Comix Talk

Good morning Internet!  Swine flu even at PAX?! (see Mike/Gabe’s message) — nice to see that the Penny Arcade crew is broadcasting useful information via the website and encouraging everyone to take care of themselves.  That show seemed huge this year.  I am looking forward to my probably futile hopes to attend PAX East (futile because something always comes up to deflect my physical travels much like that damn leprechaun and his stale box of marshmallows and grains).

INTERVIEWS
Rick Marshall scores an interview with Harvey Pekar about his new webcomic project.  How cool is that?!

A lovely interview with the talented Kate Beaton (no! you have not yet read enough interviews with Beaton this year!!  And… there WILL BE MORE! This Nostradamous predicts…)

REVIEWS
Brigid Alverson gives a very good review to the first print collection of Skin Horse by Shaenon Garrity and some dude (Jeffrey C. Wells: just kidding!!!!!!!).

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Met up with the Washtington Webcomics crew last night: Rob Balder (still erfing the world); Chris Impink (um gravitating the fragile… hmm ), Chris Flick (caping the babes? okay this nickname scheme isn’t working out all that well) and just met Joe Zuniga who does the relatively new comic Made Up.

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Hope everyone had a great summer – I guess it’s officially FALL now.  Start off your autumnal reading with this post from Tony Piro (creator of Calamities of Nature) who recommends reading Dave Sims’ writings about self-publishing as still relevant in a webcomic world.

REVIEWS
Caleb Mozzoocco reviews the newest Achewood book from Chris Onstad, Worst Song, Played On Ugliest Guitar.

COPYRIGHT
Interesting post on copyright violations and how one artist deals with them. (h/t Journalista!)

TOOLS
More coverage of David Morgan-Mar’s new custom-comics-RSS-feed service called Archive Binge.

JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Roadcrew looks pretty good – I started checking out the archives this morning.

Newsarama’s blog will run Egg Embry’s Global Freezing webcomic from the beginning starting tomorrow. The strip, which will run on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, has been running at Embry’s own “Comics By Egg” at www.comicsbyegg.com.

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Robot6 has a nice overview of the webcomics nominated for an Ignatz.  The Ignatzs are presented at the SPX show in September — that’s my hometown (well close enough) show.

The nominees for Outstanding Online Comic are Bodyworld, Dash Shaw; Danny Dutch, David King; Thingpart, Joey Alison Sayers; Vanessa Davis’s comics for Tablet; and Year of the Rat, Cayetano Garza.

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Crisscrossing the literary genres of murder/mystery, action/adventure, historical drama, horror, science fiction, and steam punk, The Continentals by writer/creator Darryl Hughes and artist Monique MacNaughton, creators of the 2007 Glyph Comic Award nominated scifi adventure webcomic G.A.A.K: Groovy Ass Alien Kreatures, is a modern re-imagining of the classic 19th century Sherlock Holmesian "who done it" murder mystery created for the 21st century webcomic fan.

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Pontus Madsen and Christian Fundin, the Swedish artists/fashion models behind the popular gaming-themed webcomic Little Gamers, will be signing copies of their brand-new "Volume 4" at a free event on September 11.

The long-awaited book will collect the fourth year of the comic, and  according to co-creator Madsen, the collection is "filled to the
rafters with spelling errors and grammatical nightmares."

The book is also "funnier than the older ones," he said.

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A big thanks to Chris Watkins for coming up with beautiful cover art for ComixTalk (and on short notice!).  Be sure to click on the "view the entire cover" button – this is one of the covers that best takes advantage of that part of the cover art.

Chris is the creator of the absolutely charming Odori Park, a webcomic about "Japanese Arisa Nishimori, from snowy Hokkaido, Japan, and American Colin Easton, from Suburbia, U.S.A., navigating the culture shocks of romance, parenthood, family, friends, and making a living in an ever shrinking world. Colin and Arisa run the used bookstore A Book By Its Cover, and live in an apartment above the shop along with "Sprout," their multi-lingual toddler son."

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Tyler Martin’s released the latest version of ComicPress, his webcomic theme for Wordpress. There’s a full list of the new features in this release at the ComicPress website.  They include (among others) things such as: 

• Customizable Menubar
• Post Heading Icons
• Author/User Pages
• Buy This Print Feature
• Members Only Content
• Numbered Pagination
• Graphic Comic Hovertext
• Calendar Wallpaper
• SWF (Flash) File Format Support

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Nina Paley’s Sita Sings The Blues is an amazing animated movie that almost never got released due to copyright issues.  Paley has embraced a business strategy for it not unlike the typical webcomic approach.  To paraphrase Paley: "the content is free; fans buy containers." (h/t to TechDirt)

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Walt Disney Company is buying Marvel.  I think this won’t change much — just a consolidation of Marvel’s focus on exploiting its roster of Stan Lee/Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko/Chris Claremont/Etc created characters.

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Derek Kirk Kim, the creator of Same Difference and Other Stories, returns to the web by serializing – one panel a day – his new comic Tune at his website Lowbright.

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