Walking on Eggshells: Documentary about Remix Culture
Does remix culture have anything to do with comix? Good question I guess but regardless I found this really interesting:
Legal
The Law Firm of Dewy, Cheatum & Howe
Nina Paley’s Copying Is Not Theft
Hopefully you've heard about Nina Paley's epic struggles with copyright issues in releasing her amazing animated movie, Sita Sings the Blues. That experience has somewhat radicalized her to issues of copyright more generally (although radical is really a relative term). Anyhow – here's a video she had a hand in starting with a simple message about the differences between theft and copying:
Comix Talk for Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Seth Kushnar's CulturePop debuted this week. The first one is about Alyssa Loveless talking about performing and her music. I really dig Kushnar's website Graphic NYC, and this comic project looks very promising. Different vibe but its somewhat similar to a great journalistic comic called CulturePulp by Mike Russell.
BUSINESS: Tom Tomorrow's current comic is a funny take on the Internet but a little bitter about the changes waste the Internet is laying to existing business models. Tomorrow and Reuben Bolling are two extremely talented cartoonists that should be able to make it in the Internet world. Maybe they need their own Robert Khoo business guru but if nothing else they ought to talk to Jeff Rowland at Topataco and see what they can do with taking control of their merchandizing opportunities.
LEGAL: Linda Joy Kattwinkel, Esq., Intellectual Property and Arts Attorney at Owen, Wickersham & Erickson writes a post on what to do when your artwork is being ripped off. Good advice.
AWARDS: James Hudnall writes about his experience being a judge for the Eisner nominations this year.
MILESTONES: Shaenon Garrity reports that Daniel Merlin Goodbrey has concluded his webcomic All Knowledge Is Strange and started a new webcomic 100 Planets.
REVIEWS: LeftyFilms.com reviews this month's Zuda contestants. (h/t Artpatient.com)
HYPE: BleedingCool.com has a bit more and pix on the upcoming book Kill Shakespeare. Plus a take from a Shakespeare scholar.
NOT WEBCOMICS: BleeedingCool.com has a round-up of the recent uncovering of work Jack King Kirby did for an animation house in the 80s. Neat to see even more ideas from the comics legend.
Comix Talk for Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Scott McCloud endorses the E-Sheep Kickstarter drive. Help Patrick Farley make more comics, folks!
INTERVIEWS
- Graphic NYC has an interview with Jason Little on the upcoming book collection of his webcomic Motel Art Improvement Service (a sequel to Shutterbug Follies). Great interviewer, great subject – this is a good read.
- Newsarama has an interview with Dan Goldman on his current webcomic, Red Light Properties.
- Tim O'Shea has an interview with the crew from the webcomic Cyanide & Happiness.
LEGAL: CBR has an interview with Nina Paley with some good discussion about copyright in the digital age. Paley had epic copyright battles in getting her fantastic animated film Sita Sings the Blues released.
REVIEWS: Charley Parker talks about Asaf Ahanuka's effort to serialize an english language webcomic version of his Hebrew language comic, The Realist.
Conventions: Gary had the first part of his PAX East round-up yesterday, more to come this afternoon.
AROUND THE BLOGS: An amazing series of ABC driven artwork from Neill Cameron.
NOT WEBCOMICS: James Kochalka has a supporting role in a new movie Mars, that looks pretty interesting. Shot entirely on greenscreen, it has a rotoscoped animated look not entirely unlike the videogame Borderlands.
Comix Talk for Thursday, March 4, 2010
INTERVIEWS: Time's Techland Blog is the next step on the Penny Arcade book tour. Sean Collins interviews Nick Gurewitch about some short comics he did for Marvel. Marvel? Yeah Marvel! He has Hulk and Wolverine comics in an upcoming book. CrunchGear interviews Drew and Natalie Dee of Toothpaste for Dinner fame. And David Harper interviews Brock Heasley, co-creator of Monsterplex, the most recent winner of the Zuda contest. Heasley's other webcomic is the superheroes in a retirement home comedy — Super Fogeys. (h/t to Paperless Comics which does a far most exhaustive job than I of tracking down webcomic-related interviews and reviews around the web)
REVIEW: Christopher Irving at GraphicNYC gives Raina Telgemeier's Smile a great review.
LEGAL BEAGLE: Long article at CBR on the Incarnate/Bleach copying scandal and the line on plagerism and homage/inspiration in general. If you're interested in the subject, worth a read.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE Channeling Randy Jackson for a minute: Dude, Rosenburg you just killed it tonight! That thing is hawt! Seriously – this animated panel of Goats is great fun and doing it as an animated gif is practically like employing medieval age technology by the standards of Internet time.
