Author: Xaviar Xerexes

Welcome to the third week of December!  In today’s ComixTalk 2009 Roundtable, (did I mention the 2009 ComixTalk Roundtable was posted today?) Johanna Draper Carlson mentions motion comics; Mike Rhodes blogs about motion comics, leading off with a link to this NPR story on it.

Last week, I posted Time Magazine’s interview with cartoonist Julia Wertz on her lack of health insurance and Tom Spurgeon posted a round-up of several posts written in reaction to it, notably one from cartoonist Evan Dorkin.  Also in last week’s news, Johanna Draper Carlson covered Ryan Sohmer’s post about his horrible, no good, bad experience with DragonCon.

And this is kind of a narrow-interest piece, but as someone who has tinkered with a website about comics for almost a decade now, reading this post about the good and the bad of the new tcj.com is kind of interesting.

BEST OF 20009 LISTS

• DC bookstore, Politics & Prose, posts its 2009 Favorites for Graphic Literature list.
• The Daily Cross Hatch lists various artists’ top 5 comic picks for the year.
• Top 5 Comics lists for the year from various readers of the Comics Reporter.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
All kinds of awesome: My Three Robins or Mr. Bat-Mom.  I’m somewhat shocked David Willis didn’t think of this first!  (h/t to Johanna Draper Carlson).

NaNoGraWriMo
Colleen Frake posted her NaGraNoWriMo effort here.  They ought to make a 30 day graphic novel effort an official variant on National Novel Writing Month (and maybe just call it NaCoWriMo for National Comic Writing Month).

BECAUSE BOB CRATCHETT DEMANDS IT
One more pitch for the Webcomic Holiday Postcard fundraiser.  Pitch!

Continue Reading →

Julia Wertz talks about being a cartoonist without healthcare insurance in this interview with Time.

Continue Reading →

Hope everyone is having a good week and maybe, reflecting on a good year?  Or maybe looking ahead to the next one!

First off, congrats to everyone who donated and is helping with Penny Arcade Inc.’s Child’s Play charity drive.  They’ve reportedly raised over a million dollars already!  Wow – for something that started in part to give the finger to Jack Thompson, this has turned into a wonderful institution.

Next, are you on The Comics Reporters’ Local Scene list?  If not and you are a comics-type person, you should email Tom Spurgeon with your vitals.

REVIEW
Robot 6 reviews Princess Planet and Merlin’s All Knowledge Is Strange.  It’s good to check in with Merlin every so often to see if he’s off on another experimental stretching-the-boundaries-of-comics kind of project.  This isn’t one of those but it’s entertaining nonetheless.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Derik Badman completes his 30 days of comics project.  Derik’s one of the smarter people in comics I’ve met (online at least) and his comics are always a bit challenging (in a good way).  He reminds me sometimes of an old favorite of mine — Russ Williams’ Ko Fight Club.

Cameron Steward used the Brushes app on his iPhone to keep a sketchbook while traveling in Europe. Fantastic stuff!  (Here’s a link to the Brushes app)

DEAD TREES
Optimum Wound blog has a guide for submissions to a whole lot of comics publishers.  (h/t Journalista!)

Continue Reading →

Time for the 4th Annual "Webcomic Holiday Postcard Fundraiser" – a charity event that sells packs of holiday postcards (featuring original art by webcomic artists) and all the proceeds go to Child’s Play.  Some of the webcomic artists featured this year include Scott Ramsoomair, VGCats and Super Effective, Steve Napierski, Dueling Analogs, and Mohammad Haque, AppleGeeks.

Continue Reading →

Deadline is March 8, 2010.  Similar rules as last year for the best digital comic category — open to any "new, professionally produced long-form original comics work posted online in 2009". The URL and any necessary access information should be emailed to the Eisners by clicking here.

Comic-Con International, the largest comic book and popular arts event in the United States, announced today that submissions are now being accepted for consideration by the judges for the 2010 Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards. Publishers wanting to submit entries should send one copy each of the comics or books they wish to nominate and include a cover letter indicating what is being submitted and in what categories.

The tentative categories include best short story, best continuing comic book series (at least two issues must have been published in 2009), best limited comic book series (at least half of the series must have been published in 2009), best new series, best publication for kids, best publication for teens, best humor publication, best anthology, best digital comic, best graphic album–new material, best graphic album-reprint, best reality-based work, best archival collection, best U.S. edition of foreign material, best writer, best writer/artist, best penciler/inker (individual or team), best painter (interior art), best lettering, best coloring, best comics-related book, best comics journalism periodical or website, and best publication design. The judges may add, delete, or combine categories at their discretion. The cover letter should include both a mailing address and an e-mail address.

More details at the full press release.

Continue Reading →

I’m hoping to have a roundtable discussion of webcomics in 2009 up on the site later this month, but in the meantime I went back and looked at past ComixTalk roundtables (2007, 2006, 2005) to see how we all did with our predictions for the years to come.  How’d we do?

