long list of comics and webvideo projects he's working on.  A lot of people may now think of Kris as Scott Kurtz's partner in (comedy) crime but this post will give you a good sense of the many projects he's put out to the public over the last decade.  The post makes it sound like Straub will be putting F Chords back on hiatus again which is a bummer -- it's the comic of his I've liked the most. I think that's because Kris has sometimes had a tendency towards meta humor and just more complicated stuff with somewhat higher-brow references and the two main characters in F Chords really balanced against that.  These two dudes are well defined and for me at least, their emotions struck me as the most human Straub has done -- I think they are identifiable in ways that Starslip just doesn't offer.  Also I drew some fan art!

DC CONS - INTERVENTION and SPX: Intervention 2011 is getting more expensive after July 1 when the pre-registration rate jumps from $35 for the full 3 days to $40.  And time is running out for you to submit your work to the Ignatz Awards which are presented at SPX. If your comic work was or will be released between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011, you’re eligible!  More details here.

HYPE: I just ran across B. (Brian?) Patrick's Akimbo Comics which is often funny in a darkly cynical, blunt way.  Definitely worth checking out (I'd start at the last one and work backwards).

LEGAL BEAGLE: This review of DC and the SIegel heirs competing claims to the character of Superboy is interesting. Author Jeff Trexler is a lawyer and does a good job of explaining things here.

HYPE2: Darryl Cunningham presents a comic explaining the theory of evolution.  Cunningham is a good writer but I didn't think this was one of his better comic efforts.  I thought the visuals were awfully static and not particularly inventive. Still if you need a handy reference guide to some of the basic arguments in favor of evolution, this does the trick nicely (print out and save for your next Thanksgiving dinner with that one opinionated uncle...)