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Trisha’s Link of the Day: iPhone + 24-hours without sleep = awesome comics story

Posted on 10 October 2010 by admin Leave a Comment

As a writer, I love the concept and the results which come from the annual 24-Hour Comics Day events; this year’s batch was no exception.

For the non-comics geeks reading this, I’ll explain briefly: Back in 1990, comics author, theorist, and now-luminary Scott McCloud dared his fellow comics artist friend Steve Bissette to draw a 24-page story in 24 hours. The aim of the exercise was for Bissette to become a faster artist, because as anyone who wants to break into the comics business as an artist knows, nobody likes to work with someone who can’t meet a deadline. And just because McCloud is the kind of man who puts his drawing tools where his mouth is, he decided to create a story under the same constraints.

The results can be viewed here, and over the last two decades, many other comics creators have taken up the gauntlet of the challenge. With the advent of the Internet, creators have also begun blogging about their process and it has now truly become a worldwide event which drawn in new participants every year and spawned a book or two.

When it comes to innovation in comics creation, though, I think that this year San Antonio, Texas artist Lea Hernandez took home the prize in coolest and most tech-savvy comic, with an entry that I think she’s calling “Jackwagon,” which she created entirely on her iPhone, courtesy of an application called Brushes.

To read it in its entirety, click here (and note that it’s not entirely safe for work).

RIP: American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar (1939-2010)

Posted on 14 July 2010 by admin Leave a Comment

When news broke on Monday that American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar was found dead in his Cleveland Heights, Ohio home, I wrote via Twitter: “I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him in person, but [Pekar] is and will always be an inspiration to struggling creators.”

Pekar is best-known for the pioneering comics series American Splendor which told the story of Pekar’s own life and the lives of the people around him in his home in Cleveland. It was this series which lead to several guest appearances on “Late Night with David Letterman,” the last of which in 1987 got him banned from the show:

Afterwards, Pekar continued to write his comics and collaborate with several artists, one of whom introduced him to the filmmakers who would create a film about his life in 2003 starring Paul Giamatti, in which he also appeared, and subsequently wrote about in a series of Splendor stories.

What I find inspirational about Pekar is that as a writer, he had a story to tell that he believed in, and not only did he get to tell that story every day of his life, he was able to draw people into sharing his belief that stories about everyday people were important. It didn’t hurt that he was in the right place and the right time to befriend legendary underground artist R. Crumb and make use of him as a personal artist with the release of his first Splendor story in 1976, but that doesn’t explain why so many artists after Crumb not only signed up to work with him, but consider having done so one of the highlights of their careers.

Dean Haspiel, one of the later Splendor artists and also the artist for Pekar’s autobiographical graphic novel The Quitter—as well as the inspiration for the Ray Hueston character in the HBO series “Bored to Death,” but we’ll get into that some other time—was interviewed all over the place and one of the quotes I like the best is from this piece on his personal blog:

Harvey Pekar was a pioneer of the autobiographical comic book and it was working with him on The Quitter that put me on the map in our beloved industry. Harvey lived life and every last detail was written and drawn and published. He couldn’t have done half of it without his wife, Joyce Brabner. The best way to honor Pekar now is to read his life, just like he would have wanted you to.

So go. Read this. And everything on this page. And watch this.

And remember that no single person’s life is unimportant.

Keeping Tabs: Avatar sequel unlikely to win animation Oscars, and other stories

Posted on 11 July 2010 by admin Leave a Comment

Ever since Spirited Away was the second movie to win the Best Animated Feature award and the first anime (and non-English language) movie to win, anime and animation geeks have been keeping a close eye on this Academy Awards category. The newest change in the rules of the category, amongst other rules changes, were announced, including this death blow for films like Avatar which featured extensive use of new technology: “”Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique.” (Source: ANN)

In the “We Can Do It!” department, Josh Tolentino gave a brief update and provided screenshots from studio Ordet’s Black Rock Shooter, a 50-minute OVA whose source material comes from a one-year old illustration, a song recorded using the Vocaloid software, and an ensuing music video. The OVA will be released in Japan on July 24 as “special pack-in DVD with the newest print editions of Animedia, Hobby Magazine, and Megami. Two questions: 1) If James Cameron combined Vocaloid usage with his mo-cap technology for his next movie, how much money would that make? and 2) Is that really a string bikini top that the underaged-looking protagonist is wearing in the image above? (Source: Japanator.com)
And finally, if you’re a gadget geek and/or a comics geek but wanted to know which of the iPhone or Android apps to download in order to get the most comics for your bucks, Johanna Draper Carlson and Glen Weldon have got you covered with Draper Carlson providing a very succinct update on the status of the currently existing ventures and Weldon providing a very nuanced editorial on the current Digital Age of Comics.Is this enough to put a nail into the coffin of the “local comic book store” or increase comics readership? Let me put it this way: if I had an iPhone or ‘Droid (or an iPad) and knew that I could pay $5 or less for comics, you betcha I’d be reading some of them more often (Source: Comics Worth Reading, NPR’s Monkey See blog)

Trisha’s Link of the Day: Holy mix of parody and sex, Batman!

Posted on 25 June 2010 by admin Leave a Comment

Back in May, the Internet was a-buzz with the release of the Batman XXX: A Porn Parody trailer. And while I’d normally link it here because I’m not a prude and I’m assuming you all are adults, I won’t because even if the version on the BoingBoing site is totally “safe for work,” I still feel guilty even writing about it while I’m at my desk.

However, what I really wanted to link you to is this oh-so-clever review of the film done in comic-strip form by by Ward Sutton, mostly because he manages to take every visual incarnation of Batman there ever was (including the LEGO version) and put them all into one strip. That takes a lot of artistic talent, and reminds me of the Batman: TAS episode called “Legends of the Dark Knight” (yes, the one with the poke-in-the-eye for Joel Schumacher), which did the same thing, but animated (they stuck to Dick Sprang and Frank Miller’s work).

The review alone—especially Sutton’s assertion that they used the actual 1960s TV series Batmobile—is pretty damn awesome and has firmly placed the movie into a “Rent if you’re secure enough not to download or pirate porn” list.

Marvel announces same-day digital delivery; brick-and-mortar stores, fans freak out

Posted on 7 June 2010 by admin 1 Comment

After Marvel Comics announced last Wednesday (aka, the day that most comics hit the stores in the U.S.) that it would be offering Invincible Iron Man Annual #1 as a digital download on the same day as its regular print release, the blogosphere went into a tizzy and hasn’t fully recovered yet.

Written by Matt Fraction with art by Carmine Di Giandomenico, the annual will include a story about the Mandarin’s origins, which to date has never really been explored.

Reaction hit the ‘net on Friday, and I think the best place to find a nuanced argument would be courtesy of Dirk Deppey at The Comics Journal‘s Journalista! who today writes:

[You] need to keep in mind that no legacy media, — film, television, music or print — has found a proven and stable way to make the Internet pay for itself in the same way as has their previous business models. While it’s difficult to get firm music-industry statistics without paying for them, Wikipedia notes that record sales shrank by close to 40% in the United States between 2000 and 2007. A 2009 Yankee Group report makes the claim that television advertising revenue is dropping faster than the increase in advertising revenue for online video. This isn’t a swamp into which a content publisher leaps lightly, especially is you’re a division in a larger company, and doubly so if that larger company in turn is owned by Disney.

I personally don’t have a large enough cellphone screen to make reading comics on it a rational decision, but I can totally understand and get behind being able to get the newest release of a favorite book or series fed directly to my computer on a subscription basis. Once I finally decide between an iPhone and a Droid, however, this is definitely something that will become a concern.

Tag: Comics