An Interview with Crystal Yates, Creator of Earthsong

Crystal Yates is the creator of the fantasy webcomic Earthsong.  The comic has a complicated mythos; in it the planets are somewhat like gods and the creatures that live on their surface are their offspring.  I don't want to write out the whole mythos but many different species are relocated to the world of Earthsong.  Despite the involved world-building that went into the concept, it's a pretty easy webcomic to get into and the art is nicely done.  I got a chance to interview Crystal earlier this fall via email.

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Personality Type of Your Blog?

This won’t really work on a webcomic (unless it’s been transcribed than I suppose it might work) but Typealyzer purports to apply the BriggsMyer Personality test to your blog.  I ran ComixTalk.com through it:

ISTP – The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Seems about right…

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Setting Up an iMac

Hope everyone recovered from Turkey Day (or regular day in the rest of the world)!

And I have been following the news in Mumbai India and my condolences go out to anyone who is suffering right now.  Beyond our common humanity I’m betting a lot of you (like me) have a lot of friends and colleagues with family in India (let alone living there right now) and I have just been struck by that watching the news of these awful terrorist attacks there.  I have a colleague visiting India right now (not in Mumbai though) and I was there for work last December.  Heck I could still be going there this December.

And my PC conked out again (I have to pay someone to fix it next week so I can extract the files) so I bought an iMac.  So far so AWESOME!  1 minute to set up and here I am posting to ComixTalk on it.  I’ve got lots of extra stuff to set up on it (I’m going to need to do the boot camp thing for WIndows on it) still.  In any event if anyone has any tips to share on cool stuff or sites for the iMac to share please let me know!  Thanks.

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Get Your Webcomic Stuffing Here!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of those (including me) in the good ol’ US of A tomorrow.  Despite it’s historically shaky roots, it is AN AWESOME holiday that combines getting along with everyone else (at least for one day a year!) AND FOOD… lots and lots of food.  I highly recommend it to any nation around the world.

A few stories of interest today: 

An interview with John Backderf (more widely known as "Derf") – he’s not much for the web but I’ve always thought highly of his work on his strip The City – funny, insightful, he’s also been able to do some truly amazing longer form stories like TRASH and MY FRIEND DAHMER.  He has a new book out now — Punk Rock and Trailer Parks. (h/t JOURNALISTA!)

Todd Allen cranks through some numbers on whether creators would be better off working outside of the Marvel/DC-plex.  This is all coming out of a very comic book-specific debate Robert Kirkman and Brian Bendis had online earlier this year.  (One web-related bit – he has the PvP comic book sales numbers in his chart.)

The Daily Cartoonist has a round-up of "how I became a syndicated cartoonist" stories.

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Countdown to Webcomic Turk Or Treat!

A few sporadic links to webcomic stories.  Wha?!?

Interviews!  Get your interviews!  We did one with the creator of the webcomic Dr. Eldritch, Jennifer Contino interviewed Lora Innes, the creator of the spiffy, historical action comic, The Dreamer, and Tom Spurgeon talked with James Kochalka.  The Spurgeon interview with Kochalka is a good one, be sure to read the whole thing.

REVIEW-O-RAMA:  Hey, ComixTalk contributor El Santo continues to tackle webcomics at his blog — most recently he’s got an interesting review up of Sarah Zero.

SMALL SCREENS: Uclick released Bone formatted for the iPhone/iPod.  (It must be based on the Scholastic color versions,  which btw are up to volume 8)

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Webcomic Idol 08 Almost Over

There are 3 webcomics left in Bomb Shelter’s Webcomic Idol and after the elimination thing-a-ma-bee there’ll be just two this week.  I think the plan is that they’ll announce the winner sometime after Thanksgiving. 

The least vote getter is Simulated Comic Product (that’s a good thing in this contest – people are voting to eliminate comics).  I mostly like this one – it’s more often funny than not and every so often there’s a truly unsettling one that gives you a little jab of tension.  But it’s a weekly updating comic without a story or true characters — while it may be the one to win the contest, it just isn’t one of the most funny comics of its type out there… yet. 

Marooned is a science fiction comic, with a story and characters and a twice-weekly updating schedule.  I think it has a lot of potential.  I’m torn over the art.  On the one hand it’s simple style is fine for the story and mostly Tom Dell’aringa has a handle on it.  But other times, when he tries to draw something out of the core cast, like backgrounds or some of the robots, I do wish he had put more into it.

Shi Long Pang is a totally different animal than the other two.  We’re 125 pages into a probably pretty epic story.  It’s a comic about the story and the characters.  I think Ben Costa is spinning an entirely fantastic tale here.  I am sure if he keeps up the quality of work this will be a great story to sit down with and read from start to finish.

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Dr. Eldritch In The House!

Evan Nichols is the creator behind the long-running Ask Dr. Eldritch webcomic.  The long-running adventures of the intrepid advice columnist Dr. Eldritch are nearing episode #500 which is a pretty significant milestone for any comic project.  The concept here alone cracks me up.  Just check out the intro to the "Letters" page at the site:

Dr. Eldritch answers the questions that no other columnist will touch, with solid, no-nonsense advice to get you through those once-in-a-lifetime crises:

  • Being menaced by the Undead?
  • Scientific experiments gone horribly wrong and may destroy the Earth?
  • A Loved One is possessed by Satan?
  • Your gorgeous lover is using you as a patsy for an elaborate swindle?

Don't fall victim to vampires! Don't get slashed by a psycho! Don't get stuck, ASK DR. ELDRITCH!

Read on for my interview about the good doctor with his creator, Evan Nichols.

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