Webcomics in paper formats
I’ve had You So Loco: the Second Crying Macho Man Collection book by Jose Cabrera to read and read again this summer and it’s about time I get on my ass and write the review for it. I interviewed Jose Cabrera about his comic earlier this year and my impression of his work hasn’t changed much. He likes to take bits of pop culture (and political figures as well) and mix them up, usually with a visual pun.
Back in January of this year, I reviewed Runner’s Paradox by Steve Peters. I think it’s fair to say I didn’t love it. Very recently, I received a review copy of Peters’ newest book, Awakening Comics #0. You can read a preview of it here.
Interviews with Jon Rosenberg on his new book deal hot off the presses at FLEEN and ComicMixaLot. Read the full press release below:
INTERVIEWS
ComicMix talks to Chris Hastings of Dr McNinja.
Eric Burns profiles Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics.
INDUSTRY
The Comics Reporter has an overview and a lot of links to the recent TokyoPop restructuring.
JUSTIFY MY DEAD TREE HYPE
This looks cool – Mitch Clem is doing some comics for a print series:
I have about fifty more of these fully inked. It’s a new series I’ve been working on called "Something Great", which will be my first foray into creating a direct-to-print comic strip series (as opposed to a webcomic, which I already have too many of). Five per issue have been running in Razorcake, so you’ll see those too once new issues come out, as usual. Otherwise, patience is your best hope for ridiculousness.
PODCASTANETS
Chris Williams listens to comics podcasts so you don’t have to… unless you really want to!
LEGAL
If you haven't read enough about how bad the new Tokyo Pop contest contract is read Tom Spurgeon's straightforward breakdown of the various flavors of crap contained within it. (Lea Hernandez also has links to most of the posts on the subject here.)
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Will Wheaton and Greg Williams have a webcomic up about nostalgia — Star Wars action figures to be specific.
Joe Infurnari who does the Eisner-nominated webcomic, The Process, announced he will also be posting a new webcomic titled The Transmigration of Ultra-Lad on the ACT-I-VATE site.
DEAD TREES
Comics Worth Reading has a short review of the print collection of the webcomic America Jr.
Word Balloons has a review of Kean Soo's Jellaby book.
SWAGALICIOUS
I really like this t-shirt from Dorothy Gambrell (Cat and Girl).
NOT WEBCOMICS
NerdWorld has a post up about the freshly released Penny Arcade game and the almost here Homestar Runner game.
New column from Derik Badman – this month he reviews the comic Parade (With Fireworks).
Also a big thanks to our current sponsors: the Laugh Factory, the Learn to Draw course, the new children's novel Chessie Bligh and the webcomic The Asylumantics.
WEBCOMICS PORTAL LAUNCHES
Top Shelf's webcomic portal is live.
HOW TO MAKE WEBCOMICS SELLS OUT
Scott Kurtz writes that the initial press run of How To Make Webcomics is (almost) sold out.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 4 BLOGS
Alan Gardner reports that Michael Jantze, the creator of the The Norm has an animation short “Mr. Lux: At Your Service” in the Short Film Corner at this year’s Festival de Cannes.
Randall Monroe (xkcd) invents midnight underwater speed chess. "A nice feature is the naturally-enforced clock. You have as much time per move as you have air in your lungs."
Fabricari writes about spring cleaning and I guess I missed his post that he was selling off – cheap! – copies of his graphic novel Fabricari: Ad Hoc.
Most people, like me, are not very good at selling things.
But according to what I’ve learned, there’s really only one true thing about selling your book: You have to do it – one on one, one at a time.
Unless you’re John Grisham, you’re not going to get a marketing budget, a promotional manager or personal assistant. You’ll have to do it all on your own.
First things first – you’ve got to track your money. Only you know how much it makes sense to spend on things like conventions or advertisements, but to know that you have to have hard data. That means get in the habit of saving your receipts and maybe even setting a budget. Purchase a financial program. But know how much you’re spending – you can use that knowledge to test what works and what doesn’t.
Here’s where you’ll spend that money:
Conventions
Daily Cartoonist points to Sandra Bell-Lundy’s six part story of how she got her comic strip, Between Friends, syndicated:
THE OPINIONATER
The Daily Cartoonist reports that syndicated editorial cartoonist Matt Bors is creating a bi-weekly comic called Civil Discourse for the ACLU website. I have no idea how many editorial cartoonists are running comics (original or re-purposed) on non-traditional sites but it seems like it might have potential. A lot of groups (whether partisan or non-partisan) should have the budget to pay a reasonable fee for such comics — the benefit to them being promotion of their message or increased recruitment (via more traffic to their website). Of course unlike a "neutral" newspaper I imagine fitting the comic to the organization is a more subjective proposition, but there are organizations of all persuasions out there.
GUEST ARTIST MAYHEM
Mike Rouse-Deane has created a webcomic project/fundraiser for Make-A-Wish called the Guest Strip Project. It’s sort of a "always guest comics" comic. Should be interesting to check out and of course, it’s for a good cause.
Mangacast catches that beginning March 1st, Infinity Studios LLC is introducing "ebooks" versions (pdf files) of all new titles scheduled to be released:
Recent Comments