Coming Soon To A Computer Screen Near You: Si Spurrier's Urban Fairytale

Earlier this week, Avatar announced Disenchanted, a new webcomic by Si Spurrier (he's having a big couple of weeks!) and German Erramouspe. The pair will publish twelve pages weekly, and then those pages will be gathered up and put into physical format about twice a year, a system that Avatar, and Spurrier, has already had a certain degree of success with. This sort of serialization is intriguing to me, because it doesn't follow the model of a syndicated newspaper strip, out of which grows the publishing strategies and schedules of most webcomics. Instead, Disenchanted will more closely resemble a weekly digital comic book; a certain number of pages with a clear beginning, middle, and end, comics serialized like television is serialized. This arrangement seems like it might be more narratively satisfying, somehow, although it will be interesting to see how exactly Spurrier and Erramouspe break their story up.

Anyway, Spurrier's description of the project should get you hooked, just in case you don't get off on the relationship between publishing strategies and narrative structure like I do:

Listen: I’m not going to lie to you. There are faeries in it. Actual one-inch-tall faeries with pretty wings, pale skin, a pathological obsession with knotting human hair, an addict’s approach to teeth and all the rest of that floaty pseudo-Victoriana pre-Cottingley arsewater. But don’t panic. What we’ve got here are non-glittery, non-wanky, non-wish-granting faeries. What we’ve got here are substance-abusing, bar-brawling, civil-rights-demanding, murder-committing faeries. The good kind. The old kind. What we’ve got here is a miniature city made of scavenged soda cans, cereal boxes, dirty syringes and condoms. A city hidden beneath the streets of London. What we’ve got here are pixies, brownies, kobolds, leprechauns, boggarts, goblins and all the rest of the twee “Little People” of yesteryear who, despite being forgotten by mankind, have been dragged along by time and trend into the unsentimental Urban Century.

Just like the rest of us.

Jeph Jacques's Simple Statement

Jeph Jacques's Questionable Content was the first webcomic I ever loved. At a time when I was eagerly approaching both comics and music, it was a welcome mixture of form and content, and it had a main character, Marten, who felt like the kind of person I wanted to be. Although my goals have changed slightly since then, I've been reading the comic, which celebrates its tenth birthday in August, steadily for almost eight years now.

Comics that run so long tend to go through phases of life, sort of like people, and Jacques's is no exception. Starting as an aloof and wistful sort of daily gag strip, QC become a soap opera and then transformed into something different entirely, much more complex, but retaining elements of both. For about a year now, long past that last transition, he's been busy expanding the cast to include a bunch of entry level interns at Marten's job in the Smif (yes, Smif) College library and letting his comic breathe. QC is as good now as its ever been, maybe even better.

Last week, Jacques's latest arc, the wedding of his Marten's father, Henry, climaxed with a simple but very important panel:

I think that Claire, one of those interns mentioned above, is probably referring to the length of the wedding (Jacques's commentary on the strip, "a quick wedding is a good wedding," back this up), but I think that it's more important than that: I think this is what the future looks like. Marten's father is married to a man he loves, no big publicity campaign from the comic's author, no bolded message to USA TODAY. Marten's father is married to the man he loves. And that's it. 

From the Deepest Darkest Corners of the Internet

"Deep Dark Fears" by Fran Krause (@frankrause)

Do you like humor?

Of course you do.

Are you afraid of entirely irrational horrifying things that could never actually happen but oh god oh god what would you do if they did?

Of course you are.

Well one comicsmith has combined these two things in a single brilliant, hilarious, terrifying webcomic: "Deep Dark Fears".

Each installment either illuminates something I was already irrationally afraid of or reveals to me something I hadn't previously thought of that I should absolutely have already been irrationally afraid of. Very educational.

Proof of its usefulness? Google "deep dark fears" right now and no psychologists' websites pop up. Only the webcomic!

Seriously now. "Deep Dark Fears" is brilliantly executed. It truly does plumb down deep into the strange part of the human brain that creates every-day scenarios just on the edge of believable and makes you laugh while doing it: What would happen if juuussst the edge of a speeding car clipped a part of your body? Is that sharp thing juuussst the right shape to really screw me up? What if I'm tired and fall asleep on my feet at juuuusssssssttttt the absolutely wrong moment? What if we're surrounded by ghosts all the time and we don't even know it?!

You'll be immediately impressed by Krause's cartooning:

The economy of line used to show you a closed eyelid and a set of pursed lips is awesome. THAT'S good cartooning. (Can you see where this strip is going?)

The one about video game logic applied to real life struck me because I've had nearly the exact same thought in the same context (a contender for best comics of 2013):

THAT'S hilarious.

Then there's the one about ghosts, that is so simple and so wonderful that it's already on the Long and Shortbox best comics of 2012 list.

"Deep Dark Fears" is worth a look because it's holding a mirror back at your crazy, needy, terrified, over-active subconscious and being funny while doing it.

Or maybe that's just me? EEP!

"Deep Dark Fears" appears weekly and is hosted on Tumblr here.
The comicsmith Fran Krause maintains a website here.

~ @JonGorga

Process: Kris Straub

This week, I got caught up on Kris Straub's new Monday Wednesday Friday horror-webcomic Broodhollow. Straub is doing some really interesting formal stuff, stuff that I want to write about, but this morning he gave us a little gift when he posted the above strip, the foundation of the full strip he says he's going to post later today. Seeing stuff like this makes me wonder if anyone's ever done comics work that looks like this when its complete, in blue pencil and so on. I'm relatively sure someone must have but, if no one has, I think it could be a fabulous entrance into some easy experimentation with and commentary on the form.

