Author: Xaviar Xerexes

Nice promo video for the almost around the corner end of next month arriving print collection of Dave Roman's excellent webcomic, Astronaut Academy.

Also there is a give-away contest for the book going on over at Good Reads.  I will post a real review this month but needless to say, an excellently produced book (the cover is perfect) and a great showcase for Dave's kid-friendly but smart and slightly ironic sense of humor.  The x-girls both loved the book too.

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The nominations for the 2011 Eisner awards are out and the nominees for Best Digital Comic are:

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Hope Larson is doing a graphic novel adaptation of  Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time due out in Fall 2012.  That's basically… awesome. I loved that book, my oldest daughter just read (and loved) that book.  I can't wait to see what Larson does with it.  CBR has coverage of the WonderCon panel where Larson spilled the beans on getting the Wrinkle GN project and Chris Arrant has an even more informative interview with Larson up at Robot6.

If you're one of the few who've never heard of the book and really more so if you've already read and loved it – check out this Wrinkle In Time in 90 Seconds video to get up to speed:

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Nice write-up by Cory Doctorow of Vera Brosgol's debut graphic novel Anya's Ghost.

[It] starts out as a simple young adult story about a girl who's having a hard time fitting in at school, moves smoothly into a lighthearted story about an awkward girl and her ghostly BFF, and then slides precipitously (and scarily) into a no-fooling ghost story that'll have you jumping out of your skin while you finish it off.

Many of us first discovered Vera from her never-completed Return To Sender but she's worked on many comics and animation projects since then.

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Mia Wiesner is a graduate student at the University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig studying media economics.  As part of her dissertation on digital comic books in the US, she is conducting an online survey until May.  The survey is at https://www.soscisurvey.de/digital_comics/ and is aimed at identifing comic reader's expectations and opinions regarding digital comics.

Participation in the study is anonymous and it should take approximately 5-8 minutes to complete the questionnaire.

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I feel like I was just writing "I can't believe February is almost over!" and man – I can't believe March is almost over! 

Just a Housekeeping note: If you do apply for a user account here at ComixTalk be sure to fill out the user profile fields with your webcomic and/or website. Something so I know you're not a bot. If you apply and don't hear back from the site in a day let me know directly.

MILESTONES: Lloyd Dangle announces the end of Troubletown this April. Not much revealed in the way of reasons but 22 years is a long time for any project.  My first encounters with Troubletown were in the alt-weeklies and so even though it's on the web now too, that's still my primary frame of reference for it.  Best wishes to Mr. Dangle and hopefully he has other projects in mind next.

REAL LIFE: The creators of Joe Is Japanese created a comic — Koga’s Email — based on a first-hand account of the earthquake in Japan. (h/t Robot6)

BUSINESS: Interesting thought attributed to Kevin Kelly (from a conference that JOHO the Blog is live-blogging):

The Net is a giant copy machine. When copies are super-abundant, and worthless. So, you need to seel stuff that can’t be copied. 8 things that can’t be copied: immediacy, personalization, interpretation (study aids), authenticity (what the prof wants you to read), accessibility, embodiment (print copy), patronage (people want to pay creators), findability.”

MAILBAG

Jameson Gardner writes in that his new webcomic Narssica follows the adventures of a lesbian superhero and her entourage of GLBT friends living in West Hollywood. It's written by Jameson Gardner, illustrated by Alan Foxwood and edited by Jon Lee. 

Brian James writes in about his webcomic A Fine Example — about pirates and greed and the economy.

Thom Pratt and Kambrea Pratt write in about their webcomic The Shadowbinders.

Denver Brubaker writes in about the first anniversary of his webcomic Tales of a Checkered Man.  The webcomic is the story of an average hero who turns to a life of crime-fighting, despite his bad luck and acrophobia. Think Charlie Brown as a masked vigilante.  Brubaker is also in the stages of planning a book which will collect the entire first year of the comic.

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So a lot of discussion yesterday about Chris Onstad's public posting (alternate url) on his de facto hiatus on Achewood.  Also an interview of Onstad at Comics Alliance that perhaps shed a little more light on it. A lot of that discussion linked to this Neil Gaiman video which is about as good an explanation as any of why the artist doesn't owe you (yes I'm looking at you… and you in the back too) anything really.  Most comments boiled down to we feel ya Chris and hope you get your groove back. 

Kris Straub, who is one of the most reflective folks in webcomics, posted another take on things in his blog and while his post is as much about himself as it could be about Onstad, it's interesting reading.  Straub has not really tied himself to the kind of one ongoing series that some webcomic artists have (like Onstad so far) in the tradition of the newspaper ideal (aka Schulzian).  Instead he's had two major projects (Checkerboard Nightmare and Starslip) which while sharing a sense of humor had very different subject matter and approaches; lots of collaborations; and a string of smaller comics, including one (F Chord) that I really wish he had stuck with (but also equally applicable here – this Neil Gaiman video).

Peoples ought to do what they want to do and I don't pretend to stand on high delivering knowledge. But what I've seen is that there is still a bit too much devotion to that old Schulzian ideal of the one strip forever.  Taking chances, changing up work, rebooting work, radically shifting and experimenting — there's a lot to gain from this as a creator in terms of artistic growth and just finding new audiences.  While there is always the risk of a mistep (either creatively or commercially or both) there are equal risks to trying to plow the same road forever.

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D.J. Coffman tweeted about this effort to raise money for Japan, currently suffering from just a catastrophic series of calamities.  Please go check it out and if others have tips on how to provide help to Japan please add those in the comments.  Thanks!

Tsunamis and now a Nuclear emergency, Japan is facing one of the worst catastrophes in recorded history. Entire towns have been wiped out. There’s a food shortage and people have no place to go. What can we do from so far away?

 

Draw comics.

 

Dear webcomic creators, this Friday, March 15th 2011, we’re urging you to mention the following links either in your comic or on your comic’s blog. Whether you have 10 readers or 10,000 readers, we as webcomic creators are fortunate to have an audience that we can encourage to help donate in ways that will directly aid the people of Japan. Here are the two key places you should mention in your comic or on your comic’s blog:

 

• http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html – This link is for monetary donations. It is a google page made by the Red Cross in Japan. The lowest people can donate is 100 yen which is roughly $2 and change.Every little bit counts.

   

• www.2hj.org – Second Harvest is an organization in Japan where people can ship supplies that will be on the ground DIRECTLY to the people who need them. Take a look at the list of supplies at the link. You might consider gathering up a big box of supplies and having a few friends pitch in for shipping to Japan. They need raw supplies more than money at this time.

   

Anyone who participates in this, please comment here and leave your link or send us an email with a link to your “Comics For Japan” strip. If you can’t make the deadline this week, we’re planning on doing a collected post of comics on every Friday. Please help!

 

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