Comix Talk

So sad but necessary.  It’s spring cleaning two seasons too late.  My little corner of the universe where ComixTalk HQ exists is overwhelmed with stuff.  STUFF!  Here’s some of that stuff I’ve found from freebies, cards, etc from shows that I don’t want to forget about:

• Fridge-mag.net:  cool little mini comics.
• Wondersmitten:  weird, interesting.  Cool little train riding across the website.
• Benjamin Birdie: The Rack right now; previously Genre City and Kings Of Pop.
• Kelli Nelson: Aha! I saw your stuff this year at SPX and had a huge Deja Vu moment.  Turns out I just have memory problems.
• Aaron Gonzalez: He has a comic called Broken Chain for sale at Lulu.
• David Yoder: Is awesome!
• Alec Longstreth: Also awesome.

Also while I’m cleaning out things here’s a silly airbrush I did in college.

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Ah ha – it was a two part interview with Howard Tayler – sneaky Gary! — here’s part one and part two of FLEEN’s interview with Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary – lots of good insight into being an independent artist and businessman here.

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WOWIO
New Wowio owner Brian Altounian pledged to pay creators the money Wowio has owed for about a year now. (ht/ Tom Spurgeon)

BUSINESS
Karen Montagus-Reyes writes about her now-not-syndicated, formerly syndicated comic, Clear Blue Water.  She started off with around 30 papers and didn’t add any for about four years until she was dropped by her syndicate.  No mention of a web strategy at all so I assume she is describing a pretty typical old-school syndication effort which not surprisingly is a really tough (read: impossible) road in the 21st century.  (Her strips appear to be posted at her website but without proper archives and navigation — someone get her a copy of Comicpress stat!)

INTERVIEWS
Sequential Tart has two good interviews: one with Shaenon Garrity of Skin Horse, and one with Ethan Young of Tails.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
New Ryan Estrada webcomic starting: Chillin’ Like Villains.

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A couple of things I wanted to post up – one of course being this weekend (October 3rd and 4th) is 24 Hour Comics Day.  On your mark, get set – go comic!  Also FLEEN has an interview with Howard Tayler about his recent keynote at the Comics Success Seminar.

And so long as I'm here — a little JUSTIFY MY HYPE linkin'

• Chris Jones is back with more adventures of that historical detective type – Byron Pinkleton! 
• Kevin Churck and TJ Kirsch with mystery webcomic She Died In Terrebonne.
• Virtual Shackles – do we need another video game webcomic?  No, but this one has had some funny ones in its short run.

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Hey – Google Wave invites are out and mine apparently got misplaced in the email.  So if you’ve got one to spare set me up (xerexes at gmail DOT com).  Thanks!

BUSINESS
PBS does one of those "look people are making a living making webcomics" stories.  They did interview interesting people for it — from Randall Munroe (xkcd) to Howard Tayler (Shlock) to R Stevens (Diesel).

INTERVIEW
Nice interview with Gordon McAlpin of Multiplex touching on movies and Chicago.

Newsarama has an interview with Emma Caulfield, actress and now webcomic auteur.  How very interesting that Newsarama has the scoop on the new webcomic Contropussy which has a creative team consisting of Emma Caulfield, Camilla Outzen Rantsen, Christian Meesey, Thomas Mauer, and Blog@Newsarama columnist Christian Beranek.

REVIEW
Johanna Draper Carlson reviews High Moon, the second book from Zuda. 

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Chris Yates connects the dots on Colleen’s tattoo but really Jon‘s disco solo sold it for me.

FLEEN flagged that Christopher Baldwin has a work-in-progress site up for Spacetrawler, a webcomic he seems to be working towards launching next year.

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First off – cool new cover coming today from Charles Snow of Sordid City Blues.  Click on it to see larger versions.

Today’s going to be a rolling update kind of day…

REVIEW
Derik Badman has a review of Tom Hart’s Hutch Owen.  (Badman’s own webcomic Things Change posted its monthly update this week.)

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SPX!
It wasn’t just my imagination, SPX was more crowded this year.  Chris Mautner has a nice write up of this year’s SPX, (although I’m not sure I qualify for inclusion among "respected online personalities").  Also check out this year’s Nerdlinger awards.  It’s too bad they’re in Baltimore – Baltimore is a long ways from Bethesda!  Maybe next year someone will organize a cool pre-SPX event closer to SPX!

CRAFT
Really nice tutorial over at Webcomics.com today – from script to finished panels.

INTERVIEW
Smith Magazine has an interview (video) with Harvey Pekar.

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Daily Cartoonist has an update on the 250 people making it as quarterfinalists for the Amazon Comic Superstar contest.  There are a lot of strips on that list — at least some of them seem to be on the web already.  There’s a couple more rounds of winnowing before the final 10 are chosen on October 28th.  The winner will be chosen by a vote of Amazon customers Continue Reading →

Howard Taylor of Schlock Mercenary and successful transition from Corporate 500 world to full time webcomic-ing popped up in the comments to the FLEEN thread on the recent Comics Success Seminar in Las Vegas (you’ll recall I commented on host Alan Gardner’s What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas, especially since attendees paid to attend).  Interesting stuff – also read Howard’s post here and hopefully Gary takes Howard up on the interview offer.

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Garage Raja by Matthew J. Rainwater and Austin Price. Garage Raja is a webcomic about a band and magic keys and Lizard Folks.  it’s fairly new and realistically, at this point, it’s uneven.  The plot — and just generally the writing could stand improvement; the art often has a lot of energy and includes great background detail, but other times just doesn’t convey crisply what’s going on.  Not all that different than many early webcomic efforts.

These guys didn’t ask for a review, but there’s clearly some potential there and I hope they keep working at their craft.  Also they did have a nice freebie at SPX – guitar picks with the webcomic name emblazened on them.

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