The day has officially gotten away from me. Two things to mention though:
Scott McCloud endorses the E-Sheep Kickstarter drive. Help Patrick Farley make more comics, folks!
INTERVIEWS
LEGAL: CBR has an interview with Nina Paley with some good discussion about copyright in the digital age. Paley had epic copyright battles in getting her fantastic animated film Sita Sings the Blues released.
REVIEWS: Charley Parker talks about Asaf Ahanuka's effort to serialize an english language webcomic version of his Hebrew language comic, The Realist.
Conventions: Gary had the first part of his PAX East round-up yesterday, more to come this afternoon.
AROUND THE BLOGS: An amazing series of ABC driven artwork from Neill Cameron.
NOT WEBCOMICS: James Kochalka has a supporting role in a new movie Mars, that looks pretty interesting. Shot entirely on greenscreen, it has a rotoscoped animated look not entirely unlike the videogame Borderlands.
So here's a good question worth a think. Salon just let Reuben Bolling know it's canceling it's contract for Tom The Dancing Bug (which apparently means This Modern World is the last comic at Salon?) Tom the Dancing Bug is a smart, funny comic and the question now is — what's the business plan for Bolling going forward? Seriously, if there's one cartoonist who I would volunteer time to help brainstorm and execute a new business model for, he'd be on the short list.
Penny Arcade Expo: Hope PAX East was awesome. I'll jealously read the reports trickling in today as attendees tell their tales of brushing against the PA crew and breaking into spontaneous nerdcore beatboxing in the hallways. In honor of the recent PAX East here's a link to Geekosystem's Top 10 Most Obscure PA characters.
Also, the Penny Arcade crew announced they would not be making a third installment in their videogames series but you can still read Macgasm's refresher review of the first two episodes of On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness here.
OTHER CONVENTIONS: In other con news, I'm still trying to make sure my schedule allows me to attend, but it looks like Rob Balder of Erfworld will definitely be there. Where? At Intervention of course. And don't forget the Comics Events calendar for dates for comic conventions and other events.
Milestones: Gordon McAlpin finished Book Four of his Multiplex webcomic. This comic has gotten better and better — McAlpin does the character-driven material as well as the movie-driven stuff.
REVIEWS: El Santo reviews Evan Dahm's Rice Boy – it's another example of why El Santo is one of the best reviewers in comics right now. (My review of Rice Boy is here.)
INTERVIEWS: Sequential Tart has an interview with Rene Engstrom, creator of the completed webcomic Anders Loves Maria.
Opinion: I'd rather have Tatsuya Ishida on the editorial pages than most working editorial cartoonists. Ishida is at least as opinionated as 3/4 of them and his art runs laps (MULTIPLE FREAKIN' LAPS) over all of them.
iWEBCOMICS: Johana Draper Carlson talks about Alex de Campi’s Valentine comic, particularly the effort de Campi's making to bring it to multiple platforms simultaneously.
AROUND THE BLOGS: Last week, Howard Tayler had a great post on ideas and their value in the world – worth reading still. And Tom Spurgeon lists the webcomics suggested by readers of his site, The Comics Reporter. Not a bad list…
THE MAILBAG: Jason Whitley wrote to alert us to the return of Sea Urchins, which apparently used to be a newspaper-only comic (there's a book collection of these available here). The comic is by Whitley and Scott Eckelaert, but so far there's not much in the way of comics up on the website.
NOT WEBCOMICS: I've still only read one Scott Pilgrim book, but the trailer for the movie looks like great fun.
Happy Birthday today to Bryant Paul Johnson, creator of the super-smart historical fiction webcomic Teaching Baby Paranoia. Johnson, nice guy that he is, has some birthday presents for his fans starting with a revamped personal site, a short videogame series submitted for the recent webcomic contest at The Escapist, and a preview of his in-progress graphic novel, The Lower Kingdom.
Patrick Farley is one of the most important artists of the early webcomic era. You want to argue the point, bring it on. Farley's amazingly diverse and inventive output losts its presence on the web when Farley's original URL expired. He's slowly been restoring work to a new URL but now has a beta version of a Kickstarter pitch up to help defray the costs of giving his webcomics the home on the web they really deserve. Maybe it'll also help buy him more time to complete some of the major projects he created and start some new ones. I strongly encourage everyone to check out the comics that are already back up, watch the video below to see the startlingly broad range of styles Farley employed and than check out the Kickstarter page.
Intervention 2010, the con for Webcomics by Webcomics, is now taking pre-reg and hotel space registrations. Information is available on the main site.
Join the growing webcomics party today!
Sorry for the lack of updates recently – last week I was working on this; this week I'm working in Madrid, Spain. I thought I might be able to have loaded some "best of" posts for y'all but I ran out of time. So here's what is in my mailbag right now:
And a few good links to check out today:
Also if you have signed up for a ComixTalk account this week or last, my apologies but I won't have time to review and approve until the upcoming weekend.
AWARDS: The Joe Shuster award nominees were announced. The webcomic category nominees are: Attila Adorjany – Metaphysical Neuroma; Kate Beaton – Hark! A Vagrant ;Andy Belanger – Bottle of Awesome and Raising Hell; Rene Engström – Anders Loves Maria; Karl Kerschl – The Abominable Charles Christopher; Gisèle Lagacé and David Lumsdon – Eerie Cuties and Ménage à 3; Tara Tallan – Galaxion; and Steve Wolfhard – Cat Rackham.
REVIEW: El Santo reviews By Moon Alone.
iWebcomics: The Beat had an interview this past weekend with the CEO of Longbox, the comics application on the launch of the public beta for the application. UPDATE: Bleeding Cool has an early review of the Beta.
MILESTONES: 1000 White Ninjas can't be wrong. Wait that didn't come out quite right… how about 1000 White Ninjas and Runnin' or maybe "I'd walk a thousand miles… if I could just see a White Ninja.. Tonight." Eh.. I got nothing…
REVIEWS: El Santo reviews Xylia Tales.
BUSINESS: The Daily Cross Hatch blog talks to Box Brown about his Kickstarter fundraiser.
THEORY: Dr. Visual Linguist, Neil Cohn, is running a survey — help him out by filling it out. (h/t FLEEN)
TOOLS: Comic Space 2.0 Beta invitations still available.
PLUG: Zip and L’il Bit by Trade Loeffler returns with a new story, The Captain’s Quest. (h/t Art Patient)
AWARDS: The Doug Wright award nominees — which honor English-language Canadian comics — were announced last week. Kate Beaton's book Never Learn Anything From History is up for the Pigskin Peters Award (for unconventional, "nominally-narrative" comics); and among the finalists for finalists for Best Emerging Talent is Adam Bourret for his comic I'm Crazy. I gave I'm Crazy a mixed review, but Bourret certainly was a brave story-teller in his book and showed a lot of potential.
PLUG ONE: I haven't mentioned David Simon's Crimson Dark webcomic in quite awhile which is a shame because it's still one of the best 3d art webcomics I've seen. Not sure how it's working, but Simon started a "club" for supporters to subscribe to at $2 to $5 a month to help him with having the time to produce Crimson Dark.
PLUG TWO: The Covered blog which spotlights re-dos of classic comic book covers by new artists. I would love to see a webcomic spin on this.
TOOLS: Scott McCloud experiments with a simple browser-based drawing tool called Harmony.
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