Comix Talk

A smattering of newsy bits for the afternoon:

• Another new Valve game — another well-done webcomic, this one based on Portal 2 and crafted by Michael Avon Oeming.
• Comics Worth Reading notes that Jane Irvin is working again on Clockwork Game.  Subtitled "The Illustrious Career of a Chess-Playing Automaton" Irvin has started it in 2007, stopped it 2008 and now she's back — posting it over again from the beginning.
• Dave Roman's other project, Teen Boat, also gets a new publisher.  Co-created with John Green, it will be published by Houghton Mifflin.
• The Tartan newspaper spotlights Pittsburg webcomic creator Wayne Wise, creator of the webcomic Grey Legacy.

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The cast of John Allison's Bad Machinery.  John has been talking about publishing these stories as All Ages-style graphic novels.  I've read a lot of those in the last 2 years or so and he's on to something.  This would make a great book for kids and someone in that market (cough cough Scholastic cough) should get in touch with John ASAP.

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Man what a week.  Well I almost got furloughed by the elected representatives of these ol' fifty states and a district yesterday.  I woke up this morning to learn that they had figured something out so back to work on Monday. While this is probably for the best part of me was looking forward to stories about the one dude left working who was going to have to answer the phone for the whole federal government of the United States.

So mea culpa but I never got around to posting about MOCCA which is GOING ON RIGHT NOW IN New York City! It looks as usual to be a great show with a lot of the local comics talent (including the very talented members of Pizza Island) exhibiting or paneling.

Charles Snow is debuting his new graphic novel Road  at MoCCA this weekend. Snow describes Road as "a story of sex, faith, music, and adventure a long way from home. Local indie rock band Owns Big Mecha are hitting the road. They’re dedicated to rock & roll, but are they ready for what lies ahead?"  I reviewed a preview copy at the end of last year.

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Nice promo video for the almost around the corner end of next month arriving print collection of Dave Roman's excellent webcomic, Astronaut Academy.

Also there is a give-away contest for the book going on over at Good Reads.  I will post a real review this month but needless to say, an excellently produced book (the cover is perfect) and a great showcase for Dave's kid-friendly but smart and slightly ironic sense of humor.  The x-girls both loved the book too.

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The nominations for the 2011 Eisner awards are out and the nominees for Best Digital Comic are:

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Hope Larson is doing a graphic novel adaptation of  Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time due out in Fall 2012.  That's basically… awesome. I loved that book, my oldest daughter just read (and loved) that book.  I can't wait to see what Larson does with it.  CBR has coverage of the WonderCon panel where Larson spilled the beans on getting the Wrinkle GN project and Chris Arrant has an even more informative interview with Larson up at Robot6.

If you're one of the few who've never heard of the book and really more so if you've already read and loved it – check out this Wrinkle In Time in 90 Seconds video to get up to speed:

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Nice write-up by Cory Doctorow of Vera Brosgol's debut graphic novel Anya's Ghost.

[It] starts out as a simple young adult story about a girl who's having a hard time fitting in at school, moves smoothly into a lighthearted story about an awkward girl and her ghostly BFF, and then slides precipitously (and scarily) into a no-fooling ghost story that'll have you jumping out of your skin while you finish it off.

Many of us first discovered Vera from her never-completed Return To Sender but she's worked on many comics and animation projects since then.

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Mia Wiesner is a graduate student at the University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig studying media economics.  As part of her dissertation on digital comic books in the US, she is conducting an online survey until May.  The survey is at https://www.soscisurvey.de/digital_comics/ and is aimed at identifing comic reader's expectations and opinions regarding digital comics.

Participation in the study is anonymous and it should take approximately 5-8 minutes to complete the questionnaire.

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I feel like I was just writing "I can't believe February is almost over!" and man – I can't believe March is almost over! 

Just a Housekeeping note: If you do apply for a user account here at ComixTalk be sure to fill out the user profile fields with your webcomic and/or website. Something so I know you're not a bot. If you apply and don't hear back from the site in a day let me know directly.

MILESTONES: Lloyd Dangle announces the end of Troubletown this April. Not much revealed in the way of reasons but 22 years is a long time for any project.  My first encounters with Troubletown were in the alt-weeklies and so even though it's on the web now too, that's still my primary frame of reference for it.  Best wishes to Mr. Dangle and hopefully he has other projects in mind next.

REAL LIFE: The creators of Joe Is Japanese created a comic — Koga’s Email — based on a first-hand account of the earthquake in Japan. (h/t Robot6)

BUSINESS: Interesting thought attributed to Kevin Kelly (from a conference that JOHO the Blog is live-blogging):

The Net is a giant copy machine. When copies are super-abundant, and worthless. So, you need to seel stuff that can’t be copied. 8 things that can’t be copied: immediacy, personalization, interpretation (study aids), authenticity (what the prof wants you to read), accessibility, embodiment (print copy), patronage (people want to pay creators), findability.”

MAILBAG

Jameson Gardner writes in that his new webcomic Narssica follows the adventures of a lesbian superhero and her entourage of GLBT friends living in West Hollywood. It's written by Jameson Gardner, illustrated by Alan Foxwood and edited by Jon Lee. 

Brian James writes in about his webcomic A Fine Example — about pirates and greed and the economy.

Thom Pratt and Kambrea Pratt write in about their webcomic The Shadowbinders.

Denver Brubaker writes in about the first anniversary of his webcomic Tales of a Checkered Man.  The webcomic is the story of an average hero who turns to a life of crime-fighting, despite his bad luck and acrophobia. Think Charlie Brown as a masked vigilante.  Brubaker is also in the stages of planning a book which will collect the entire first year of the comic.

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