Comix Talk for Tuesday, October 12, 2010

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I beg to differ — short weeks make the world go round. The New York Comicon sounded like it was a really good show – I saw estimates of 100,000 plus attendees.  Gary had a write-up here and USA Today's PopCandy blog flagged 5 books it found here.  The Comics Reporter's "collective memory" roundup of stories on the NYCC is here.

A few more stray notes from conventions in DC last month.  I met T.J. Kirsch at SPX this year and bought a couple print versions of A Sam Kimimura Mystery: She Died In Terrebonne — the webcomic Kirsch draws and Kevin Church writes.  Not sure how they're printed but not a bad way to "recreate" an installment feel in print.  Not necessary, but seemed like a nice thing for fans to pick up.  I also got a copy of Kirsch's mini Slim Johnson's Fever Dream which is indeed weird like most dreams are.

At SPX (or maybe it was at Intervention — the creators' label Interrobang Studios was at both) I picked up Ensign Sue Must Die! by Clare Moseley and Kevin Bolk. It's a pretty funny little parody about a Mary Sue character run amuck in the "new" Star Trek universe. I also picked up The Lettuce Girl from Sophia Wiedeman (I interviewed her this year at SPX and ComixTalk reviewed her previous work The Deformitory).  A take on the fairy tale Raphunzel from the witches perspective. And last but not least, Jamie Noguichi gave me a mini called Pandoom about (sort of) real life panda bears Ling Ling and Tai Tai.

DEAD TREES: Last week we learned that Dark Horse has signed up Dr. McNinja to its roster with a book coming April 2011.  Creator Chris Hastings mentioned that it will be Book 4 — he's keeping books 1-3 on Topatoco.

REVIEW: El Santo reviews Sam Logan's Sam & Fuzzy.

iWEBCOMIC: Stories are circulating on the digital comics reader Longbox's deal with Adam tablet maker.

HYPE: Warren Ellis had another tell-me-about-your-webcomic threads at White Chapel. I usually find good links there.

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SUPER ART FIGHT 8 Featuring MC FRONTALOT

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Super Art Fight, the self described "Greatest Live Art Competition in the Known Universe", returns to The Ottobar in Baltimore on Friday Night, October 15th for SUPER ART FIGHT 8 featuring a performance from nerdcore legend MC FRONTALOT.

A Super Art Fight is a wild mixture of pro-wrestling and Pictionary, presented as 30-minute bouts pitting artists from throughout the world of comics, webcomics, roller derby and elsewhere.  The bouts start with a set topic given to each artist, and then every five minutes, new topics are given to the artists from "The Wheel of Death", a randomized topic generator, featuring suggestions from fans cultivated at SuperArtFight.com. After 30 minutes, it's the live audience's cheers which choose the victor. 

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Remember WOWIO

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Remember WOWIO – the company that gave webcomics money, than didn't pay what it owed for awhile, than got acquired by Platinum (and then got bought again)?  Wowio's owner Brian Altounian is on a clip from a Money TV show (what channel is this thing on?) saying that WOWIO got a business method patent that has something to do with ads in ebooks. He references it being very broad and mentions Google and Amazon as two companies who he hints will now need to pay him to do the things this patent covers. Interesting.

On first reaction, I find it hard to believe that (a) you can patent something so obvious and (b) no one else has a patent in the same area (which usually means PATENT WAR)…

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Comix Talk for Thursday, October 7, 2010

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Doug Hiro from Astronaut AcademyHey one bit of SPX-related news I forgot to relay is that Dave Roman's all age webcomic Astronaut Academy will be a graphic novel from First Second — scheduled for publication next summer.  Very exciting — Roman is a great cartoonist and I think this book is a great project for him.

Posting is going to be light to non-existant over the Columbus Day holiday here in the United States but I'll be back with more reviews next Tuesday. In the meantime here's some stories worth reading from around the Intertubes:

BUSINESS: Jason Brubaker of the webcomic ReMind writes up how he's been making money from his webcomic this year.

