Archive for April, 2006
<< style="font-weight: bold;">Luck?
A new SPB strip went up today.
Also unrelated, I found a new internet radio to fill the void of epitonic- last.fm. Similar to pandora you plug in some of your favorite bands and or performers and it will generate a set list of ‘similar’ stuff to what you entered. Last.fm has everything on it- from Billie Holiday to Cursive. Epitonic, when it was up, was great because you could mix and match genres. Discover new and old tracks. Well with epitonic’s new relaunch they ditched what I liked and now you can’t mix n’ match.
Jay Hosler’s awesome webcomic
Biology professor, comic creator (Clan Apis, Sandwalk Adventures,) and former Columbus resident Jay Hosler has posted a short webcomic called The Diabolical Dr. NoNoNo (link opens as PDF.) This charming story deals with the issues of raising children in a way to encourage their curiosity and experimentation while balancing that with parental protection. I especially love the creative page layouts on pages 3 and 4. Great stuff.
(via Comics Worth Reading)
Fantastic computer lettering resource site
Payton over at the Penciljack.com forums maintains a great website devoted to the art of computer lettering. Check out Ninja Lettering for all sorts of tips, techniques, and links to other lettering tutorials and websites.
Say a prayer for Brian!
Boy, man I wish Brian Wood well but the vision in his right eye is failing and it doesn’t look good. He’s documenting this as it goes but he has a corneal ulcer. Losing your vision has got to be one of the worst things for an artist or designer. Some of the posts he’s put up of other corneal ulcer victims are pretty graphic. This could liquify one’s cornea causing permanent blindness. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that but in a recent post he has yet to see out of it. He’s canceled a signing so far as he tries to recover from this predicament.
Fascinating insider’s look at the publishing business
I know this is about book publishing and not comics specifically, but I thought it’s well worth sharing. Here’s a detailed post from an editor at Tor books, explaining the business end of publishing, and how/why books make or lose money. Complete will real dollar figures and lots of insider knowledge:
P&Ls and how books make (or don’t) money: part the first: the mass market original complete failure.
“All bookselling outlets get to decide what they use this money for. Then they tell us and we bargain with them. If Your Mom’s National Chain Bookstore takes 10,000 copies of The Autobiography of Dominar Rygel the 16th, and spends five cents out of coop per book (that seems like a lot, but it’s actually not) to promote the book within particular store locations — well, firstly, that is five cents that isn’t being spent on Crichton is an Idiot by Aeryn Sun, and, secondly, it means the book will probably get front of store placement or they will order a “standup” in which they will place sixteen copies of the book in a prominent place in the store.We say, okay, if you’re going to do that, how about we give you an extra two cents to spend on advertising this book we really love, Crichton is an Idiot by a brand new author we think will explode!
Your Mom’s National Chain Bookstore says, Feh. But we’ll take one cent per book we take (which, as we know, is about 600 copies or whatever), and use that $6 to put a one-inch advertisment in our newsletter.”
Makes you realize how much simpler the comics business is, huh? Despite all the problems with our distribution/retail system, it’s still fairly easy for an amateur to shepherd their book all the way from creation to sale without a ton of investment or knowledge.
(via boingboing)
Tattoos: cool. Webcomics: cool. Tattoos of webcomics: not so cool.
What kind of idiot gets a tattoo of an obscure webcomic character? I guess these idiots.
Ok, maybe there’s a cool design in there somewhere. Like this one, for instance:
But why in the world would you get something like this tattooed in a weird place on the side of your torso?
I just don’t get people sometimes…
(via boingboing)
Somebody owes me a page of story
Dara beat me to pointing out another way comic creators rip off those of us who expect sufficient story in the books we buy when he mentioned the full-page splash. I enjoy a good splash page, whether it’s an arresting visual like the Bi-Beast lumbering out of the mist of his city in the clouds, or a powerful emotional moment like Spider-Man shaking his fist at the Green Goblin while he holds Gwen Stacy’s dead body (showing my age here, I know). Unfortunately, this is what we get instead:
From Marvel’s attempt to relaunch a classic series, Tomb of Dracula #1:
Wow. Two people standing around watching an image on a TV set. Powerful stuff, huh? Note the precision and craft with which the artist drew the really big rectangle that dominates most of the page. Observe the way the characters, whose backs face the viewer and are shadowed, are almost completely devoid of detail. Observe the CD tower which serves as a background, or the empty circle which serves as a rug. This image definitely demanded a full page to convey it’s emotional power.
