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How To Draw Stupid — Kyle Baker’s Entertaining Book on Cartooning

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How to Draw Stupid and Other Essentials of Cartooning by Kyle Baker is one of the more entertaining how-to books I’ve read this summer.  The somewhat thin volume (clocking in at 111 pages) is really well written — if a little thin on practical tips and guides to actual cartooning techniques.  I mean well written in the sense that it’s an enjoyable read, even if you don’t learn a thing from it.  Baker is just funny, especially in his cartooning, but even in the straight-ahead text portions of the book.

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No More Words: An interview with the creators of the webcomic Pear Pear

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Pear Pear is an innovative, wordless webcomic created by Peter Donahue, Erin Donahue and Sal Crivelli.  There is a lot to like from the clean and simple icon-driven website to the intriguing ideograph-in-balloon speech that the characters use.  Maybe most impressive of all is the investment of real personality in a pear and a mug.  Artist Peter Donahue is the creator of this month's cover art at ComixTalk — I got a chance to interview all three by email.

What is the creative team behind Pear Pear?  And what do each of you do on the comic and website?

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Facial Expressions: Babies To Teens; A Visual Reference For Artists

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I have a lot of reviews of how-to books on tap for August but Facial Expressions: Babies To Teens; A Visual Reference For Artists by Mark Simon is probably the most unique and possibly the most valuable.  It’s a big book, 256 pages (with a free Internet supplement available), and entirely filled with reference pictures of, you got it, babies to teens.  Each model tends to get between 2 to 4 pages of 2 1/4 inch to 2 1/2 inch square head shots with a tremendous variety of expressions and poses.  Other chapters include a skull gallery, hats and headgear, a phonemes gallery (mouth shapes for various sounds), and an age-progression gallery (shots of the same model over a wide range of years).

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Bringing the Buzz Back to Buzzcomix

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Andrew "mneonix08" Gomez created the webcomics toplist Buzzcomix back in 2002 and it has long been one of the most popular "top list" sites for webcomics.  After graduating from college mneonix08 has taken apart the code for Buzzcomix and reworked the site adding several features, including a webcomics reader (with bookmarking function) that shows a lot of promise.  Currently in beta, the new version of Buzzcomix is scheduled to launch August 8th.  I caught up with mneonix08 over email last week.

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An Interview with Tom Brazelton

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Theater Hopper by Tom Brazelton is a webcomic sort of, but not entirely about Tom, his wife Cami and their friends. The creator, Tom Brazelton (as opposed to his four-color alter ego) is coming up on six years of the webcomic.  Neither fatherhood nor the Star Wars prequels have stopped the man from making fun at and with the movies.  Over the last couple of months I interviewed Tom about the webcomic, his third print collection and other necessary pop culture topics.

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An Interview with the Creator of SPQR Blues — Carol “Klio” Burrell

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Carol "Klio" Burrell is the Glyph Award nominated creator of SPQR Blues — a webcomic set in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in the era of the Roman Empire. Burrell is really talented which is a great thing because a historically-based webcomic like SPQR Blues appears to be a really  demanding task:  set in Roman times with a wide-ranging cast;  all of it meshing with our collective sense of the Roman empire both in terms of the writing and the visuals — it's extremely interesting to say the least and perhaps the education-oriented publishing company (Graphic Universe)  Burrell works for ought to consider putting it out as a book when she's done.

I was really excited to see Burrell's Roman take on "steampunk" for our cover at ComixTalk this month.  I think there's a whole new subgenre of speculative fiction waiting to emerge from that image.  I got a chance to interview Burrell about her and her webcomic via email earlier this month.

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Catching Up With Dylan Meconis

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Dylan Meconis created the popular and well received webcomic Bite Me!.  ComixTalk reviewed it back in 2003.  Nowadays Meconis is working on the webcomic Family Man.  Family Man is being serialized by Meconis on her website and as she discusses below is a work with a lot more ground to cover before it will be completed.

Meconis also wrote a regular column called Juxtapose This! for ComixTalk in its first years.  Aside from Paul Bryant Johnson's comics, it's the only thing I think we've published that had footnotes.  But really good footnotes! (honest!)  Being the fifth anniversary year of ComixTalk I thought it would be a great idea to catch up with Meconis and see what she's up to in 2008.

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