• Tom Spurgeon on 2008: A general downturn in the economy combined with the further development of opportunities for traditional media sources on-line is going to have a drastic impact on on-line advertising sales for anyone not aligned with a major company. Tough times ahead. 
• Heidi MacDonald on 2008: Some smart publisher is going to realize that webcomics are the next Garfield, and make lots of money for everyone. It is inevitable. I’m shocked that no one has been smart enough to see that yet.
• Michael Rouse-Deane on 2007: I think even more webcomics will venture into animation. I know some of them are dabbling in it at the moment. Also, even more so, webcomics will expand off the web and into print. So webcomics will become offline and animated. I think the next big milestone for a webcomic will be a TV series!
• Gillead Pellaeon on 2007: Last year I predicted people would be jealous of Tim Buckley and start making their own animations. And it happened. First with Blamimation, then a test episode of a VG Cats series, and now with PvP going to Blind Ferret. I also predicted more books, and that happened too. I didn’t foresee Penny Arcade going into video game development, but now that they have, look for others to follow suit (I’m thinking Ctrl+Alt+Del and VG Cats here).
  
• Alexander Danner on 2007:  Something I do think we’ll see in the coming year is greater cooperation between the various technical service providers. For instance, it would be very lovely if users of WCN could simply click a check box to activate an account with RyanNorth’s OhNoRobot transcription and search service. There are a lot of services out there that are wonderful individually, but would be golden in combination.
• Doctor Setebos on 2006: Mainstream. As broadband creeps slowly into everyone’s homes, and online is everything, people will discover the popular webcomics. PvP and Penny Arcade will be on the forefront of the public onslaught. Journalists from respected newspapers and television news magazines will begin to write intelligent and eye-opening articles on webcomics that actually inform the public of this expansive entertainment industry that is growing daily right there on the internet. More services will be created/shifted to provide subscription webcomic content to the droves of readers that will begin to pour onto the webcomics community by next summer. More webcomics will be signed to those subscription services, and fans will cheer wildly as their favorite cartoonists finally reach the "big time".
• Bob Stevenson on 2006: I spent some time talking with a Nielson executive this fall (the tv ratings folks). He hadn’t considered the kind of traffic and market webcomics pull in or more importantly their narrow demographic. I’m not sure I convinced him it was worth any attention, but I’m thinking that some big companies may finally realize there’s an underexploited market in the making that’s worth throwing some money at. The cost to try something out on a large scale is just too low for someone not to. Sure, we comic creators have talked about how to reach a wider advertising market, but I think services like google adsense and the 360ep signings may have made some of us too passive on that front. Unless our efforts change drastically (they won’t), it’ll take some of the advertisers coming at webcomics to start realizing the potential on that front. Will it happen in 2006? How much is Rockstar Games paying Tycho and Gabe in 2005?

Continue Reading →

From the blog Glyphs:

Any comics publisher – small, large, corporate, independent, self-published – as well as online comic creators and cartoonists for newspapers and other periodicals, are invited to submit black-themed material released from January 1 – December 31, 2009 for consideration for award recognition. The Committee defines black-themed work as any comic with any combination of the following: a black protagonist(s), or at least a black character(s) pivotal to the direction of the story; a setting(s) or a theme(s) that explores the black experience within the United States and/or abroad, past, present, and/or future; and/or a comic of any kind written and/or illustrated by a black creator(s).

The panel of judges for the 2010 competition is:

• David Brothers, comics blogger, 4^thLetter!
• Carol Burrell, editorial director, Graphic Universe/Lerner Publishing Group
• Brian Cronin, writer, Comic Book Resources
• Katie Merritt, co-owner, Green Brain Comics; former president, Friends of Lulu
• Dan Merritt, co-owner, Green Brain Comics

Anyone wishing to submit their comic book or comic strip for consideration in the 2010 competition should e-mail GCA Committee Chair Rich Watson at rich.watson@gmail.com for further information. Hard copies are preferred, though submissions of e-files will also be accepted. Online comics creators and newspaper/periodical cartoonists with websites should send a direct URL link to their site or page. Daily cartoonists must have a minimum of one month’s work archived and available for viewing; weekly cartoonists a minimum of two months. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2010.

The 2010 Glyph Comics Awards ceremony will be held at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC) in May 2010.

Continue Reading →

The new TCJ.com looks really interesting (temporary URL here) and it’s a great list of bloggers they’re going to host including two names familiar to webcomics: Eric Millikin and Shaenon Garrity.  It also lists Gary Groth (owner of TCJ and Fantagraphics) who apparently will get over his previously expressed aversion to writing online.

INTERVIEW
CBR had an interview with Gary Phillips about his new webcomic Bicycle Cop.  I checked out the comic, I’m hooked.  So far an intriguing mystery with sharp art and cracking dialogue.

CRAFT
Onezumi has a video tutorial on how to get super-clean lines with the Photoshop pen tool.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
The publisher APE Entertainment has a new webcomic anthology centered around UFOs.  You can read it online here.

Continue Reading →