Really the only thing worth posting this AM? Axe Cop and Dr. McNinja in the TEAMUP of the century. Predator-Aliens? Jason-Other Serial Killer Guy? Pitosh!
DEAD TREES: So how is the last volume of Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series?
AWARDS: Techland predicts Cameron Stewart's Sin Titulo to win the Eisner this year.
REVIEW: El Santo reviews the webcomic 1977.
I reviewed Justin Madson's Breathers series for you today. You're welcome. Also help out Reinder Dijkhuis with some guest art so he can get "swearing Kel off the front page" of his webcomic Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan.
REVIEWS
INTERVIEW: This Week in Geek interviewed Jim Zubkavich.
CRAFT: Jeph Jacques shows his progress on a print he's making for SDCC.
HYPIN' THE CUBE
FROM THE MAILBAG: Creator Ted Sikora writes to tell us about Hero Tomorrow, an indy film about David, a guy who creates a comic book character called Apama. After his girlfriend makes him a costume of Apama for a Halloween party, David starts dressing up in it to fight crime. To help promote the film Sikora put together a comic book online of Apama The Undiscovered Animal.
Breathers by Justin Madson is a series of self-published comics that I first found out about at SPX. It's up to Issue #5 now and it remains an intriguing premise with some great characters and story arcs. (There are actually six books as there is an Issue #0) From what I can tell jumping around the web, it's criminal how few mentions of it there are, considering how good it is. Some of that is simply due to its minimal presence on the web (which it would be well suited to as each book's chapters are episodic in nature) but it's also just another reminder that simply producing good work isn't always enough to connect with a big audience.
The world of Breathers is one where a virus has rendered the air unfit for humans to breathe without the assistance of a breather — a mask to filter out the virus. The world is fairly well-adapted to this new status quo when the story starts although people do remember the world before. Madson does a nice job of thinking through the implications of this situation, but this is not a hard core science fiction type story; it seems more interested in its characters and is even prone to bits of magical realism.
It's just one of those quiet news days (watch, right after I post, something HUGE will happen…). Have a great weekend!
MC HYPE-Z: The Sisters Grimm webcomic starts today with a schedule planned for weekly updates on Friday. Writer Dave Pauwels describes it as "The comic is your average adventure-comedy-political thriller-space rock opera. Set on Mars, in the year 2339, it follows a garage band and their exploits against a backdrop of Martian civil war." The webcomic is drawn by Nicolas R. Giacondino, who lives in Argentina – his Deviant Art page is here.
VIDEO GAMEZZZZ: Cameron Stewart reveals that he and Karl Kerschl and writing and drawing a new comic miniseries for Ubisoft, based on their hugely popular Assassin's Creed videogames.
PR0N: Erica Henderson explains in a short comic why 3D porn may not be such a good idea (SFW actually).
DEAD TREES TELL NO TALES
In the last issue of Dark Horse Presents on MySpace, there's a new Bee story from Jason Little; a comic based on the video game Mass Effect, a comic written byLeVar Burton plus a funny riff on a scene from Star Wars by Frank Stockton. Future issues of DHP will be at Dark Horse's own website. (h/t Scott McCloud)
I also point you to a comic on digital civil rights in Europe that is pretty interesting, particularly if you're interested in the topic. (h/t BoingBoing)
CODE: The new convention Intervention will be hosting a workshop on Comicpress for Wordpress run by one of the developers, Frump. This is a great idea, one that I'm surprised I haven't seen at other webcomic-friendly conventions. Attendees to the workshop will get a bonus — a free download of the automated Cast addon for ComicPress. The Cast addon displays cast members in a totally new way, showing when they first appeared in the comic, how often they have been in the comic, all of the comics they were in with links and other statistics as well as individual biographical information.
CONVENTION: Gary reports that Jorge Cham is organizing another Webcomics newspaper-style handout for this year's San Diego Comicon.
REVIEW: Roya Grinstead reviews the webcomic Romantically Apocalyptic with which the reviewer "was floored by its miraculous visuals, its marvellous concept, and its delightfully dark, whimsical, and twisted humour."
MILESTONE: Spwug notes that the webcomic Dreamless by Bobby Crosby and Sarah Ellerton has only one page left to post. A review of the comic by Spwug is here.
DEAD TREES: Scott Kurtz announced that he is leaving Image to return to self-publishing his comic books.
The Queen's Hype: The Independent newspaper hypes some webcomics including The Oatmeal, Hyperbole and a Half, Cyanide and Happiness, The Perry Bible Fellowship, Ctrl+Alt+Del, xkcd, and Girl Genius.
We haven't linked to the return of Mocktopus yet so be sure to check it out.
MILESTONES: Harvey Pekar passed away yesterday at age 70. I never met Pekar, but he was an important creator who wrote honest portrayals of life in his comics. Many pages of tribute and condolences around the web today.
CONVENTION: Intervention announced that artist and webcomic creator Molly Crabapple, the founder of the Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, will be there both on a panel as well as running a Dr. Sketchy’s event at the con (Currently scheduled to take place Friday Sept.10 from 7-10pm). Excellent!
COLLECTIVES
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 A BLOGS
Despite the angst of the long underwear crowd bemoaning the lack of superhero comics for kids, it is such a great time in comics for kids. The old model of kids going to the drug store for a few comics for a quarter is long gone, but it doesn't matter as libraries and book stores have a healthy stream of all ages graphic novels, not to mention that you can find great age appropriate webcomics too.
The latest young adult graphic novel from publisher Scholastic is Ghostopolis by Doug TenNapel (creator of the videogame character Earthwork Jim). TenNapel has created a spin on the traditional notions of purgatory, etc., by creating an afterlife way-station that functions very much like actual life with a city and different groups living together in it. This gives TenNapel lots of room to stretch his visual imagination with skeletons, mummies, goblins and zombies populating the crowds. The art is very sharp and TenNapel does a great job with the main characters — a boy named Garth and the "supernatural immigration officer" Frank Gallows who accidentally sends Garth on into Ghostopolis. There's also Claire Voyant, Gallows' ghost girlfriend and Garth's grandfather Cecil. So much of the "world" that TenNapel built here is full of details and vibrant imagination that you're really sucked right into the book from the get-go.
Probably because it deals with death (and when the story opens, Garth is very sick) and some of the images could be a little intense for very young kids — this one is probably better for 10 years or up. Just a guess really as my kids are younger than that and I'm not sure I'm going to let them read it… yet.
Your post-World Cup comics report (start your planning for Brasil 2014 now!).
iWEBCOMICS: Comics Worth Reading has a round-up of some of the digital comics reader programs out there now. She picks Comixology as the industry leader to date, based largely on its embrace of handhelds and wider selection of comics.
INTERVIEW: Sequential Tart has an interview with A. David Lewis, creator of the webcomic Braveplay.
ALL THE HYPE THAT FITS
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 2 BLOGS
Angela Melick, creator of the great webcomic Wasted Talent, just got married. Congrats! Wasted Talent is a very funny auto-bio journal comic about a woman engineer — I think it's only gotten better as Melick got out of school and into a job; and despite a full-time job, her cartooning chops have continued to improve.
I've been meaning to try and get an interview with Angela and her now husband. In addition, to being a great comic, Trevor moved Wasted Talent over to the CMS Drupal — a great implementation and I'm hoping to get some more insight into how he and she planned and implemented the move over to a CMS that still is pretty foreign to webcomic sites (it is the CMS that ComixTalk runs on).
The 2010 Harvey Awards Nominees have been announced. Here's the webcomic category:
The full list of nominees after the jump:
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