What’s Cooking Doc?
Check out the Webcomics Cookbook kickstarter project. I would never suspect (outside of Greg Dean) that there was much of an overlap between webcomics and cooking but if this gets funded I hope to be proved wrong:
Author: Xaviar Xerexes
John Allison’s Manifesto
Styled a manifesto for UK Indie comics in 2010 it's should be read by anyone making or wanting to make comics. John Allison speaks from experience folks –
Comix Talk for Thursday, November 18, 2010
Thursday! Days of thurs!? What is a "thur" anyhow…
COPYFIGHT: Journalista posted links to a number of copyright-related articles this morning of interest. Colleen Doran writes about her bad experiences with pirates and her good experiences with have a webcomic the last year. Sean Kleefeld writes about a Chrome Browser extension that makes reading manga scanlations easier – his point that many of these are unauthorized derivative works is what drags it into copyrightland.
INTERVIEWS: GraphicNYC has an interview with Art Spiegelman.
iWEBCOMIC: Rich Barrett writes to announce that his webcomic Nathan Sorry has officially made the move into the digital comics space. Issue number 1 is now available through Graphic.ly for 99¢ and can be read on the iPhone, iPad, Windows 7 and soon Android – not to mention Graphic.ly’s Adobe Air powered Desktop application.
MILESTONES: Gavin Hignight and Jettila Lewis hit the one year mark with their webcomic The Concrete World. They also announced that they are giving away 50 free copies of their graphic novel MOTOR CITY to the first 50 new subscribers to join their email list starting at 9:00 AM (PST) on November 19th 2010.
MAILBAG
Juan Mejias writes in about his webcomic The Pigeons' Rule about an office clerk unremarkable for everything other than his unrelenting nervousness and his rooftop neighbors, which range from a Roc bird to an antropomorphic cat-fishing mouse. Nice website, the webcomic is definitely getting better — it's a first sustained effort, much like a first novel. I'm not sure I'm sold on this comic, but I do think Mejias shows potential.
Mark Maultby writes in about his brand new webcomic MoonPuppy. Well so far it feels like the opening to a Swedish auteur film from the 70's. Not sure if that's what Maultby's going for or not. In any event please grab Comicpress or an equivalent for Wordpress – don't make readers work hard simply to peruse your archives.
Nate Wunderman writes in that he's changed from downloadable pdfs to pop-up jpgs for viewing his online comic E.I. – I don't know if Nate really wants advice or not but this is the kind of half-step that really isn't worth the trouble. His website isn't necessarily bad, but it isn't efficient in its function. It should either have the latest update to the comic on the home page or it should be really easy to click once to get there. I think there's lots to debate about online publishing but I do think that advice is pretty much a truism at this point. PDFs are useful to download things – a plausible approach to packing an issue of something. Not a good approach for something in the middle of being serialized. I don't see much benefit to going with a pop-up image approach over just embedding the image into the website like Comicpress/Wordpress does so well. Pop-ups just require extra clicking.
Comix Talk for Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Time for me to start thinking about end of the year articles and the inevitable tweaking of Comix Talk for next year…. But for now here's some things I thought were interesting for today:
iWEBCOMICS: Comixology announced a beta test opportunity for independent comic creators to get their comics into the Comixology marketplace. CWR notes that the program won't actually start until next year but publishers and creators can sign up for it now here.
INTERVIEW: Brian Heater has the first part of an interview with Roger Lanridge.
REVIEW: CWR has a review of The Art of Failing Buddhism, the print collection of Ryan Dow's webcomic Introspective Comics.
MILESTONES: Tony Murphy announces he's ending his syndicated newspaper comic It's All About You. DailyCartoonist reports that he cited the "lack of client papers" as the reason. You may remember Murphy for his successful Kickstarter drive this summer to fund his weekly comic paper for coffee shops called Coffee Talk.
AWARDS: Kirkus released its Best of 2010 with lists of best graphic novels for teens and for children.
Comix TaLK FOR tUESDAY…brAINS bRAinqdwdqad
I was all set to write this zombie parody post this morning and well… I didn't. But that title stays dang-it!
iWebcomics: An interesting survey of 500 iPad users indicates that the browser is still the most popular app and that they continue to use it heavily even after the first few months.
BUSINESS: Boing Boing profiles The Indie Band Survival Guide: The Complete Manual for the Do-It-Yourself Musician — a soup-to-nuts guide to musical survival in the 21st century, written by two of the members of Beatnik Turtle. Certainly there must be some useful information in there applicable to any DIY artist, including webcomics.
