Your Ignatz Winners
Tom Spurgeon has a list of the Ignatz 08 winners announced last night at SPX. Achewood by Chris Onstad won for OUTSTANDING ON-LINE COMIC.
I’ll be wandering around SPX today.
Author: Xaviar Xerexes
You Hockey Puck!
TOOLS
Publishers Weekly has a story on an upgrade to the Sony e-book reader. Still expensive ($399) but better touch screen, a readling light and more storage capacty (also will play music!?).
CIVIC LESSONS
An interview with Tom Tomorrow who has a book collection out, called The Future’s So Bright, I Can’t Bear to Look.
An interview with Ted Rall who will be at SPX in Bethesda MD this weekend.
Kerry Edwards brings the pain.
An opera based on Dinosaur Comics — not the first such cross-medium adaptation (Too Much Coffee Man probably claims that footnote in history) but still pretty unusual. It’s tonight if you’re interested in attending!
ComixTalk Coverage of SPX – SUNDAY
SPX in Bethesda MD is this weekend (this year – Saturday and Sunday). I’ll be there on Sunday hanging out – drop me an email (xerexes AT gmail DOT com) if you’re attending. I’ll also have the low-tech video camera this year shooting some footage and maybe if all goes well doing a few interviews. If you’re game for letting me ask you questions about your comics let me know!
Making Comics With Comicbrush
Probably a post better for ComixTalk (and there are posts on this over there) but it certainly is relevant to this site too. Â I’ve been playing with Comicbrush today (I tried it out a little earlier while it was in beta) – a site that let’s you create comics from pre-packaged art packs and things you upload. Â There’s a community gallery to show off your work and you can export it by email or facebook.
Full Story Down?
I haven’t been able to get ahold of Alexander Danner in awhile so I’m hoping someone reading ComixTalk can help me out.
His website has been down for a good chunk of September (including Full Story, the great directory of completed webcomics).
10 Years and the End of Cigarro & Cerveja
I think I failed to mention both the 10 year anniversary and the "end" of Cigarro & Cerveja by Tony Esteves earlier in September. The last strip (although Esteves says there may be more on a very sporadic basis) is a nice ending to what was definitely an underappreciated strip. I finally got to meet Tony in person at last year’s SPX – I’m looking forward to his new comic project.
Scratch Fury 3D
Scott Kurtz has a post up about how he made the prototype for his new Scratch Fury Maquette. He worked with a company in China (Gensen figures) to design and produce the figurine — while I guess it’s become fairly commonplace I still have to stop and do a doubletake that we live in such an interconnected world these days (at least until we run out of petro, ‘natch…).
Bailout Comics
Will the economy crater as Washington fiddles? Will Wall Street bigshots get their bonuses? Will there be any banks left standing by the end of the year?
Man that’s serious… after yelling at your representatives for letting things get so bad we’re in this mess we all need a laugh. Post some links to comics on the crisis de jour.
- 3 Panel Soul
- Shortpacked!
- Medium Large
- Dr McNinja (really! and Happy 3rd Year Anniversary!)
- Sinfest (a whole bunch before this one too)
- Overcompensating
- Joy of Tech
Dresdan Codak’s “Hob” Storyline
I meant to post about this earlier in the month but what the hey — Aaron Diaz finished up his "Hob" storyline at Dresden Codak this month (last comic; first comic) and while there was a ton of discussion on his forum I didn’t see much reaction around the web except for El Santo who generally doesn’t seem to have liked the transhumanism aspect of the Hob storyline (El Santo also reviewed Dresden Codak for ComixTalk earlier this year).
I did see this review from Saloon Muyo which did seem to be mostly about the Hob storyline (Muyo was put off by the character development in the storyline) but for such a popular strip I was surprised there wasn’t more reaction to its first complete major storyline.
Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson is an amazing processor of information. I (like countless other fans of his work) am currently reading Anathem, his latest novel which tackles such myriad issues as religion, science, the long clock… I’m only 200 pages into a lengthy brick of a book. So far it is living up to the amazing trilogy of his previous work, The Baroque Cycle books.
If you missed them, The Baroque Cycle books are Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. Stephenson has an amazing ability to process, digest and integrate knowledge in his work — the books are historical fiction and yet they have this very science fiction feel to them that is bound up in the tremendous excitement about discovery and possibility Stephenson brings to the story. You read these books knowing at once the historical contours of where they will go, but you get so engaged in the characters wild journey through the amazingly productive time of the books (1660-1715) that there is a giddy feel for the discovery of modern financial systems akin to Doc Brown inventing a time machine.
Stephenson was one of the first authors I saw who let fans use the Internet to take apart his books online or at least the knowledge in them. The first time I saw this was on a site called the Metaweb which was a wiki built around the books of The Baroque Cycle (sadly the URL seems to have lapsed and the work is only accessible through the Wayback Machine). Now there seems to be a similar effort built around Anathem. This wiki approach is a natural for an author who layers so much material into his narrative; it seems intuitive for readers to pull the layers back again and to build that knowledge outwards.
This is a small thing, but I’m just struck by how fans of a work might no longer view the reading of the book as the end of the experience, but instead take on such a thing as working on a wiki built around the book. How does that change the readers’ relationship to the book; the author’s relationship to the readers? I’m not entirely sure if there’s any generalization that’s entirely valid — nothing requires readers to be anything more than readers, just as nothing requires a writer to pay attention to the world beyond a paper and pen in front of them. Nevertheless, with work like Stephenson’s it’s really interesting to think about the life of the book beyond the acts of writing it and reading it.
Stephenson recently spoke at the Googleplex; the Q&A provides a lot of insight into what he’s interested in and how he approaches his writing (I liked in particular his thoughts on the “deification of knowledge”).
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