Monday Update

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 21, 2007 - 21:51

COMIXTALK

• Derek Badman is back with another installment of Panels & Pictures -- this month Badman shares some examples of color use in a variety of comics, with an emphasis on the use of shifting color palettes within the same work.
• Xaviar Xerexes interviews this month's cover artist -- Spike. Spike is the talented creator behind the well-received webcomic (and book) Templar, Arizona. The comic is a story about a town that may or may not completely conform to the regular laws of reality and features a growing assortment of interesting characters who both intrigue and intimidate the protagonist, a young man named Ben. Spike has also created other webcomics, including Sparkneedle, Lucas and Odessa and Playing With Dolls.
• And don't forget to check out all of the feature articles from October: Tim Broderick's article on taking your comic to a traditional book publisher; and interviews with creators Jon Morris; Jamie Robertson; Bill Roundy; Thomas K. Dye; and Lee Adam Herold.

LEGAL BEAGLES

• Jeff Rowland got a nasty-gram supposed from the copyright owner of the O'RLY owl photo that's infested the intertubes for awhile now. Apparently one of Rowland's designs incorporates the image from the photo. FLEEN offers some thoughts on the matter. Damn Good Comics blog offers its two cents too.

INTERVIEWS

• Wizard Online interviews Kris Straub about the Alterverse War miniseries and his ongoing sci-fi webcomic Starslip Crisis.
• Comic Book Resources talks to Unshelved co-creator Bill Barnes about his library-themed strip. (h/t Journalista!)'
• Lynn Lau interviews Tara Tallan, the creator of Galaxion.
• Boston Globe interviews Randall Monroe, creator of xkcd.

REVIEWS

• Meg Heald has a review of Looking For Group.
• Mr Myth lambasts Chris Crosby for creating an infinite loop of repeats without a proper ending for the webcomic Wicked Powered.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE

• I thought David McGuire's Webcomics Are Awesome is pretty funny as a parody of webcomics community (not sure if he's going to update it further) on the level of "lots of this absurd stuff happens and it's always healthy to make fun of yourself" since McGuire is a comic creator himself and as part of the now defunct Bag of Chips collective has certainly been "in" the webcomics community as much as anyone. On the otherhand I don't really know David (met him once at SPX) so I'm not sure how he views this comic.
• Everyone's making comics about the latest videogame Portal. This one's from Hijinks Ensue (whose creator Joel Watson also makes comics that appear on the website Apple Insider)
• Tough Guys is a pretty good concept for a comic (or probably more likely an Adult Swim animated series) but the execution of this webcomic by Zac Marshall and Nuno Teixeira is all wrong. The art is strange and largely looks cut and pasted. Maybe a chibi style would have worked better here. It's also largely not funny nor interesting yet. You're aiming at a huge chunk of American pop culture over the last 30 to 40 years (the "action movie") -- that's a big fat softball across the plate, if you're doing jokes you ought to be hitting multiple base hits everytime out.
• The Tower by Saki Miyamoto and Brendon Bennets is a textless comic about a princess who escapes her intended role in search of adventure.
• David Wright (creator of Todd and Penguin) has a new webcomic out called The Best Kids Show Ever - sort of if Fox News decided to get into the children's television business.
• Butternut Squash versus Mahna mahna. (Original muppet song here!)

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• A fairly good discussion has emerged from Joey Manley's post asking about how popular a webcomic needs to be to be able to successfully sell t-shirts.
• I can't decide if this videocast called ComiXtrips was fun or just annoyed me but I will say this - it was short, the guy clearly planned out what he was saying before he shot it and he had an opinion. If someone did this about webcomics I might watch it.
• Tastefully Done 2008 is out. It's a fundraiser for Cancer Research and features sketches of your favorite webcomic artists sans fabric.
• The Tonight Show with Tycho! It certainly would suck less than Jay Leno seems to do.
• The Beat has video of Chris Onstad's (Onstad or someone in a gorilla suit at least) Ignatz award acceptance "speech". (h/t Journalista!)

• Bill Barnes
• Chris Onstad
• Derik Badman
• Jamie Robertson
• Jeffrey Rowland
• Jerry Holkins
• Joey Manley
• Jon Morris
• Kris Straub
• Lee Adam Herold
• Randall Munroe
• Spike
• Tara Tallan
• Thomas K. Dye
• Tim Broderick
• Galaxion
• Templar AZ
• xkcd