Scott Kurtz
Comix Talk for Thursday, July 15, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 15, 2010 - 09:36
In the last issue of Dark Horse Presents on MySpace, there's a new Bee story from Jason Little; a comic based on the video game Mass Effect, a comic written byLeVar Burton plus a funny riff on a scene from Star Wars by Frank Stockton. Future issues of DHP will be at Dark Horse's own website. (h/t Scott McCloud)
I also point you to a comic on digital civil rights in Europe that is pretty interesting, particularly if you're interested in the topic. (h/t BoingBoing)
CODE: The new convention Intervention will be hosting a workshop on Comicpress for Wordpress run by one of the developers, Frump. This is a great idea, one that I'm surprised I haven't seen at other webcomic-friendly conventions. Attendees to the workshop will get a bonus -- a free download of the automated Cast addon for ComicPress. The Cast addon displays cast members in a totally new way, showing when they first appeared in the comic, how often they have been in the comic, all of the comics they were in with links and other statistics as well as individual biographical information.
CONVENTION: Gary reports that Jorge Cham is organizing another Webcomics newspaper-style handout for this year's San Diego Comicon.
REVIEW: Roya Grinstead reviews the webcomic Romantically Apocalyptic with which the reviewer "was floored by its miraculous visuals, its marvellous concept, and its delightfully dark, whimsical, and twisted humour."
MILESTONE: Spwug notes that the webcomic Dreamless by Bobby Crosby and Sarah Ellerton has only one page left to post. A review of the comic by Spwug is here.
DEAD TREES: Scott Kurtz announced that he is leaving Image to return to self-publishing his comic books.
The Queen's Hype: The Independent newspaper hypes some webcomics including The Oatmeal, Hyperbole and a Half, Cyanide and Happiness, The Perry Bible Fellowship, Ctrl+Alt+Del, xkcd, and Girl Genius.
2010 Harvey Award Nominees Announced
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on July 12, 2010 - 08:34
The 2010 Harvey Awards Nominees have been announced. Here's the webcomic category:
- HARK! A VAGRANT by Kate Beaton
- HIGH MOON by Steve Ellis, David Gallaher and Scott O. Brown
- POWER OUT by Nathan Schreiber
- PVP by Scott Kurtz
- SIN TITULO by Cameron Stewart
The full list of nominees after the jump:
Comix Talk from the Airport
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on May 4, 2010 - 10:48
I'm leaving on a jetplane... actually I know when I'll be back again which is why posting might be light until the end of the month. Although I am led to believe they have a series of tubes in Asia too so I'm counting on that.
BUSINESS I guess the big news over the weekend was the by-now-well-covered announcement from DC that it won't be holding monthly contests anymore at its Zuda property. I generally am suspicious of contests but on the other hand experimentation is necessary. So hopefully we´ve all learned a bit from Zuda part 1 and DC will try something else interesting for Zuda part 2.
INTERVIEWS Liberally borrowing from Brigid´s Paperless Comics because this is a great batch of interviews she linked to from TGT Webcomics with creators at C2E2 includingGordon McAlpin (Multiplex), Ed (Ed Contradictory), Michael A. Kandalaft (That Monkey Tune), Tony and Sarah (The Angry Penguin), Josep (Space Punks!), Joe and Phil (Digital Pimp), Brad Guigar (Evil, Inc.), Kris Straub (Starslip), and Scott Kurtz, (PvP).
FROM THE MAILBAG Rina Piccolo writes to announce her new webcomic Velia, Dear. The comic is about a young woman named Velia who leaves the inner city to take care of her aging Italian mother. There´s already a few strips up in the archives and it´s a great premise and Piccolo is already a pro and shows it in this new project.
