Another Video About SPX 2010
I liked this video on SPX 2010 from Miles Shugar for its simple appreciation of the desire to tell your story — which is a big part of why comics is such an open and democratic medium
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Author: Xaviar Xerexes
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Comix Talk for Tuesday, September 21, 2010
TOPIC OF THE DAY: David Willis' new Dumbing of Age is like the (new) Star Trek of webcomics (I am waiting for the red matter to show up) Discuss!
CONVENTIONS: Intervention reports that its fundraiser collected $500 for EFF. SPX raises money for CBLDF. Both good causes, but If you're into webcomics, EFF is probably as important as CBDLF.
IT'S THE ECONOMY STOOPID PIGEON: MK Reed ran through some rough numbers for overall attendees, educated guesses about gross revenue and costs to come up with a rough estimate of profit per creator for the recent SPX. It's an interesting thought experiment but I can't imagine it means all that much to any individual creator. There's a big difference between Kate Beaton's table and someone who is at their first convention. Also of interest — Sean Kleefeld notes that Dorothy Gambrell of the webcomic Cat And Girl has posted several charts with her annual income.
DEFINITIONS: El Santo debates "what is a webcomic?" I agree with his knocking down motion comics — not really comics at all in my book. He also runs through several other examples where people have debated the definition of webcomics.
HYPE: Jen Wang's KoKo Be Good is now out on the shelves. Needless to say I love this book and I should have a full review telling you why up on the site this week.
Comix Talk for Monday, September 20, 2010
MILESTONES: A little late but it was Guilded Age's one year anniversary this month. RESPECT!
CONVENTIONS: I went from a weekend of comics overload to a weekend of coaching girls soccer. Just what are the differences there… Anyhow still haven't finished my SPX/Intervention Report yet (but still planning on it) so here's other folks interesting comments:
- Blogger Johanna Draper Carlson writes up her SPX experience here — she was a part of the 2nd Critics panel at SPX, I saw a good part of it and last year's version as well. It always seems like a good idea to me but the reality is kind of boring, too much about theory and the essence of criticism and not enough about you know — comics! Supposedly the SPX panels were taped so when it's up I'll link to them.
- Chris Flick who I actually have met many times at the local Washington Webcomics meetup put me in his comic strip Capes N Babes today. I think I'll pretend to stay mad at him and see if I get any repeat performances.
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David Malki!, the creator of Wondermark, who is always unfailing polite and full of
goodawesome cheer when I chat with him at SPX, wrote up his 2010 experience here. Be sure to check out the video of SPX he included in his post.
CRAFT: I thought this post by Jeph where he showed how a QC strip worked with different fonts was interesting. If you go with digital font over hand-lettering you're presented with a huge set of options — I can understand how you might want to change it up after 1500 strips.
INTERVIEWS: CBR has an interview with Shaenon Garrity, currently working on the daily comic Skin Horse.
REVIEWS: Johanna Draper Carlson reviews Gordon McAlpin's first print volume of Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show and Delos has a review of The Checkered Man. I also posted a review of Joann Sfar's graphic novel adaptation of The Little Prince.
BATTLE OF BRITANNIA: Kris Straub is apparently in England as we speak. I have this half-formed Beatles = Half Pixel joke in my head; "hey which Half Pixel is Kris?" but maybe I'll leave the jokes to the properly caffeinated this morning.
The Little Prince Adapted by Joann Sfar
Joann Sfar is a fantastic comic artist – he is well-known as part of the new wave of Franco-Belgian comics and was also the artist on the multi-volume all ages series Sardine in Outer Space. He has done a marvelous job of adapting the famous tale of The Little Prince to comics. And let's be sure to hand out credit as well to Sarah Ardizzone who translated Sfar's adaptation into English.
The tale of The Little Prince is fairly famous at this point. Author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote the story while in America during World War II. It was published in 1943, the year before de Saint-Exupéry joined Free French forces and ultimately crashed over the Mediterranean on a reconnaissance mission during the war. It is one of the most popular books of the last century, translated in many languages. It is often described as a philosophical tale but it is also clearly autobiographical in a sense. Saint-Exupéry flew for many years, often working for national post services. On December 30, 1935, he crashed in the Libyan Sahara desert. Along with his navigator, Saint-Exupéry survived three days in the desert with extreme dehydration and hallucinations. They were rescued on the fourth day by a Bedouin traveling by camel. The Little Prince begins with a pilot crashed in the desert, needing to fix his plane and escape before succumbing to the heat and dehydration.
Frumph Announces Comic Easel
It's late but Phil "Frumph" Hofer, one of the key developer/maintainers on ComicPress announced publicly what he had discussed at Intervention last week — he's going to put out a new webcomic plug in for Wordpress called ComicEasel. He has a short post up explaining why he's releasing the new code under a new name.
It's getting late on the East Coast for me but I'll shoot Frumph some more questions on timing and details of the new project.
Comix Talk for Friday, September 17, 2010
Happy Friday – I'm still working on finishing up the video interviews I did at SPX and Intervention plus I have a stack of books to review now. In the meantime here's some interesting stories from today:
iWEBCOMICS: How important are apps going to be to the future of comics? This story suggests people may not be using all of the apps (not just comics) that they download.
BUSINESS: The Webcomics Marketing website lists a lot of recommendations for possible printing needs. Looks like it's worth bookmarking.
