Despite starting off the year with a humble idea of working on making comics simply to get a little better I’ve slipped off the rails this month. For all kinds of other stuff – work, family, soccer, LIFE. Anyhow I’ve posted three of the Super Jr comics I’ve been making to play with Manga Studio (inking on the WACOM) and I hope to start an Continue Reading
Brian Babendererde started serializing his comic Soul Chaser Betty on the web in 2001. Later in 2003, it became one of the titles on the Graphic Smash anthology website. Serialization of the comic continued throughout 2004 until the story was finished. I know — a webcomic adventure tale with a beginning and an end, fully published online within approximately four years. Normally that might take a decade or more! Okay maybe a slight exageration, but it strikes me that Babendererde's initial run on Betty is no small accomplishment, given how many dramatic, longer-form comics run off the rails for long hiatuses before finishing (if ever).
So why are we talking about a webcomic dating from the beginning of the decade? Well in 2007 Bebendererde went back to the comic to redo many of the panels and re-work some of the story, in preparation for publication as a stand-alone graphic novel in print. The book has been available for awhile but more recently Bebendererde placed it in the Diamond monthly catalog making it available to comic book stores. I was interested in talking with Bebendererde about how the new push for the book is going and what it's like to work on a specific comic over the course of almost a decade.
Planet Saturday by Monty Kane bills itself as "adventures in childhood and parenthood" and it is a charming collection of tales of Emory (who is basically a stand-in for Monty), roughly half with him as a child and half with him as an adult, father of a daughter. It in some ways suggests that the comic is really about Monty himself but it doesn't feel biographical as the stories seem to be more universal than uniquely revealing of one person. There's a touch of nostaglia at times, but particularly in the stories with the Emory as father and the daughter Dot it's also very much about two well-drawn characters and their father-daughter relationship. Maybe it's simply because I'm a dad with daughters myself, but I do enjoy these stories.
I got a chance to interview both Monty and his wife Kelli Stevens Kane by email this month about the comic and its first collection in print.
Working on a few interviews – probably will have them set for Sunday night/Monday morning posting. Here’s what I found interesting reading this morning:
THE WORK
Mark Waid has an interesting column on talent, personality and deadlines. The key takeaway being don’t sacrifice work for the sake of deadlines. It’s at least worth thinking about even if it’s not always applicable to every situation.
TECHNOLOGY
Scott McCloud has a post on Microsoft’s Infinite Canvas which is still in "alpha" but McCloud says "it’s definitely worth looking at and playing with."
REVIEWS
Robot 6 has a review of Karl Kerschl’s The Abominable Charles Christopher.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Lots of folks linked to this article on webcomics in IF: INTERFACE (also billed as THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, COMMUNITY, AND VALUES).
I love it that the Bad Astronomy blog is linking to webcomics with science! A few recent posts include one on the webcomic The Pain – When Will It End? and one on a recent Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Digital Strips catches the return of Spider Girl in the webcomics – Marvel will have a new series on its Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, beginning April 15th!
Check out our current sponsor – the webcomic Null Knowledge.
INTERVIEW
BusyGamer has an interview with Danielle Corsetto of GWS.
CONVENTIONS
I won’t be at Webcomics Weekend but will you? Panel and pub crawl schedules up at the website.
COVERS
Mitch Clem and Nation of Amanda ("It takes a nation of Buffys to hold us back") are drawing clever riffs on existing album art for a cover song project called Under the Influence. Some very cool stuff there.
If you haven’t checked out the Covered Blog get it a look – classic comic book covers redone. Not all of them are interesting but some really are.
SciFi SyFy Webcomics
New installment of that Star Wars webcomic. Oh nos – trade discussions will conquer the galaxy.
I’ve seen several blogs point at Runners by Sean Wang which does look pretty good.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Kent Archer, the Inker on Dr McNinja has a new comic with co-creator Tom Torres called Porterhouse.
Porterhouse follows the trials and tribulations of a struggling comic book artist named Porter trying to break into the comic industry. We follow him on his various endeavors from traveling to conventions, taking on side jobs, and just hating the life of a starving artist. In order to survive the struggles of NY life he earns his living by working the meat counter at the local grocery store.
Leroy Brown is the creator of Ice Cubes about a motley crew of characters living within the Artic Circle in Alaska. I had not been previously familiar with Brown’s work, but he submitted a design for the February cover art to ComixTALK that I liked and wound up using. It’s got a similar set up to Tyler Martin’s Wally & Osborne, but beyond updating more regularly the last year (hey now! rim crash… I"ll be here all week folks!), it’s just a different animal entirely. The comic is very new (unfortunately the website doesn’t currently have a very navigation-friendly set-up but you can get through the archives by clicking on the "strips" category) so it’s easy to check out the archives to date.
Read on for my interview with Brown about his comic Ice Cubes.
A few things on an otherwise slow day:
Today’s the last day to nominate an online comic for the 2009 Eisner Awards. Go forth and email!
A review of Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody at the NYTimes book blog. Shirky is writing about how the web moved the world from a "filter-publish" model to a "publish-filter" model.
And I’ve still got a sponsorship slot here open and if you’re interested I’m on Twitter at twitter.com/xerexes.
Ever wondered about what might have happened to Calvin after Calvin & Hobbes ended? Gerry Canavan rounds up some interesting comic visions of Calvin-future he found out there on the webs.
REMINDER! Eisner Nominations Due This Friday. Online creators — you can nominate yourself. Don't be modest folks – if you've published online an outstanding body of work last year — put in a nomination. It's an easy process to do and the judges can't pick something if it wasn't nominated.
CONVENTIONS
I guess it wouldn't be a webcomics weekend without the t-shirts.
REVIEWS
The Daily Cross Hatch reviews Derek Kirk Kim and Gene Luen Yang's collaboration, The Eternal Smile.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
From the Strange Maps blog comes a comic called "World War II: If Maps Could Fight".
BUSINESS
Comicspace CEO (co-CEO?) Joey Manley has a post with some examples of webcomic creators splitting from more corporate publishig arrangements. A ha! He's suggesting webcomic creators may be better of without traditional arrangements in favor of D-I-Y. But wait, then he notes that other creators have left one publisher for an even bigger publisher. So maybe it's not so clear? Or maybe webcomic creators are all just "anal retentive control freaks and/or crazy egotistical jerks"… I'm picking on Joey a bit if only because he seems to be hedging on making any definite conclusions in his post, but otherwise he is asking the right kinds of questions (and the fact is there are lots of different reasons for why different creators have made different decisions on publishing arrangements in the last couple of years).
HOUSEKEEPING
Also the sponsorship space at ComixTALK is once again OPEN! If you're interested click here – your ad gets the upper left hand column space and you help to pay for ComixTALK's server bills. THANKS!
Recent Comments