Anyway, go read Broodhollow. You'll enjoy it.

Here's To The Letter

Lettering in comics is, I imagine, a tricky business. But I don't really know: for all of my interest in process, I've never really investigated the art of lettering. I guess I figured one letter, one letterer, was as good as any other. 

On its face, this is an assumption that is obviously not true. Typography, at its best, leaves an impression by not leaving one. At its worst, type leaves an impression for the wrong reasons, because its gimmicky, because its unclear or because its hard to read. Take, for example, comics' bastard child-- comic sans. The font, invented by a Microsoft designer in the mid-nineties, has been often criticized, so much so that it has been the object of attempted bannings for almost a decade and a half. The backlash against it seems overblown-- except for being goofily rounded and purposefully sloppy, the font is, on its own, innocuous and inoffensive. While sort of pernicious in its ubiquity, the real problem with Comic Sans, according to the Holly Combs, the cofounder of Ban Comic Sans, is the way that its used incongruously with the purpose of much of the text typed with the font: way back in 2005, while speaking to the Boston Pheonix, Combs said that she had recently received a death notice in it. Surely, then, if bad typography can take a way from the words that are set in it, good typography can add something to them. This is certainly also true of the comics letter, which Comic Sans, with its sloppy lines, is supposed to mimic.

Last month, after years of lettering his comics digitally in photoshop, Evil Inc. webcartoonist Brad Guigar switched to lettering his comics by hand. At his blog, Guigar explained his reasons for switching over saying that, after doing it on a guest strip for Dave Kellet, he and Dave got to talking about the process:

Have you ever considered it?" he asked. 

"Considered, yes... but I'm a little scared of it." 

And it is daunting. But as he pointed out, he was able to get such a broader range of expressiveness out of his hand-lettering than I could -- even taking into account a full range of wonderful special-effect fonts purchased at several consecutive Comic Craft New Years sales. 

"But my lettering stinks." 

"Only because it's a skill you don't practice." 

Boy, that sat with me all the way home. I mean, who's that guy that's always telling people that it's impossible to get worse at something that you do every day?
Me and my big mouth. 

What Guigar realized, and what I think is probably hard to understand until you notice it, somehow, or until someone points it out to you, is that lettering changes feeling, even if it doesn't necessarily effect meaning (although sometimes it does that, too). Guigar's comics have always had a great visual flair, but not in every way-- take, for example, the last computer lettered strip that Guigar did, from August 31st.

This is a great strip-- Guigar's art is fluid and expressive, look at the grin on the alien's face in that last panel, and his simple figures move from panel to panel quite easily. While his font choice for the dialogue isn't bad, it also doesn't add anything to the strip-- it serves only to display the dialogue. There are, in other words, pictures and text coming together to tell the same story, but, beyond that, they don't really cohere. Then look at a more recent strip of Guigar's, say, yesterday's:

Dig that? The differences between this strip and the one above are slight and, yet, this one is much more alive. While the other one seems kind of stilted, because the words don't flow the same way the pictures do, Guigar's hand lettering here is much easier to follow from one end of the strip to the other, and it adds depth; the word that Guigar used in the blog post to describe this extra depth, expressiveness  is close to perfect, since the comic really tells you a lot more this way, gives you a better feel for not only how the characters are speaking but also of what it is exactly that they're saying, because this gives you the peaks and valleys of speech. It makes Captain Heroic sticking his tongue out in the third panel that much more interesting and, more importantly, it adds a layer of meaning to the words that wasn't there before, simply because Guigar did it by hand.

So here's to the letter, and to the letterer, ladies and gentleman. May it, and he, get the credit that they deserve, and may make your comics experience that much more meaningful.

Quote For The Week: Erika Moen

Erika Moen, in a marvelously revealing interview over at Comics Bulletin:

I've had many, many people tell me that my comics helped them come to terms with their sexuality or gender identity or made them feel less alone. That gives me goosebumps just writing it out! It is surprising to me how many queer people there are out there who have gone through almost the exact same experiences as me and received the same backlash and rejection from the "queer community," so while my comics help them feel less alone, their letters back to me make me feel less alone too! 

And, oh god, there has been a hilarious amount of ridiculous and painful criticism of my work. That it is bi-phobic, trans-phobic, privileged, sexist, racist, anti-feminist, advocates rape (yes, really), that I'm not allowed to call myself queer, that I'm trying to force queers to get married to oppositely-sexed partners like I did... Oh my god, the list could go on and on, only increasing in absurdity. It's fine though. People are allowed to project their interpretations onto my work; we're all entitled to do that! Doesn't mean that's the message I ever had in mind when I was making my comics, though. 

When I get hate mail or people confronting me at conventions, I process the experience in the same way that I do when a drunk, crazy, homeless man comes up and yells at me on the street: they're experiencing their own reality and expressing it outwardly, but that has absolutely no bearing on my life or who I am. If anything, I hope my supposedly offensive comics help inspire people to create the kind of comics they do want to read and that do"correctly" portray their views! People can write me angry emails that I'm not going to finish reading before I delete, but wouldn't they feel so much more empowered if they took that same time it would take to yell at me and funneled their anger into something productive, like creating their own comics.

I'm a big fan of not wasting energy on futility (such as screaming into the abyss of the internet) and instead making the content you want to exist, whether it's in the form of a comic, a story, or whatever medium you prefer. 

But then again, some people just like to scream, and that's enough for them.

The Prodigal Cartoonist Returns

Dylan Meconis, the Portland-based cartoonist behind the killer webcomic Family Man, has been on a creative hiatus since the spring. During her "summer vacation," she apparently did a lot of thinking and plotting for her main gig, and she also had time to work on something new, a little joy of a bonus comic she calls Outfoxed.

