Skip to main content

Paul Taylor

Comix Talk for Friday, July 09, 2010

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 9, 2010 - 08:53

C'mon weekend!  Okay this first story struck me as a great project.  Jennifer Ouellette writes about a collective effort to create a webcomic telling the amazing story of 20-something Dutch primary school teacher, Hanny van Arkel, who discovered a strange blue/green smudge on an image of what was otherwise a standard spiral galaxy now referred to as "Hanny's Voorwerp."  The full comic will be released at Dragon-Con in Atlanta, Georgia, this fall.

MILESTONES: Wow, it's the FIFTH anniversary of Gordon McAlpin's Multiplex.  Congrats!  If you're not reading this smart comic about the crew working at a local multiplex definitely check it out.  A wonderful combination of character-driven and movie culture comedy.

iWEBCOMICS: Lauren Davis notes the release of a new version of the controversial webcomic app from Dale Zak. Noted without comment from me today as this is a topic that requires more time than I have this morning.

THE MORE YOU KNOW: Yesterday we noted Paul Bryant Johnson gave a class at a summer webcomics camp.  Today he posted online his presentation on "Finding the Balance Between Words, Pictures and Time in Making Comics."

WE WILL... WE WILL... HYPE YOU!

FROM THE MAILBAG:

  • Peter Conrad writes "I took down attemptednotknown.com last year because of some hackers who used the site for nefarious purposes. I've relaunched it with way more content, and I'm uploading stuff every week now!"  Peter is another long-time webcomic creator who I'll always remember for creating Zeenster - an app to read comics on the Palm OS.
  • Tommie Kelly writes "I did the webcomics Road Crew and From Rags To Rockstars.  I have a new webcomic... There are about 70 strips online at the time of emailing and it updates five times a week. Mon to Fri...  It's called Something Wonderful and it deals with religion, beliefs, new age, spirituality and Mac owners among other things."
  • Stephanie O'Donnell writes "I'm Stephanie O'Donnell, artist for the webcomic Perfect Agent.  It is written by Greg Carter (creator of Abandon and Love Is In The Blood). It started last year and we're now 2 full stories in."

CONVENTION 'VENTION WHAT'S YOUR INTENTION?

  • Hey it's San Diego Comicon time again -- FLEEN is all over getting you your guide to webcomic booths so be sure to check in there before you go!
  • Also in new webcomic convention on the block news, Intervention added award winning Sci-Fi author (and soon to be Webcomic author) Ben Bova to its inaugural lineup. Bova, Rob Balder, and Bill Holbrook will be debuting their new online webcomic collaboration at Intervention called Duel in the Somme.

Comix Talk for Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 22, 2010 - 22:07

USA versus Algeria.  I'm not even sure this site gets any traffic from Algeria but regardless... go USA!

Let's start off with a bit of hypey mchype today.  Webcomics went through a phase of experimenting with comic-ness without necessarily worrying about the story or appeal of the comic and more lately maybe the impression is that expermentation is dead. Well I'm not sure, but when I do see someone smartly taking advantage of the web in webcomics without letting it get in the way of making a good comic I think we should pay attention.  So, Ornery Boy by Michael Lalonde which is really already a very funny comic - a sort of slacker version of the Adams Family (not really but that'd be my teevee pitch).  Lalonde actually uses Flash to add little bits of animatin' and other layered in stuff that adds to the comic without sacrificing the comicness of it.  Do you need the extras to enjoy the comic -- probably not, but I guess you don't need color in comics either and yet...  Lalonde is using what could be just obnoxious experimental techniques in a very intregated way that completely serves a very funny and accomplished comic.  Check out these two recent installments: #432 and #431 for some examples of what I mean.

ARE ELECTRIC SHEEP A RENEWAL RESOURCE?  Remember when I kept reminding everyone to consider committing to Patrick Farley's KICKSTARTER drive so we could get him back to making webcomics?  Well it's bearing fruit -- Scott McCloud blogged that Farley has started to re-serialize his groundbreaking comic The Spiders.  This alternate history of the Afghan war is fascinating.

CHASING THE TITANTIC:  Gene Weingarten is getting a big push from the Washington Post for his new comic strip Barney & Clyde.  He created it with his son and there was a nice story on their relationship.  Weingarten is actually usually pretty funny in his weekly column but I'm curious to see how that translates to the comics.  Still it looks like it's only getting launched in 3 papers?  There's something horribly, amusingly wrong with a corporately controlled artform (which comics strips in the newspaper definitely is) where a big corporation can't even properly launch a new product...

