Milestones

You’ve come a long baby!

Comix Talk for Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Xaviar Xerexes Leave a Comment

Just a side note to everyone — I'm behind on everything online, it's not you, it's me!  Hope to catch up before the end of the month.

MILESTONES: I didn't know Dwayne McDuffie, and although I was aware of his name in the industry I just never followed him specifically. It's always sad when a talented creator passes away too damn early and seeing all of the projects he worked on it's clear McDuffie was damn talented. GraphicNYC writes that it did a recent interview with him and that it will be up on their site next week.

AWARDS

REVIEW: El Santo reviews Axe Cop.

INTERVIEW: TGT podcast has an audio interview with Gordon McAlpin of Multiplex.

HYPE: Wow! Daniel Clowes has a website – be sure to check out the "About" page. (h/t Drawn!).

Continue Reading →

Comix Talk for Thursday, February 3, 2011

Xaviar Xerexes Leave a Comment

There's a lot to catch up on this morning so let's get to it:

AWARDS

MILESTONES

INTERVIEW

REVIEW: Ed Sizemore reviews Ben Costa's Pang the Wandering Shaolin Monk.

MAILBAG

Rigby, by Lee Leslie, may have already ventured into the world of high fantasy, but now the heroine and her eponymous webcomic are venturing into the world of print comics. Pre-orders are currently open and will run until February 11. This is RiGBY’s first official print appearance, and the 20 page, full color comic will only be available at conventions and signings after the pre-sale. Those fans pre-ordering the comic will also be treated to a high resolution digital version.

IN MAPS & LEGENDS, illustrated by Niki Smith and written by Michael Jasper, continues with its fourth issue on February 2, 2011. With Bartamus' world falling apart around them, LaVonne, Jeremy, and Antawn venture deeper into unknown territory, while Kait travels into the darkness between worlds — and she's no longer alone.  Smith and Jasper were named "Digital Creators of the Year" (along with Alex de Campi) for their work on IN MAPS & LEGENDS in 2010.  Artist Niki Smith is an artist and writer who is currently working on a handful of creator-owned comic projects such Some Did Rest. Her work has also appeared in several English language and German comic anthologies.  Writer Michael Jasper has published three novels, a story collection, and over four dozen short stories in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Polyphony, Writers of the Future, and the Raleigh News & Observer, and other fine venues. His most recent novel is A Gathering of Doorways (Wildside Press, 2009).

Continue Reading →

Freewriting Re: Writing

Ben Leave a Comment

There's a well-known (in certain circles …) doodle by Bill Watterson wherein he shares his writing process, which pretty much consists of staring blankly into space, waiting for inspiration. I imagine this holds true for a lot of cartoonists – it does for me, at least. Which makes writing about Writing a bit of a challenge, as I can't give a simple set of directions and send you on your merry way. I think the most I can manage is some random observations, which I'll try to tie together as best I can.

Continue Reading →

Congrats to Angela Melick and Trevor

Xaviar Xerexes Leave a Comment

Angela Melick, creator of the great webcomic Wasted Talent, just got married. Congrats!  Wasted Talent is a very funny auto-bio journal comic about a woman engineer — I think it's only gotten better as Melick got out of school and into a job; and despite a full-time job, her cartooning chops have continued to improve.

I've been meaning to try and get an interview with Angela and her now husband.  In addition, to being a great comic, Trevor moved Wasted Talent over to the CMS Drupal — a great implementation and I'm hoping to get some more insight into how he and she planned and implemented the move over to a CMS that still is pretty foreign to webcomic sites (it is the CMS that ComixTalk runs on).

Continue Reading →

Comix Talk for Friday, April 30, 2010

Xaviar Xerexes Leave a Comment

ComixTALK Man by Stephen McCranie

Stephen McCranie created a bit of ComixTalk fan art, thanks Stephen!  Be sure to check out his comic Mal and Chad a really well drawn comic.

Congrats to the Penny Arcade duo for being included in Time's Top 100 list this year.  Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins are a true American dream story — doing what they love and creating success with it.

BleedingCool.com reports that the Atlantic Centre For The Arts in Florida is offering a  residency as Associate Artist for a comic book creator in October, under master artists THB creator Paul Pope, Blankets author Craig Thompson or manga creator Svetlana Chmakova. Wow, for almost any aspiring comics creator this seems like taking a PhD course.

MILESTONES: Brat-halla reaches 400 comics.  Congratulations to Jeffery Stevenson & Seth Damoose (and colorist Anthony Lee)!

EVENTS: Noel Curry wants to make May 14th Dialogue Free Comics Day.  It's a good point – which is to remind everyone of the important visual aspect of comics.

FROM THE MAILBAG:  Al Schroeder writes: After two years and ten zillion cameos and interdimensional tomfoolery, the group webcomic CROSSOVERLORD, featuring superheroes from seven different webcomics, reaches the climax of its storyline.  After this, only four or five more strips to go!