The pretty crazy cool thing about Outfoxed is that it's very, very different from Meconis's work on Family Man. She's said, for one, that the art style here comes more naturally than the one she uses in her long form comic, and it shows. This stuff is just looser, a little less serious, a little more consciously cartoony, significantly more fun. Don't get me wrong, I adore the ongoing story of Luther Levy, and I'm glad to see that it survived the hiatus unscathed, but this stuff is wildly slicker and more inventive. If she's being honest about the fact that this is what comes naturally to her (and I have no reason to believe that she's lying) it means that she has to reign herself in when she draws Family Man, that she has to control her wilder designing and cartooning impulses for the sake of telling a more serious story.

If this is the case, Dylan Meconis is, straight up, one of the most talented cartoonists I've ever encountered, and probably also among the smartest. Check this out if only because of the art; from the unhurried lightness of the lines that come together to make the form of the protagonist to the heavy blockiness of the noble hunters, it's a beautiful piece of work, one I hope comes out as a physical minicomic sooner rather than later, if only because I would like to see the beautiful colors in real life. The story isn't perfect (it's relatively clear that the tight storytelling that accompanies the labor that is Family Man is a side effect of Meconis challenging her natural tendencies), but there's really only one place that it presents a serious issue and, anyway, have you seen the damn thing?!

Talk Over Balloons: Greg Rucka and Rick Burchett Part One

Writer Greg Rucka and artist Rick Burchett recently came together for a new high-adventure steampunk webcomic, which they call Lady Sabre. Last week, Jon and I got to speak with Greg and Rick over Skype about their new project, and about a whole mess of other things. Because the conversation was long, almost ninety minutes, we're going to be presenting it in a few parts. Here's Part 1.

Josh Kopin: It's good to be talking to both of you

Greg Rucka: It's nice to be talking to you guys

JK: I just wanted to start by asking how Lady Sabre came together.

Rick Burchett: The short version is that Greg and I have been wanting to work together on a project for a longtime, and things just didn't come together. We tried I don't how many different proposals and it just didn’t work out.

Greg Rucka: Five

RB: Yeah, and it just didn't work out, and we were talking about another project we’re trying to get off the ground called “American Soldier,” but that's a big project, and we were kicking around the idea of trying to find something to do in the meantime, and actually it was Greg that was thinking about doing a web comic and so I piped up and said why don’t we do that, why don't we do a web comic. And it happened pretty much that quick. The decision was made six months ago, and we just started work immediately.

GR: Was it six months ago?

RB: Yeah

GR: We were in development on it for a while, there was a long period where neither of us felt safe talking to anyone about it. That sort of vaporware fear that you'll say ‘we're going to do this thing’ and then that thing will never come to pass and, as Rick said, our track record of actually getting stuff off the ground is not what we would like it to be.

JK: How is putting a project together for the web different than putting one together for print?

GR: We've each had to learn entirely different skill sets. I suspect that the learning curve for Rick has been far more cruel than it has been for me. But, you know, we’re finishing up chapter one, meaning that the last few screens for the rest of chapter one... I don't know, I guess we're two weeks, three weeks away from wrapping that up entirely. And then we go on for chapter two. And the thing is that chapter one was written as our first effort and it was approached as our first effort and it aces very strangely for the web, whereas chapter two, once we started seeing the pages posted I went in and did a complete rewrite, and Rick has been drawing from that now, so we’ll see, some of the tools obviously are the same, but, there are so many different in terms of storytelling, in terms of pacing, in terms of what you can do visually, in terms of the amount of content you are delivering, and than there’s a whole ancillary element, we posted a new entry to the almanac on Friday, about Lady S[abre]'s sword, that actually took far longer to write than I suspect it looks like, and I have no idea how long it took Rick to do the accompanying schematic. It’s ironic that for, right now, a venture that is essentially making no money, were putting a lot of man-hours in. But it's very liberating: I think I speak for both of us when I say that all bets are off, that we sort of get to do what we want and we get to experiment and explore on our own terms, and that's a fairly precious thing when you're working in the comics industry, there's really not a lot of opportunity to do that, and the web rally does provide... you know it’s a cliché, it is an open frontier, you can be as risky as you'd like to be, I suppose.

JK: With the almanac, it seems like you are engaged in a lot of world building. Are you doing a lot of long term planning, or is it sort of fly by night?

GR: Oh no, there's a story. We know where we going, it's not so much 'hey I've got an idea everybody lets put on a show in Betty's barn!' There’s not a terminus, I think both Rick and I are thinking of it as books, and thus we are putting up chapters in each book, I know where this book is going, I know where it ends, but I've also learned that don’t handcuff myself to my plans, because things change in the writing, I don't see an end point for the project at this juncture, I don't think either Rick or I are going ‘ well, we’ll do this much and that would be that.’ As Rick referenced, we've got a whole bunch of plans, there are a bunch of things that we want to do, the ideal situation would be hat we can find a publisher for ‘American Soldier’ and, frankly, I would like Rick job to be drawing my stuff. I want to see him draw American Soldier and this [Lady Sabre]

RB: I look upon us as Louis and Clark. We're starting out, 'hey, I wonder what's over that mountain. I dunno let's go look. Gee, I wonder what's on the other side of that river. I dunno, let's go look.'

GR: That's abusive to the native population

Rb: Yea, we don't know what's over the hill, we don't know how long the country goes on in front of us, and we’re just going to see keep going and see what’s out there and that's part and parcel of this whole learning experience, trying to craft a story specifically for the web. I think we've finally nailed the storytelling that we've been looking for since day one, and that's not exactly comic books on the web, and it's not exactly the newspaper strips on the web, it’s its own thing, it’s its own form, and it’s exciting.

