Matilda the Pirate

The first installment of my webcomic/minicomic thing, Matilda the Pirate, should be ready to launch in June. So, er, look forward to that.

Quel chute!? Spiderman doit mourir

Raphael B makes funny with the webbed one in this blackly humourous webcomic.

(via Forbidden Planet)

The Rainbow Orchid

Any plans for the Bank Holiday weekend?

If not, you have one last chance to read Garen Ewing's The Rainbow Orchid, which goes offline shortly.

The Rainbow Orchid is an adventure strip, in the ligne-claire style, following the adventures of Julius Chancer as he hunts for the eponymous flower.

Unsurprisingly (given its quality) The Rainbow Orchid has found a home at Egmont Books, which is to publish it in August, so Ewing plans to reduce its online presence to a preview/promotional website for the book.

Ligne claire is a popular style in francophone comics - and many readers will be familiar with it from Herge's Tintin books - and it is particularly suited to webcomics, where its elegant, unfussy imagery makes for great readability.

While we're at it, here are a couple other of my favourite ligne claire webcomics. Les McClaine's Johnny Crossbones and David O'Connell's Tozo the Public Servant.

(via Forbidden Planet)

The Uses of Re-Enchantment

Reading Dylan Horrocks' review of Mark Barrowcliffe's The Elfish Gene and his short comic, The Physics Engine, struck me with a pang of nostalgia for the world of roleplaying gaming.

I have tremendous sympathy for kids who get into roleplaying games. The RPG geek's lot is somewhat tragic, and not in the usual sense. Far from the odious, egotistical stereotype, I feel that most teenagers (or at least boys) respond to roleplaying, offers two succours in an otherwise difficult period: a sense of empowerment and purpose in an otherwise chaotic period of development and a safe way of exploring (intellectually and emotionally) the fearful and banal new territory of pubescence.

Childhood is a mysterious time. Children are all artists and magicians. And they are all roleplayers. As children become self-conscious teens and young adults, they are often divested of free communion with the world of the imagination; many people feel this loss of beauty and enchantment bitterly.

Roleplaying is playing. It is about creating worlds, characters, exciting events and involving other people in one's own imaginative world. A bit like writing stories. Or acting. Or drawing cartoons. The charge of escapism is at least as legitimate of these other creative activities as it is of roleplaying.

I recently read Lynda Barry's What It Is , which saddens and inspires by turns. Barry gives a recognisable description of having her mental life stripped of confidence, imagination and creativity - albeit far more brutally than most of us experience - to conform with a vision of adult normality.

Ironically, this child's-eye view (indeed, caricature) of being 'grown up' has little to do with emotional maturity or social (or even personal) responsibility. It reminds one that being told to 'grow up!' is to be admonished rather than encouraged, where innocence is conflated with naivety.

Although I haven't taken part in a roleplaying game in many years, my memories of it are mainly of friendship and creativity. Respect for the natural world, understanding of and empathy with others, and foresight require imagination. It seems to me that the world could do with more of this.

On Webcomics

Yves Bigerel's neat little webcomics illustrating how webcomics might be developed, without resorting to the cheap tricks of other media (ie. sound effects, animation), generated a fair bit of excitement a couple of months back.

Scott McCloud rightly pointed out that many long-form webcomics offer what seems to be counter-intuitive page design:

"Good artists and writers... force readers to scroll, then click, then read, then scroll, then read, then click, then scroll again for no other reason than a stubborn belief that all comics pages have to be taller than wide, and that all web pages need a metric ton of blinking crap at the top to work."

McCloud's point is that either screens are the wrong shape or webcomics are. While the current generation of comics readers, which did not grow up within the Internet, may be happy to read, scroll, read, click and scroll, net natives are unlikely to be so patient.

Bigerel's examples have the advantage of being self-contained (Adobe Flash) and easy to navigate. Although there may be commercial reasons (at least in the short term) not to abandon the traditional comic-page-shaped format, I think enterprising creators will overcome these barriers.

As comics increasingly become 'native' to the Internet, there will be more along the lines of Bigerel's work.

Until then here are two great-looking webcomics, new to me, which follow the old format in one way and another: Dicebox by Jenn Manley Lee, which is ongoing, and Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch, which is complete.

