Continuing with our theme from last month’s column, we’re delving into the core of telling stories and making sure that the foundation we’re building is strong, instead of trying to create a comic from thin air. Making a good story means doing a lot of thinking up front, but don’t be intimidated, because once the ideas start flowing, you won’t be able to stop! Continue Reading
What more can really be said about JR Conlin’s The All New Adventures of The Slug?
Well, judging from this remarkable in-depth interview, perhaps it’s best to just let JR Conlin tell you himself. His answers are deep, insightful, and will leave you a changed, changed reader.
Read on, and be forever enlightened… Continue Reading
Is "comics" a genre
in and of itself? Some seem
to think this is so.
Get Fuzzy creator Darby Conley recently drew the ire of Pittsburghers when referring to Pittsburgh in a recent strip as a place that smelled. (Story here.) Since the comic was published, he has been receiving hate mail and death threats. If something so benign as saying a city smells can cause such a bad reaction, what does that say about comics that handle REAL controversial issues?
A few nights ago, while in a drug-filled haze (the prescription kind), I hopped online for what was supposed to be a few minutes to chat with my wife, only to be slapped across the face with the Holy Trout of Revelation. Continue Reading
In the weeks after Sept. 11, when anthrax was flying through the postal system like AOL free samplers, and flags suddenly sprouted from every crack in the ground, pop culture balled into a foetal position and rolled under a table. You were there, too, so you can’t deny you saw it. American pop culture briefly became nothing less than a 24-hour, instantly-updated funeral service with occasional breaks for scary news stories about "dirty bombs."
Every comedian had a somber speech about being unable to make jokes. Talking heads debated the patriotism of disagreeing with the President. The editor of Vanity Fair, stretching that magazine’s authority just a bit, officially declared irony "dead."
That’s when David Rees started tearing it all apart with the caustic sarcasm of Get Your War On. Continue Reading
Stephen Notley planted his first comic seeds the mid 90s while drawing weekly strips for the University of Alberta’s Gateway (a student newspaper that managed to churn out not only Notley’s work, but also Cigarro & Cerveja, Deathworld, and the now-defunct but fondly-remembered Space Moose all in the same span of time). It did not take him or his comic idea about a disgruntled sentient weed – umm, sorry – flower to take root and bloom brightly in the still-Edenic Garden of Webcomics. Now already releasing his fourth book, the creator of Bob The Angry Flower can be seen on the comic convention circuit sporting large yellow petals on his head and pollinating truths about life, the universe, and political everythings as only an angry, petal-bedecked person could. Continue Reading
Well, here goes. I thought long and hard about this, trying to decide if it was appropriate for a column, and then I came to a carefully thought-out decision based on the fact that my column was due last week. Continue Reading
After the first online comic and the first webcomic, the early pioneers of webcomics included Bill Holbrook, Peter Zale and Charley Parker. Each of these three pioneers faced their own obstacles and found success in their own way. Bill Holbrook was already a syndicated newspaper cartoonist when he launched the webcomic Kevin & Kell, Peter Zale's Helen: Sweetheart of the Internet featured a tech-savvy female at the lead character and Charley Parker's Argon Zark began to take advantage of both digital art tools and the "web" part of webcomics in ways that no online comic had previously. Continue Reading
Steven Withrow is the author of Toon Art: The Graphic Art of Digital Cartooning, published in July through Watston Guptil Publications. Toon Art presents a comprehensive introduction to digital comics and animation, including a brief history of cartooning, a primer on digital art and production methods, and a broad survey of top talent working in the medium today. Toon Art has been favorably reviewed in both Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal, the latter calling it "a definitive popular guide to…digital art."
Steven's webcomics series, Crackles of Speech and Critical Thinking, have appeared on Komikwerks.com and NextComics.com, with various artists. "Manuwahi," a short story he scripted for Roberto Corona, was recently chosen by Dark Horse Comics for their online Strip Search contest. When not earning his living as a writer and editor, Steven is working on several comics and animation projects for print and the Web. He has also published poetry, short fiction, and plays, and written lyrics and libretto for a musical composition. In addition, Steven expresses an intense interest in children's literature and its crossover with comics. Continue Reading
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