GR: And I think there's also, we need to master basic thinking before we get to advanced, and we've talked about other things we can do with the format, you know your ability to scroll down a page and use that in narrative, for instance, but I don't want us to get ahead of ourselves. Right now the most important things is telling the story cleanly, telling it clearly, telling it cleanly, and telling it consistently. You need to know that there's a new screen on Monday, a new screen on Thursday, you're always going to get that. Added content Tuesday and Friday wherever possible, and the site is alive. It’s not going to go fallow. We still have a large enough lead where I'm not panicking on schedule yet, so that's good as well.

JK: Can you two talk about the way the web changes the way you collaborate? Not only the way it influences what you create, but also the way you two work together?

GR: I like getting on the phone, and I like the collaboration. So, I'm not sure... We're talking a lot more we used to, I don't know another way to put it, there’re calls three, four times a week and I just remembered I forgot to send Rick a whole bunch of reference, so there you go. That's where the influence is. There's a lot of link swapping, there's a lot of I found this take a look at this, it’s kind of like this thing. We don't tend to, and Rick I love you dearly when I say this, Rick is not, shall we say, super tech savvy.

RB: I think that's a fair assessment.

GR: We had to drag him kicking and screaming onto twitter, and if you look him up on twitter, I think you'll note he's tweeted all of like twice

RB: Actually, four times. [Ed. note: Jon checked right after we finished the interview, and Rick was selling himself short: the number was actually six.]

GR: Ooh, doubled it.

RB: I've doubled my output.

GR: Also, frankly, and now I am speaking for you, Rick, but I think most of your time is put to, this is the first time you've been drawing almost entirely digitally.

RB: Yeah.

GR: And that's different too. So, you know, I’m not sure that the nature of the web itself, the nature of doing a web comic, has changed the nature of collaboration. I do think that it makes the process more fluid, since so much of what were doing exists electronically. When Rick and I were first working together, it's funny, Rick, I was thinking about it: it was ten years ago this September that we were working on ‘Cry For Blood,’ because I remember our discussions after 9/11 about it, and it used to be that Rick would do a page and I would have to wait three weeks to see what he did. And he finishes, and we get multiples and variations, and I think the editing process is easier on both ends as well. I'm marginally more web savvy, so I can into the nuts and bolts of the site and tinker and post and prepare stuff. We have a web master, who designed the site, named Eric Newsom, who is phenomenal.

Jon Gorga: It's a great site.

GR: I really think he did a brilliant job on it. He is the unspoken, unsung partner in this. And he is a partner, his input is not solely limited to site design and site maintenance, he really is a part of what were doing.

RB: Yeah, very much so, I mean I copy Eric on everything I send Greg, just so he knows what's going on, he's completely in step with us every minute, it wasn’t a matter of, ok guys, here's your web site, see you later, we have a Monday morning meeting every week, the three of us, and if there are any problems or any glitches along the way, he really is part and parcel of the whole thing, he's invaluable. We couldn't do it without him.

JG: That is really interesting. We are entering this new world where any artistic collaboration involving the tech guy, who really is almost an artist in his own right.

GR: it's funny, I was just thinking, to answer your earlier comic, there are so many pieces that are invisible: you have your writer, you have your penciller, you have, in many cases, an inker who is separate from the penciller, a colorist who is separate from both of them, a letterer, editors, and this process, in that sense the collaboration is much tighter, because there's just the three of us. And the lion’s share of the work belongs to Rick, because I can't draw to save my life. It's also interesting, Eric is an academic, and one of the things he's studying is transmedia communications, which provides an interesting insight into what were doing. But, yeah, there are those people out there who are the triple threats, who have the information and the know how to do it themselves. For somebody like me, I don't. My bailiwick is that I tell stories. I'm pretty good at it. I make a living at it, but, you know, I can’t draw, and my ability to code a site is nonexistent.

RB: Yeah, same here. I'm still earning my living with a pencil and a piece of paper. I'm the Luddite, I'm Fred Flintstone in this group, and I've had to learn a lot real fast, and Im not a quick learner.

GR: it's funny when he tries to get his car to go, too.

RB: The car's not so much... It's the shovel

GR: [laughs]

JG: Dangerous.

JK: Rick, would you talk a little bit about what were you just saying, about how your process for the web is different from your process for Batman: The New Brave and The Bold?

RB: It's different in that, the word that I used earlier, fluid, is exactly the word. Change can happen almost all the time, and does. Nothing is engraved in stone, until we post it. I can make changes up until the last minute, up until the last second. If I don't like something, and usually I don't, I'll change it, because it's so easy to make changes, but as far as the big picture process, I've had to learn a lot of things on computer that I had no intention of learning. I still draw it on paper, kind of, but then I scan it in and do everything from there on in on the computer, and that's what's makes it so easy to enact these changes: I can change a look on a face, I can change a figure, I can change the clothes they are wearing. I can do that on a computer in a very short amount of time. You can't do that in print comics. Once it's there, it's there, even if you go back and look at it, look at your copies of it, you can't change it, because it's got to be at press at a certain time, and there's deadlines, and we have deadlines too, but...

GR: We've actually posted pages and gone back and changed the art.

JG: I was about to ask if that’s what you meant, Rick. That's remarkable. That’s brave new world stuff.

GR: and, looking at the site right now, God, we're still trying to master the lettering, speaking of which, did you get that email? That I forwarded to you?

RB: Yea, I did. And I know why that happened. That was because of the email we got earlier from Todd Klein.

