Dead Trees
Webcomics in paper formats
Rob Hanes #12: Stranded On A Desert Island
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What do we call the 24-ish pages soft paper comic book these days with the explosion of graphic novels, collections of comics in print, etc.? I guess we stick with "comic book" as meaning a 24-ish page floppy book. Randy Reynaldo is sticking with the comic book format for his series about intrepid adventurer Rob Hanes.
The Amulet Book Two, The Stonekeeper's Curse
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Kazu Kibuishi once again takes us back into the world of Amulet in Book Two: The Stonekeeper's Curse which is due out from Scholastic in September 2009. The Stonekeeper's Curse is a compelling story with tons of actions and opens up in much wider ways the world of the first Amulet book. It's a thrilling tale, a fantastic piece of comics from Kibuishi and a worthy successor to the first book.
Great Kids Comic: Knights of the Lunch Table
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The Dragon Players, the second book in Frank Cammuso's Knights of the Lunch Table series is scheduled for release this September. I got a chance to review a preview copy this month and it's a great sequel to the first book, The Dodgeball Chronicles. The version I got to read had a great color cover and a few pages in color (but the rest in black and white). The released version will be all in color and based on the color I saw, it will certainly be another bang-up job from Scholastic's GRAPHIX imprint.
Summer Loving: Inbound Anthology #3
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A little late but better than never? The third edition of the solid-to-really-good anthology Inbound: Comics From Boston from the Boston Comics Roundtable group is all about the romance, the love, the heartache and pain and that's worth reading about now just as much as when I first read through this book back in the Spring.
Chicken and Cat Clean Up: New Comic From Sara Varon
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Sara Varon is becoming hopefully a bit more well known at this point having several published comic books released now. Although she has a nice website she has not really published anything in an online format. Given her interest in telling tales most interesting to young children I'm not sure whether the lack of a web presence is a bad idea or not.
Comic Foundry Magazine Closing Doors
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 3, 2008 - 15:45
Tim Leong wrote yesterday that the upcoming fifth issue of Comic Foundry will be the magazine's last. He's not really clear on why he's shutting things down other than to say he doesn't have enough time to devote to the magazine anymore. I don't really know where he got the funding for the magazine from -- if he did it all on his own then it's pretty successful that they got to issue five. The magazine biz ain't easy. While I don't think I was ever convinced that the magazine was as revolutionary as Leong often described it, he did bring a modern magazine design sensibility to comics journalism that I just don't really see in any other publication focused on comics.
UPDATE: Laura Hudson was Leong's right hand woman at CF and she writes on her blog that the decision to cease publication was not financial. Leong said this too and apparently he has a full time job at Complex magazine that is the reason he doesn't have time for CF anymore. I don't really get this -- if you can't make a living from doing something that is essentially a full-time job (editor-in-chief of a full-blown magazine such as CF) than isn't that financial? I don't mean to make a big deal of it; comics is a tough business, comics journalism that much tougher (If I paid myself even minimum wage for the work I've done on Comixtalk I would not even be breaking even over its lifetime) so it's not unusual to struggle financially -- which is why it seems odd they both felt the need to argue to the contrary.
Scary Go Round Book Preview
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 15, 2008 - 10:29
I noticed that John Allison posted an abandoned cover effort for his forthcoming print collection of Scary Go Round comics. It's not clear from his post if the title of "Peloton" is set or not but dang - it'll be the 7th collection of SGR. That means SGR is about 100 years old in webcomic years.
And whilst we're on the subject of Allison's saga of Tackleford, did everyone catch the 'zine comic he recently posted as part of the current storyline. The 'zine strips start here; you can pick up the storyline here, but the storyline probably starts here (although it jumps to other events from time to time).
You So Late: A Review of The Second Crying Macho Man Collection
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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.
Awakening Comics #0 by Steve Peters, reviewed by Xaviar Xerexes
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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.