(via Scott McCloud)

British Comics alive and well

Sadly, the British children’s comic, The DFC, published its final issue last week. The DFC was critically well-received, for innovation in both its content - the comic featured a wide variety of strips by many of Britain’s best cartoonists - and for its ad-free, subscription-based format. However, David Fickling Books (an imprint of Random House), which published The DFC, called time on the comic less than a year after its launch.

However, far from a demoralising defeat, comics creators blame the demise of The DFC merely on bad timing and and see it as an inspiration for British comics.

There was a short-lived campaign for a subscriber buy-out of the comic. That was always going to be a difficult sell, given the youth of the publication, but it shows the devotion that the comic engendered and the appetite for a high-quality comic magazine.

On the creative front, former-DFC contributors have rallied together to keep the spirit of the publication alive and (one hopes) to raise the profile of British comics. They have begun a new web-comic Huzzah! (a comic version of exquisite corpse), which showcases their talents.

On other fronts, the number of British comics conventions around the country, the recent anthology of British indie comics from Polish publisher, Polygo Books, and the continued success of acclaimed British comics magazine Crikey!, show the general rude health of British comics.

Huzzah, indeed!

Dash Shaw's Bodyworld

Just started reading Bodyworld by Dash Shaw (Bottomless Bellybutton). I don't love the artwork, so far, but the surreal atmosphere is keeping me interested. Daily Cross Hatch has a fine review of it here.

Spazzmoid webcomic drops!

Since wrapping up The Shiznit, Bob Byrne has been promising to bring his acidic stylings to 'The Internet'. Behold Spazzmoid! As Bob might say 'April Fools Day mother-figgedy-fuckers!'

More Creebobby Characters!

More brilliant comics archetypes from Jacob Borshard. You many now add the Mer-nerd and monkey-pirate to your cast of characters!

Spiderman Must Die! (part 2)

(Read part one of this article here.)

I recently discovered Graphic Smash and Komikwerks, two subscription-based webcomics publishers. While webcomics sites like Comic Genesis or Webcomics Nation are swamped with poor quality work, these sites retain the editorial sensibilities of traditional publishers (in terms of quality control).

While some individuals will make go of it alone, this seems like the future for the majority of comics creators. It is interesting to note that Marvel has concluded Spider-Girl in print and is to re-launch it, next month, as a digital-only title.

I don’t think printed comics will ever wholly go, but given the ragged state of publishing in general at the moment - and with comics and graphic novels suffering falling sales - the industry must make some tough decisions to reinvigorate comics and prevent the medium from falling into obscurity.

As per part one of this article, OK Erok! proposes four ways to revitalise the comics publishing industry:

1. Kill ongoing/endless titles:
   Ongoing/endless titles, with their increasingly baroque continuities, alienate casual readers and stifle the creativity of writers. Finite/limited titles energise writers and offer more 'hooks' for the reader. Make them the cornerstone of the industry.
   
   
2. Release/relax copyright on existing characters:
   Encourage the current generation of comics fans and creators to offer their own takes on classic characters.
   
   In Japan, a dojinshi culture of amateur/unsigned creators, making professional-quality bootlegs of popular manga, is seen as a benefit rather than a threat to publishers. It's only a step forward from the comics industry's policy of harvesting talent from successive generations of comic readers.
   
   
3. Crowd-source comics:
   Without getting into the debate about whether or not crowd-sourcing is evil - the equivalent of making every worker a scab etc - it may also be a fact of economic life, especially in the 'creative industries'. Zuda is an early adopter of this approach.
   

   "...comic book culture has a higher percentage of productive fans than other groups. Even more significant, the productive fan of comic books can actually get a job writing, drawing, or somehow being involved in making the official adventures of his or her favorite character. Fans of Star Wars don't really ever get this chance." - Matthew Pustz
   

   This is the great, untapped strength of comics culture. Acknowledge the fact that comics fans are some of the most creative fans and build it into the system.
   
   
4. Anthologise monthly comics:
   DC has recently acknowledged the need to provide more content for their expensive products, by lowering their price and adding back-up features to their titles. Despite the failure of CrossGen Comics, which pioneered monthly anthology comics, the monthly book is a relic of another time and needs to be retired.
   
   
5. Decentralise publishing:
   The advantage big publishers have over indie producers is their ability to market and get exposure for their products. Change focus, from doing everything - outsource some of the creative work (as above) - to bringing comics to readers.
   

