Author: Xaviar Xerexes

Washington is ON the hockey BANDWAGON folks.  I'd turn the site RED but why don't you imagine it that way instead. Today's INKTANK spoke to my inner caffeinated soul. It might as well have featured a little angel and little devil on my shoulders delivering the same dialogue…

INTERVIEWS: Fandomania has an interview with Nathan Schreiber, creator of Power Out, a webcomic on Act-I-Vate.  Webcomics Community has an interview with creator and Keenspotter Prime, Chris Crosby.

CONVENTIONS: Bags and Boards blog has an article speculating on Comicon moving from San Diego to Los Angeles. They think there are signs it may happen.

iWEBCOMICS: The Daily Cross Hatch has an article on indie comics on the iPad.

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The Small Press Idol competition is underway.  I got an email from Carolyn Watson-Dubisch about her webcomic (along with collaborator Mike Dubisch) project in the competition — The People that Melt in the Rain.  Check it out – sounds interesting.

iWebcomics: Comics Worth Reading has a post on how much readers will pay for comics on the iPad

THEORY: Paul Gravett has a post pondering the potential of a post-print comics landscape.(h/t Journalista!)

INTERVIEWS: Wired has a profile of Peter Bagge.(h/t Journalista!)

CONTESTS: Digital Strips has a story about a contest to work with Brock Heasley and David Reddick on a Superfogeys origin story.

HYPE: Contropussy is a webcomic by Emma Caulfield, Camilla Rantsen, Christian Meesey, and Thomas Mauer.  Caulfield was an actress on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Contropussy has been playing off of that in its PR which made me skeptical of the project but it ain't bad.  Kinda funny and some strong artwork.  I think they've already maxed out on their fair share of pussy jokes though.

MAILBAG: Tom Pappalardo sent me an email about his graphic novel in progress — Broken Lines, "a story about a spaceman and a cowboy driving around in a stolen rental van. They are on a secretive mission, and are being pursued by what I like to call "bad guys". En route, they meet a very nice waitress named Maggie."  It's a mashup of pure text and comics and Pappalardo has posted the first chapter online.  It looks like his focus is on a print version of this project (i.e., it ain't a webcomic… yet) and the first chapter online is a preview.

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Despite my blocking it from my memory for awhile I did buy comics in highschool — for a few years at least.  I can't remember all of the titles I bought from the comic shop relatively nearby, but I do remember Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis' run on Justice League.  My memories of that original run are a little fuzzy now (although I suppose I could dig the issues out of a box in the basement), but I got a huge fix of their trademark bwhahaha humor by picking up trade collections of Formerly Known As the Justice League and I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League — two series they did earlier this decade.

Now I'm trying to sort out how to follow the current Giffen (co-written by Judd Wicnick) Justice League series titled "Generation Lost".  Apparently D.C. is running two alternating bi-weekly Justice League series this year — do I have to follow the other one — "Brightest Day" — to figure out what's going on or can I just read Giffen's series?  And I realize this ain't going to be on the web, but seriously… now that I'm wanting to read something new from DC I'm struck again and 10 times clearer, how stupid it is to tie a business model to a single distributor and a limited number of specialty shops while ignoring the greatest distribution system ever invented…

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A lot of chatter over this year's Eisner nominations around the webtubes as everyone winds down for the weekend.  Here's a look back at webcomics' permanent record:

2009

• Last year's Eisner nominees for Best Digital Comic were: Bodyworld by Dash Shaw, Finder by Carla Speed McNeil, The Lady's Murder by Eliza Frye, Speak No Evil by Elan Trinidad, and Vs. by Alexis Sottile & Joe Infurnari.

2008

• After a lengthy hiatus, Barry Smith returned to webcomics with a new project Inktank.

2007

• Johnny Hart, creator of long-running comic strip B.C. dies.

2006

• The nomination of an unfinished webcomic provoked a lot of discussion over the Eisner's treatment of its Best Digital Comic category.

2005

• Everything Jake by Mike Rosenzweig hit its five year anniversary — I guess that makes it 10 years in 2010.

2004

• We gave a plug to the website Comics By Email.  It looks like it's still in operation.

2003

• The web is an often fragile beast — Jen Contino's story about Iain Hamp's Darwin's Complex (and the webcomic itself) is entirely lost to broken linkage.
• Greg Stephens not only created the webcomic Zwol but created one of better publication systems — conceptually at least – for his site zwol.org. 

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Fleen reported yesterday that Phil Foglio caught that Merriam Webster had "webcomic" up as a new word for April 2010.  I've always liked webcomic because (1) it's self-explanatory and (2) no one calls comedians doing something online "webcomics".

CONVENTIONS: MoCCA is this weekend.  Sam Costello the creator of the horror webcomic Split Lip will be debuting a special limited edition of its Volume 2 trade paperback with a new, previously unpublished story and a new cover by Shane Oakley.  The 10 stories in the collection offer 160 pages of disturbing, intellectual horror stories with art by Sami Makkonen (Hatter M vol. 2), Anthony Perruzo (Zuda), John Bivens (Comic book Tattoo), and Jason Ho (Agnes Quill). 

And Brigid Alverson has a round-up of lots more great books that will be available at MoCCA.

INTERVIEWS: The Beat has an interview with Hope Larson and Raina Telgemeier.  Together they're hosting the "Drink & Draw Like A Lady" event.

AWARDS: You can make nominations for the Eagle awards now.  Go Intertubes go…

FROM THE MAILBAG

So The Boy with Nails for Eyes by Shaun Gardiner is pretty interesting.  It's a webcomic with music, and a kind of delayed, cinematic presentation of the panels on a "page" that pushes — but in my mind mostly doesn't break — the boundary of comicness.  Really in terms of experimenting with the notion of a comic embedded in the web, this is fantastic stuff.  And the interface used to navigate within the "page" and to go from page to page is pretty easy.  So far there is only one chapter up of what is supposed to be a much longer story.  The art is fantastic, the brief text so far interesting, hard to guess if the work as a whole will be satisfying but certainly Gardiner's setting a high bar for himself.  I heartily recommend checking this out.

Nate Wunderman wrote to mention his webcomics E.I. and Time Corps.  Talk about extremes – I went from being immersed in the webbiness of The Boy with Nails for Eyes to Wunderman's comics which are all presented in pdf format.  I can't repeat this enough — use an image format that's native to browsers.  You want to offer a .pdf as an alternate version, great, but start with something from the holy trinity of image formats; gif, jpg and png.

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Another day that got away!

REVIEWS: El Santo has a review of Moon Town by Steve Ogden.

INTERVIEWS: Robot6 has an interview with Jarrett Williams who does the webcomic Lunar Boy, and this July will see the release of Super Pro K.O.!, a graphic novel.

AROUND THE BLOGS: A brief update on Nemu*Nemu plans for the year including conventions and print volumes of the popular webcomic.

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