We had a bit of downtime with the site after the upgrade to the newest version of PHP5 went a bit off. All seems okay now (although please email me at xerexes AT gmail DOT com if you notice problems). Along with some site stuff I’m working on you’ll notice that the center aisle of the site is now a daily feed of new stuff — news from staff, staff-selected talk posts and feature articles from the magazine. On the right hand side you can get the most recent magazine articles, or click the tab for the most recent talk posts from Comixtalk members. Two more tabs — webcomics and creators — are not active yet so stayed tuned.
Also please check out our new sponsor the art exhibition The Great Great Grand Show featuring artists Graham Annable, Scott Campbell, Jon Klassen, and Israel Sanchez. The OPENING RECEPTION is this Saturday, August 16 from 7 to 11 pm and it’s Free!
Criteria for Criticism Continued
Scott Kurtz wrote a bit about critics (here’s the ComixTalk post on it). El Santo wrote a pretty good post on the ideas percolating through the discussion Kurtz kicked off. One more thought occurs after reading some of this — I’m sure Kurtz has encountered plenty of people who do live up to his stereotype of the self-important, uneducated, and/or otherwise useless critic but even if there are a lot of such creatures it doesn’t mean every person writing about comics fits that stereotype. (Just like every webcomic creator isn’t craptastic despite the existence of a lot of not-yet-or-never-will-be-decent webcomics). There is a bit of a disconnect going on here though — Kurtz is absolutely right that an artist should be looking to get constructive feedback to improve and grow and Kurtz gets that from his friends and colleagues in comics. I think that’s a perfectly valid way to do that. On the other hand I made some of the biggest leaps in my basic drawing skills in college under an absolute ass of a teacher. But the times when he didn’t blast me in front of the class, I knew I had made real progress.
Comics Curation
FLEEN has a bit more on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign show featuring comics creatorsin October (lots of webcomic creators in the show catalog). FLEEN also has a link to DIY magazine show creator Oliver Brackenbury recent show on webcomics in general (which has a nice conversation with creator Ryan North).
MILESTONES
Congrats to Derik Badman on the 2nd year anniversary of his webcomic Things Change.
AROUND the WORLD in 80 BLOGS
Buzzcomix is back open for public business. If anyone has reactions to their new reader/bookmark function please let us know.
Theater Hopper has a donation drive to help creator Tom Brazelton out with the bills for data recovery of his webcomic files. If you can chip in a bit and than make sure it doesn’t happen to you and your files!
David Malki!’s wedding is the must-see movie of 2009! More like 2007 I think. Still a pretty cool trailer. 🙂
An interview with uber-blogger, Dirk Deppey of TCJ’s Journalista!
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