Scott McCloud
Comix Talk for Thursday, June 24, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on June 24, 2010 - 13:44
Bring on Ghana! (Just an aside, I think a lot of cartoonists would get more work done if after every time they finished an excellent piece of work they heard something like this.)
FINAL FLIGHT IN SIGHT: Scott McCloud remembers buying the very first installment of the Flight anthology at SDCC in 2004. It really is an impressive roster of talent when you look back on the contributors to the entire series. Looking forward to the seventh and final volume!
iWEBCOMIC: The Beat has a short post on the new DC Comics iPhone/Pad/Pod app. All the early reaction stuff is probably better spent just downloading and trying the dang thing -- although I might wait until all bugs get squashed.
CONTEST: The Washington Post's comics blogger, Michael Cavna, announces the five finalists of his "Next Greatest Cartoonist" contest.
INTERVIEW: Graphic NYC has an interview with Nick Abadzis.
REVIEWS: Cory Doctorow with a positive review of David Malki!'s Dapper Caps & Peddle-copters. El Santo reviews Bottle of Awesome.
AROUND DEM BLOGS: The Beat links to an online posting of the Beasts of Burden story by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson.
Comix Talk for Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 31, 2010 - 17:39
The day has officially gotten away from me. Two things to mention though:
- Wow - go viral hype: Yamino of Sister Claire is the person behind an infamous piece of Lady Gaga fan art (h/t El Santo!).
- Scott McCloud linked to this project from Ira Marcks and asks "is it a comic"? Probably not, but an interesting music video.
Comix Talk for Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 30, 2010 - 10:00
Scott McCloud endorses the E-Sheep Kickstarter drive. Help Patrick Farley make more comics, folks!
INTERVIEWS
- Graphic NYC has an interview with Jason Little on the upcoming book collection of his webcomic Motel Art Improvement Service (a sequel to Shutterbug Follies). Great interviewer, great subject - this is a good read.
- Newsarama has an interview with Dan Goldman on his current webcomic, Red Light Properties.
- Tim O'Shea has an interview with the crew from the webcomic Cyanide & Happiness.
LEGAL: CBR has an interview with Nina Paley with some good discussion about copyright in the digital age. Paley had epic copyright battles in getting her fantastic animated film Sita Sings the Blues released.
REVIEWS: Charley Parker talks about Asaf Ahanuka's effort to serialize an english language webcomic version of his Hebrew language comic, The Realist.
Conventions: Gary had the first part of his PAX East round-up yesterday, more to come this afternoon.
AROUND THE BLOGS: An amazing series of ABC driven artwork from Neill Cameron.
NOT WEBCOMICS: James Kochalka has a supporting role in a new movie Mars, that looks pretty interesting. Shot entirely on greenscreen, it has a rotoscoped animated look not entirely unlike the videogame Borderlands.
ComixTalk for Monday, March 15, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 15, 2010 - 08:00
AWARDS: The Doug Wright award nominees -- which honor English-language Canadian comics -- were announced last week. Kate Beaton's book Never Learn Anything From History is up for the Pigskin Peters Award (for unconventional, "nominally-narrative" comics); and among the finalists for finalists for Best Emerging Talent is Adam Bourret for his comic I'm Crazy. I gave I'm Crazy a mixed review, but Bourret certainly was a brave story-teller in his book and showed a lot of potential.
PLUG ONE: I haven't mentioned David Simon's Crimson Dark webcomic in quite awhile which is a shame because it's still one of the best 3d art webcomics I've seen. Not sure how it's working, but Simon started a "club" for supporters to subscribe to at $2 to $5 a month to help him with having the time to produce Crimson Dark.
PLUG TWO: The Covered blog which spotlights re-dos of classic comic book covers by new artists. I would love to see a webcomic spin on this.
TOOLS: Scott McCloud experiments with a simple browser-based drawing tool called Harmony.
ComixTalk for Monday, March 8, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 8, 2010 - 11:03
OSCARS! I bailed on watching them this year -- maybe the highlights will be on the youtubebox? Anyhow though, the Comics Reporter reported that ACADEMY AWARD WINNER Jeff Bridges is also a cartoonist. Whodathunkit? A few tiny site notes -- (1) you can add your first/last name, homepage and webcomic URLs and a picture to your ComixTALK user account (restoring us to 2006 functionality! yay...); (2) if you add your name it'll show up on your blog and forum posts instead of your account name; (3) oh yeah, a small forum is back up (with a link to the ancient pre-2005ish forums) and maybe we'll do something with that this year.
