In this month's Panels & Pictures, Derik A Badman makes a list of questions to consider when creating a comic: panel layouts? colors? composition? word balloons? Comics aren't simple when you start taking them apart.
Kit KaleidoscopeNick Mullins has two webcomics (also available in print) featuring Kit Kaleidoscope, a gravedigger who also draws. In "Kit Kaleidoscope and the Mermaid in the Jar" she meets a sculptor whose brother, a taxidermist, has died. In "Carnivale", still being serialized, Kit meets a young musician, while her coworker meets an old woman mourning her husband. Not a lot to say for a plot precis, but these are great comics. Mullins has beautiful linework that ise reproduced way too small to be really appreciated.
Both stories are completely wordless. He uses images in word balloons to create dialogue, mixing imagery and symbols to great effect. It is only occasionally difficult to follow the conversations. In one amazing scene the word balloons of Kit and the musician take on a life of their own as two bodies dancing together.
Both are worth reading, though Carnivale is serialized in extremely small segments (one tier of panels), which makes ongoing reading very fragmented. Continue Reading
Simply SarahI don’t even know how I discovered this webcomic, but it fascinates me for some reason. It has this weird combination of amateurishness and skill, naivety and insight.
Simply Sarah by Sarah Skye is a story about a young lesbian falling in love with another girl whose feelings she is not sure is shared. The art has the look of an old romance comic (except in black and white), and the story itself falls squarely into that genre, except with lesbians (or at least one lesbian) and a more overt sexuality. We even see the classic fear of rejection ("oh, does she really like me?") as well as being a social outcast (more often a class issue in the old romance comics). Even the layouts are reminiscent of those old comics, which is extra strange as I would think a story like this would hold heavy manga influence in it and be much more shojo-esque. Heavy use of narrative captions and thought balloons (which seem to be really out of style these days). The story has such a feel of being autobiographical that I wonder if the author is a teenager, yet something about it makes me think she is older, or it is a fictional persona created for the story. Or maybe not. Either way, Simply Sarah is so weirdly retro that it stands out, regardless of its flaws.
I didn’t think I would like Nothing Better by Tyler Page when I first looked at it. Freshman at college featuring the overdone and usually uninteresting "coming of age" story? Plus it’s got a art style that is vaguely animation, vaguely manga that I’m not generally fond of. So what won me over and got me to read 9 chapters of archives (he has since started Chapter 10)? Continue Reading
Sin Tutulo by Cameron Stewart is a recent webcomic (only 8 pages so far) by an artist better known for his print comics (such as working with Grant Morrison). A "professional" doing a webcomic is something we see more and more of as time passes. A chance to write own’s on story? Freedom? Continue Reading
Comics blog The Daily Cross Hatch is looking for someone(s) to write about webcomics. Maybe it’s you? Continue Reading
One of the comics on Serializer that I don’t skip over in my rss reader is True Loves by Jason Turner and Manien Bothma. They are on book 2 now and I completely missed book one (which is now in physical book form), but basically it’s a light-hearted relationship drama starring True, a young woman who owns a clothing store in Vancouver. The episodes are short vignettes in her life, featuring her boyfriend (they move in together during book 2) and various friends. Continue Reading
The seemingly very popular (at least with print comics people) webcomic collective Act-I-Vate has been hit or miss with me, but one comic that really stands out is Leland Purvis‘s "Vulcan & Vishnu". Continue Reading
Since I know a lot of the readers here also make webcomics, I’ve got a question:
What software do you use in creating your webcomic?
Good Monday morning, everyone. Derik Badman here, this week’s guest blogger. My plan for the week is to post about a few webcomics I read–ones that might not get as much attention as they deserve–and whatever else I think of.
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