Comix Talk for March 16, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 16, 2010
iWebcomics: The Beat had an interview this past weekend with the CEO of Longbox, the comics application on the launch of the public beta for the application. UPDATE: Bleeding Cool has an early review of the Beta.
MILESTONES: 1000 White Ninjas can't be wrong. Wait that didn't come out quite right... how about 1000 White Ninjas and Runnin' or maybe "I'd walk a thousand miles... if I could just see a White Ninja.. Tonight." Eh.. I got nothing...
REVIEWS: El Santo reviews Xylia Tales.
BUSINESS: The Daily Cross Hatch blog talks to Box Brown about his Kickstarter fundraiser.
THEORY: Dr. Visual Linguist, Neil Cohn, is running a survey -- help him out by filling it out. (h/t FLEEN)
TOOLS: Comic Space 2.0 Beta invitations still available.
PLUG: Zip and L’il Bit by Trade Loeffler returns with a new story, The Captain’s Quest. (h/t Art Patient)
ComixTalk for Monday, March 15, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 15, 2010
AWARDS: The Doug Wright award nominees -- which honor English-language Canadian comics -- were announced last week. Kate Beaton's book Never Learn Anything From History is up for the Pigskin Peters Award (for unconventional, "nominally-narrative" comics); and among the finalists for finalists for Best Emerging Talent is Adam Bourret for his comic I'm Crazy. I gave I'm Crazy a mixed review, but Bourret certainly was a brave story-teller in his book and showed a lot of potential.
PLUG ONE: I haven't mentioned David Simon's Crimson Dark webcomic in quite awhile which is a shame because it's still one of the best 3d art webcomics I've seen. Not sure how it's working, but Simon started a "club" for supporters to subscribe to at $2 to $5 a month to help him with having the time to produce Crimson Dark.
PLUG TWO: The Covered blog which spotlights re-dos of classic comic book covers by new artists. I would love to see a webcomic spin on this.
TOOLS: Scott McCloud experiments with a simple browser-based drawing tool called Harmony.
Brainfag Forever: Comics by Nate Beaty from 1999-2007
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 15, 2010
Nate Beaty has been making comics for about a decade (at least) and collected 8 years of journal webcomics into Brainfag Forever (or BFF as it appears on the cover). It's very self-revealing with a great deal of painful honesty in it. Artistically it's all over the place and in that sense it's an overview of Beaty's life as a comic artist as much as the comic itself is an overview of his life in general. It's no wonder this book collected a number of strong reviews last year.
Comix Talk for Friday, March 12, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 12, 2010
Rainy, dreary day in Washington DC today. And it's FRIDAY. Sigh... On an even more boring note, I'm slowly making some tweaks to everyone's "user account" (eventually I'll even get around to 'prettying up' your user pages) and you can upload a much better quality photo/picture for your user avatar here at ComixTalk now. Just log in and click on "my account" over there at the bottom of the right hand column, then "edit" and at the bottom of the page you should see where you can upload a picture for your user avatar.
CONTEST: The winner of the Escapist website's webcomic contest has been announced -- details and a gallery of the finalists' entries here.
HYPE!: New Dresden Codak! It's a webcomic and a game (and a floor wax!) -- I think folks should try and play this at conventions.
BUSINESS: Comic Alliance points to the latest comic from Let's Be Friends Again which nails the direct market dynamic of DC and Marvel.
LINKS: Ben has a list of webcomic news, forum and podcast sites - if you need a bigger fix, you might check out some of the sites he's listed.
Odori Park at One Year Old
Submitted by Chris Watkins on March 11, 2010
On Saturday, March 13th, I'll be celebrating the first anniversary of my webcomic Odori Park. I've managed to keep the comic updating three days a week (M/W/F) since March 13, 2009, at my site www.odoripark.com. For the uninitiated: Odori Park chronicles the gaffes and romance of Colin and Arisa Easton, an "east marries west" international couple with a toddler son named Sprout, and a small used bookshop to look after.
Comix Talk for Thursday, March 11, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 11, 2010
Good morning y'all, I almost skipped updating the site today but than I saw this: Josh Lesnick's WEBCOMIC PONY PARTY. 'Nuff said.
DEAD TREES: Ben Costa posts that he won a xeric grant and has the cover art to the book he'll be self-publishing, Pang, The Wandering Shaolin Monk, Vol. 1: Refuge of the Heart. I'm looking forward to this book.
Also another installment from Tyler Page on his experiences in self-publishing his comic Nothing Better. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. (A part 3 is coming)
BUSINESS: The Daily Cross Hatch has an interview with Bellen creator Box Brown about the fundraising website Kickstarter. In related news, James Kochalka's Kickstarter drive to fund a video game he thought up has met its goal so GAME ON.
COPYRIGHT: Copyright is a weird thing sometimes in this age of MEDIA MEDIA MEDIA all around us. Take this example of a post examining Dave Devries series of paintings based on children's drawings. What's the kid's (c) versus what's Devries? You might think there's an obvious answer but take the questions seriously and I bet you start to think a bit harder about it.
