Dead Trees

Webcomics in paper formats

SPX Updates from Eleanor Davis and Drew Weing

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Secret Science Alliance by Eleanor Davis

I picked up the Secret Science Alliance book from Eleanor Davis at SPX this year.  I got halfway through it before the older X girl took it away.  She's finished and now the younger X girl took it to school with her today.  Both are really excited about the book.  This seems like a great book for boys and girls of a reading age (not sure how old the audience for it would be, although I found it very clever and the artwork, including the composition and layout, is equally as clever as the writing). This project also has a bunch of great people behind it.  Eleanor Davis wrote and drew it; Drew Weing inked it and Bryant Paul Johnson (Teaching Baby Paranoia) lettered it — that's like a webcomics supergroup right there.  And Joey Weiser and Michele Chidester colored it (and it's really nicely done).

In Drew Weing news, I chatted with him and Eleanor while buying the book — Drew has finished plotting and thumbnailing his amazing Set To Sea comic (which has wonderful E.C. Segar influences all over it) which means it WILL BE FINISHED!  In fact, in finishing the rough of it Drew said he decided he needed to make small changes here and there throughout which is why he is re-publishing it online.  Everyone should give this a read; I'm already looking forward to the whole thing (both on the web and the book to be).

I also saw Eleanor on the "Debut Cartoonists" panel at SPX where she was joined by Ken Dahl (Monsters), Hans Rickheit (The Squirrel Machine), and Zak Sally (Like A Dog).  She did very well – it's not always easy to talk about your own motivations and creative process but it was interesting to hear that she has a part time job working on organic farms.  Not a quote but basically she explained that she didn't want to do comics all of the time and that she enjoyed life better with a balance between comics and other activities (which was in contrast to Dahl who took the less surprisingly line that making it was quitting your day job).

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The Ragbox

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The Ragbox is a comic written by Dave Kender and drawn by three artists: Mark Hamilton, Braden Lamb, and Matthew Reinke (each artist handling one of the three chapters).  Kender is the founder of the Boston Roundtable group.  This is a short book — the pleasures in reading it are not really for the plot so there will be spoilers ahead. (It's also available as a webcomic here; you can buy the book at the store here.)

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The Amulet Book Two, The Stonekeeper’s Curse

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Kazu Kibuishi once again takes us back into the world of Amulet in Book Two: The Stonekeeper's Curse which is due out from Scholastic in September 2009.  The Stonekeeper's Curse is a compelling story with tons of actions and opens up in much wider ways the world of the first Amulet book.  It's a thrilling tale, a fantastic piece of comics from Kibuishi and a worthy successor to the first book.

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Great Kids Comic: Knights of the Lunch Table

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The Dragon Players, the second book in Frank Cammuso's Knights of the Lunch Table series is scheduled for release this September.  I got a chance to review a preview copy this month and it's a great sequel to the first book, The Dodgeball Chronicles.  The version I got to read had a great color cover and a few pages in color (but the rest in black and white).  The released version will be all in color and based on the color I saw, it will certainly be another bang-up job from Scholastic's GRAPHIX imprint. 

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Chicken and Cat Clean Up: New Comic From Sara Varon

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Sara Varon is becoming hopefully a bit more well known at this point having several published comic books released now.  Although she has a nice website she has not really published anything in an online format.  Given her interest in telling tales most interesting to young children I’m not sure whether the lack of a web presence is a bad idea or not.

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Comic Foundry Magazine Closing Doors

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Tim Leong wrote yesterday that the upcoming fifth issue of Comic Foundry will be the magazine’s last.  He’s not really clear on why he’s shutting things down other than to say he doesn’t have enough time to devote to the magazine anymore.  I don’t really know where he got the funding for the magazine from — if he did it all on his own then it’s pretty successful that they got to issue five.  The magazine biz ain’t easy.  While I don’t think I was ever convinced that the magazine was as revolutionary as Leong often described it, he did bring a modern magazine design sensibility to comics journalism that I just don’t really see in any other publication focused on comics.

UPDATE: Laura Hudson was Leong’s right hand woman at CF and she writes on her blog that the decision to cease publication was not financial.  Leong said this too and apparently he has a full time job at Complex magazine that is the reason he doesn’t have time for CF anymore.  I don’t really get this — if you can’t make a living from doing something that is essentially a full-time job (editor-in-chief of a full-blown magazine such as CF) than isn’t that financial?  I don’t mean to make a big deal of it; comics is a tough business, comics journalism that much tougher (If I paid myself even minimum wage for the work I’ve done on Comixtalk I would not even be breaking even over its lifetime) so it’s not unusual to struggle financially — which is why it seems odd they both felt the need to argue to the contrary. 

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Scary Go Round Book Preview

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I noticed that John Allison posted an abandoned cover effort for his forthcoming print collection of Scary Go Round comics.  It's not clear from his post if the title of "Peloton" is set or not but dang – it'll be the 7th collection of SGR.  That means SGR is about 100 years old in webcomic years.

And whilst we're on the subject of Allison's saga of Tackleford, did everyone catch the 'zine comic he recently posted as part of the current storyline.  The 'zine strips start here;  you can pick up the storyline here, but the storyline probably starts here (although it jumps to other events from time to time).

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