Awards
Recognition of webcomic goodness
Joe Shuster Awards: Webcomic Nominees
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on May 14, 2010 - 11:38
The nominees for the 2010 Joe Shuster Award in the categoy of "Webcomics/Bandes Dessinées Web" are:
- Attila Adorjany – Metaphysical Neuroma
- Kate Beaton – Hark! A Vagrant
- Andy Belanger – Bottle of Awesome & Raising Hell
- Rene Engström – Anders Loves Maria
- Karl Kerschl – The Abominable Charles Christopher
- Gisèle Lagacé and David Lumsdon – Eerie Cuties & Ménage à 3
- Tara Tallan – Galaxion
- Steve Wolfhard – Cat Rackham
The 6th Annual Awards Ceremony is on Saturday, June 5th, 2010 at the Innis Town Hall (University of Toronto) with returning Master of Ceremonies Jonathan Llyr. The awards ceremony is held on the same weekend as the Toronto ComiCON FAN APPRECIATION Event (June 5-6).
Comix Talk for Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on April 13, 2010 - 09:24
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.
2010 Eisner Nominees Announced
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on April 8, 2010 - 17:24
The 2010 Eisner Nominations have been released (h/t El Santo) The nominees in the Best Digital Comic category are:
- Abominable Charles Christopher, by Karl Kerschl
- Bayou, by Jeremy Love
- The Guns of Shadow Valley, by David Wachter and James Andrew Clark
- Power Out, by Nathan Schreiber
- Sin Titulo, by Cameron Stewart
ComixTalk for Monday, March 15, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 15, 2010 - 08:00
AWARDS: The Doug Wright award nominees -- which honor English-language Canadian comics -- were announced last week. Kate Beaton's book Never Learn Anything From History is up for the Pigskin Peters Award (for unconventional, "nominally-narrative" comics); and among the finalists for finalists for Best Emerging Talent is Adam Bourret for his comic I'm Crazy. I gave I'm Crazy a mixed review, but Bourret certainly was a brave story-teller in his book and showed a lot of potential.
PLUG ONE: I haven't mentioned David Simon's Crimson Dark webcomic in quite awhile which is a shame because it's still one of the best 3d art webcomics I've seen. Not sure how it's working, but Simon started a "club" for supporters to subscribe to at $2 to $5 a month to help him with having the time to produce Crimson Dark.
PLUG TWO: The Covered blog which spotlights re-dos of classic comic book covers by new artists. I would love to see a webcomic spin on this.
TOOLS: Scott McCloud experiments with a simple browser-based drawing tool called Harmony.
ComixTalk for Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 16, 2010 - 03:02
We 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:
- Back on January 31st, Warren Ellis had one of his hype your webcomics threads at WhiteChapel that's now got an overflowing bounty of potential links for your perusal.
- Scott McCloud links to an interesting comic-like project from a photograher - the "comic" is called A Garden Not Lost to Us.
- I noticed that you can buy the originals from Christopher Baldwin's new webcomic Space Trawler. Beautiful stuff!
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):
Comix Talk for Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 9, 2010 - 03:02
It's day 4 of Snowapalooza in Washington DC. I consider this a trial run for if I ever decided to move to Canada and so far... I don't think I'd make it. But being snow-bound has been great for catching up on comics. I also wanted to flag a few features at ComixTalk -- the calendar of comic events is available here, but you can also add it a number of other calendar programs and I'm always interested in co-maintainers. In fact I'd be very happy to see other blogs and sites join me in maintaining it and embedding it on their sites too. I also set up a hub page for the four webcomic titles that have run at ComixTalk over its 8 year history - click to discover work from Ryan Estrada, Kris Straub and Bryant Paul Johnson.
Awards: The Webcomics List, a hybrid tracking, popularity and news site for webcomics had a forum-organized awards program this year. It felt a lot like the old WCCAs. This Week in Webcomics covers the results. Gunnerkrigg Court won the nod for Best Comic and Moon Town won for Best New Comic. Coyote has a review of Moon Town here.
iWebcomics: So I'm kind of already burnt out on the iPad hype. I want to wait until the thing is available to think more about it. Others are though: Erik Larsen has an essay about it and Gizmodo salivated over how comics will look on the tablet device.
Dead Trees: Tyler Page talks numbers, costs and quality for taking the Print-On-Demand route for volume 2 of his Nothing Better webcomic. And starting this week, for a couple of months, Gordon McAlpin is working full time on Multiplex — and, the Multiplex: Book 1 print collection. This is all due to the funding he raised for the book through a Kickstarter drive.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
- The recent rock concert contest storyline at Ornery Boy has been great - both funny and Michael Lalonde has done an awesome job with animating key panels. If you're going to do a flash comic than use it! Ornery Boy makes great use of Flash's capabilities.
- It's a been awhile since I've linked to Freak Angels. Things are happening again in the storyline and although I'm a bit annoyed that after a few years we still don't really understand the full logic of the "package" of the freak angels and their world, it's a hell of a comic. I'll also just flag again that what Avatar is doing here seems like a pretty good model for a publisher-creator relationship in the webcomic world. I'm not sure I've seen anyone else quite match it yet.
- The latest issue of Dark Horse Presents is out with webcomics from Graham Annable and others.
Comix Talk for February 1, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 1, 2010 - 10:33
Good morning world. The Cranky Old Gnome blog offers an essay on webcomics called "Critiquing Free Content". (h/t Paperless Comics):
It got me wondering–to what extent can free content like a webcomic be criticized? How much does the audience have a right to expect from the artist, and when do they cross that line?
iWebcomics: Paperless Comics has more reactions to the iPad announcement last week.