GR: [Laughs]

RB: So that won't happen again. And that's the thing, when you get from Todd Klein, who I think has a room devoted to his Eisner awards for lettering, I think they had to build an addition, when he sends you a note on Facebook saying 'I'm loving the site, you did this wrong,' you kind of sit up and go 'ok, let's fix that.' There was a screen, I think about the fifth screen or so that posted, the last panel of which Rick changed, and between the initial post, the panel was one illustration, and had Lady S sort of turning in, turning toward the left, facing your left, and the revision has her facing right, and that, from a storytelling point of view, is a substantial and subtle but very powerful change, looking left she's looking at the way we we've come, she looking at the last panel, but as the last panel on the screen for that day she’s looking right, she's looking to the next panel, she’s looking to the next post.

JK: That's awesome.

GR: It really changes the motion of the story.

JG: Is this the widescreen, very thin panel, where she’s saying 'fancy your Chances?'

GR: No, this is part five, the last panel of part five, which is ‘My Chances Alone’?

JG: Yea, I see, the next page, looking towards the future, if comics is time and space, she's looking to the future instead of the past.

GR: And you turn, you click to your next screen, and that’s a point of view shot, the first panel on screen six, is what she's seeing. That's far more effective storytelling. We've got a bit coming up where she is going to be jumping from something, and we talked different ways, how do you illustrate that fall, because if you do that in mainstream print comics, the way you would do it, you would do multiple panels depicting the individual moving through the air. On the screen, you can conceivably, and I'm not sure at all that this is what we would do, but you can conceivably begin with a screen that has yhr figure beginning their drop and then scroll, so as you scroll you have the figure reappear so that you have the effect of multiple quote unquote panels, but it's all the same image.

JK: That’s amazing.

GR: That is basic sort of embracing of what we can do. I don't want to go to Flash, I never want to go to animation, I don’t want to go sound effects, I'm sort of an a comic purist in that sense...

JG: I'm glad to hear that. I'm the same way.

GR: I think we muddy things. I never liked motion comics for the same reason. If I want motion comics, gimme animation. Embrace it. Don't try to half ass both of them, because in the end that'll be nothing. And, again, trying to figure out what are the ways in which we can do this. And then I’ve got a friend who has been working on this digital platform, means to read on an iPad and so on, and his whole issue is doing everything you can to keep the reader from actually ever having to work at reading. You don't have worry about where you are clicking to go to the next page, you don't have to resize, you don’t have to scroll, everything you need is right there in front of you that you need to tell the story.

JG: that sounds great, because that's really been the main hurdle that I see with digital comics, that there's a weird interaction that's very awkward.

GR: I absolutely agree, and that’s why I think it hasn't been cracked yet. And I think that's why most of the comics reading applications that are out there are, frankly, horribly inferior, and I don't mean to malign their creators but it's hard to read these things....

JK: Yea, it is.

GR: …there's too much in the way and, part of the joy of a comic in particular, I that you open it up and your eye immediately takes the page in. Before you even start reading it, there are images.

JG: There's a lay out as well as storytelling, it's not a movie, there’s a layout on the page, so you can take in all of the panels at once and one of your collaborators, and well get to this later, but J.H. Williams III, he does that. It's intense and remarkable, and that's lost in digital, sometimes.

GR: I think, honestly, I'm not sure how well that Batwoman stuff would translate digitally.

JG: Yea, it would be a mess, wouldn't it?

GR: I'm not sure it would. Having not seen it, I'm not sure, but I do feel that... talking about Jim specifically, his eye for composition, his approach to the page is such a holistic thing. He designs the whole damn thing and he is designing for the page, and that is not the same as designing for the screen. And then if you try to take that and put it on an Android screen? You're going to lose some of that artistry. One of the things we want you to be able to do with Lady Sabre is that I want you to be able to read it on platform. You know if you read it on your iPhone, or if you read it on your laptop, or if you read it on your desktop or if you read it on your iPad you should still get the same reading experience.

JK: You do, I've read it on my iPad.

GR: I think that says far more about what Rick and Eric have done than about what I have done. But I do think that DC is talking about day and date, and I have no idea how Batwoman is going to execute on that. Mind you, this is not something that keeps me up at night, but I have no doubt that if Jim was designing for a digital medium, he would master it, But that’s no what he is doing initially with that art. That art is designed to turn a page and take it, and I don't know if it'll fly. Well, that was a cheerful and long digression. Rick, are you still awake?

RB: Huh? What? I don’t want to go to school, Mom.

A Comic With a Personal Stroke

"My Reaction to the Amazing Spiderman Trailer" from PennyDreadfulComics.com

It's a bit well... over-dramatic. Intentionally dour, but still.

I've been reading Spider-Man comics since I was in the second grade and Peter Parker is essentially my model of how to be a person. So I have no right to call Maggie Vicknair out on having a personal reaction to some media including Spider-Man in it.

That said, the discussion Josh (@IamJoshKopin) and I had in our first little video dispels all reasons for us as comic journalists/creators to get upset about a comic-book adaptation movie. Doesn't mean we won't have reactions as fans anyway.

More importantly: The style on display is smooth and professional, the black-and-white tone-effects (which I'd wager are digital but do have the quality of an old-school ink-wash) are very good and the whole thing has a depth that's quite honestly way more work than most people would determine this gag is worth. The faces in the piece are remarkable. And most panels are tremendously effective: awkward surprise and confusion/disgust fueled by nostalgia. That's a tough feeling to get across. The piece has a structure, both visually and in terms of narrative, which doubles, then builds, and crescendos all in seven panels. If the tone wasn't so subtle and the desired effect so specific, the strip would be hilarious. If the concept wasn't over-the-top and the desired effect so ironic, the strip would be emotionally affecting.

