Comix Talk

Still reporting live from the Far East on the other side of the International Date Line. It does havoc to your schedule to be 12 hours away from your home time zone.  Anyhow I'm going to catch up on comics stuff you've probably already read about but if you've been preoccupied this week too or if you just can't bear not to miss my 60 cents (that's only 2 US cents though) than here we go!

Brigid Alverson has links to more people talking about the end of contests at Zuda. The contests were always a gimmick, the real question should be what's DC's plan for online publication of comics?  Does it remain committed to it's indie experiment (i.e., Zuda) and when, if ever, does it leverage its existing titles?  You know what was cool for me earlier this year?  Watching the teevee show LOST online because there was a huge backlog of archives and I knew it was going to get finished.  In that sense it was like finding a great multiyear webcomic that had an ending in sight.  You know what doesn't have a satisfying beginning, online backlog and ending in sight?  DC and Marvel "mainstream" comics titles…

BUSINESS: Lauren Tiffany has an article on webcomic artists making a living at AOL Business News.  With some coverage of Chris Onstad and Brad Guigar, good sources for working la vida webcomica. 

CRAFT: Webcomic Builder has a post on how to script a comic.

DEAD TREES: Shaenon Garrity has some advice for you with five things to know before you publish your first comic.

AWARDS: I got a press release from Comic-Con announcing that submissions are now being accepted for the 27th annual Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award. Started in 1982 as a joint presentation of Comic-Con International and the West Coast Comics Club, this award honors a comics artist who, early in his or her career, shows a superior knowledge and ability in the art of creating comics.  More details after the jump…

Continue Reading →

It's been a few years because of internet issues, but I'm back for now =)

Chapter 17 of my webcomic Fred Peterson, The Mighty Warlord is now complete! Chapter 18 begins next week. Also, I removed all the fillers, so you can now read from the beginning without interruptions inbetween the actual story content.

Continue Reading →

Wow the big story this week so far is the discussion kicked off by Jon Rosenberg's pondering shutting down Goats.  Stories from CWR, Robot6, FLEEN, and Storming the Tower cover Jon's recent blog post.  I wish I could offer some insight or commentary but I don't have enough time this week to add something of value.  I will say that Jon's always been a nice guy in my interactions with him and that he's improved so much as an artist and creator over time that I hope he can find a way forward that leads to more financial success for him.

HYPE: The creators of the Piracy is Liberation comic book are going to run the entire series as a webcomic, starting May 15th at elftorp.com/piracy.  The webcomic will be updated once a day with additional commentary.

MARKETING: Do people go to Top 100 lists anymore?  Just in case, here's another one for webcomics.

FROM THE MAILBAG:  Giannis Milonogiannis wrote to let me know about his cyberpunk police thriller comic Old City Blues — "pretty much my love letter to 80's cyberpunk films, books and comics."  The story takes place in New Athens- a city built from the ruins of Greece after a cataclysmic flood in 2016.

Continue Reading →

I'm leaving on a jetplane… actually I know when I'll be back again which is why posting might be light until the end of the month.  Although I am led to believe they have a series of tubes in Asia too so I'm counting on that.

BUSINESS  I guess the big news over the weekend was the by-now-well-covered announcement from DC that it won't be holding monthly contests anymore at its Zuda property. I generally am suspicious of contests but on the other hand experimentation is necessary.  So hopefully we´ve all learned a bit from Zuda part 1 and DC will try something else interesting for Zuda part 2.

INTERVIEWS  Liberally borrowing from Brigid´s Paperless Comics because this is a great batch of interviews she linked to from TGT Webcomics with creators at C2E2 includingGordon McAlpin (Multiplex), Ed (Ed Contradictory), Michael A. Kandalaft (That Monkey Tune), Tony and Sarah (The Angry Penguin), Josep (Space Punks!), Joe and Phil (Digital Pimp), Brad Guigar (Evil, Inc.), Kris Straub (Starslip), and Scott Kurtz, (PvP).

FROM THE MAILBAG  Rina Piccolo writes to announce her new webcomic Velia, Dear.  The comic is about a young woman named Velia who leaves the inner city to take care of her aging Italian mother.  There´s already a few strips up in the archives and it´s a great premise and Piccolo is already a pro and shows it in this new project.

