Author: Xaviar Xerexes

For me I really enjoy blogs featuring "covers" of classic comic work.  The first one I started following is probably the oldest one — "Covered: Artists Re-interpreting Comic Covers" — which is pretty much what it says: artists doing a new version of an older comic book cover.  Sometimes the covers are fairly close, other times they're a radical reworking of the concept.  The next one I started reading is Repaneled which features artists doing a new version of a panel from an existing work.

Debuting this week is a new one called Cornered: The Cover Corner Art Blog which was started by Jon Morris.  Self-described as "we recreate the spot character illustrations which appeared in the upper left-hand corners of so many classic comics, from Marvel to DC to Harvey, Charlton and beyond!"  I used to doodle these character illustrations all the time as a very little kid.  I think this is a pretty cool idea and I'm looking forward to following it.

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Hey it's Tyler Page's birthday – go wish him a happy one by catching up with his excellent college life webcomic Nothing Better.  This comic has two great, well developed lead female characters in it.

CONVENTIONAL THINKING: Jen Vaughn posts a great write-up of Webcomics Weekend 2 over at The Beat. The Daily Cross Hatch posts another comment on the recent Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival.

BUSINESS: Critic Tucker Stone with some "Career" "Advice" for aspiring comics creators.

MULTIMEDIA: I saw the press announcement for a new webcomic called The Adjusted by Kenneth Bass, which is being hyped for "its driving, cosmic beats that enhance the action of the story and the scene transitions of the high-resolution graphics."  Now I'm a sucker for trying out webcomics that really explore the web part of things.  Doesn't mean I ultimately think these efforts are always a success but I'm happy to see new spins on the webcomic form.  Bass is a music producer and electrical engineer as well as a fan of comics.

DEAD TREES: This Week In Webcomics lists three books for the holidays from the webcomics Multiplex, Blank It and F Chords.

REVIEW: Tangents reviews the highschool webcomic Penny & Aggie.

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So what did everyone think about the finale of Season One of The Walking Dead? I kind of wished they'd avoided the cliché of the last minute running out of the exploding building and jumping for safety but otherwise I thought it was an entertaining episode.  One can guess that the changes they made to the story this season (particularly the trip to the CDC) may have driven in part by not knowing if they'd ever get to make more than 6 episodes.

AWARDS: The judges for next year's Eisner Awards have been announced: Comic-Con board of Directors member Ned Cato, Jr., librarian/curator Karen Green, writer/editor Andrew Helfer, publishing executive Rich Johnson and retailer Chris Powell. The judges meet next March to select the nominees for the 2011 Eisner Awards ballot.

IT'S ART JIM BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT: Matt Dembicki posts photos of the Party Crashers exhibit on comics as art, here in Arlington, Virginia. I made it to the opening of this at the Arts Center but promptly forgot to post the pictures I took.  Matt took way more pictures than I did!  My favorite part of the exhibit? A really Dash Shaw-like video by who else – Dash Shaw.

REVIEW: Art Patient reviews Mel and Chad.

INTERVIEW: CZ Wheeler interviews Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics and Webcomics Globetrotters fame.

Scene and Heard: Comics DC links to video of a recent panel called "In Between the Panels: DC's Emergence on the Graphic Novel Scene". Start off with part one: 

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I'm sure there's a bit more going on today but here's something to start off with.

INTERVIEW: Mike Rhode interviews Kevin Ward of Retail Gods.

REVIEW: El Santo reviews Zombie Jesus and The Beast.

GUEST COMICS: Chris Cantrell writes that he's holding an open call this holiday season for guest comics for his webcomic The Deadlys: 

To celebrate the holiday season, I’m starting what I hope will become a tradition at The Deadlys. If you’ve ever wanted to take a crack at drawing a comic strip for the site, I would love to see your take on the characters and their universe. My hope is that this will be a fun event where we can see some of the work of other talented readers out there.

Guest comics should be sent to Chris at art(at)thedeadlys(dot)com by December 15th and should be no wider than 950 pixels at 100dpi and in a jpg format.

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DEAD TREES: Tom DellAringa writes that his sci-fi and humor comic Marooned – A Space Opera in the Wrong Key! is now taking pre-orders for a second book "Mars Wars." The book collects the second year of strips, and two bonus stories, including the origin of Captain John and his sidekick Asimov. In addition there are great illustrations and "Sunday Comics" (1-2 page Marooned comics) by guest artists like Ramon Perez of Kukuburi and Mike Maihack of Cleopatra in Space. 

