They tell you cleanliness is next to godliness. They being those people who write those books of guidelines explaining how you’re supposed to behave. They give rules about eating candy in church and putting the toilet paper either under or over the roll.
In this case, I’m not sure they’re wrong. Continue Reading
Homework For Webtoonists
Smell that?
That familiar lingering scent, the heady musk of worry and frustration at a summer that is dribbling away through your sweaty, sunburned, strawberry ice cream-stained fingers?
Continue Reading
Every online comics reader encounters college webcomics sooner or later. They’re so common you might start to feel like every third comic you encounter is college-based. But, despite the history and nature of college comics in print, it seems the most popular "college" strips are scarcely about college life at all, building instead on elements not found in the real world at all, much less college.
Continue Reading
As I write this, Life Assessment Day (also here) is fast approaching. I also don't have a job.
Life Assessment Day, among other things, involves creating/updating a list of ten things one most wants to do before they die. You don't need a yearly day, of course – I encourage you to sit and come up with the ten things you most want to accomplish in this mortal coil. It's exhilarating.
Does 'get a job' go to the top of things I most want in life before I die? Continue Reading
Mirror Mirror On The Web
It happens a lot. We don’t spend a lot of time talking about it, or analyzing what went wrong. We don’t sit down and articulate areas for improvement. Generally, the readership for a webcomic gone wrong takes its time and attention elsewhere, and the creator is left to toil away in obscurity and isolation until the fateful day they have to pull an "Old Yeller" and put their comic down.
Continue Reading
There he was.
He looked nothing like I expected. Instead of thin, parted hair, thick baroque curls snaked around his upper head. He was taller and thinner than his cartoon likeness. But something about the way he carried himself, the way the glasses sat on his eyes… I still recognized him. Continue Reading
According to the mainstream press, it's the year of the blog. And in many ways that's absolutely true. To name just one example, political blogs are making an impact beyond just providing the kind of thoughtful commentary no longer found on screaming-head talk shows; arguably blogs helped to keep the Trent "We Would Have All Been Better Off" Lott scandal alive until he resigned as Majority Leader of the United States Senate; Howard Dean, candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, has used his blog as a means to inform, organize and raise significant funds; and we can read Andrew Sullivan and Tom Tomorrow exchanging witty quips as if they were at a virtual table at a virtual Algonquin Hotel.
There are two issues of interest to explore here. First, why are blogs with significantly smaller audiences than webcomics having an exponentially larger impact on popular culture? Second, why are blogs doing a much better job of building community and drawing attention to other worthy blogs than webcomics? Continue Reading
I am of the opinion that all webtoonist wannabes could greatly improve their skills if only they took ONE stroll up and down the aisles of the San Diego Comic-Con’s Artists’ Alley.
Continue Reading
A few years ago, I got tricked on a message board.
Someone posted a question attributed to Edgar Allen Poe asking whether writers need to know their topic. I weighed in that, yes, writers need to do their research or readers will not buy into their stories.
Later, it was pointed out that Poe was out to prove that, no, you don’t need to have intimate experience of something to write about it and promptly described how it would feel to die from hanging – obviously something he hadn’t experienced first-hand.
I didn’t have a reply to that then, but I do now:
Picture it in your mind’s eye: the Artist, alone in her drafty garret studio, isolated from friends, family, the ten thousand distractions of the everyday world, the better to concentrate on her struggle with the ineffable. Breathing deeply, she takes up pen or paintbrush, chisel or keyboard, to seek out all on her own the elusive fruits of her solitary labor – her Art.
It’s a persistent image. Downright iconic. It’s pretty much how we think of artists doing art. It’s also a load of malarkey.
Continue Reading
Recent Comments