Save The Elves!!!
The only thing worse than being embarrassed – that squirmy, wormy, queasy embarrassment, like when your pants rip open during an assembly, or when you fall off your bike in front of that girl (or guy) you really like in Grade Three – the only thing worse than that sort of embarrassment is when you don’t feel it for yourself, but for somebody else.
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Collaboration of One?
The Comics medium is often a collaborative medium. This is particularly true in "mainstream" American and European comics, but a lot of independent or alternative comics are also produced in a collaborative setting.
I’ve been writing the last couple of these columns about comics scriptwriting, with the implication that I’m talking about comics created by several hands. I’ve been referring to the writer and the artist as though these are two separate entities, but the things I’ve been writing about hold true (in as much as they hold true at all) for a single creator, as well. Continue Reading
Staff Contributor: Features Continue Reading
Say, did you know science-fiction fans like Star Trek more than they probably should?
Not only that, but Republicans are unconcerned about the poor, gay men are stylish, and Italian men are good lovers! It's true! And those are only the first few revelations you can get from sampling our pop culture! Continue Reading
Heroes, Kids, and Hope
Tonight was the night I’d been waiting a year for.
Spiderman 2 was finally out, and while I’d promised my friends back in my old college town I’d see it with them on Friday, the geek in me was screaming to see it ASAP. So I bought my ticket a day in advance, put off drawing my comic for a few hours, and headed out to the theater. Continue Reading
In the days before I discovered webcomics, I worked an office job where I generally had at least a couple of hours each day when there simply wasn't anything useful for me to do. Of course, I was still expected to look busy. I couldn't exactly put my feet up and open a book. In fact, when I wanted to read, there was really only one place I could go. And that was – you guessed it – the bathroom. Yes, I confess – I too have spent many hours hiding in the loo with a book. Continue Reading
Creators make webcomics. Cool tools make the webcomic community go round. Here’s to the geeks, the code monkeys, and the computer science students who come up with ingenious hacks to help creators automate publishing and fans find a webcomic’s latest update.
I – Finders, Keepers! Continue Reading
Webcomics are constantly being compared to comics made available in print mediums: pros and cons, webcomics breaking into print, print on the web, etc. Much of this discussion is generated from people who read and create webcomics, and is written in defence of webcomics. Oddly enough, it’s not as if you hear the masses screaming that webcomics are inferior to print. Maybe it’s simply inferred by everyone, the same way comic fans infer that their favorite medium is supposed to be inferior to prose or movies?
So maybe I’m just giving everyone a reason to argue their point when I say that right now, I consider webcomics to be not as good as other mediums. Continue Reading
As everyone knows, chief among the benefits of producing an independent webcomic is the freedom from any sort of editorial input or criticism. In the absence of the editor's stifling presence, a comics creator can maintain a pure artistic vision, and is thereby free to reach his or her full potential.
That seems to be the prevailing opinion, anyway. That editors might actually have useful skills and services to offer is a little-considered possibility.
Mean What You Say, but Never Say What You Mean
Continuing down last month’s David Mamet trek towards an aesthetic of creating comics….
Brian Michael Bendis is a big Mamet fan. When I read a Bendis script a little while back, I was really impressed; I liked it because it read like a script to a comic, not like he was trying to impress anybody. It wasn’t full of witticisms and fancy descriptions, it was bare-bones writing that provided a structure which could be turned into a comic.
What I liked about Bendis’ script was that it was made up of panel descriptions like: “Shot of guy’s face.” And “Same as 2.” “Same as 2, closer.”
At first, every growing-up-thinking-comics-scripts-should-look-like-Alan-Moore-scripts bone in my body reacted against this. Wait, I thought, shouldn’t Bendis be saying what the face looks like? Continue Reading
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