INTERVIEW: Brigid Alverson snags an interview with the anonymous writer of Zahra's Paradise, which is about a mother searching for her missing son in the aftermath of the protests following the Iranian presidential election of 2009. Brigid also has a great roundup of all ages comics reviews and interviews.
THEORY: Scott McCloud writes about this article by Tokyo-based Craig Mod on different contents’ ability (or lack thereof) to migrate easily from device to device. I get McCloud main take on Mod's article which is sort of a warning that if we're not careful webcomics will get stuck with a bad "metaphor" for "reading/viewing/processing" them but I don't really buy it. I think the web is still incredibly fluid and open to innovation and I don't really see where the network effect is that would lock us into something.
BUSINESS: The Casual Webcartoonists writes about how to price your artwork.
CRAFT: Project Waldo has a post on making word balloons.
VERSUS: Webcomic Planet is hosting a "webcomics war" where comic creators "try to dominate the playing field by earning points by advertising their own sites."
JUSTIFY KONRAD's HYPE: Someone's list of webcomic recommendations -- seems like a good mix of stuff!
Comix Talk for March 2, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on March 2, 2010 - 10:42
INTERVIEW: Graphic NYC interviews Scott McCloud.
iWEBCOMICS: Bleeding Cool blog reports that a new beta version of Longbox, the comics reader-and-collector-and-social-networking software, will be available to the public this weekend. Prior versions of Longbox were in private beta..
CONTEST: The Escapist website webcomic contest has a couple of additional judges you might recognize: Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics) and Brian Clevinger (8 Bit Theatre). The deadline for entries closed February 28th and winners will be chosen the week of March 8th.
JUSTIFY THE HYPE: The Comics Are Evil blog spotlights an old skool webcomic, The Parking Lot is Full, by Pat Spacek and Jack McLaren.
MILESTONES: Chris Crosby's Superosity hits its eleven year anniversary. That's super! (h/t FLEEN)
Comix Talk for Monday, February 22, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 22, 2010 - 08:44
Welcome to Monday! May I direct your attention to a review of several mini comics posted late Friday? If you enjoyed John Allison's COMIX REMIX of the above photo, you might want to check out the entire series he posted to FLICKR.
REVIEWS: Delos reviews Odori Park by Chris Watkins and El Santo reviews the Xeric Grant-winning Haunted by Joshua Smeaton.
INTERVIEWS: Growly Beast has an interview with Alice Hunt and Tracy Williams of Goodbye Chains.
REMIX: The Webcomic Builder has a lengthy essay on fan-comics; something maybe we ought to relabel "remix comics"?
NOT WEBCOMICS: Kickstarter fund drive for an American Elf videogame? I'd buy that for a dollar!
INTERNATIONAL:
- Scott McCloud highlights something I'd actually missed in reading the new Zahra’s Paradise at First Second: its availability in multiple languages: English, Farsi, Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch.
- Not sure if this is good or bad but Bleeding Cool notes that "After filing for bankruptcy, German TV company TV-Toonland has sold Svetlana Chmakova’s manga-adapted TV show My Life Me to Classic Media. It will air in France and Canada later this year."
- Digital Strips has some factoids on webmanga, including Shuhuo Soto's earnings this year alone.
Comix Talk for Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 17, 2010 - 10:41
DEAD TREES: Scott McCloud writes about a forthcoming project from Jason Shiga called Meanwhile. I've seen pictures of the original hand-crafted version of this "choose-your-own-adventure" style comic but not the actual artifact. Shiga is a dang good, inventive comic creator.
Interviews: WebcomicBuilder.com has an interview with Gianna Masetti, the creator of The Noob, a gamer comic set in an MMORPG.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
- Seven Stories Press is serializing on the web, As The World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Stay In Denial, a graphic novel by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan, originally printed in 2007.
