Jason Shiga is an inventive cartoonist and the creator of FLEEP, a comic serialized at Modern Tales back in 2003. Shiga is fairly prolific and has posted to his website many other examples of his work over the years. His most recent graphic novel Bookhunter was nominated for an Eisner award this year and he's already at work on new comics.
Back in 2003, one of the first webcomics reviewed by ComixTalk was a cute little absurdist riff called Bueno The Bear. Bueno the Bear was a strange, but sweet-natured aburdist bit of humor; alas it's creator Pendleton Ward took the archives down from the web. Curious as to what Ward is up to now, I got a chance to interview him via email.
Thanks to our current sponsors: the webcomic Please Rewind, and the Learn to Draw the Human Figure video series. More sponsorships available – CHEAP!
The June issue continues here at ComixTalk: an Interview with the creator of SPQR Blues — Carol "Klio" Burrell; an interview with Faith Erin Hicks who just won the Joe Shuster award for Canada's Favorite Comic Book Creator, an interview with Dylan Meconis, the creator of Family Man; and Dr. Haus reviews Gun Baby.
TOOLS
Digital Strips blogs about the release of Jerry Stephens' new webcomic management system – BitArtist. If anyone gets a chance to test this out please let us know what you think of it.
WRITING
Howard Tayler's podcast Writing Excuses covers plot twists.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Jim Zub has written a story for the Pop Gun 2 anthology with artwork by Chris Stevens. It looks awesome!
Could it be? Is Caleb coming back to webcomics?
Funny — Webcomic Warrior Action Figures!
THAT'S HOLLYWOOD JAKE
Lots of superhero movie casting rumors at Blog@Newsarama including this interesting bit that Robert Downey Jr. is in negotiations to star in DreamWorks/Universal’s Cowboys & Aliens, based on the Platinum Studios graphic novel by by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley, from an idea by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg.
Carol "Klio" Burrell is the Glyph Award nominated creator of SPQR Blues — a webcomic set in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in the era of the Roman Empire. Burrell is really talented which is a great thing because a historically-based webcomic like SPQR Blues appears to be a really demanding task: set in Roman times with a wide-ranging cast; all of it meshing with our collective sense of the Roman empire both in terms of the writing and the visuals — it's extremely interesting to say the least and perhaps the education-oriented publishing company (Graphic Universe) Burrell works for ought to consider putting it out as a book when she's done.
I was really excited to see Burrell's Roman take on "steampunk" for our cover at ComixTalk this month. I think there's a whole new subgenre of speculative fiction waiting to emerge from that image. I got a chance to interview Burrell about her and her webcomic via email earlier this month.
Many people died to bring us this comic review.
Okay, no one died, but one brave Doctor did have to go several hours without power over the span of 3-4 days. For the first time in awhile, I turned off the laptop and I went to the library to read a book. A book printed on real paper.
And then I used their free wi-fi to surf the Internet.
Dylan Meconis created the popular and well received webcomic Bite Me!. ComixTalk reviewed it back in 2003. Nowadays Meconis is working on the webcomic Family Man. Family Man is being serialized by Meconis on her website and as she discusses below is a work with a lot more ground to cover before it will be completed.
Meconis also wrote a regular column called Juxtapose This! for ComixTalk in its first years. Aside from Paul Bryant Johnson's comics, it's the only thing I think we've published that had footnotes. But really good footnotes! (honest!) Being the fifth anniversary year of ComixTalk I thought it would be a great idea to catch up with Meconis and see what she's up to in 2008.
Faith Erin Hicks is the creator of two critically well received webcomics, Demonology 101 and Ice. She most recently put out the graphic novel Zombies Calling for which Hicks was just named "Favourite Canadian Comic Book Creator – English Language Publications" at this year’s Joe Shuster awards.
We’ve covered much of Hicks’ career in webcomics at ComixTalk from a review of D101 in March 2003 to interviews with her at the completion of D101 and during the start of her webcomic Ice. She even did one of my favorite covers for ComixTalk for the April 2005 issue.
Given the very recent news of her Shuster award it was great timing to catch up with her on life in Halifax, Nova Scotia and to get a few words on the new graphic novel, The War at Ellsmere, she’s currently working on.
INTERVIEWS
Rick Marshall interviews Joey Comeau and Emily Horne of A Softer World. Later Marshall, goes underground to report on illegal rock lobster fights. That guy gets around!
Jovan Zimzovski interviews Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics while coincidently, Joey Comeau is hanging around. (h/t Journalista!)
The Daily Cartoonist links to a Universal Press interview with Jim Davis of its syndicated comic strip Garfield — Scott Kurtz of PvP brings the drama in the comments that follow.
LEGAL KNIEVEL
8 Things I Hate Like About Service Agreements. (h/t Journalista!)
ART
Sean Kleefeld breaks down the linework in a classic Peanuts strip.
BUSINESS
Jason Poog interviews writer Donald Ray: part 1 on finding an agent and part 2 on how Ray quick his day job. Both should be of interest to comics creators.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 3 BLOGS
Luke Foster on the puntastic comic strip Pearls Before Swine. (h/t Journalista!)
Cartoonist Shaenon Garrity hangs out with other members of the National Cartoonists Society.
Super-talented Jon Morris has been posting various alternate versions of Superman – check them out and then vote in his poll for which one you like best.
Newsarama has a roundtable style interview with a whole bunch of folks mostly about webcomics and the potential impact of a worsening economy on creators. It’s more interesting than it’s title suggests.
The Newsarama article includes comments from T Campbell; Mike S. Miller, an authorized representative of Wowio.com; Chris Crosby, Chief Executive Officer of Keenspot and creator of Superosity; Tim Demeter, editor of (the iPod comic site and home to digital material from UK comics publisher 2000AD) and GraphicSmash.com (ModernTales’ action-focused anthology site); Dean Haspiel, co-founder of the webcomix collective, ACT-I-VATE, editor of SMITH Magazine’s Next-Door Neighbor anthology and Billy Dogma creator; Jim Dougan, a founding member of the webcomics collective, The Chemistry Set, and co-creator of Sam & Lilah on DC’s Zuda Comics (came in fourth place in the March Zuda competition), now part of the online comics collective ACT-I-VATE; Shaenon Garrity, creator of Narbonic and editor of the subscription-based webcomics anthology site, ModernTales; Queenie Chan, a Chinese-Australian webcomics creator; Andy B., a member of the Toronto-based webcomics group, Transmission-X; David Gallaher, writer of High Moon, the first winner of DC’s Zuda webcomics competition; and Lea (DivaLea) Hernandez, webcomics and Original English Language (OEL) manga pioneer.
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s momentous Freaks N Squeeks announcement, today, the Marvelous Patric is excited to announce that Fun Factory is returning to GraphicSmash.
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