I can’t recall– and don’t care to find out– who wrote and drew this nonsense, but they owe me a page of story. This issue was pretty lame, though, so a page of story from another comic would be okay.
Your political moment of the day
Al Franken in a funny man. Moreover, he’s a smart funny man, and there’s nothing more pleasurable that watching a smart, funny, sincere person take the piss out of a bigoted, hypocritical, ignorant asshat.
AKA Ann Coulter.
Read Al Franken’s opening statement from his debate with Ann Coulter.
Of course as you’d expect, he takes plenty of well-deserved potshots at other right-wing hypocrites:
“I was just talking to Newt Gingrich the other day. And I said to him, ‘Don’t you want for a gay couple what you had with your first wife? Don’t you want that bond that comes with the pledge of fidelity that you had with your second wife? Don’t you want what comes with that lifelong bond that you may or may not have with your third wife – I have no idea what’s going on there.’”
And:
“You know, Bill O’Reilly always talks about his “traditional values” – as opposed to “the far left’s secular humanist values.” I didn’t realize phone sex was a traditional value. I didn’t think the phone had been around long enough. Maybe telegraph sex.”
Good time, good times.
So what’s Andy Bennett been up to?
Besides feverishly working on finishing our story for the next Panel book, that is…
Well, how about this crossover series from Moonstone:
Free magazine, free trip to San Diego Con
One’s easy to get, the other isn’t.
“In conjunction with the comic industry’s upcoming Free Comic Book Day, TwoMorrows Publishing (publisher of the comic industry’s top historical and “how-to” magazines) is offering an opportunity for readers to try a TwoMorrows magazine free-of-charge.On Saturday, May 6, anyone who visits the TwoMorrows website (www.twomorrows.com) can request any in-stock issue of BACK ISSUE, ALTER EGO, DRAW!, or WRITE NOW!, and it will be mailed to them at no cost the following week. A special banner atop the home page will link to the Free Magazine Page where selections can be made.”
More details at the official press release.
Wanna get to San Diego but don’t have the cash? Maybe you can win a trip from Dark Horse Comics:
” Dark Horse will select a Grand Prize winner to receive an all-expenses paid trip to Comic-Con International 2006. Simply register to win and maybe you’ll be heading to San Diego in July.Grand Prize (1):
- Roundtrip airfare for two.
- Lodging for three days and two nights (July 21-23).
- $500 in spending money.
- 2 passes to the convention (July 21-23).
- “VIP” pass to all Dark Horse Comics-related events”
Official online entry form here.
Nice reflexes, Obi Wan
You’re looking at an outtake from the “Sci Fi Geeks” segment of “Support an Indie Filmmaker,” a short film by local creators Jerod Brennan and Justin Lewis. View the actual scene at Youtube.com or at their Web site, http://www.temperedzealot.com I’m just linking to the Sci-Fi Geeks segment, not the whole thing, but by all means watch the whole thing.
In this episode, geeks Dan (Danikan) and Carl are working on their movie special effects. And one of them gets him by a Nerf ball.
Monday Morning “Guess the Artist”
Since last week’s artist was so easy to guess, I’m going with a nearly impossible one this time. The difficulty lies in the fact that the artist in question isn’t very famous, as their body of work is rather small. So this will be more a game of me dropping hints until someone gets it. In the meantime, feel free to guess…
(click image to moster size)
(previous weeks: 9/12/2005, 9/19/2005, 9/26/2005, 10/3/2005, 10/10/2005, 10/17/2005, 10/24/2005, 10/31/2005, 11/1/2005, 11/2/2005, 11/3/2005, 11/4/2005, 11/5/2005, 11/6/2005, 11/7/2005, 11/14/2005, 11/21/2005, 11/28/2005, 12/5/2005, 12/12/2005, 12/19/2005, 12/26/2005, 1/2/2006, 1/9/2006, 1/16/2006, 1/23/2006, 1/30/2006, 2/06/2006, 2/13/2006, 2/20/2006, 2/27/2006, 3/6/2006, 3/13/2006, 3/20/2006, 3/27/2006, 4/3/2006, 4/4/2006, 4/5/2006, 4/6/2006, 4/7/2006, 4/8/2006, 4/9/2006, 4/10/2006, 4/17/2006)