Begining next month, John Holtgrew will be the artist for Aces High. Season 2 of the serial begins at GraphicSmash on September 15th, 2004. Aces High will continue to be written by the Marvelous Patric. Previews of John Holtgrew's artwork can be found at marvelouspatric.com.

UNA Frontiers, the post-apocalyptic comic that cut its teeth on DrunkDuck, debuted on GraphicSmash this past August 13. The creator, Monique MacNaughton, hopes to present her epic storyline to a whole new group of readers in addition to those who are already loyal fans.

CBC television in Canada is looking for 4-6 minute Flash animated cartoons for a contest. From the website:

We're looking for animated shorts to air on our new program, "Maple Shorts," a TV series that features short animated films competing for a chance to win a pilot project with the CBC.

Here's the deal: We want animators from across the country to submit original Flash cartoons, no more than 6 minutes in length, for an animated festival to be aired on national television this fall.

Just 1 Page is a comics magazine produced for the British Comics Festival, which is held annually in May in Bristol. All proceeds from auctions of the original art and profits from sales of the magazine will go to the Trinity Hospice in London.

Art is donated from a range of artists, from professionals to amateurs, from small press and webcomics to the "big two and a bit". Each issue has a theme, the latest being British comics. The magazine is sold at the Bristol and London Festivals, and is available to buy online. There have been two issues so far.

The Weekly Geek has two new webcomic creator interviews: Jeff Rowland from Wigu and Scott Ramsoomair from VGCats.

Check them out on the Weekly Geek website (scroll down and look to the right).

Did anyone realize that I was gone for a week offline and asleep at the beach? Well I'm back.

Lea Hernandez (girl-a-matic patron saintess) and others chat it up in a Ninth Art article.

Found a copy of McSweeney's Quarterly #13, edited by Chris Ware. This is the comics issue and it's a must have. I'll post more when I finish it but it is a revelation so far.

Went to Borders (where I did not find the McSweeney's) and bitched to the manager about dumping all the graphic novels in one poorly maintained section. Why not shelf comic book with "word books" under the appropriate subject matter? I don't think the guy gave a shit actually but he blamed it all on corporate. So perhaps a letter writing campaign to Borders and B&N and all the other graphic novel carrying chains is necessary.

Good post from Joey Manley on Work for Hire versus Creator Owned work. One thing I think worth mentioning is that Manley's post doesn't venture beyond books. That is to say most people would think of creator owned books as more artistically valuable than WFH. This doesn't hold up in other creative endeavors. Plays, movies, music all have a more varied history of artistically meritorious WFH efforts.

If you missed this catch the NY Times article on further cost cutting in the newspaper comic strip biz.

Everyone seems to be talking about Peter Bagge's latest webcomic attacking "fine" arts and public funding of high-culture art.

And last but not least for now - Sean Collins of Attention Disorderly seems to have landed a mysterious new gig which will preclude him from blogging about comics. That's a bummer for me, I enjoyed his writing on comics, but congrats to Collins. I hope we hear from him again.