Happy Birthday today to Bryant Paul Johnson, creator of the super-smart historical fiction webcomic Teaching Baby Paranoia. Johnson, nice guy that he is, has some birthday presents for his fans starting with a revamped personal site, a short videogame series submitted for the recent webcomic contest at The Escapist, and a preview of his in-progress graphic novel, The Lower Kingdom.
Patrick Farley is one of the most important artists of the early webcomic era. You want to argue the point, bring it on. Farley's amazingly diverse and inventive output losts its presence on the web when Farley's original URL expired. He's slowly been restoring work to a new URL but now has a beta version of a Kickstarter pitch up to help defray the costs of giving his webcomics the home on the web they really deserve. Maybe it'll also help buy him more time to complete some of the major projects he created and start some new ones. I strongly encourage everyone to check out the comics that are already back up, watch the video below to see the startlingly broad range of styles Farley employed and than check out the Kickstarter page.
Sorry for the lack of updates recently – last week I was working on this; this week I'm working in Madrid, Spain. I thought I might be able to have loaded some "best of" posts for y'all but I ran out of time. So here's what is in my mailbag right now:
And a few good links to check out today:
Also if you have signed up for a ComixTalk account this week or last, my apologies but I won't have time to review and approve until the upcoming weekend.
AWARDS: The Joe Shuster award nominees were announced. The webcomic category nominees are: Attila Adorjany – Metaphysical Neuroma; Kate Beaton – Hark! A Vagrant ;Andy Belanger – Bottle of Awesome and Raising Hell; Rene Engström – Anders Loves Maria; Karl Kerschl – The Abominable Charles Christopher; Gisèle Lagacé and David Lumsdon – Eerie Cuties and Ménage à 3; Tara Tallan – Galaxion; and Steve Wolfhard – Cat Rackham.
REVIEW: El Santo reviews By Moon Alone.
iWebcomics: The Beat had an interview this past weekend with the CEO of Longbox, the comics application on the launch of the public beta for the application. UPDATE: Bleeding Cool has an early review of the Beta.
MILESTONES: 1000 White Ninjas can't be wrong. Wait that didn't come out quite right… how about 1000 White Ninjas and Runnin' or maybe "I'd walk a thousand miles… if I could just see a White Ninja.. Tonight." Eh.. I got nothing…
REVIEWS: El Santo reviews Xylia Tales.
BUSINESS: The Daily Cross Hatch blog talks to Box Brown about his Kickstarter fundraiser.
THEORY: Dr. Visual Linguist, Neil Cohn, is running a survey — help him out by filling it out. (h/t FLEEN)
TOOLS: Comic Space 2.0 Beta invitations still available.
PLUG: Zip and L’il Bit by Trade Loeffler returns with a new story, The Captain’s Quest. (h/t Art Patient)
AWARDS: The Doug Wright award nominees — which honor English-language Canadian comics — were announced last week. Kate Beaton's book Never Learn Anything From History is up for the Pigskin Peters Award (for unconventional, "nominally-narrative" comics); and among the finalists for finalists for Best Emerging Talent is Adam Bourret for his comic I'm Crazy. I gave I'm Crazy a mixed review, but Bourret certainly was a brave story-teller in his book and showed a lot of potential.
PLUG ONE: I haven't mentioned David Simon's Crimson Dark webcomic in quite awhile which is a shame because it's still one of the best 3d art webcomics I've seen. Not sure how it's working, but Simon started a "club" for supporters to subscribe to at $2 to $5 a month to help him with having the time to produce Crimson Dark.
PLUG TWO: The Covered blog which spotlights re-dos of classic comic book covers by new artists. I would love to see a webcomic spin on this.
TOOLS: Scott McCloud experiments with a simple browser-based drawing tool called Harmony.
Nate Beaty has been making comics for about a decade (at least) and collected 8 years of journal webcomics into Brainfag Forever (or BFF as it appears on the cover). It's very self-revealing with a great deal of painful honesty in it. Artistically it's all over the place and in that sense it's an overview of Beaty's life as a comic artist as much as the comic itself is an overview of his life in general. It's no wonder this book collected a number of strong reviews last year.
Rainy, dreary day in Washington DC today. And it's FRIDAY. Sigh… On an even more boring note, I'm slowly making some tweaks to everyone's "user account" (eventually I'll even get around to 'prettying up' your user pages) and you can upload a much better quality photo/picture for your user avatar here at ComixTalk now. Just log in and click on "my account" over there at the bottom of the right hand column, then "edit" and at the bottom of the page you should see where you can upload a picture for your user avatar.
CONTEST: The winner of the Escapist website's webcomic contest has been announced — details and a gallery of the finalists' entries here.
HYPE!: New Dresden Codak! It's a webcomic and a game (and a floor wax!) — I think folks should try and play this at conventions.
BUSINESS: Comic Alliance points to the latest comic from Let's Be Friends Again which nails the direct market dynamic of DC and Marvel.
LINKS: Ben has a list of webcomic news, forum and podcast sites – if you need a bigger fix, you might check out some of the sites he's listed.
Good morning y'all, I almost skipped updating the site today but than I saw this: Josh Lesnick's WEBCOMIC PONY PARTY. 'Nuff said.
DEAD TREES: Ben Costa posts that he won a xeric grant and has the cover art to the book he'll be self-publishing, Pang, The Wandering Shaolin Monk, Vol. 1: Refuge of the Heart. I'm looking forward to this book.
Also another installment from Tyler Page on his experiences in self-publishing his comic Nothing Better. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. (A part 3 is coming)
BUSINESS: The Daily Cross Hatch has an interview with Bellen creator Box Brown about the fundraising website Kickstarter. In related news, James Kochalka's Kickstarter drive to fund a video game he thought up has met its goal so GAME ON.
COPYRIGHT: Copyright is a weird thing sometimes in this age of MEDIA MEDIA MEDIA all around us. Take this example of a post examining Dave Devries series of paintings based on children's drawings. What's the kid's (c) versus what's Devries? You might think there's an obvious answer but take the questions seriously and I bet you start to think a bit harder about it.
REVIEW: El Santo reviews Natalie Dee.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel. Also 'nuff said.
A few more stories worth checking out today:
JUSTIFY SOME HYPE: Comics Alliance has a preview of David Malki!'s new Wondermark book — Dapper Caps and Pedal Copters. It's been great to see Malki!'s success with the Wondermark books from Dark Horse Publishing.
INTERVIEWS: An interview with Mike Russell of the alway funny webcomic Culture Pulp. Culture Pulp is non-fiction, usually taking on a movie or an event in the Northwest. And Von Allan gets interviewed — his graphic novel (which used to be serialized on the web at Girlamatic but I don't see it there now) is The Road to God Knows.
BUSINESS: An article on epublisher WOWIO's excitement about the iPad. I'm excited about the iPad too, but given WOWIO's history I am going to wait and see what they bring to the world in terms of product and contracts before spending too much time reporting on their revival.
ALWAYS BE PREPARED: Webcomic Marketing has a list of items to put in a convention travel kit. It's a really good idea to have a check list before leaving for a convention.
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