INTERVIEWS: Growly Beast has an interview with Gitte Tang Jensen of B.I.B.L.E. and Forbidden Planet has an interview with Daniel "Merlin" Goodbrey and his collaborator Sean Azzopardi on their comic Necessary Monsters.
VIDEO GAMES, VIDEO GAMES, VIDEO GAMES: Congrats - the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards are honoring Jerry, Mike and Robert of Penny Arcade, Inc. with an Ambassador Award for their Child's Play Charity work.
AWARDS: SPACE handed out some awards and Ryan Dow won in the webcomics category for Introspective Comics.
REVIEWS: Delos reviews Urban Jungle by David Willborn, "a gag comic which mostly covers cubicle humor but also has geek humor, tech humor, animal humor, pokes fun at comics and talks about issues and culture without being preachy."
JUSTIFY MY HYPE: Sailor Twain or the Mermaid in the Hudson by Mark Siegel. (h/t Scott McCloud); and David Lasky draws the ULTIMATE GRAPHIC NOVEL (in six panels).
Comix Talk for Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 27, 2010 - 10:40
So today is the Second Coming? The rumored debut of Apple's oversized iPod has sent the newspaper business into a tizzy but it is potentially VERY interesting to the world of comics. I doubt the first generation of it (if it exists!) will be affordable enough but eventually this could become a serious platform for comics. IF IF IF IF....
In non-rapturous news of the day, congrats to Ben Costa for winning a Xeric Grant for Shi Long Pang. I look forward to buying that book! (h/t Paperless Comics) And in a true spirit of public service, Gary reads Platinum Comics Licensing's press release to decipher the latest business plan: "an in-house version of CafePress."
INTERVIEW: Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots.
REVIEW: Delos reviews Insert Comic by Zack Holmes.
And how about some links to fill-out your morning read -- here's the list of webcomics the readers of the Washington Post nominated for its Comics Riffs poll on "Best Webcomic of the Decade": "Devil's Panties" ; "Devin Crane" ; "Eric Monster Millikin" ; "Girl Genius" ; "Girls With Slingshots" ; "Hark! A Vagrant" ; "Jesus and Mo" ; "Kevin and Kell" ; "Least I Could Do" ; "Navy Bean" ; "The New Adventures of Queen Victoria" ; "Order of the Stick" ; "Penny Arcade" ; "Perry Bible Fellowship" ; "Pibgorn" ; "PvP" ; "Questionable Content" ; "Red String" ; "Schlock Mercenary" ; "Sinfest" ; "UserFriendly.Org" ; and "xkcd."
Comix Talk for Monday, January 25, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 25, 2010 - 10:50
For what it's worth, I've got a fresh install of DRUPAL on the dev server at home, working up a streamlined version of ComixTALK. Laid out the basic theme (moving to a 2 column layout) and now tackling cleaning up the horror that the tag and category system at ComixTALK has mutated into.... Right now I'm debating whether to port ComixTALK as is to the new server or wait until I get the redo... done.
One story that caught my eye this morning was this rant by blogger-czar Jason Calacanis about comScore. Worth reading to think about. Another interesting story from Tom Spurgeon, who has an essay up at the Comics Reporter which I think one could summarize as "wow, there are a lot more good comics than when I was younger..." I guess I would add, "wow, there are a lot more good webcomics than 10 years ago..." And if you need a recap of recent webcomic news, Delos has a whole bunch of interesting links covering last week at Art Patient.
NEW BOOK: John Allison posted the cover art from the forthcoming 8th book collection of Scary Go Round: "Recklessly Yours."
Cory Likes Corndogs: Goats scores a favorable review from Boing Boing Blogger Cory Doctorow for the second book in the new series: The Corndog Imperative.
ZUDA IDOL SCANDAL? Digital Strips reports on the departure of one of the ten finalists from this month's Zuda popularity contest. Apparently The Thunderchickens had a good shot of winning it too, so the undisclosed reasons for its departure must be something non-trivial.
POLLS: Over at the Washington Post's comics blog, Schlock Mercenary is leading their Best Webcomic of the Decade poll, followed by Girl Genius.
INTERVIEW: Inkstuds has an (audio) interview with Bryan Lee O'Malley.
Non-ZUDA CONTESTS: El Santo reports that John Lustig of Last Kiss is having a contest -- write the best dialogue for a comic captioned by Orson Scott Card.
ALL AGES: Comics For Kids has a list of recommended comics for the classroom.
Webcomics Headlines for Tuesday November 24, 2009
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 24, 2009 - 10:27
AWARDS
The Webcomics List is having an awards program this year. According to their rules, "Everyone actively involved in webcomics in some way can nominate candidates for the awards. You can nominate up to three comics for each [category]." Nominations are open until December 13th and the winners -- to be selected by panels of judges -- will be announced on January 24th.
AV Club includes two webcomics in its best comics of the decade list: Achewood and American Elf. (h/t El Santo)
NOT COMICS
The Penny Arcade "reality show" is surprisingly moving -- really well done and looking forward to future episodes. (Much better than the PA comic would suggest!)
BUSINESS
Sean Kleefeld comments on a recent story (one in a continuing series apparently) about how "the internet ate my comic" -- this story in the Peoria Journal focusing on comments of frustration with the Internet from Julie Larsone, the creaor of the Dinette Set comic.