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?
I immediately found this webcomic impressive while I also find it, as I said, over-dramatic. Doesn't tickle me.

It only takes a second to read to see for yourself. The link is at the top of the review.

Maggie's style can be seen on a more regular basis in her ongoing webcomic "Penny Dreadful" at PennyDreadfulComics.com. I have actually intended to write about her work for months, ever since I had the pleasure of meeting her about a year ago. Check out her work. Quite honestly, you should check it out solely because one of her best strengths as a comicsmith is her coloring.

~ @JonGorga

2o1o in a Shortbox: The Best of the Year

The Oscars were last night, so here's the best comics I read last year. Pretty simple.

The deal is: To qualify, a work must be comics and must have become publicly available in its entirety, in English, and for the first time, either in print or on the web, between 1/1/1o and 12/31/1o. The selections are presented by category, but not in any ascending or descending order.

BEST GRAPHIC NOVELS
"Superman: Earth One"
written by J. Michael Straczynski(@straczynski); drawn by Shane Davis
Like a Hollywood action movie, the first of the "Earth One" graphic novels delivered on action, excitement, and most importantly: gravitas. A 'superhero in the real-world' story for the first half and a classic, smart, grandiose superhero/supervillain battle for the second half with strong character work throughout.

"To Teach: The Journey, in Comics"
drawn by Ryan Alexander-Tanner (@ohyesverynice); adapted from a prose-book by Bill Ayers(@BillAyers)
A documentary-comic, Alexander-Tanner deftly cartoon-ed his way through Ayers' theories about education to clear, informative, humorous, and, occasionally, thrilling effect! Truly it is a work that any aspiring teacher should read. Quite a few healthy life lessons in general are spelled out on its pages.

"Ghostopolis"
written and drawn by Doug TenNapel (@TenNapel)
If "Earth One" is the 'action flick' and "To Teach" the 'documentary,' this is the 'animated movie'. A fully-realized world of familiar archetypal Halloween characters used and combined in unexpected ways, portrayed with fine cartooning and lush coloring. Some pages are laugh-out-loud funny (although some jokes are childish 'potty' humor), while other pages are truly moving. The words AND the pictures are moving, both in concert and separately. (I don't play the numbers game, I list no 'number 1' graphic novel here, but if I did...)


BEST GRAPHIC NOVELLAS (under 100 pages)
"Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale"
written by Zack Whedon(@ZDubDub); drawn by Chris Samnee(@ChrisSamnee)
Truly beautiful and truly unique is this 'life flashing before his eyes' sketch of the television/film/comics character Shepherd Book. The overlapping phrases and motifs that run through the life of the main character serve as bullet-points by which the reader is allowed to drop into further and further back stages of Derrial Book's life.

"Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City"
written and drawn by Brendan Leach (@iknowashortcut)
Sharp drawing and even sharper writing makes this strange comic an exciting and engrossing reading experience. Brotherhood and the passing from one era into another are its themes, the ink-lines combined with ink-washes make for a glowing, bleary, period-accurate feeling. Not to be over-looked is the awesome faux-newspaper-front-page that makes the comic's cover.

"Falling for Lionheart"
written and drawn by Ilias Kyriazis (@IliasKyriazis)
The 'indie- film' comic for the year. (Okay, that analogy's done with now, I promise) Emotional, but with action, sex, and humor; alternative lifestyles are presented as well as mainstream ones; comics is depicted as a medium capable of expressing emotion within the narrative, "Falling for Lionheart" is among the finest graphic novellas I have ever read. And furthermore, it uses different visual art styles to VERY smart narrative effect.

"Portrait of the Cartoonist as a Woman" on NarrativeMagazine.com

written and drawn by Liza Donnelly (@lizadonnelly)

Human and honest, like the best memoir comics are, these 32 pages speak volumes about childhood, womanhood, body issues, sexism, motherhood, and creative energy. The inherent sweetness of the small moments ("I was launched as a cartoonist. ... And most importantly, I made my mother laugh.") support a sense of life and narrative.

BEST MINI-SERIES
"Bullseye: Perfect Game" #1 and #2
written by Charlie Huston(@CharlieHuston); drawn by Shawn Martinbrough
This clever short series tells of murder on the baseball diamond. A certain supervillain-assassin masquerading as a home-town baseball player to carry out a hit. A big baseball fan solves the murder and narrates the story to the reader while walking around an apartment. Only at the last page, does the POV shift and we see that the baseball fan has been talking to a certain superhero.

"Phantom: Unmasked" #1 and #2
written by Martin Powell; drawn by Hannibal King
Again, this series' strength lay in a unique POV: the sultry, intelligent, hard-as-nails, lady private investigator Laughton Brice hired to find The Phantom, through which we see 'The Ghost Who Walks' anew! (The character of The Phantom has been around since 1936.) The Ghost Who Walks never even makes a clear physical appearance until more than halfway through the first issue, only shadows and stories. And, to boot, the courageous choice a character makes in the second issue tops it off nicely.

Seriously, these are both worth checking out and only two issues-long. Ask your retailer for where you might find them. I have little doubt most American retailers didn't sell many of these two series AT ALL.

(LATE ADDITION)

BEST STORY-ARC IN AN ONGOING SERIES

"Metal" from "Northlanders" #30, #31, #32, #33, and #34

written by Brian Wood(@brianwood); drawn by Riccardo Burchielli

One of the best stories of any medium was told last year in Brian Wood's series "Northlanders". Cross-cultural viking-era action/romance. Unique, smart, and cool.