COPYRIGHT: If you're at all interested in copyright and how it evolves in tandem with technology check out Lewis Hyde’s new book Common as Air. There's a review here at the New York Times. Sort of on a similar tack, check out this post at TechDirt on how much material is missing from the public domain because of countries habit of continually expanding and extending copyrights.
DEAD TREES: Gordon McAlpin's Multiplex is in the last day of a pre-order book drive. So nudge nudge — get over there if you were thinking about getting the book at some point.
ALL AGES: Lots of folks linking to the serialization on the web of the comic The New Brighton Archeological Society. I hadn't read it before but from what I see it looks great and is pitched at all ages. Brigid Alverson has an interview with one of the creators, Mark Andrew Smith.
Comix Talk for September 16, 2010
Wow I was completely zapped by three days of con-mania this past weekend. In any event, I've posted some photos, my first "live" interviews – well first I've recorded and shared with peoples like yourselves. I've got a few more to edit and post — hopefully by the end of the week along with a convention-report style wrap-up. There's been a lot of posts on SPX (Tom Spurgeon's round-up of such posts is here). I missed the panel there with Richard Thompson, creator of the best new comic strip in recent years — Cul de Sac but moderator Mike Rhode posted the audio from the panel.
iWEBCOMICS
Warren Ellis posted a little blurb about ideal digital format and pricing for comics. There were some recent posts about the current price of monthly comic books pamphlets floppies 32 pages with staples thingees lately — prices have gone way up and that format is really not a cheap buy for entertainment anymore. Digital comics could be. Webcomics surely are — free is the ultimate sampler price. I also missed posting about the speech on this future for comics that Mark Waid gave at the Harvey Awards ceremony — Waid followed up with a blog post containing a more polished version of the speech here — it's well worth reading.
NEW!!
David Willis — who I got to meet at Intervention — launched his brand spankin' new Dumbing Of Age webcomic.
DIFFERENT!!
John Allison writes that he's going to stop posting Bad Machinery as a webcomic, but instead turn towards finding a publisher for it. Presumably to put out a print version that would help it to find more younger readers?
MILESTONES
Co-creator Eben E.B. Burgoon writes that the 3rd anniversary of Eben 07 was this month plus they have a 3rd print collection out, titled Operation: 3-Ring Bound. To celebrate, they're holding a contest for a $20 amazon gift card & the line art of a celebratory anniversary poster drawn by D. Bethel — anybody that comments on a comic during September will be entered to win.
HISTORY
El Santo writes a round-up of attempts to chronicle the history of webcomics including T Campbell's series on it here at ComixTalk.
MAILBAG
- Charles Cutting wrote to let us know that the Illustrated Ape website is hosting the first installment of his webcomic The Dream Quest of Randolph Carter. The next episode will be posted as soon as it is finished (Cutting says hopefully no later than November the 1st).
- J.T. Yost debuted some new mini comics at SPX including It's Dream Time, Snoop Doggy Dogg. I got a review copy and hope to have a review up later this month. I interviewed Yost at SPX — it's part of the 5 interview video here.
- Stan Wojohowitz wrote that he's launched a new webcomic after 18 months of development called The Psychotic Episodes. It's about characters exploring issues of psychiatry and mental health. The first issue, including related blog posts, seems to be about mental health issues for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
- Stefan Strasser writes out with a different pitch for his webcomic, "Most webcomics start out with a lavish update schedule and then cut down the number of new strips during the course of time. Chicken Wings is now going the opposite way. Starting this week, the comic will update three times a week instead of just one. Chicken Wings is a comic aimed at aviation enthusiasts and about a bunch of chickens working in a small aviation company.
Old Spice Cthulhu
Man I missed the whole Old Spice Dude you-tubey thing but webcomic creator Michael Moss wrote in that he and Jace Mills and Jack Shen created their own Old Spice commercial starring Cthulhu. Moss actually uses Cthulhu as a character in his webcomic Gods Playing Poker.
Interviews with Five Creators at SPX 2010
Here's a longer clip of five interviews I did in a row at SPX this past weekend. These creators' work largely has more of an indy feel and while they all have web presences I think all are a bit more focused on print. I have reviewed work from J.T. Yost and Sophia Wiedeman before but it was my first time looking at comics from the other three. Yost had a Xeric Award winner in his book Old Man Winter (reviewed here) and Wiedeman had a Xeric Award winner in her book The Deformitory (reviewed here).
In order I talked to Steve Secks about his comic Life Is Good, Sara Lindo about her comic Carl In Love, Marguerite Dabaie about her comic The Hookah Girl And Other True Stories, Sohia Wiedeman about her comic Lettuce Girl, and J.T. Yost about his two new series — one about dreams and the other about found objects.
Interviews with Sara Turner and Jerzy Drozd
I got a chance to do short interviews with Sara Turner and Jerzy Drowd at SPX this past weekend.
Sara was there to promote her new comic The Ghosts of Pineville. They also had a print collection of The Replacements, a webcomic that originally ran on GraphicSmash.com that Sara worked on with Jerzy. Jerzy and Sara put out a lot of their work under their Make Like A Tree banner where you can also find out more about what they're working on.
Jerzy was there to promote a new minicomic, Tiny Hamiltons, that he did with his wife Anne. He also let slip that he's already written another volume of his webcomic The Front although it sounds like it won't be until next year at the earliest that we'll see it on the web.
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