Comix Talk for Friday, April 2, 2010

Bad Machinery (Linton) by John AllisonREVIEW: El Santo tackles the denizens of Tackleford in a review of John Allison's Bad Machinery.

CRAFT:  Webcomic Builder has a few words of inspirational advice for improving your art.

FROM THE MAILBAG

Poseur Ink which published the Side B anthology has a Kickstarter drive going to pre-sell a new book, Octobriana from Steve Orlando and Chaz TruogOrlando is the author of the innovative adaptation of Paradise Lost; and Chaz Truog is the artist of Grant Morrison's legendary Animal Man.  Poseur Ink describes the book as "an action-filled fantasy piece that follows the heroine, Octobriana, on her quest to claim her title as the goddess of lust. Set in Soviet Russia, with chapters full of sex, psychics and Russian mythology, this new incarnation looks to be a titillating thrill."

Ed Contradictory is a webcomic with an archive back to 2007, with a lot of meta stuff going on, jokes about the creator's control over the comic, etc.  The art is serviceable, but boring in a repetitive, and bland kind of way.  The comic does seem to keep getting better though and to the extent you love jokey meta kind of webcomics, this might be one for you to check out.  (In fairness Greg Burgas at CBR liked it a lot more than I did).

A pitch for Cheapjack Shakespeare, a webcomic with a decently polished pr pitch attached.  Except that the website itself is still sporting "hosted free, courtesey ofGo Daddy.com" — guys, there's plenty of free webhosting not cluttered up with ads and stuff designed to make your site look like an escapee from Geocitites.  (Let alone maybe you should spring a few bucks for hosting?).  In any event, it looks like the webcomic "preview" on the site is really a promotional piece for a desired movie deal.  The webcomic preview is available at a small size — too small to read actually — and with an interface that's a bit of a pain.  Sorry not to be able to comment on the story itself but if I can't read the comic, not much to say.

Got an email about the Charlestown City Paper's coverage of a photo comic called Blood Rose.  I'll admit up front, the number of photo comics I've liked in my life is pretty small.  And this one started off confirming my bias – static scenes, horribly clunky dialogue; but I was impressed with the visuals after finishing the story.  Charlie Thiel staged a lot of action really well and the actors were pretty decent.  But the dialogue… oy, that's got to improve.  (It wouldn't hurt to polish up the website either).  Anyhow, the next storyline debuts today in the afternoon (EST I suppose).

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Xaviar Xerexes

Wandering webcomic ronin. Created Comixpedia (2002-2005) and ComixTalk (2006-2012; 2016-?). Made a lot of unfinished comics and novels.