Author: Xaviar Xerexes

AWARDS: Last week the Glyph Awards were announced – the winner in BEST COMIC STRIP OR WEBCOMIC was The K Chronicles by Keith Knight.

GREAT WHITE NORTH, EH: Daily Cartoonist notes that each Wednesday, For Better or For Worse creator Lynn Johnston has been posting a video podcast where she shares with her fans a little peak into her world as a cartoonist and creator of the Patterson family.

TRIP THE GLOBE FANTASTIC: Art Patient reports that portrait artist Jean Tripier has started publishing Travelogue, his travel journal online. It is a unique webcomic with ink and watercolor artwork that is based on (mostly) real events — it's on Jean’s Travelogue website.

ON THE COMICS MEDIA: Graphic Novel Reporter has an interview with Brooke Gladstone, writer of the graphic novel The Influencing Machine and an interview with the illustrator Josh Neufeld.

I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS MORE THAN 20 YEARS AGO: TCJ reprints a 1990 interview with Jack Kirby.

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The Washington Post's comic blogger Michael Cavna has a profile of Cul de Sac creator Richard Thompson in this week's Post Magazine.  It's really well-done, good read and Thompson's career and life story is particularly interesting.

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Jonathan Ingram writes about his monthly webcomic, The Bifter:

[My] main aim [is] to create a monthly comic that could be read by visually impaired users who use a screenreader, as I don't believe any exist on the web.

 

The category of jokes caters to a slim target audience, namely the web development sector, but it also showcases a combination of some of the new web technologies that are out there to create a retro comic feel (namely HTML5, CSS3, SVG and RDFa).

 

Plus because I draw the comic strips in SVG format, everyone is free to take a look at them (using their favourite image editing software) and use any of it as a base for their own work.

 

I would be most appreciative if you had any thoughts or opinions on the comic, or if you could give it a brief mention on your website. I would dearly love to let more people know about this so the design techniques can become more popular, and thus people who are visually impaired can enjoy comics as much as everyone else.

I think it's a great idea and the website is really well done.

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Raindrops keep falling on my head…  The other day I dropped a Bueller reference and then had to wonder if my youngster colleagues would get it.  1986 afterall is quite possibly before some of them were born.  Time keeps marching on.  Wait whatever happened to Morris Day and the Time?

BRANDY YOU'RE A FINE WINE: Frank Cho is bringing back Libery Meadows.  And just as cool to me — he's rerun the newspaper era run of the comic at his website. Just click on "first" and reread. Never quite great enough to crack the Calvin & Hobbes-level pantheon, still I thought Cho's work was some of the strongest in the paper when I was growing up.

HANG IN THERE: Wow I am re-inspired up today after reading Phil McAndrew's blog post about Super Obvious Secrets That I Wish They’d Teach In Art School.  You should definitely go read this today.  You can also check out Lisa Hanawalt's good advice too.

RACK 'EM UP: Apparently it was draw Cat Rackham day this week – Anthony Clark suggested that people draw Steve Wolfhard’s Cat Rackham to celebrate the release of Steve’s new book from Koyama Press, Cat Rackham Loses It. Steve has posted the results in a Flickr set of over 100 drawings. (h/t Drawn!)

CONVENTIONAL THINKING: I missed it last year, but apparently the Washington DC Comicon is returning for a second edition.  You can call that annual now!  It returns on June 19th with guests J.G. Jones ("First Wave"), Herb Trimpe ("BPRD: The War on Frogs"), the Luna Brothers ("The Sword") and John K. Snyder III ("Phoenix Without Ashes"). Hmm, that's Father's Day – I guess that might work out well for comic geek dads in the area.

THE PARENTHOOD: The Webcomic Factory is launching a new webcomic today called I Hate My Kids written by Tony DiGerolamo with art by Harold George.  “I wanted to do a kids comic,” says Webcomic Factory co-founder, Tony DiGerolamo.  “This comic embodies all the frustration parents feel towards their kids.  The kids, of course, are oblivious.”  Actually this reminds me to also plug Dadding Badly which is a cute strip by John Kovaleski about being a father.

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I read a preview copy of a new all ages graphic novel called Sidekicks by Dan Santat — it's a really fun book with good characters and stellar art.  I'll have a review up sometime (relatively) soon but this is a great book for kids to pick up when it comes out in July.

REVIEW: El Santo reviews The Gutters –written by Ryan Sohmer and illustrated by a series of guest artists, including long-time collaborator Lar deSouza:

The Gutters  is a comic industry parody and editorial. Sometimes they’re spoofs about recent comic book plotlines, like the one where Superman renounced his American citizenship or when Wonder Woman donned her new pants-enabled outfit. Sometimes it can get very insider, like the digs at Dan Didio and Joe Quesada. It is a webcomic designed to be consumed by the most obsessive nerds on earth.

LOCAL: Mike Rhode does a great job covering the local DC comics scene at his blog.  Most recently he interviewed Liz Suburbia (who I didn't know was local to the area).

DEAD FILES TELL NO TALES: Dave Wright writes up the tale of the amazing success in pre-orders for the apparently widely pirated, illustrated parody children's book, Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach.

BE OUR GUEST: John Allison kicks off a guest week of strips for his webcomic Bad Machinery with one from Marc Ellerby, who does Ellerbisms.

MY HYPE: Perhaps the greatest Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic of all time.  It's only missing charts!

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This comic titled "Born Like an Artist" by Jellyvampire is cute but inspiring — and only comics could literally show you that there really are no borders. (I'd say more about this but the artist is Norwegian — I can't read a single other thing on the website besides this comic).

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