- DailyCartoonist.com reported that Go Comics opened up its archives for free viewing for a couple of weeks (starting this past Sunday).
- BleedingCool.com shows us a recent Day By Day comic from Chris Muir with an.... interesting take on the reference to the American "Tea Party" protesters in a Captain America comic. I really can't wait for Shaenon Garrity's take on this one.
ComixTalk for Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on February 16, 2010 - 03:02
We had the Son of Snowpocalypse in Washington DC yesterday. Not all that exciting actually. Also finally saw AVATAR in 3D on Sunday night. (Ain't Mrs X cool to take me to that for Valentines Day?!) Reviews were dead-on; awesome world-building and special effects to carry it off, story was Dances With Wolves With Four Eyes and Gil Slits. All in all, a great movie experience.
AWARDS: Tom Spurgeon has a list of the nominees for this year's Glyph awards.
MILESTONES: Congrats to Brad Guigar on 10 years of comicking! Brad has had a heck of a decade pioneering this thing we call webcomics and I hope there's lots more to come. In his blog post there's a BIG hint that a full collection of his first strip, Greystone Inn, will be coming to print.
Also docking in close to 10 years is the Flight anthology series. Kazu Kibuishi announces that Flight 8 will be the last edition of that very successful project.
INTERVIEWS: Growly Beast has an interview with Tom Dell'Aringa of Marooned and The Internet Review of Science Fiction has a fairly indepth interview with Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary. UPDATE: Graphic NYC has an interview with Raina Telgemeier, who's most recent work is the graphic novel Smile.
JUSTIFY VARIOUS PEOPLE'S HYPE:
- Back on January 31st, Warren Ellis had one of his hype your webcomics threads at WhiteChapel that's now got an overflowing bounty of potential links for your perusal.
- Scott McCloud links to an interesting comic-like project from a photograher - the "comic" is called A Garden Not Lost to Us.
- I noticed that you can buy the originals from Christopher Baldwin's new webcomic Space Trawler. Beautiful stuff!
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS: Kids book author/illustrator Mo Willems takes a crack at Hilary Price's Rhymes With Oranges this week. Also details on Hilary's trip to Cuba with Jeannie Schulz and other cartoonists including Alexis Fajardo. Haven't talked with Alexis in years - maybe I better catch up with him! :) (h/t Daily Cartoonist)
SECRET SCIENCE ALLIANCE ACTIVATE! The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis won this year's CYBIL award for the graphic novel category. The CYBILs are the Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards. And TCJ posted a four part interview with Eleanor, husband Drew Weing and the rest of the creative crew from the Secret Science Alliance book. Here's part one (with links to part 1 & 2 and part 3 & 4):
Comix Talk for January 29, 2010
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 29, 2010 - 10:44
Whew, made it to Friday. Sometime next week a new version of ComixTalk at the new server will emerge -- it won't be perfect but mostly what I need this year. And it should mean the end of me starting posts writing about Drupal and CSS...
I got a fever, and the only prescription... is more AXE COP! You've all read Axe Cop, haven't you? If I didn't know it was for real I might have thought Kris Straub was behind it... Coupling really funny and well-done art with scripts from his 5 year old brother Malachai, artist Ethan Nicolle has created something that is a gimmick but I swear I laughed the whole time I was reading it.
iWEBCOMICS: Paperless Comics has a nice round up of webcomic commenting on the iPad announcement. I'm not going to think too hard about it until the damn thing is actually in the store, but even though it's not perfect I'm kind of leaning towards getting an iPad right now. (I wonder if I can write it off as a business expense for this site?)
INTERVIEW: A really nice interview with Kean Soo, creator of the all ages comic Jellaby (and before that his journal comic at keaner.net)
REVIEWS: Tom Spurgeon has a glowing review of Kazu Kibuishi's book, Copper. Copper has long been one of my favorite comics and I really do want to get a copy of the paper version at some point. Missed it but earlier this month, Sean Kleefeld reviewed another all ages title -- the prose/comics hybrid book Malice.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Seth Godin read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and thought it was... about marketing?
Over at Panel & Pixel forums, there's some information and discussion of how intellectual property rights in the U.S. work when a writer and artist collaborate. And another Panel & Pixel post covers creating model sheets for characters for your comic.
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