INDIE ROCK PETE I CHOOSE YOU!  Richard Stevens the 3rd asked YOU and maybe you for questions for his Diesel Sweeties characters to answer in a comic.

THE ADVENTURES OF HANNAH SOLO:  Lucy Knisley's sorta-journal, sorta-musing webcomic is quite good and the latest is great. I do think there seem to be more stories featuring girls doing things (as opposed to just going along for the ride or worse waiting around to be saved) but as a guy it wasn't until I had daughters that I really thought about how tilted the traditional roles in stories were towards guy=action and girl=inaction.  I hope comics is getting better.  From my webcomic perspective, it's actually pretty good.

OH PRETTY PICTURES!  Paul Taylor of Wapsi Square did a great bit of fan art for Mike Malhack's Cleopatra in Space webcomic.

Lulus of the Year: 2009

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 13, 2009 - 09:50

Congrats to all of the winners of this year's Lulu Awards: 

Listen up!: Two Interesting Interviews!

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on September 14, 2009 - 09:41

The SPX Convention is coming this month!  There will be a pretty interesting group of webcomic types exhibiting at this year's Saturday and Sunday show in Bethesda.  More details at the website -- I am overbooked this year, but hope to be there Sunday afternoon.

INTERVIEWS
Lucy Knisley, author of French Milk, and Erika Moen, creator of DAR: A Super-Girly Top-Secret Comic Diary, join Words & Pictures' S.W. Conser to discuss cartoon travelogues, online journaling, collaborative art-making, and the fine line between Renaissance iconography and porn.  Warning: explicit content.  Click here for the podcast.

And another podcast interview -- this one with webcomic creator Paul Taylor of Wapsi Square.

Now or Never

Submitted by Howard Tayler on March 6, 2009 - 10:17

Here are two web-comicky things that I’m sure you want to pick up eventually, but which you can’t acquire in that manner.

The first is the extremely limited edition Monica Macquette from Paul Taylor and Patch Together. Here’s the final version of the sculpt, pre-painted:

Best Spam EVER!

Submitted by RyanEstrada on November 6, 2008 - 00:00

from: ads@mohawkmedia.co.uk
to: help@cartooncommune.com
date: Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 2:24 AM
subject: Mr. T advert - price reductions

Want Mr. T to promote your product and company?

We have some last minute ad space in the official Mr. T graphic novel!

This can be offered at a discount price of:

Half-page advert: £185.00

Full-page advert: £245.00

This will sell fast, so if interested please let me know ASAP.

Sincerely,

Paul Taylor

Email: ads@mohawkmedia.co.uk

The ComixTalk Interview with Blank Label Comics

January 20, 2008 - 20:42 | Xaviar Xerexes

We took the best of the readers' questions and mixed in some of our own to conduct this interview with the six current members of Blank Label Comics: Howard Tayler (Schlock Mercenary), Steve Troop (Melonpool), Paul Southworth (Ugly Hill), Paul Taylor (Wapsi Square), David Willis (Shortpacked) and Greg Dean (Real Life).

Call For Questions For Blank Label Comics

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on December 17, 2007 - 06:36

Back in February of this year, we hosted the results of a ComixTalk community interview with the members of the indepedent creators collective, Blank Label Comics. Given that this is an end-of-the-year kind of issue for ComixTalk, I thought it would be great to do another interview with the members of BLC so we could book-end the year between them.

Moreover, although there has been a good deal of press on Halfpixel, the new collective formed by Scott Kurtz and former BLC members Brad Guigar, Dave Kellett and Kris Straub, there is still plenty to catch up on with the six current members of BLC: Howard Tayler, David Willis, Paul Southworth, Paul Taylor, Steve Troop and Greg Dean. Please post your questions here -- I'll collect them on December 21st and send them out for answers with an eye to publishing the full story here in January 2008.

Updates On Entries in the Ill-Fated Webcomic Directory Project?

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 24, 2007 - 13:31

I built a "library" of webcomics and creators back in the fall of 2005 which I put into beta before realizing it was too much editorial work to deal with and the same information could be better provided through the community edited webcomic wiki - COMIXPEDIA.

Nevertheless looking back on the assortment of names collected (some from me, some sent in from you) I wonder if anyone has any significant updates on these creators 18 months later. Maybe we should interview some of them?

Updating the Feed Lists

Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 22, 2007 - 09:03

When we switched to Drupal one of the nice things I was able to set up was pulling in the RSS feeds of other sites to Comixpedia. That way we do less "link" blogging here but you can still get a sense of what's going on in webcomicland from the syndicated headlines.