REVIEWS

• I might have linked to this before, but this is a good review of Scott McCloud's book, Making Comics with a scan of the very interesting page on primary and secondary expressions.
  

LEGAL

• This video, titled The Disney Trap, features a discussion on how copyright prevents creators from telling new stories about old characters.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Everyone is linking to Chris Ware's "variant" covers for the current New Yorker issue. This comic book marketing gimmick feels a bit less gimmicky in this instance given that it's Chris Ware and the New Yorker, but c'mon... do we really want a world of variant covers of issues of People or Sports Illustrated?
• Boing BOing caught this photo from a 2003 exhibit - a setting of sculptures of superheroes in old age called The Hospice. Cool, weird and total dork-i-tude all in one. Click here for close up photos of the exhibit.
• From the blog Your Mom's Basement comes this Jack Chick-ish comic about Marvel's Eater-Of-Worlds, Galactus.
• Fast Film by Virgil Widrich, is a very interesting piece of animation that uses snippets of famous films to create a sort of moving collage. Cartoon Brew posted this 2003 project here and it's worth seeing (given it's likely conflict with current copyright law it's possible it won't be available forever).
• Finkbot demonstrates how to create an "Art Bot" out of a small motor, batteries, paper cup and markers. It does sound like a cool project for kids to do. Maybe it could also be the conceit for a webcomic :) (If you need to make a motor here's a page on how to make a simple motor from a wire, battery and screw.)
• How to make a mini comic from one sheet of paper.
• A scan of Disney artist Carson Van Osten's Comic Strip Artist's Kit. This is a really good primer to practical problems and fixes for comic strips.
• Can you make an alphabet from scratch? How about in an hour? Here's Ape Lad's effort. (I had to do this as an assignment in college - my final is too big to scan in, but I did it around the oil spill at Huntington Beach, California.)

Post-Turkey Day looks like slim pickin's for news but here's what we've got:

Not to stir the Most Read Project pot more (plenty of discussion in the thread on the subject of measuring webcomic readership here) but every webcomic host that publishes some kind of "popular" list is another potential data point for the project. This Drunk Duck list is described as "most read strips for the past seven days" (there is a second DD list for "story" comics):

• Elijah and Azuu
• supahnariobros
• Elijah and Azuu Classic
• Life and Death
• Grog
• Culture Shock
• No Need for Bushido Remix
• Mixed Bag Comics
• kirby supah star
• Bird and Worm
  

UPDATE: I have to believe, based on a long tradition of Little Gamers mocking Comixpedia, that this strip was inspired by our recent discussion of measuring webcomics' audience size.

SOME WEBCOMICS I READ THIS MORNING

• Lucid TV really deserves a spot on the Most Offensive webcomics poll we're running this month. Brutally-funny, medically-flavored comedy.
• Michael LaLonde's Ornery Boy probably is the only webcomic featuring a zombie MC. Today's strip is one of the funnier raps he's penned for the strip.
• Guest month at Todd and Penguin with comics from guest creators such as Jamie Robertson (Clan of the Cats), Phil Cho (Skinny Panda), and Paul Southworth (Ugly Hill).
• If you changed the color of the splotch of lipstick red on Clango's chin and neck in today's Diesel Sweeties to black, you'd have Clango's evil twin brother Bango. Well it could happen!...

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• The San Francisco Society of Illustrators & AIGA San Francisco in conjuction with the Academy of Art Institute presents "Pixar Under the Hood: The Making of Cars" on Friday, December 1 at 7pm at the Morgan Auditorium in San Fransisco. More details at the Drawn! blog.
• Brinkerhoof has collected The Zoo into dead tree form. More details here.
• An animated version of Maakies is coming to the Adult Swim lineup.
• Check out the latest installment of Lighten Up!, the spoof version of Shades.
• A new Gigcast is up.
• UPDATE: Fleen apparently subscribes to Wizard magazine - check out this nice writeup of five webcomics that Gary scanned in.

It's a cold and wintry November day here in dear old Blighty and to make matters even more bitter, Australia have just knocked the stuffing out of England on the first day of the Ashes. Time to weep? Not at all - you can always Lighten Up! by reading BVC's redubbed spoof of its own graphic novel "Shades"!

Go on ... jump straight to the latest instalment and treat yourself to a sly smile!

It seems last week that Adult Swim posted an update to their schedule with a couple nice pieces of news.

• Tony Millionaire's pilot will be shown sometime in '07. The pilot is known to be titled "Drinky Crow", though it's curiously listed as "Maakies" on the website.

• The Venture Bros is getting a third season of 26 episodes.

Happy Turkey Day everybody--I had a good one, thanks to some nice coworkers.



I'm not sure what turkeys really look like, but I doodled this one in anticipation of dinner.

We had a brilliant (and timely) holiday-related comic all set for you boys and girls, but OJ is trapped at a family engagement, as is the custom at this time of year. So the comic is a not as appropriate filler comic. OJ says that he "despises family gatherings since fucking the women there wouldn't be very prudent." I agree whole-heartedly.

This post will be relatively short, as I also am participating in activities befitting the let's-get-together-and-be-merry clime. Actually, the particular folks that I am participating in these activities with (sounds deliciously ellicit, doesn't it.... sorry it isn't) are standing right behind me, intently watching the jabbing of my keys at my keyboard, patiently waiting for me to write something funny, as opposed to dull meandering it has been thus far. It doesn't help that they're pinching me and pouring beer over my head. For God's Sake, it's not even eight o'clock!