Continue Reading →

Are you reading Comix Talk thru The Geocities-izer? It's a tool that promises to "make any webpage look like it was made by a 13 year-old in 1996."  Ah good times…  Hey, a warning — the posting here by me is going to be pretty sparse until the end of May.  I travel more for work now and life just gets busier every year (I'm better at taking on new activities then retiring existing ones).

GOOD DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP:  Yamino, creator of Sister Claire has started Webcomic Charity.  The charity is asking webcomic creators to create a postcard design, of which they print 10 limited editions (or more, if they like.)  There will also be one "general" postcard compiled from the combined artwork of each artist. (More info on this later.)  It looks like they're voting on which charities to donate raised monies to now. 

REVIEWS:  The College Voice offers a mix of webcomic mini-reviews recommendations.  Actually the rest of today's post is a mix of plugs, so off we go:

FROM THE MAILBAG

Brett Donnelly writes: I do a webcomic called Weird, Green Cat. I've been plugging away for about a year and some months, now, and while I've acquired a small audience, I could always use a little more exposure (who couldn't?).  This is a funny comic and more importantly, Donnelly is pretty good at making comics – the writing is crisp and the art is solid and he has a decent sense of putting it together.  There's no storyline here — it's a humor comic, with lots of fun at the expense of superheroes, animated characters and other icons of pop culture.  Go check it out!

Ryan Pagelow wrote to us about two of his webcomics. Buni is a tragic weekly comic about a hopelessly optimistic bunny that fails at everything he tries. It was selected as one of the 10 finalists in the Comic Strip Superstar contest hosted by Amazon.com. It is almost Perry Bible Fellowship-esque.  And his other comic is Pressed, a daily comic about a newspaper that's not dead yet and trying to survive in the twittering blogosphere.

I also got a note about Exile a digital graphic novel — to be honest it's not clear from the website whether purchasing the novel lets you read it through your browser, or a download or some kind of interactive application.  The art in the previews on the site look good; the story is described as a future in which convicted felons are not locked up in prison cells, but rather sent through a portal off the face of the planet.

HYPE, HYPE, BRAND NEW HYPE FOR SALE!

Nick Douglas, former Gawker and Valleywag scribe, and Twitter Wit author, has started a new webcomic called Big Damn Deal about a nascent online internet e-web venture in San Francisco.  Looks like fun – worth checking out.

COMING ATTRACTIONS

I don't normally like to plug or write about comics coming at a date off in advance but heck, these folks (Dave Pauwels and Nicolas R. Giacondino) wrote such a nice note.  They have a new webcomic debuting in July called The Sisters Grimm – but you can check out a poster for the comic at the website now.  The comic was pitched to me as "Hard Day's Night meets Total Recall" and follows the exploits of a young garage band ON MARS and their attempts to avoid becoming embroiled in an impending Martian civil war.

Continue Reading →

Another week and whadya know the Wikipedia entry for ComixTalk was deleted.  Meh?  What I really need to be working on is getting a cameo in Evil Inc.  Gary gets all the cool webcomic cameos…

WE INTERRUPT THIS BLOG POST TO REMIND YOU THAT THERE ARE ONLY 6 DAYS TO GO IN PATRICK FARLEY's KICKSTARTER DRIVE TO BRING BACK ELECTRIC SHEEP.  As of Sunday night yesterday there were 354 backers putting up $5,371 in pledges — less than $650 to go to make the magic number.

AWARDS:  The Comics Reporter reports that Aaron Colter's webcomic Wondermark won Outstanding Webcomic at the Stumptown Comics Convention awards.  Only thing is I'm pretty sure Aaron Colter is the marketing coordinator for Dark Horse and Wondermark is from a fellow named David Malki!.

BUSINESS: Webcomics.com inked a discount deal with a printer for its subscribers.  Is that ironic?  Well either way that sounds like a good deal and a nice benefit to subscribing to webcomics.com.