Oeming's Hammer of the Gods 2 online

Not exactly breaking news, but Mike Oemings's Hammer of the Gods 2: Back from the Dead is available to read online at ComicMix.

Oeming's artwork is great and Hammer of the Gods shows it off really well.

(via Mike Oeming)

Comics Archetype Times Table

Brilliant! Never again be lost for how to depict Lincoln as a platypus.

(via Waxy.org)

Paul Grist web-comic!

Paul Grist (self-publisher and creator of Kane and Jack Staff), one of my very favourite comics creators, is posting a new web-comic! It's called The Eternal Warrior (I think!) and looks amazing!

(via Paddy Brown)

Union der Helden

Check out the excellent German photo-comic Union of Heroes! You're going to want to know where that breakfast smell comes from!

[via The Comics Reporter]

I Make: Erok strips

My own take on the comic strip challenge.

Smax, Zuda and Satrapi

While Watchmen is excellent, I've never been a huge fan of Alan Moore. However, I was very disappointed by Smax, a spin-off from Top 10. I was expecting something with a bit more substance from the great man (although perhaps I ought to have read the original strip). I found Smax smug and fatuous, the characterisation dreadful and the dialogue awful.

To add insult to injury, the artwork by Zander Cannon and Andrew Currie is awful. Cartoony is fine, but this is just bad; loose and poorly detailed, so that characters hardly look the same from one panel to the next.

The net result is that Smax seems self-indulgent and sloppy.

To distract myself from this terrible disappointment, I have turned my attention, at long last, to Marjane Satrapi's Persopolis.

It is quite graphic and stylised, which I like, and proves that comics needn't be fatuous, sexist or stupid to be funny.

I'm also taking some solace in Zuda Comics. DC Comics's web comics imprint has received criticism for its opaque submissions policy, but there's no question that Zuda features some interesting content.

Subcultural doofii

Some while ago I hit the magical number of iterations of an activity that supposedly forms a habit.

I have just realised that as well as being a writer, artist (with a little 'a')/doodler, musician/dj, would be academic, I am now a blogger.

Uh oh... I also fall into two out of three convention subcultures. I'll leave it up to you to guess which ones.

[Illustration by the talented Dylan Meconis]

Six of the best! Web Comics with Nice Artwork

Apropos of nothing, here is a great illustration from Vera Bee.

Here are six of the web comics I've seen with the nicest artwork:

1. Family Man - Well-researched period drama.
   
2. Dice Box - beautifully drawn, epic story.
   
3. Clockwork Game - adventures of the famous Clockwork Turk, which beat everybody at chess in the Eighteenth Century.
   
4. Brat-halla - about obnoxious Norse godlets.
   
5. The Phoenix Requiem - the author of this gothic melodrama takes pains to insist that The Phoenix Requiem is a novel, rather than a comic.
   
6. Badass Muthas! - have no idea what's going on, but artwork is quite nice.
   

Nice comics!

Chris Hastings, of Dr. McNinja fame, has designed this awesome t-shirt of a gorilla high-fiving a shark.

I'm on a comics kick after just finishing reading Scott McCloud's Making Comics.

McCloud's words and pictures are eloquent and he makes his subject accessible without skimping on his incredible wealth of knowledge. It's great stuff whether you are simply interested in comics, or you want to learn how to make them.

I loved Understanding Comics and now I'm keen to read Reinventing Comics. McCloud was an efficient draughtsman in the 80s, when he wrote Zot!, but his artwork has really matured. His line is full of variety and texture.

As far as excellent artwork is concerned, Les McClaine's homage to Herge, Johnny Crossbones, is also worth well worth checking out.

McClaine also offers really good tutorials on his own creative process and on colouring. In the words of the gorilla and the shark: NICE!

Vote Bob!

Congratulations to Bob Byrne, talented illustrator and comix writer/artist, who has been nominated for two Eagle Awards, one of the top awards that recognise comic artists!

Good news for Bob, who has been plugging away diligently (if scatologically!) for many years, and is one of very few world class comics artists in Ireland. Hopefully this provides some inspiration for wannabe comics writers/artists out there. Oh, and if you like his work and care for comics, please vote for Bob.

While voting for Bob on the Eagle website, I also discovered a couple of great online comics.

Although I've always thought the prospect of online comics was interesting (since I read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics), I've found that quality of artwork is an entry barrier. Being hot for good illustration, I am delighted to endorse Dr. McNinja and particularly Girl Genius.