AROUND DEM BLOGS: Hope Larson reminds you that she is not Bryan Lee O'Malley's secretary. Alexis Farjado announced that his new Kid Beowulf book The Song of Rowland is off to the printers.
Comix Talk for Friday, February 26, 2010
What a week it was… or was it?! El Santo posts up a question about "what age of comics" are we in? I think both in terms of the evolution of digital platforms and explosion of variety of subject matter this decade represented the beginning of a new era. What to call it though? Digital is only half the story.
SWIPER NO SWIPING! Two incidents of bad behavior this week – one already rectified. FLEEN has a writeup of Hot Topic's selling of ripped-off artwork from Vera Brosgol. I saw bits of the twitter stream on this yesterday and while Hot Topic seriously needs to revamp it's IP review in its process of acquiring product, the "producer" of this shirt was some band. (The Beat has a picture comparing t-shirt to artwork) Artists ripping off other artists? Not cool guys. The other big to-do this week was Nick Simmon copying artwork repeatedly from the manga seriesTite Kubo Bleach. Simmon's publisher Radical has pulled his book for now.
MONEY MONEY MONEY: Rare comic books sell for one million dollars. Okay, whatever? I don't care one way or the other about rare comic book sales — I like to read comics, not collect physical artifacts.
INTERVIEW: CBR interviews Phil Foglio about his current webcomic Girl Genius. The Foglios are having a donation drive for their colorist Cheyenne Wright who was quite ill (but good news! is recovering).
CONTEST: Raina Telgemeier is having a contest where you can win a copy of her new graphic novel Smile. Deadline is this Sunday!
Comix Talk for January 29, 2010
Whew, made it to Friday. Sometime next week a new version of ComixTalk at the new server will emerge — it won't be perfect but mostly what I need this year. And it should mean the end of me starting posts writing about Drupal and CSS…
I got a fever, and the only prescription… is more AXE COP! You've all read Axe Cop, haven't you? If I didn't know it was for real I might have thought Kris Straub was behind it… Coupling really funny and well-done art with scripts from his 5 year old brother Malachai, artist Ethan Nicolle has created something that is a gimmick but I swear I laughed the whole time I was reading it.
iWEBCOMICS: Paperless Comics has a nice round up of webcomic commenting on the iPad announcement. I'm not going to think too hard about it until the damn thing is actually in the store, but even though it's not perfect I'm kind of leaning towards getting an iPad right now. (I wonder if I can write it off as a business expense for this site?)
INTERVIEW: A really nice interview with Kean Soo, creator of the all ages comic Jellaby (and before that his journal comic at keaner.net)
REVIEWS: Tom Spurgeon has a glowing review of Kazu Kibuishi's book, Copper. Copper has long been one of my favorite comics and I really do want to get a copy of the paper version at some point. Missed it but earlier this month, Sean Kleefeld reviewed another all ages title — the prose/comics hybrid book Malice.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Seth Godin read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and thought it was… about marketing?
Over at Panel & Pixel forums, there's some information and discussion of how intellectual property rights in the U.S. work when a writer and artist collaborate. And another Panel & Pixel post covers creating model sheets for characters for your comic.
Copyright Or Wrong
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.
Yeah, Copying Game Images Is A Copyright Violation…
Blogger Kevin Huxford has an email exchange with Blizzard posing a hypothetical:
What is Blizzard’s policy on screen shots being used to create a webcomic and then selling advertisement on the webcomic site? I’m worried that compensation for ads on the same page as the webcomic would constitute commercial use.
Not shockingly, Blizzard says this is against their current policies. Now have I heard of Blizzard going after people for this? No, not really. But anytime you use copyrighted material in your work, under the current law of the land, you run a huge risk because the copyright holder holds a lot of cards. Yes fair use can be a defense to what would otherwise be copyright infringement ,but it is a case by case analysis and you really need to know how to do that analysis (or have someone do it for you) to know whether you can make a plausible claim to that or not.
Making Comics From Home Causes Trouble For Ramon Perez
Ramon Perez is facing eviction because of a zoning law in Toronoto that says he "must be operating a business on the premises and not residing within them."
Perez was told by his superindentant that he would not be evicted because he is a good tenant and always pays his rent, but that they were using this to evict bad tenants.
"[I] laughed and said i’m not going to take your word over a signed piece of paper. i sign that lease and i’m putting the noose around my neck and just waiting for the landlord to push!"
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