REVIEWS: CBR has a review of Dylan Meconis' Bite Me graphic novel (collected from the webcomic); Comics Alliance has a review of the webcomic Buttersafe; and Boing Boing praises Dan Goldman's Red Light Properties webcomic.

INTERVIEW: Daily Cross Hatch posts the first of a 3 part interview with Drew Weing on his new graphic novel Set to Sea.

From the Mailbag:  Sean O'Neill writes about a project he's working on — a graphic novel for young readers called Rocket Robinson and the Pharaoh’s Fortune. O'Neill describes it as "a classic adventure story about a 12-year-old boy traveling in Egypt who discovers a plot to steal a secret ancient treasure."  I hope to get a chance to read more of it – a quick look at is is promising.

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Comix Talk for Wednesday, October 6, 2010

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A few new reviews from me this week — thumbs up to Koko Be Good and Bone: Tall Tales.

I saw that Wired compared xkcd's new map of online communities versus the original one it did in 2007.  It is kind of amazing how quickly some sites fortunes have risen and fallen since just 2007.

INTERVIEWS

HYPE: Robot6 covers Steve Horton's forthcoming Spinning To Infinity webcomic — a unique story serialized in one-page increments with each page telling a standalone story with a new artist on every story. Horton has over 30 artists on-board, with openings for a couple more. Interested artists can contact him at smashoutgames@gmail.com.

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Bone: Tall Tales by Jeff Smith with Tom Sniegoski

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Bone: Tall Tales

The world of Bone is back for a series of short stories in Bone: Tall Tales by Jeff Smith with Tom Sniegoski.  Jeff Smith's creation has been told in the original black and white versions and now the full series is out in color from Scholastic.  After the release of a prequel Bone: Rose, Smith has turned to a small sequel of sorts as Tall Tales concerns four stories that Smiley Bone tells to little Ringo, Bingo, Todd and the rat creature Bartleby during a campout.  

This is a fun little addition to Boneland focused on the sillier, fun side of Jeff Smith's world with almost none of the serious side of the epic tale through the original series of books.  Most of the tall tales center around a new character called Big Johnson Bone, a Paul Bunyan-like character who is constantly telling tall tales as he wrecks a patch of destruction in his adventures.  There is also a wordy, somewhat timid monkey named Mr. Pip (who Big Johnson won in a poker game) who is a nice counterpoint to Big Johnson's bravado.  Even though the book is set after the epic series, the tall tale about Big Johnson concerns an adventure before the story in the original series. It turns out Big Johnson serves a key role in the early history of the valley when he turns back the rat creatures and rescues the forest creatures.  

While there is none of the epic quality to the original series or the prequel Rose, this book does have all of the charming humor.  The Queen Rat and her gigantic son Tyson are two great characters who add a bit more to the basic rat monster template of the stories.  The tiny dragon Stillman is also very funny – in fact there is a whole lot of "cute" in the stories with lots of baby animals and the type of scattered chatter that Smith has done before.  

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SPX and Intervention 2010 Report

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SPX 2010Intervention 2010Wow! SPX and Intervention in one long weekend of comics; it took me awhile to recover and get back to writing up lessons learned.  I felt a little stretched trying to cover ground at both conventions —  but it looks like no one will have to do that again as Intervention will almost certainly be on a different weekend in the Fall next year. Ideally, Intervention would be in the summer or spring to really separate it from SPX, but co-creator Oni Hartstein explained that a Spring date for the show would be cost prohibitive.

SPX was more of the same as it has been since the move to the Bethesda Convention Center — one big room filled with rows and rows of comic creators talking about their comics with books and swag to sell.  The presence of webcomics at the show grows every year — this year Kate Beaton was the rock star of the show, with lines longer than anyone else had.  Jeph Jacques' table and a whole group of webcomics at one corner of the room were all pretty constantly crowded from what I could tell.  It's kind of a no-brainer when you say it out loud, but if you have a webcomic with a decent to more than decent sized audience, SPX is potentially a really good show.  People are there for the comics and outside of New York, this is one of the best places on the East Coast to see a whole lot of the entire spectrum of comics.

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