We Talk with Mike Witmer about Pinkerton Vol 1, JT and Scott talk Webcomics, Inktank Fanart Winners announced and   Christian Ellis Shallow Thoughts LInks: InkTank Fan art winners 1st - Krishna Sadasivam of pcweenies.com 2nd - Kevin Ireland of ominousknife.com 3rd - JT Shea of nightgig.com The GigcastA Nightgig Studios Production - http://www.nightgig.comwww.thegigcast.comHave News or a Comment?  Want to tell [...]

File this under not at all webcomics related: To celebrate the release of “The Dark Knight” tomorrow, I’d like to take you back to one of the all time best parody works ever greated. “GnatRat: The Dark Gnat Returns” was written by Mark Martin way back in 1986 to spoof Frank Miller’s influential work, [...]

And with today comes the very last comic strip on our twelve comic odyssey, a veritable tour de force of comedic wit. Or something. Anyway, obviously I'd had no plan with this whole thing, so wrapped the whole thing up magically in one giant swoop. Which ... was actually kind of sad, because once you get working on something (or at least, so I find) and discover who the characters are, different situations start popping into your head and the story becomes much richer (which is how sequels are born! ... and also in the bowels of Hollywood hell).

And with today comes the very last comic strip on our twelve comic odyssey, a veritable tour de force of comedic wit. Or something. Anyway, obviously I'd had no plan with this whole thing, so wrapped the whole thing up magically in one giant swoop. Which ... was actually kind of sad, because once you get working on something (or at least, so I find) and discover who the characters are, different situations start popping into your head and the story becomes much richer (which is how sequels are born! ... and also in the bowels of Hollywood hell).

If YouTube yanks this, check out this one on the official movie Web site.

I will be all over the San Diego Comic Con! Here's where to look:

Base of Operations: The Comics Bakery
P2, in the Small Press section. That lines up with aisle 1900, at the very edge of Small Press, so we should be pretty easy to find! Look for the Comics Bakery banner! Also tabling there are fan-favorites like Raina Telgemeier, John Green and Marion Vitus.

I wasn't going to post again about the New Yorker cover that got the media so worked up this week but this cartoon/column by Tom Tomorrow is too funny not to link.

So, Amazon users have added the amusing "Why America is hated" tag to about 200 products, and even though they would be better off arguing that the top picks on the list are "Why America is hateful," there's still few surprises in the top rankings: Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly ...

A couple of Platinum-related odds n' ends today:

Tom Spurgeon gets the top of the post quote at Journalista! with his take on the Platinum Studios story.

DJ Coffman gets a CEASE AND DESIST letter from Platinum regarding the herobynight.net and ,org URLs that apparently Coffman personally owns.  Lots more in Coffman's post on his post-Platinum thoughts on Platinum including this key bit:

So yeah, that boggles my mind. 24k? Brian just passes me off as any creator who would complain to a publisher about not enough promotion. But the guy’s problem is, and he admitted this to me is, he just doesn’t KNOW comics. For all intents and purposes, and not a surprise to many, Platinum isn’t in the comic BOOK business.

I've got a large number of "how-to" type books to review and so I'm going to try and make the theme of August about tutorials and tips.  I don't have a cover artist lined up for August, however and in the spirit of doing something different I'm going to open it up to submissions.  Here's the plan -- if you're interested in doing the cover for ComixTalk for August (that's the 1000 x 400 image that sits at the top of the site) submit a quick sketch (and any explanatory notes) of your idea by the end of July 21st.  I'll pick one idea for the artist to do a final version for the site.  Submit your sketches to xerexes AT gmail DOT com and include any links to work you've done online.

There's no pay for cover art, however, you retain the copyright (you do have to give me a non-exclusive license to display it online), get your name and linkage under the cover for the month and if you're interested we'll run a free left-hand column ad for you.