To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life, and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before. This is emphatically not the continuing mission of the starship Number Six, whose captain, the eponymous Commander Kitty, is in it wholly for himself. If his crew can get a little that’s okay, too, but woe unto anyone else who tries to get in his way.
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Write what you know.
Write from experience.
These are two major tenets you’ll hear spouted to you from a million million creative writing teachers, or from a thousand thousand famous writer/artist people when asked, "What should I draw/write about?". Continue Reading
Since Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is essentially a play about plays, it has a few things to say about how to set up a story. Eversummer Eve borrows a page from the Bard’s tale, and its players make the story approachable – but it’s Jones herself who pens an environment more elaborate than any of Shakespeare’s stages.
Don’t be fooled into thinking you’ve seen this before, however. Continue Reading
On a personal note…
When I began "Why Do Online Comics?" it was my intention, above everything else, to have it act as a spur. Continue Reading
Japanese culture has so thoroughly melted into American culture that we can't always tell where one ends and the other begins. Speed Racer, Godzilla, Voltron, and Tranzor Z are nostalgic for millions of Americans, almost a part of "Americana." Weightlifters train by eating sushi. The Matrix seamlessly blends Japanese martial arts and Eastern philosophy into Western cyberpunk and American car chases. Japan makes our cars, our computer parts.
Nowhere does the Japanese voice speak more clearly than in the true avant-garde, the avant-garde of comics, the Web, and especially of webcomics. Continue Reading
An Electric Manga Mirror
Scouring the Internet comic scene, it’s easy to see how prevalent manga imagery and ideals are. Thousands of fan sites are dedicated to Japanese anime, comics and characters. It’s a cultural tidal wave that can easily wash away the uninitiated with way too many facts and trivia about the multitude of worlds that have been created by eastern artists. Whether you’re a fan or not, you can’t deny its influence on popular entertainment. Continue Reading
MegaTokyo blew up almost immediately when it appeared on the webcomics scene three years ago. Fred Gallagher, the creator behind the strip, goes by Piro, a nickname he took only temporarily. A former architect, he now lives on the spoils of the site's merchandise.
I was surrounded by people who succcumbed to that so-called Yellow Fever in university. Sometimes I felt like the minority, not being obsessed with getting to Japan, or with scoring bootleg Anime and Manga in the original Japanese. I didn’t take Japanese, despite having the opportunity. I didn’t even try sushi until third year, despite the trendiness of sushi bars in Halifax (when I left, there were at least 7 within walking distance of the university). It wasn’t until after I’d left university that I tried watching bootlegged VCDs of Asian movies, despite my friends all having seen Ringu before they’d even started talking about making The Ring. Continue Reading
Before Cowboy Bebop‘s Spike, there was another crack-shot lonesome cowboy hunting bad guys and riding into the sunset. Years prior to Rei Ayanami dying her hair blue, a gaggle of little guys had already given themselves the full-body treatment.
Wishes. In almost all cultures, wishes have been used in literature and mythology, in fables and lore. Often, as in "The Fisherman and His Wife" or "The Monkey’s Paw" the granting of wishes comes with a price. Perhaps these stories are object lessons on the greed found so often on display within these same cultures, or subtle propaganda in support of the status quo, but one message is invariably and consistently obvious: wishes are dangerous things.
Wish3, by Sylvia Leung, is another chapter in this enduring meta-tale. Continue Reading
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