Features

How to Make Action Move, Part One by T Campbell

kjc 1 Comment

My muscles tensed. A cold sweat broke over my brow. The next few minutes would be do or die.

"So long story short," said Joey Manley, "You want to edit this thing?"

Since I started editing Graphic Smash, and even before, I’ve seen a lot of action, from "widescreen" superhero epics to old-fashioned 1930s-ish serials to Matrixesque cyberpunk to melees between talking rats and wombats. I’ve seen a lot of great action.

And honestly—I’ve seen a lot of bad action. Cartoonists sometimes rush into things, when that should be the action star’s job. So let’s puzzle this out a bit. What makes good action pulse and throb? Continue Reading →

Feeding Snarky by Eric Burns

Wednesday White 1 Comment

It’s back to school time, which has me hopping around like a bunny on crystal meth. I work at a school, so had many, many long days behind me. For most of the rest of the world, however, August is a time of bittersweetness. Even folks who don’t operate on an academic schedule any more know that summer is waning, and autumn is coming, and it’s time once more to prepare ourselves for a slide into winter. Continue Reading →

Through the Looking Back Glass by Erik Melander

kjc 2 Comments

Webcomics have been receiving a surprising amount of mainstream media attention this year. The Washington Post column, which was reprinted in several other papers, and the G4techtv feature on the WCCA both painted webcomics in a fairly favorable light. But when the New York Times critic Sarah Boxer's article on Infinite canvases and webcomics was published in August, it was not perceived as an endorsement of webcomics by most. It immediately gave rise to some furious discussion, most of which focused on whether the article was well-researched or not. Continue Reading →

Feeding Snarky by Eric Burns

Wednesday White 31 Comments

So here’s the thing. I like porn.

I don’t talk a lot about liking porn, because you’re not supposed to come right out and say it. "Man, what a beautiful morning," you never say. "I think I’ll have a cup of tea, and maybe go down to the market, and when I get back I’m going to enjoy the bounties of porn that are my birthright as an internet consumer." People would look at you funny if you did, and your boss would stop letting you have complimentary coffee and donuts in the morning.

But I do like it. And most of you probably do too. We might not be cheerful about it – we might not march into gas stations with our head held high, grabbing the latest magazines off the rack and marching right up to the gas station attendant to make our purchases (that might be the one situation in life where you are that concerned about what a gas station attendant thinks of you) – but we do like it.

Which leads us inexorably to porn comics, which I don’t often talk about either. Continue Reading →