BEST INDIVIDUAL ISSUES (either from a mini or ongoing series)
"41" from "Daytripper" #4
written and drawn by Fabio Moon(@fabiomoon) and Gabriel Bá(@Gabriel_Ba)
A tremendously emotionally affecting chapter in the haunting life of Bras, the main character of the series by those talented brother comicsmiths: Moon and Bá. The loss of a father, the birth of a son, and the moment in life at which a precarious level of security-like adulthood is attained... then swept away like all the others.

"M.I.A." Parts 1, 2, and 4 from "DMZ" #51, #52, and #54
written by Brian Wood(@brianwood); drawn by Riccardo Burchielli
Matty Roth, the main character of Wood's long-running futuristic love-letter to NYC, makes some achingly hard decisions to regain his lost honor. LOOK at that cover on the last issue of the arc!

"Collective Punishment" one of five: "five hours under fire" from "DMZ" #55
written by Brian Wood(@brianwood); drawn by Andrea Mutti

A shocking, smart, compact story about the horrors of war, both the ones perpetrated on human bodies and those perpetrated on human minds.

"Collective Punishment" four of five: "A Decade on the Wall" from "DMZ" #58

written by Brian Wood(@brianwood); drawn by Danijel Zezelj
A harrowing and beautiful issue narrated by the first "DMZ" character I ever encountered: the graffiti artist known as Decade Later. After imprisonment, during which he wasn't allowed to draw, this man creates a graffiti autobiography in the ruins of a New York City art gallery. Incredible.

"Electric Ant" #1 and #3
adapted from a Philip K. Dick prose novel by David Mack(@davidmackkabuki); drawn by Pascal Alixe
Crazy mind-altering sex between a self-aware organic-robot and a human... or is she? Visually stunning color and shape choices are made to represent Dick's psychedelic verbiage. Very cool.

"The Sixth Gun" #1, #2, #3, and #6
written by Cullen Bunn(@cullenbunn); drawn by Brian Hurtt
Fun, striking, exciting, funny, and unique all describe this new ongoing series. The most wonderful sound effects melt into the artwork in wonderful ways. The scope is huge, while the human-scale dangers never feel lost. The first arc's conclusion in issue #6 is perhaps the best: mostly double-page spread layouts.

"Never Say Die" from "The Shield" #10
written by Eric S. Trautmann(@mercuryeric); drawn by Marco Rudy
The surprise delight of my year. I received this issue in a pile of free comics. The superhero concept at the core of this series (American soldier is gifted with abilities by the government to better serve) is a very, very old one to which nothing new is brought here, but the characterization seems more genuine than most. The winning element is Rudy's storytelling panel layouts, which are the best I have seen since those of the supremely talented Steve Rude or J. H. Williams III.

"the brave and the bold." from "Superman/Batman" #76

written by Judd Winick; drawn by Marco Rudy

In fact, I shouldn't have been surprised by Rudy's skills as he had already shown me what he can do. More wonderful page compositions here. Judd Winick brings emotional gravitas to Superman's reaction to Bruce Wayne's death. It was also a wonderful compliment to this Batman issue...

"Batman's Last Case" from "Batman" #702
written by Grant Morrison; drawn by Tony Daniel
Despite the fact that this issue makes no sense without the context of a mini-series from two years ago ("Final Crisis") it does an excellent job of gifting that mini-series retroactively with more sense. Most specifically and remarkably it explains Batman's actions and makes them emotionally powerful: "I survived an encounter with something bigger than me".

"Grounded" Part One from "Superman" #701
written by J. Michael Straczynski(@straczynski); drawn by Eddy Barrows
Any story in which Superman is put into realistic morally complicated situations is usually interesting. Stories in which Superman is put into realistic morally complicated situations and finds a way to triumph are usually going to get me. A single issue that does that over-and-over again was guaranteed to win me over.

"Night Gods" from "The Brave and the Bold" #32
written by J. Michael Straczynski(@straczynski); drawn by Jesus Saiz
This Cthulu-inspired, genuinely scary comic, stars Etrigon the Demon and... Aquaman. Aquaman does a series of bad-ass things and Straczynski put in the effort to write all of Etrigon's dialogue in rhyming verse. All good things.

"Ladies' Night" from "The Brave and the Bold" #33

written by J. Michael Straczynski(@straczynski); drawn by Cliff Chiang(@cliffchiang)
A return to the moment-in-time just before a young heroine's defining tragedy laid out in sharp relief. Just beautiful.

"A Batman's Work is Never Done!" from "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" #17
credited as written by Sholly Fisch; drawn by Robert W. Pope
Kids' comic: Batman has a busy week. Calls his friends. Hijinks ensue.

BEST SHORTS (under 22 pages)
"Comic-Converts" on Jillian Tamaki's Sketch Blog

written and drawn by Jillian Tamaki (@dirtbagg)

It's a diary entry, a comics news report, a food review, a showcasing of friendly faces, and an ethnographic statement all at once. The mix of geek/indie, human/inhuman, private/public elements in this comic about SDCC really shows how much a comics convention can be and how much a comic can show.

"Culture POP" #14 "The Aerialist" on ACT-I-VATE.com

reportage and photography by Seth Kushner (@sethkushner)

The way Kushner laid-out photographs here to bring the reader through a narrative while maintaining the beauty of the photographs themselves is nothing short of remarkable.

"Acidopolous" number one

written and drawn by Nathan Bulmer (@natemorebikes)

A fun, trippy little mini-comic. Reality melts into a world of cartoony horror for one acid-tripping punk rocker. The first chunk can be read here.