Continue Reading →

ComixTalk for Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Xaviar Xerexes Leave a Comment

Greystone Inn by Brad GuigarWe had the Son of Snowpocalypse in Washington DC yesterday.  Not all that exciting actually.  Also finally saw AVATAR in 3D on Sunday night. (Ain't Mrs X cool to take me to that for Valentines Day?!)  Reviews were dead-on; awesome world-building and special effects to carry it off, story was Dances With Wolves With Four Eyes and Gil Slits.  All in all, a great movie experience.

AWARDS: Tom Spurgeon has a list of the nominees for this year's Glyph awards.

MILESTONES: Congrats to Brad Guigar on 10 years of comicking!  Brad has had a heck of a decade pioneering this thing we call webcomics and I hope there's lots more to come.  In his blog post there's a BIG hint that a full collection of his first strip, Greystone Inn, will be coming to print.

Also docking in close to 10 years is the Flight anthology series.  Kazu Kibuishi announces that Flight 8 will be the last edition of that very successful project.

INTERVIEWS: Growly Beast has an interview with Tom Dell'Aringa of Marooned and The Internet Review of Science Fiction has a fairly indepth interview with Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary.  UPDATE: Graphic NYC has an interview with Raina Telgemeier, who's most recent work is the graphic novel Smile.

JUSTIFY VARIOUS PEOPLE'S HYPE:

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS:  Kids book author/illustrator Mo Willems takes a crack at Hilary Price's Rhymes With Oranges this week.  Also details on Hilary's trip to Cuba with Jeannie Schulz and other cartoonists including Alexis Fajardo.  Haven't talked with Alexis in years – maybe I better catch up with him! 🙂  (h/t Daily Cartoonist)

SECRET SCIENCE ALLIANCE ACTIVATE!  The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis won this year's CYBIL award for the graphic novel category. The CYBILs are the Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards.  And TCJ posted a four part interview with Eleanor, husband Drew Weing and the rest of the creative crew from the Secret Science Alliance book.  Here's part one (with links to part 1 & 2 and part 3 & 4):

Continue Reading →

Comix Talk for Monday, February 8, 2010

Xaviar Xerexes Leave a Comment

Sci Fi Drive By by Ryan Estrada

Welcome to the new site design at ComixTalk.  We're on a new server so let me know if it feels a bit zippier (it seems to be faster all around to me).  Happy to hear about broken stuff — I'm not done with tweaking things (never done!) and I can add it to the list.  One thing I can warn you about is that a lot of the older URLs are still broken, but I hope to clear most of that up this week.

REVIEWS:  I had the pleasure of sitting down with Copper in print this weekend and reading and re-reading it.  Here's my glowing, gushing review. I also forgot to mention that we liked Kazu even before he was a star; here's the cover art he did for ComixpediaTALK back in 2004.  Also, I'll have a review of Smile, the new graphic novel from Raina Telgemeier up this week.  I did get a chance to read it this past weekend and it is an entertaining, moving story.  Sure, the tale of the teeth and all of the work Raina had to go through are interesting, but she's done so much more with filling out the emotions and just the in-between-ness of those middle school years that it would have made a good story even without that hook.

MILESTONES: Last week marked the end of Anders Loves Maria, the breakout webcomic from Rene Engström.  I'll second Gary's thoughts on the tale.  Perhaps the ending felt a bit abrupt, even forced, but you can't deny it's impact.  It's also worth noting that Engström's art continually improved throughout the comic and that in re-reading the archives of this comic, I'm even more impressed with where she is now as a creator.  I hope the next comic comes soon.

CONTESTS: Ryan Estrada is competing in this month's Zudalympics and he needs your vote.  His comic is called Sci-Fi Drive-By and you can vote by visiting his website.  In non-Zuda voting, Comic Riffs, the Washington Post's blog about comic strips is having a Best Webcomic of the Decade Popularity Contest — voting closes this Wednesday.  The seven contenders are: Girl Genius, Hark! A Vagrant, Least I Could Do, Penny Arcade, The Perry Bible Fellowship, Schlock Mercenary, and xkcd.

Continue Reading →

Silly Daddy hits 500 Comics Online

Xaviar Xerexes Leave a Comment

500 webcomics is still a pretty tough milestone on the road of webcomics.  And perserverence in comics is nothing to sneeze at. Congrats to Joe Chiappetta on 500 installments of his all-ages family webcomic Silly Daddy!  Here’s the press release:

The family comic series, "Silly Daddy," posts its 500th online cartoon November 9th, 2009. Started as a print comic book in 1991 with the birth of his first child, cartoonist Joe Chiappetta has received much award recognition for the series, including Harvey and Ignatz nominations. When his story arc combined science fiction with real life family drama and humor, he won the Xeric Award.

Continue Reading →