REVIEW: El Santo reviews Party Bear.
INTERVIEW: The second half of Brian Heater's interview with Tracy White.
HYPE: Some amazing art from Emily Carroll including a Fallout New Vegas character. (h/t someone – most likely Journalista!)
NOT WEBCOMICS: An interview with David Malki!, Ryan North and Matt Bernnardo on the rise of their anthology of short stories, Machines of Death, to #1 for a day.
Hold On… It’s The Return of Zombre
Ansis Purins' Zombre #2 The Magic Forest dropped out of nowhere on me last week. I wasn't familiar with Purins' work beforehand and therefore missed Zombre #1. Purins won a Xeric grant earlier this year for this project so it's great to see the finished comic out in the wild. It's a really well done production clocking in at 48 pages and you can get it at his website.
Purins' pitch for the comic is “It’s Harry Potter meets Yogi Bear meets Night Of The Living Dead!” I don't know about that, but there is something oddly charming about this very low key, sweet tale of a magical (in a sort-of-Saturday morning cartoon kind of way) forest. Zombre is, well a zombie, but a friendly one who has apparently kicked the brains habit. It's a reinvention of zombie as nonthreatening and cuddly forest creature.
Inbound #5: The Food Issue
The Boston Comics Roundtable sure seems like one of the most viable and interesting local comics collectives around. They've put out several issues now in a couple of different anthology series (ComixTalk reviewed previous books Outbound #2 and Inbound #3). The latest edition of the Inbound anthology series (subtitled "Comics From Boston") is The Food Issue which focuses on comics featuring food. The first half of the book is titled "Food Facts" and includes stories about food and autobiographical tales with food as a prominent part of the story. The second half of the book is titled "Food Fiction" and is a more wide-ranging selection of comics, none of which purport to be nonfiction.
The book is 176 pages and features 26 brand new stories. The contributors include: E.J. Barnes, Eric Boeker, Jerel Dye, Franklin Einspruch, Patrick Flaherty, Bob Flynn, Joel Christian Gill, Andrew Greenstone, Danny Gonzalez, Raul Gonzalez, Beth Hetland, Erik Heumiller, Allie Kleber, Braden D. Lamb, Cathy Leamy, Jackie Lee, Jesse Lonergan, Dan Mazur, Mar-T Moyer, Line O, David Ortega, Shelli Paroline, Adrian Rodriguez, Roho, Aya Rothwell, Katherine Roy, Adam Syzm, Laura Terry, Jason Viola, Rebecca Viola, Katherine Waddell, Ryan Wheeler, and Andy Wong.
Comix Talk for Friday, November 12, 2010
Lots of reviews this week at ComixTalk – be sure to check it all out: Road: A Sordid City Blues Graphic Novel by Charles Snow, Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show by Gordon McAlpin, Guinea PI and Adventures in Cartooning, and mini comics from J. T. Yost.
Lucy Knisley with a personal "It Gets Better" comic. More on "It Gets Better" efforts here.
INTERVIEW: Brian Heater posts part one of his interview with Tracy White.
iWEBCOMIC: Brigid Alverson buys an iPad and blogs about her first experiences with it.
MANGA: Brigid Alverson links to a report that 37 Japanese publishers are working together to set up a North American digital distribution portal for manga.
WE'RE HERE TO HELP M'AM: Susie Cagle comics about working for the U.S. Census.
HYPE: Why have I not seen this webcomic before?!? Comics Alliance hypes American Barbarian, a webcomic by Thomas Scioli. You gotta love the About page description: "A red-white-and-blue-haired hero must defend a post-post-apocalyptic world from the immortal Two-Tank Omen."
EVENT: Super Art Fight in DC on November 17th with art-warriors: Jami “Angry Zen Master” Noguchi, Chris “Impact” Impink, and Brandon J Carr.
Two All Ages Comics: Guinea PI and Adventures in Cartooning
Sometimes I catch books when they're new, sometimes they slip through the cracks at ComixTalk headquarters. Today I'm covering two comic series for kids: Guinea PI: Pet Shop Private Eye and Adventures in Cartooning.
More Mini Comics from J. T. Yost
J.T. Yost is the creator of the Xeric winning comic Old Man Winter and Other Sordid Tales which ComixTalk reviewed in 2009. Today I'm covering three new mini comics he has out this year: It's Dream Time, Snoop Doggy Dogg and two issues of Losers Weepers. All three books are available from Yost's publishing label Birdcage Bottom Books.
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