CRAFT: David King, creator of Danny Dutch, has a set of lettering dos and don'ts. (h/t Robot6)

A GOOD USE OF SOME DEAD TREES: Not brand new news, but damn exciting – Hope Larson has been signed to do a graphic novel adaptation of Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.  I love(d) that book — it blew my grade school mind away.

NEVER MIND THE %@#*, HERE'S THE HYPE

• New Octopus Pie up… a little more bittersweet than usual and a spot-on Chuck E. Cheese homage.
• Shaenon Garrity drew chibi versions of her mad scientist characters.  Mwhahahahaha!
• The Beat reports that Jon Lewis’s cult comic True Swamp is back as a webcomic.
• Haven't linked to Nathan Sorry in awhile.  9/11 is the starting date for this twisty mystery which is a good read — just hope Rich Barrett keeps at it until it's finished.
• Sea Monster by Nathan Castle is a trip.  I still kind of have to wrap my brain around it to say something intelligent about it.  Definitely recommend you checking it out though.

Continue Reading →

Wow – it's been one crazy summer week. So the big story this week is the move of Reuben Bolling's Tom the Dancing Bug from Salon to Boing Boing.  At least I think it's kind of a big deal as boingboing.net has a huge audience and as Reuben Bolling explains it was the first place he contacted after learning Salon was dropping his strip.

Digital Strips has a plug for Patrick Farley's Kickstarter drive to let him focus on his webcomics site, Electronic Sheep. For those who weren't reading webcomics 10 years ago you may not have the context for how mind-bending Farley's work was at that point.  He pushed… hard on the web.  He had comics with radically different art styles, different web environments, different everything.  And it was all good.  Having him freed up to work on comics would mean getting a lot of great new work.  Consider pledging…

REVIEWS:  Daily Cross Hatch has a review of the latest Snake Pit book – a compilation of the journal comic from 2009.  I have the book, was struggling with a review — I think this review is pretty useful — this is journal comic at it's most basic.  I did this, I saw that.

Also worth checking out is a look by the Storming the Tower blog at the quasi-Penny & Aggie-Something Positive cross-over via the character of Helen.

I SAY GOOD MAN, HERE'S THE HYPE

• Kate Beaton does The Great Gatsby… funny as balls folks…
• Scott McCloud links to a recent Slow Wave webcomic featuring a dream from Skin Horse webcomic creator Shaenon Garrity.

From the Mailbag: Thormod Skald writes about his webcomic Farnir The Dragon — an action/comedy/political satire:

The dragon Fafnir awakens from a centuries-long slumber to find his treasure stolen and scattered across the world. Unfortunately for him, anyone who finds a piece can control Fafnir for nine days and as usual, the greatest power is often in the hands of the biggest idiots.

Continue Reading →

REVIEW: Gavin Lees gives a pretty positive review to Kate Beaton's Never Learn Anything From History collection.

HYPE

• I'm not sure I've linked to Awesome Hospital yet so here you go.  It still feels a little derivative of Dr. McNinja to me, but it is pretty funny.
• Another list of webcomics generated at Warren Ellis' White Chapel forum. You're bound to find something new to you on it.
• Comics Alliance presents a Firefly fan comic from Mike Russell and Bill Mudron.

From the Mailbag:  Patric Lewandowski started a fundraising project at Kickstarter with a goal towards funding a comic called Terminal Life.

In 1989, when I was 9 years old, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He underwent surgery which removed an entire lung from his body. For the next nine years, he was in and out of the hospital and always near death. I grew up with a terminally ill parent and it had a profound impact on who I became as a person.  This graphic novel, tentatively titled "Terminal Life" is about that first year when my father was diagnosed, had surgery, and it became apparent that my life had changed forever. 

Continue Reading →

Don't forget that HARVEY NOMINATION BALLOTS are due this Friday, April 23rd.  Ballots can be downloaded from harveyawards.org.

There's probably some more news out there, but for now here's the hype:

• 2nd installment of Seth Cushnar's awesome Culture Pop comic — this one about graphitti artist Carlos ‘Mare 139’ Rodriguez.
• David Willis goes sick and twisted in Shortpacked (well more so than before I guess) and, man do those two middle panels pop.
• Three Panel Soul wins a lifetime Guigar award for this amazing pun…

Continue Reading →