ONE FEWER HOLIDAY SHOPPING DAYS LEFT: I09 offers its list of 10 graphic novels that would make good gifts.  Also always worth looking at is The Comic Reporter's gift guide.  Any other quality lists worth linking to?

BUSINESS: Cory Doctorow links to Jeff Price's essay series on life today as an independent artist (bottom line — it's better opportunities for most than ever).  I often tend to see parallels between comics and music — I usually find reading about music reveals something applicable to comics as well.

INTERVIEW: GraphicNYC has an interview with Frank Miller.   Robot6 has an interview with Mike Jasper and Niki Smith of the webcomic In Maps and Legends, and an interview with Brian Clevinger of 8-bit Theater fame who is writing a Captain America story.

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Wow I cannot believe it's almost the end of 2010.  End of a decade basically.  Surely that means something, right?  Hey have you all seen this video yet — every time you hear "novel" replace it with "graphic novel" and boom – totally about comics:

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MILESTONE: Little Gamers hits 10 years.  Also Krishna Sadasivam looks back on 10 years of his webcomic PC Weenies.  I'd still love to see more recollections on your experience this decade in webcomics.

REVIEW: El Santo gives Hanna is Not a Boy's Name 4 stars. Despite the name, the comic sounds like the offspring of Quentin Tarantino and Twilight.  And Sean Kleefeld reviews Havoc, the sequel to Chris Wooding's text-comic hybrid novel Malice.

HYPE: Critic Sean T. Collins is writing the new webcomic Destructor.  Check out Sean's work with collaborator Matt Wiegle here.

TOOLS COPYRIGHT: The online tech series Tekzilla hypes the Comical program for reading webcomics.  Unfortunately this is another one of those grab-only-the-image file type of programs. I was kind of surprised that Tekzilla co-host Veronica Belmont made no mention of any possibility of copyright issues at all.  

MAILBAG: Luke writes that his older brother Adam Whitely has recently launched a website for his comic adaptation of the ancient text The Ramayana. Adam has posted a lengthy preview of the work which he intends to publish as a full length graphic novel.  He is still unpublished and unsigned.  Check it out – what do people think of the preview?  From a quick perusal, there's a lot of interesting artwork in there, but my familiarity with the story is limited to Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues (and resulting conversations with folks more knowledgeable about the saga).

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Ryan Estrada returns with another inconceivable comic-endurance challenge — this time he's announced he will complete an animated film in one month:

It's always been my dream to make an animated feature, but I've never been able to get the time and resources I need. Well, I'm sick of waiting. This December, I'm sitting down at my desk in the Costa Rican jungle to work. And on January 1st, I'm releasing the finished movie online, free to all. 

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Looking like a tough week for me to deliver the news so don't be alarmed if things get quiet around here.

BUSINESS IS GOOD: FLEEN links to George Rohac's thesis, Copyright and the Economy of Webcomics [PDF], and his data set [Microsoft Excel] to which Tony Piro adds a chart. (FLEEN linked to an old ComixTalk post about this too but go right to the source – Steve Crowley's blog post on webcomic audience sizes.)  Also TechDirt comments on Scott Kurtz's comments on Garry Trudeau's offhand dismissal of webcomics as a viable economic model.

MILESTONES: Adam Huber, creator of Bug, writes about his first year as a webcomics creator.

INTERVIEWS: Brian Heater wraps up his four part interview with Jamie Hernandez.

iWEBCOMICS: Comics Alliance has an overview of the digital comics landscape.

DIARY OF A MAD WEBCOMIC CREATOR: The Drawn blog links to John Allison's advice on having a career in comics. Although John Allison cautions against doing a diary comic, it appears to have worked out well for Emi Lenox who has a new book, Emitown, coming out from Image.

WANT ADS: The fantastic artist Erica Henderson is leaving the fun fantasy webcomic Guilded Age and writers T Campbell and Phil Kahn are looking for a new artist as well as some guest comics for this month.  Go check it out – good comic and surely a potentially fun gig for someone.

DECADE OF WEBCOMICS: I asked for more stories of the decade that was and D. J. Coffman delivered.  D.J. has experienced a lot of the decade's big stories first-hand and he includes some details from his time with Keenspot and Platinum Comics.  

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A couple of posts this fall from Brad Guigar and Kris Straub on their 10 years in webcomics struck me an pretty interesting and a reminder we're all still on the ground floor of this new era of comics.  Here's my thought — as we wrap up the first decade of the 21st Century I'd love to publish here folks recollections on their experience with comics and the web.  Take a few minutes to take stock of it.  Feel free to post a blog or forum post here, email me, tweet me, whatever — I'll look to collect some of these memories into an article for the site for December.

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