Author: Xaviar Xerexes

Obama!  It’s day two of your presidency… why haven’t you solved global warming yet!!  How about some webcomic-y news in the meantime:

TOP STORY
Kris Straub has a really good post on why he essentially did a reboot of his comic Starslip recently.  For anyone hoping to have a popular strip the advice on "the pitch" is well worth reading.

INTERVIEWS
Brian Warmoth has an interview with Jon Rosenberg of Goats.

An interview with Zach Weiner of the screamingly funny Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

REVIEW
Ping Teo takes a look at Shi Long Pang.

THEORY
Herve St Louis has an article on his definition of comics which includes a survey of other approaches as well.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Lea Hernandez has a new website at http://divalea.net/.

Has anyone used this site called Komix! – it appears to be a piperka type of comics update/reader.

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I haven’t really finished integrating the styling of it into the site but I’ve moved all of the handy functions readers at ComixTalk might need on to a "user bar" at the very top of the site (right now it’s colored blue).  Up there you can log in, and once logged in edit your profile, post a talk post or view your existing talk posts at ComixTalk.  If there are other functions that would be handy to have up there please let me know.

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2009: OBAMANOS!!

2008: ComixTALK interview with the creators of Blank Label Comics.

2006: Kris Straub contributes a theme song for R K Milholland’s Something Positive comic.

2005: Announcement of never-finished Patrick Farley/Justine Shaw comic Mother of all Bombs.

2004: ComixTALK wanged!

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Over at Talkaboutcomics, Eric Monster Millikin writes:

So today’s the big Obama Inauguration Day, so I thought I’d take a look at what unusual things some of my webcomic-making compatriots and I are up to.

Chris Yates (reprographics) is auctioning off the third and final edition of his Obama-styled hand-crafted wooden art puzzles. The first debuted at Comic Con International this summer and sold instantly. The second was commissioned by the Manifest Hope Gallery (curated by Shepard Fairey, MoveOn.org, Moby among others) and auctioned for charity during the DNC in Denver. It’s starting at just a buck! Over on eBay.

I did a big Inauguration/MLK Day painting with Obama, Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and others and then sold it to a group of about 80+ newspapers with a total circulation of like 7+ million. At least one paper ran it huge on their back page, as you can see in this glamour shot of me relaxing inside the dark mansion of forbidden love.

It says “Reaching the Dream” up in the upper right. You can see Thurgood Marshall right in the middle, Shirley Chisholm below him, and Jesse Jackson partially obscured by my kung fu grip.

Randy Milholland over at Something Positive is doing a series of strips about the inauguration. This is unusual because this is probably the most attention Randy’s ever given to politics. It brings a tear to my eye!

So there you have it. If you spot any other unusual Obama festivities from the world of webcomics, feel free to post them in comments.

And then continue to party.

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Hey D.C Simpson (or as now billed – Dana Claire Simpson) has a new comic up — Raine Dog.  Since it’s literally started today all I can tell is that it’s about a dog.  Art looks nice.  Simpson is the creator of the long running comic Ozy & Millie.

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I haven’t really felt like checking out journal comics in awhile – I think I have some I read and there’s only so much time in the day for reading webcomics.  But I got a link somewhere today to Inkdick — a journal comic by Prana T. Naujokaitis.

It’s run daily for about a year and Naujokaitis is a very accomplished cartoonist.  And in terms of the comic, he had an extremely eventful 2008 with some major life choices (as he was in the last year of attending Savanah’s College of Art aka SCAD).  So frankly it’s pretty dramatic for a journal comic including scraping together enough money to buy an iMac only to have it stolen from the car, attending a lecture by bigshot webcartoonists Scott Kurtz and Dave Kellett, and getting robbed right in front of his house, let alone all of the things you deal with wrapping up your last year of college and trying to figure out how to "become" an adult with a job and all of those other responsibilities post-college life provides.  (Frankly I can’t imagine how scary it must be to graduate in this economy…)  He also does a great job of sketching in (through moments and actions as opposed to just telling us about them) his girlfriend Amy, his dad and his younger brother (who is deploying to Iraq).

It is a journal comic and doesn’t break out of the Kochalka-Weing mode much but it is really good – definitely worth checking out.

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Look don’t get me wrong – I think Wordpress + Tyler Martin’s Comicpress is great and for many many creators and/or publishers, it’s the way to go.  But I’ve been using Drupal for ComixTalk since 2006 and have always wanted to use Drupal to publish a webcomic(s) as well.  And I’ve known it’s possible since Christopher Wright has had his webcomic Ubersoft running on Drupal for about a year now.

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Some webcomic stories floating on the ‘tubes today:

TOOLS
Chris Flick explains how webcartoonists can use Twitter.  Twitter seems to be a decent tool for promotion but I think it has also is a background communication tool for many cartoonists who want the feel of a "virtual" bullpen despite working at home or alone.

INTERVIEWS
Shaenon Garrity interviews Alexander Danner and Edward Grug about their new comic, Gingerbread Houses.

A two part interview with Tony Piro (part one, part two), creator of the webcomic, Calamities of Nature.

CONVENTIONS
Tom Spurgeon has some details on the definitely-happening MOCCA Festival this coming summer.  Key though is that exhbition registration is going on now and will wrap up this month.

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Big news leaking across the Internets – The Legends of Zork will be a new browser/web incarnation of the legendary Infocom text adventure.  And it’s being designed by webcomic artist extraordinaire Jim Zubkavich! Jim writes about the buzz from on his blog here: Eaten by a Grue and the initial announcement of the project here: ZORK! Continue Reading →