Comix Talk for Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 10, 2010 - 08:34
Just got a bunch of books in from Microcosm Publishing that I will be taking a look at this week (thanks Jessie Duke!). If you've got a book or other webcomic-related object you're interested in having reviewed send it to "Robert Tanner, P.O. Box 3362, Arlington VA 22203" -- I can't promise every book will get a full-blown review from someone (most do though) but they all get a mention on the site.
If you're going to read one thing today I'd recommend this great post on Will Eisner by Christopher Irving over at GraphicNYC.
CRAFT: Erika Moen shows you how she made the cover art for her second print volume of DAR.
MILESTONES: It's Odori Park's first year anniversary on the web his upcoming Saturday. Creator Chris Watkins is soliciting guest strips to help celebrate - send them to him by March 15th.
TOOLS: At Webcomic Planet, Bryon Wilkins reviews the Comic Life software -- it's primarily marketed as a photo to but Wilkins talks about its comic-making usefulness.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE: It's Shark Week at Hockey Zombie! It's also Hockey Zombie's fifth year anniversary.
JUSTIFY GENE's HYPE: Creator Gene Luen Yang reminds us that Derek Kirk Kim is serializing T.U.N.E. at lowbright.com RIGHT NOW (It's also planned to be published in dead tree format by First Second).
NOT WEBCOMICS: Ted Rall time - first, Scott Kurtz throws him into a recent comic -- unless you've followed the online Kurtz-Rall verbal fragfests I'm not sure that's a 4th panel-worthy cameo there. Second, I saw this story on TechDirt where they reported that Rall recently argued "that Italy got it right in finding three Google execs criminally liable for a video some kids posted to Google Video." Rall is now officially in the running with Wiley for the all-time webcomic-luddite title.
First and Last: Player Versus Player
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 17, 2010 - 02:01
Back in 2006, we did a "First and Last" snapshot of PvP by Scott Kurtz. Even then Kurtz had shown a lot of growth artistically from the origins of the comic. It's worth revisiting PvP again, as Kurtz has probably shown even more growth since 2006 then in the period up to then.
Under Construction?!
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 6, 2010 - 11:28
January is going to be like one of those "this ol' haus" shows on PBS or TLC all month long as I patch, prod and pull apart things at the site. I didn't get a lot of feedback to my blegs from you lot on what you like or dislike here at ComixTalk so I'm left to my own devices which is...usually a mixed bag in terms of results. But let's have fun with this, shall we? I'll be putting up notes on site status to keep everyone on their toes updated on developments.
THESE RIDES ARE CURRENTLY NOT OPERATIONAL: auto-importing of blogs ; new user sign-ups
WEBCOMICS.COM
A surprisingly big story - Brad Guigar's sudden move of webcomics.com to a pay wall has been chattered about all week. Brigid Alverson does another good job of rounding up all of the talking. FLEEN interviewed the Guigarster where Brad describes the number of subscriptions purchased so far as “For a non-porn site, encouraging."
One wrinkle to this story is that there were third-party articles published at Webcomics.com -- for those authors who want a non-pay wall home for those articles, give me a buzz (tweet xerexes or xerexes AT gmail) - ComixTalk would probably be a good home for them.
BUSINESS
Webcomic Marketing looks like a decent site that's been updating for a bit now. The most recent post provides a Convention checklist from the creators of Steam Crow.
DIGITS
Drawn! points to this video demonstrating the "theoretical" Mag+ e-reader; Gizmodo covers the Skiff e-reader.
NEW WEBCOMIC
Dan Goldman launches a new webcomic, called Red Light Properties at Tor.com. Robot6 describes Red Light Properties is a "tropical-horror series" about a real estate firm in Miami Beach that cleans and sells "previously-haunted homes" to people who've lost their houses to foreclosure.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Brilliant twist on Calvin & Hobbes all this week from Scott Kurtz at PVP. What a great start to webcomics this year.
