Comix Talk

I posted a review this morning of Kazu Kibuishi's GREAT Amulet 3.  Great all ages comic.  I should have a lot of reviews coming up this week (making a big dent in the stack o' review books!).  In the meantime here's some comic news worth checking out this AM:

Let's All Go to the Movies:  I have Gordon McAlpin's first book collection of his comic Multiplex on the review book pile but the Art Patient blog has a review of Gordon's new book up now.  And Bleeding Cool has an interview with Gordon McAlpin (with one of my favorite comics from Multiplex featuring the "insolent blogger").

FULL TWEET AHEAD: Angela Melick (creator of the webcomic Wasted Talent) and her husband Trevor May have created Webcomic Tweets a portal for following webcomic tweets and other social media.  (h/t FLEEN)

OPINIONATED: Ward Sutton recreates the funny pages if they were all written by members of the U.S. Republican Party Tea Party.

INTERVIEW: The Charlotte Observer has an interview with Dustin Harbin.  I wasn't really familiar with Dustin before, but he moderated the SPX panel this year with Julia Wertz and Kate Beaton and more than held his own as a funny, intelligent person.  

iWEBCOMICS: Deb Aoki has an interview with comiXology CEO David Steinberger.

HYPE: Topless Robot picks 9 Indy comics its reader should know.  A few webcomics in there — they all look interesting.

SPX HANGOVER: Some parting remarks from creators Jerzy Drozd and Sara Turner as they say their goodbyes to this month's SPX from the hotel parking lot.  I met both in person for the first time this year (if you missed it, I posted my interviews with them from SPX here).

NOT WEBCOMICS: I'm not sure if the teevee series adaptation of The Walking Dead comic book series is going to be good but this fan-made opening credits sequence using the art from the comics is AWESOME:

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Let's Go To The Videogame Chuck: Comics based upon (and licensed from) videogames: The Sacrifice by Mike Oeming turns the premise of Left 4 Dead into a webcomic and Chris Avellone created Fallout: New Vegas—All Roads! — a graphic novel prequel to the upcoming videogame Fallout: New Vegas.

INTERVIEW: Pop Syndicate interviews Gisele Lagace and Dave of the webcomic Menage a 3.

REBOOT:  Captain Excelsior gets renamed Captain Stupendous for the forthcoming print edition from creators Zach Weiner and Chris Jones.

REVIEW: Lauren Davis has a nice write-up of John Allison's Bad Machinery at the IO9 blog

HYPE: Caldwell Tanner combines history and Frank Miller perfectly in a parody over at College Humor! Very funny and I thought he nailed the garish energy of Miller's covers.

MAILBAG: Ian Terrell writes about his webcomic The Grumpiverse "that takes on the news of the day and week that makes us grumpy for one reason or another.  We consider it a webcomic, although to some it might fall more under the category of political cartooning."

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I liked this video on SPX 2010 from Miles Shugar for its simple appreciation of the desire to tell your story — which is a big part of why comics is such an open and democratic medium

TOPIC OF THE DAY:  David Willis' new Dumbing of Age is like the (new) Star Trek of webcomics (I am waiting for the red matter to show up) Discuss!

CONVENTIONS: Intervention reports that its fundraiser collected $500 for EFF.  SPX raises money for CBLDF.  Both good causes, but If you're into webcomics, EFF is probably as important as CBDLF.

IT'S THE ECONOMY STOOPID PIGEON: MK Reed ran through some rough numbers for overall attendees, educated guesses about gross revenue and costs to come up with a rough estimate of profit per creator for the recent SPX.  It's an interesting thought experiment but I can't imagine it means all that much to any individual creator.  There's a big difference between Kate Beaton's table and someone who is at their first convention.  Also of interest — Sean Kleefeld notes that Dorothy Gambrell of the webcomic Cat And Girl has posted several charts with her annual income.

DEFINITIONS: El Santo debates "what is a webcomic?" I agree with his knocking down motion comics — not really comics at all in my book.  He also runs through several other examples where people have debated the definition of webcomics.

HYPE: Jen Wang's KoKo Be Good is now out on the shelves.  Needless to say I love this book and I should have a full review telling you why up on the site this week.

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MILESTONES: A little late but it was Guilded Age's one year anniversary this month.  RESPECT!

CONVENTIONS: I went from a weekend of comics overload to a weekend of coaching girls soccer.  Just what are the differences there…  Anyhow still haven't finished my SPX/Intervention Report yet (but still planning on it) so here's other folks interesting comments:

• Blogger Johanna Draper Carlson writes up her SPX experience here — she was a part of the 2nd Critics panel at SPX, I saw a good part of it and last year's version as well. It always seems like a good idea to me but the reality is kind of boring, too much about theory and the essence of criticism and not enough about you know — comics!  Supposedly the SPX panels were taped so when it's up I'll link to them.
• Chris Flick who I actually have met many times at the local Washington Webcomics meetup put me in his comic strip Capes N Babes today.  I think I'll pretend to stay mad at him and see if I get any repeat performances.
• David Malki!, the creator of Wondermark, who is always unfailing polite and full of good awesome cheer when I chat with him at SPX, wrote up his 2010 experience here.  Be sure to check out the video of SPX he included in his post.

CRAFT: I thought this post by Jeph where he showed how a QC strip worked with different fonts was interesting. If you go with digital font over hand-lettering you're presented with a huge set of options — I can understand how you might want to change it up after 1500 strips.

INTERVIEWS: CBR has an interview with Shaenon Garrity, currently working on the daily comic Skin Horse.

REVIEWS: Johanna Draper Carlson reviews Gordon McAlpin's first print volume of Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show and Delos has a review of The Checkered Man.  I also posted a review of Joann Sfar's graphic novel adaptation of The Little Prince.

BATTLE OF BRITANNIA:  Kris Straub is apparently in England as we speak.  I have this half-formed Beatles = Half Pixel joke in my head; "hey which Half Pixel is Kris?" but maybe I'll leave the jokes to the properly caffeinated this morning.

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It's late but Phil "Frumph" Hofer, one of the key developer/maintainers on ComicPress announced publicly what he had discussed at Intervention last week — he's going to put out a new webcomic plug in for Wordpress called ComicEasel.  He has a short post up explaining why he's releasing the new code under a new name.

It's getting late on the East Coast for me but I'll shoot Frumph some more questions on timing and details of the new project.

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Happy Friday – I'm still working on finishing up the video interviews I did at SPX and Intervention plus I have a stack of books to review now.  In the meantime here's some interesting stories from today:

iWEBCOMICS: How important are apps going to be to the future of comics? This story suggests people may not be using all of the apps (not just comics) that they download.

BUSINESS: The Webcomics Marketing website lists a lot of recommendations for possible printing needs.  Looks like it's worth bookmarking.

COPYRIGHT: If you're at all interested in copyright and how it evolves in tandem with technology check out Lewis Hyde’s new book Common as Air.  There's a review here at the New York Times.  Sort of on a similar tack, check out this post at TechDirt on how much material is missing from the public domain because of countries habit of continually expanding and extending copyrights.

DEAD TREES: Gordon McAlpin's Multiplex is in the last day of a pre-order book drive.  So nudge nudge — get over there if you were thinking about getting the book at some point.

ALL AGES: Lots of folks linking to the serialization on the web of the comic The New Brighton Archeological Society.  I hadn't read it before but from what I see it looks great and is pitched at all ages.  Brigid Alverson has an interview with one of the creators, Mark Andrew Smith.

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