REVIEW: El Santo reviews Natalie Dee.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Graphic Novel. Also 'nuff said.
More Comix Talk
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 10, 2010
A few more stories worth checking out today:
JUSTIFY SOME HYPE: Comics Alliance has a preview of David Malki!'s new Wondermark book -- Dapper Caps and Pedal Copters. It's been great to see Malki!'s success with the Wondermark books from Dark Horse Publishing.
INTERVIEWS: An interview with Mike Russell of the alway funny webcomic Culture Pulp. Culture Pulp is non-fiction, usually taking on a movie or an event in the Northwest. And Von Allan gets interviewed -- his graphic novel (which used to be serialized on the web at Girlamatic but I don't see it there now) is The Road to God Knows.
BUSINESS: An article on epublisher WOWIO's excitement about the iPad. I'm excited about the iPad too, but given WOWIO's history I am going to wait and see what they bring to the world in terms of product and contracts before spending too much time reporting on their revival.
ALWAYS BE PREPARED: Webcomic Marketing has a list of items to put in a convention travel kit. It's a really good idea to have a check list before leaving for a convention.
Comix Talk for Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 10, 2010
Just got a bunch of books in from Microcosm Publishing that I will be taking a look at this week (thanks Jessie Duke!). If you've got a book or other webcomic-related object you're interested in having reviewed send it to "Robert Tanner, P.O. Box 3362, Arlington VA 22203" -- I can't promise every book will get a full-blown review from someone (most do though) but they all get a mention on the site.
If you're going to read one thing today I'd recommend this great post on Will Eisner by Christopher Irving over at GraphicNYC.
CRAFT: Erika Moen shows you how she made the cover art for her second print volume of DAR.
MILESTONES: It's Odori Park's first year anniversary on the web his upcoming Saturday. Creator Chris Watkins is soliciting guest strips to help celebrate - send them to him by March 15th.
TOOLS: At Webcomic Planet, Bryon Wilkins reviews the Comic Life software -- it's primarily marketed as a photo to but Wilkins talks about its comic-making usefulness.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE: It's Shark Week at Hockey Zombie! It's also Hockey Zombie's fifth year anniversary.
JUSTIFY GENE's HYPE: Creator Gene Luen Yang reminds us that Derek Kirk Kim is serializing T.U.N.E. at lowbright.com RIGHT NOW (It's also planned to be published in dead tree format by First Second).
NOT WEBCOMICS: Ted Rall time - first, Scott Kurtz throws him into a recent comic -- unless you've followed the online Kurtz-Rall verbal fragfests I'm not sure that's a 4th panel-worthy cameo there. Second, I saw this story on TechDirt where they reported that Rall recently argued "that Italy got it right in finding three Google execs criminally liable for a video some kids posted to Google Video." Rall is now officially in the running with Wiley for the all-time webcomic-luddite title.
Otis Frampton Comes Alive!
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 08, 2010
Otis Frampton, creator of Oddly Normal has a new webcomic called Escape From Planet Nowhere and it looks fantastic. It's a sci-fi adventure kind of story with a classic sci-fi look. He explains the new comic and goes through how he created the look in this video:
ComixTalk for Monday, March 8, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 08, 2010
OSCARS! I bailed on watching them this year -- maybe the highlights will be on the youtubebox? Anyhow though, the Comics Reporter reported that ACADEMY AWARD WINNER Jeff Bridges is also a cartoonist. Whodathunkit? A few tiny site notes -- (1) you can add your first/last name, homepage and webcomic URLs and a picture to your ComixTALK user account (restoring us to 2006 functionality! yay...); (2) if you add your name it'll show up on your blog and forum posts instead of your account name; (3) oh yeah, a small forum is back up (with a link to the ancient pre-2005ish forums) and maybe we'll do something with that this year.
INTERVIEW: Brigid Alverson snags an interview with the anonymous writer of Zahra's Paradise, which is about a mother searching for her missing son in the aftermath of the protests following the Iranian presidential election of 2009. Brigid also has a great roundup of all ages comics reviews and interviews.
THEORY: Scott McCloud writes about this article by Tokyo-based Craig Mod on different contents’ ability (or lack thereof) to migrate easily from device to device. I get McCloud main take on Mod's article which is sort of a warning that if we're not careful webcomics will get stuck with a bad "metaphor" for "reading/viewing/processing" them but I don't really buy it. I think the web is still incredibly fluid and open to innovation and I don't really see where the network effect is that would lock us into something.
BUSINESS: The Casual Webcartoonists writes about how to price your artwork.
CRAFT: Project Waldo has a post on making word balloons.
VERSUS: Webcomic Planet is hosting a "webcomics war" where comic creators "try to dominate the playing field by earning points by advertising their own sites."
JUSTIFY KONRAD's HYPE: Someone's list of webcomic recommendations -- seems like a good mix of stuff!
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