RIP Halfpixel and Webcomics.com
Submitted by marvelouspatric on January 3, 2010 - 23:39
I have come here not to praise Halfpixel and Webcomics.com, but to bury them. For the past couple of years, the Halfpixel crew, Scott Kurtz, Kris Straub, Dave Kellet, and Brad Guigar, have taken this approach to evangelizing not only webcomics, but a business model of free content that makes a profit. Evangelizing doesn't even say it right; they wrote a book, did podcasts, and answered a lot of questions from other cartoonists about how to be successful. And a lot of advice they gave, in the beginning, was really good. They had lots of ideas about how to use social media, website design, and basic comic making skills that were fantastic.
The ComixTalk 2009 Roundtable
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It's the end of the year and what better time to talk webcomics with a great group of interesting creators and commentators. For this year's roundtable we talked about favorite and new webcomics from 2009; iPhones and iTablets; developments in the business of comics; developments in the subject matter of comics; webcomic awards; and predictions for 2010! I'm joined by Gary Tyrrell, Delos Woodruff, Shaenon Garrity, Fesworks, Derik Badman, Larry Cruz, Brigid Alverson and Johanna Draper Carlson.
And Guest Starring Ted Rall as the "Get Off My Lawn" Guy
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on November 16, 2009 - 10:49
I actually like Ted Rall's cartooning - don't always agree with him but to me if you're going to put yourself out there as an editorial cartoonist it helps to actually editorialize in the cartoon. Rall does that fearlessly.
But apparently Rall seems to think the only way to success in comics is through the narrow prism of his own experiences. He can't seem to stand thinking about any other avenue to a sustainable career in comics despite his clear understanding that the newspaper biz is dying and killing off editorial (and all) comics in the newspaper even faster. There's a somewhat over-long interview between Ted Rall and Rall protege Matt Bors in the recent issue of TCJ (available online now) where Rall just can't leave "webcomics" alone:
How can we be "alternative"? There are more political cartoons drawn and published in "alternative" styles — in altweeklies — than there are in dailies. Indeed, the only thing more annoying than the lame posturing of a few ridiculous tools like Scott Kurtz (PVP) and the Penny Arcade guys (who apparently have Roman orgies every time a staff editorial cartoonist loses his job and winds up unemployed) is the term "webcartoonist." What the fuck does that mean? Oh, I know: Cartoonists who post their stuff online for free and sell visitors to their websites merchandise like T-shirts and books. And who attend lots of comics conventions. Well, gee, what cartoonist doesn't do that? We all do. We all have been. Everyone is a webcartoonist now.
What's disconcerting beyond the ridiculous Amway-like rhetoric ("You too can make BIG CASH MONEY making comics FROM HOME!") is that free has become a religion for the e-vangelists. They give cartoons away for free that they could sell — simply by asking! You and I were on a group phone chat a while back with webcartoonists like Kurtz and someone — I forget who — said he wouldn't even know how to ask for money. I said: "You just ask, 'Do you have a budget for this?'" It really is that simple. Not only are these guys driving down the prices for all of us who are trying to make a living, they're doing the same thing editorial cartoonists are doing by lowering the quality. Look at webcartoons like PVP and Penny Arcade, by all accounts the most successful webcomics around. Kurtz tried to give PVP away for free to newspapers a while back and there were no takers. Why? Because it's terrible. Incompetently written. Awful characterization. Plastic, cold artwork. Syndication 1.0 had flaws. It kept out good, daring work. But now that there's no gatekeeper, all the shit is everywhere. It used to be off the page. Now it's damned near impossible for readers to distinguish what's good because it's surrounded by crap. That's not good for the profession. A terrible mainstream comic like Tumbleweeds had a base level of competence. Only a half-dozen webcomics, like Diesel Sweeties, Cat and Girl, etc. do.
Glengarry Glen Ross Parody for Harvey Awards Ceremony
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on October 14, 2009 - 12:38
This "blamination" from Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub is hilarious - a great parody of that brillant Mamet speech (Alec Baldwin did it in the movie version):
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