I’ve had You So Loco: the Second Crying Macho Man Collection book by Jose Cabrera to read and read again this summer and it’s about time I get on my ass and write the review for it. I interviewed Jose Cabrera about his comic earlier this year and my impression of his work hasn’t changed much. He likes to take bits of pop culture (and political figures as well) and mix them up, usually with a visual pun.
Time to wrap up the August issue and launch the September issue. Happy Labor Day and good luck to those returning to school this week (or even if you’re already there!). Our cover art this month is from J. Continue Reading
I have never met the man named Bleedman, but I imagine that if I met him in real life, he’d be bursting with an epic amount of jittery energy. Like his veins are filled with an unholy combination of Vault, Red Bull, Pop Cola, and Nestle Crunch. His anime-insired drawings are always kinetic … maybe even hyperkinetic, threatening to throw Newton’s First Law of Motion to the ground. An object at rest doesn’t stay at rest, boy-ee! With that in mind, you’d think that Sugar Bits, a webcomic about sugar, treats, and mountains of candy would be right up his alley.
I tend to stick to my comfort zone when it comes to webcomics. Reading about a new one here or on one of the other review sites, if I’m not familiar with the creator or if it doesn’t sound a little like something I already read, I’m sorry to say that I’m not all that likely to go and take a look. Unadventurous: that’s me.
So I’m very glad I took a chance three-and-a-half years ago and signed up for the Daily Grind Contest. It’s introduced me to a whole group of comics from my fellow competitors that I doubt I would ever have known about otherwise, and I’d like to mention three of them at some length here — Trains of Thought by Stephen Burrell (his Livejournal page is at http://stephenwastaken.livejournal.com), Tartpop by Phil Redmon (his Livejournal page at http://destro-simpson.livejournal.com), and Young Adventure Friends by Billis, a.k.a. Bela Whigimill.
Back in January of this year, I reviewed Runner’s Paradox by Steve Peters. I think it’s fair to say I didn’t love it. Very recently, I received a review copy of Peters’ newest book, Awakening Comics #0. You can read a preview of it here.
Randy Reynaldo is back with another issue of his all ages adventure comic, Rob Hanes Adventures. Issue 11 is titled "Rob Hanes and the Pirates" and is a quick-paced adventure story putting the main character Rob Hanes through an adventure in a thinly veiled version of North Korea and its movie-obsessed dictator. There’s a preview up at ComicSpace here.
I may be in Phoenix the first half of the week of Sept. 15th and in Tucson the later half of the week.
Who out there lives in Arizona and might want to meet up to talk comics and pop culture?
Well take with a grain of salt, but ComicList noticed some twittering that WOWIO hadn’t made its second quarter payments ot creators. If true, well, that’s not a good sign…
Lots of coverage of Apple banning a comic from distribution thruough iTunes (even more links to stories on it at the comic publisher’s site here). Apple says the content can’t "offend" but The Register correctly notes that Apple doesn’t seem to apply the same standards to movies or tv shows (and I’ll add music as well). The comic called Murderdrome was put out by Infurious Comics (and is available at their website now if you’re curious at to it’s "offensive" content)..
TechRadar has an interview with the creators — England-based Al Ewing and Belfast-based Paul J Holden, where they seem to be asking Apple to adopt some kind of rating system. I have no idea if that’s a good idea or not at this point but given the iPod/iPhone dominance these days, it’s troubling to me that Apple is setting itself up as a censor for comics content on a platform that potentially could be huge if handled right. (Although Charlie Sorrel at Wired says no thanks to comics on the iPhone. h/t Journalista!)
I exchanged emails with Tim Demeter, the Editor-In-Chief of iPod/iPhone comics pubhlisher Clickwheel this morning, asking about how Clickwheel’s model was different and if he had any reaction to the story. Here’s his comment:
Clickwheel’s iPhone App is a free reader while our content is sold via the Clickwheel site, not the App Store, so it’s a different set of rules. The truth is, the App Store is something new for all involved and everyone still seems to be feeling out what can be done – including Apple. Either way, I’m confident Apple will ultimately resolve this situation. Anything that helps them sell iPods is in their best interests and there’s a big cross over between the comic reading and gizmo buying audiences so I wouldn’t expect this to be an issue for long.
Publisher’s Weekly has an interview with Paul Levitz of DC on the digital future of comics. Nothing particularly revealing in it although Levitz imagines the current print to digital relationship to be something like radio to tv at the begining of television where television borrrowed from radio shows for awhile until ideas native to tv alone took off. I wouldn’t think that would be particularly comforting to DC and other print-heavy entities, although I suppose that having Zuda might be one of DC’s strategies to be part of "digital comics taking off". It’s not a great analogy but it’s interesting to see Levitz continue to talk about DC’s digital strategies.
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