I drew this a couple of years ago – part of an abandoned idea about a webcomic about a talkshow about webcomics. Seemed a shame not to use it somehow though so I cleaned up some of the inking and re-colored it. A famous ComixTALK no-prize to the first person to name all of the characters in it — I’ll even give you one: the goof in the red and white striped shirt is Xaviar Xerexes.
Scott McCloud announced this week that he’d inked a deal with First Second Books to publish his new original graphic novel, The Sculptor, with a publication date planned for Spring 2013. Wow – well mark your calendars, I guess! 🙂 The only hint about the comic from McCloud is a mention that it "takes place in Manhattan".
It’s actually a two book deal with the publisher both for The Sculptor and after a non-fiction book. Click "read more" to see the full press release.
Last year drawing this random adventure storyline for my lets-make-comics comic I decided to try and fit the characters into the FISHBONE EP album cover pose/scene. So below is the cover of the Fishbone EP:
It’s an interesting post from the creator of This Modern World covering the history of comics in those weekly alternative newspapers. It’s in the context of those papers killing off cartoons left and right and the creators, like Tom Tomorrow, who made their living from that particular business model lamenting the loss.
It’s a good read — on one level simply a fond and emotional tribute to some great cartoonists but on another level it really highlights how hard it is too shift gears in mid-life and after figuring out "success" in one particular way. Could Tom Tomorrow make a go of it with This Modern World on the Internet and probably with books and other swag? With Rick Marshall-like link-fu getting his comics embedded in every opinion and comic site on the Internet? You know – probably. But not necessarily in a day and possibly not to the same level of success as today (really – who knows ahead of time?).
I assume you're all reading up on FLEEN.com, Webcomics.com and Journalista!? Good. I'm happy to front page other efforts to link roll up ALL of the interesting FUTURE OF COMICS IS NOW type stories and then some (hint hint) but I won't be doing nearly as much of that kind of blogging myself this year.
Webcomics Booyah!
Tim Broderick responds to an email from a COMIC BOOK executive posted at Tom Spurgeon's COMICS REPORTER site. You know where my bias are, but by the end of 2009 "comics" as a business is going to be so deep into the throes of change… well really deep I guess. No new demographic is going to replace the aging males buying the soft comic "book" monthly thing and even a lot of those this year are going to have to cut back in order to, you know, eat.
Writing
What's this — another missive from Tim Broderick this morning 🙂 Yep, Tim has a short piece on strategy for the long-form webcomic over at Webcomics.com.
COMICSPACE
Joey Manley posted an update on Comicspace initiatives. It doesn't sound like there's a firm date anymore for the launch of the "new" comicspace.com site for creators. They are also having an open house February 5 and 6 nearby the New York Comic Convention this weekend. I have been using their new advertising network Webcomics World for a few months now — too early for me to have any opinion on it though.
Anyone else a fan of Merlin Mann’s video series (Most Days)?  He’s entertaining in a short attention span kind of way. Anyhow I have to shake my head and sigh at yet another not-that-funny attempt to belittle Malcolm “New Yorker” Gladwell — this one kind of shows that Mann didn’t really get the last book.  And to compare Gladwell to Thomas “Suck On This” Friedman… well that’s almost fightin’ words man. Anyhow – here’s the video:
Most Days (2009-01-30) from Merlin Mann on Vimeo.
I’ve fallen far behind on ComixTalk tasks since the start of the new year – plan to catch up, but in the meantime I thought I’d post a list of the books I’ve gotten from publishers and authors that are in my to-do box on my desk:
New TeeVee has an article explaining recent research asserting that copyright as we know it is basically over. Almost all copyright discussion happens in the context of music or film or television because that’s where there’s so much more money for current stakeholders to lose. Comics in total is just a much smaller ecosystem than music and video. BUT no doubt changes there will impact comics.
Also in the arena of copyright issues, cartoonist Nina Paley made an awesome looking animated movie called Sita Sings the Blues she can’t get released because of copyright issues. I wrote about this early at my blog+training wheels comic site Altertainment, but COPYFIGHT has a nice round-up on the issue worth checking out.
Webcomics VS Dead Trees, Round XXXII
Since I’m fully in agreement that comics are comics (let’s all get beyond "webcomics" and comic books" etc) — a few interesting dust-ups between cartoonists who GET the web and those who resent and fear change. FLEEN calls out alt-cartoonist Neil Swabb on some ill-advised words and Neil apologizes. Interesting comments to the FLEEN post too. Questionable Content creator Jeph Jacques has the final word for now as far as I’m concerned — read his smart and funny response to Neil here.
REMEMBER PLATINUM STUDIOS?
Sean Kleefeld has an update on the Platinumized Wowio. Wow – hard to believe it’s been a year since Platinum took over Wowio… but it has been. Sean has a back and forth with Brian Altounian of Platinum in the comments.
WEBCOMICS DAD
Brad Guigar has a "to-do list" up at webcomics.com with lots of ideas for the new year as well as some needed nags for most cartoonists (like "Start gathering receipts, invoices, records and other information for tax prep….")
Jacob Alvarez sent me a copy of his comic book Hypnospiral in the mail the other week and I wanted to give it a mention. It’s a black and white book printed by Comixpress – the website has a few previews but otherwise is just a place to find out how to order the comic book. Alvarez is a competent artist and surely can continue to improve with more work. The book is full of short gag stories — ideally suited to the webcomic first, books later model (as in build the fan base and than sell them books) so I strongly advise Alvarez to go the webcomic route. He’s already got the website URL and it’s a no-brainer today to get going online. All of the material in the book can easily be put online and surely would get much more exposure than the much, much fewer people who will buy or borrow the book at this point without having any idea if they’ll like Hypnospiral or not.
As to the book itself, it shows promise although it was definitely a mixed bag in terms of its appeal to my sense of humor. My favorite of the book was the two-pager, "My Kingdom For A Theme Restaurant" and there was something funny about the monkey-staffed Civil War enactment at the end of the story "Ugly Pete: King of the Chimps". Maybe just seeing the simian charge on "Fort Sumner"? The only other thing to mention is that the cover makes the book seem like it’s a horror comic — it doesn’t really telegraph that it’s a gag comic.
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