BEST STRIPS (one page each)
"Angel" in OVERFLOW Magazine #6, Summer 2o1o; and on ACT-I-VATE .com here!
written and drawn by Dean Haspiel
Hapiel's work always feels RIGHT to me, but rarely so much as when the main figure of this double-page comic falls-- no SLAMS-- into the ground and the textbox reads: "I'll miss you." A pseudo-Kirby, action-representation of emotion in line and color, this may be his best work to date. (Again, I don't make this a numbers game. But if I did...)

"Flying Restrictions 1" and "Flying Restrictions 3" (The Adventures of The Man Who Can Only Fly When He's Sad) on cowbirdsinlove.com

written and drawn by Sanjay Kulkarni (@cowbirdsinlove)

I especially like 3 because it is positive and beautiful in its resolution, but 1 serves as excellent set-up. 2 left me cold by comparison. Doesn't really need to be there.

"The Tell-Tale Beat" on XKCD.com
written and drawn by Randall Munroe

A hilarious piece that reminds us that yes Randall Munroe can, in fact, draw.

"Porn For Women" on XKCD.com
written and drawn by Randall Munroe

Honesty = excellence. And, in this case, hilarity.

"Spirit" on XKCD.com

written and drawn by Randall Munroe

Oh god! I can imagine few things as simultaneously funny and horrifyingly sad. Except maybe the next webcomic:

"SuperMutant Magic Academy: Wufflefluff" on Jillian Tamaki's Sketch Blog

written and drawn by Jillian Tamaki (@dirtbagg)

Creepy, sad, but so true.

"SuperMutant Magic Academy: Pickles" on Jillian Tamaki's Sketch Blog

written and drawn by Jillian Tamaki (@dirtbagg)

Funny but also sort of sad, and feels right to me somehow.

"Domestic Men of Mystery" on JillianTamaki.com

written and drawn by Jillian Tamaki (@dirtbagg)

Father's Day, indie-webcomics style. This one is really beautiful and sad and happy and I can imagine few better ways to go out for 2o1o.

~ @JonGorga

P.S. ~

Comics that very well might have made it had I bought/read them in entirety:

"The Playwright"

"Jonah Hex: No Way Back"

"Revolver"

"Smile"
"Stigmata" (in translation)

"Artichoke Tales"

"Return of the Dapper Men"

"Special Exits"

(Truly, this one is in need of more attention. Amazing.)

"Market Day"

"Foiled"

The market for graphic novels either swung wide, wide open this past year, or I just never noticed the volume already coming out. They also take a lot longer to read...

Sequential Reporting: A Night on SVA's Comics History

As part of last year's exhibit "Ink Plots: The Tradition of the Graphic Novel at SVA" a few School of Visual Arts professors who work in the comics medium were brought together on a cold night in October to speak about their particular work in the medium and its history at the college. The moderator was John Carlin, whose work co-curating the "Masters of American Comics" exhibit had a large influence on me when I viewed it here in New York in 2oo5. The panelists were: Gary Panter- punk-rock comicsmith extraordinaire, David Sandlin- who (as Carlin wrote in his introduction to the exhibit's catalog) "straddles the fine art and printed narrative genres", and Jerry Moriarty- who surprised me with the scale and nature of his work; contemporary large-scale comics painted on multiple canvases is a relatively new concept to me. That was, in fact, the intended focus of the evening's discussion: narrative painting.

Carlin began the evening with a slide-show retrospective of masterpieces of art history that have been glossed-over or entirely ignored as sequential art. Sandlin spoke about his attemps to depict inner landscapes, both of his mind/history and of the country at large. Moriarty talked about the spiritual thinking he applies to his 'paintooning' work. He imagined himself opening a portal through time and space to some moment in the past AND PAINTED WHAT HE SAW AS A GIANT COMIC. Through this method he feels he finally successfully said goodbye to his late father. (But strangely, not to his late beloved dog. Just didn't have the same effect.) They all also spoke a great deal about teaching comics at SVA.

Over on The Comicsmithy, I've started a new thing: a second webcomic titled "Framed" drawn by Josiah Sarr will feature only real accounts of comics-related events. The first of those comics is up now [Framed 1: "Gary Panter", at right] and depicts the events of the evening at SVA. I love comics about comics, personally, and I'm curious as to how people will react.

I wrote an editorial recently here on the Long and Shortbox of It about sexism in the comics world and how my perception of it changed dramatically over 2o1o. Panter's confident assertion that in regards to the position of women in comics, things have changed is a hopeful one. He said it as matter-of-factly as he looks, the way Josiah drew him.

~ @JonGorga

P.S. ~ You know what makes me very sad? Never got to see the whole exhibit. Only about half. It was held at a different location from the theater and I went on a different day, but time was limited. I enjoyed what I saw.

Time, in reality, is not so easily frozen as the panels in a comic.

Bucko!

Good news!

Jeff Parker and Erika Moen are doing a comic together. On the internet!

That's right, Jeff Parker, who wrote the sadly departed Agents of Atlas and is currently doing a killer job on Hulk and Erika Moen who taught me an important lesson last April and wrote the sadly departed webcomic DAR! have come together to make a webcomic of recent vintage (it debuted this morning) called Bucko.

Any time a new webcomic catches my eye it's good news. This one, with two incredible creators coming together, looks like it could be great. I, for one, could hardly be more excited.

The Transmogrification of The Indie Comic-Book into The Indie Graphic Novel (Series)

Jason Lutes' "Berlin" has been coming out since 1996 in a slim 30-page saddle-stitched format (that's just fancy talk for: it's a comic-book). But things have changed since 1996. Are "Berlin" and Adrian Tomine's "Optic Nerve" the last of the great indie comic-books?

Chris Ware's "Acme Novelty Library" became a hardcover graphic novel series when Ware began self-publishing the title at issue #16. Los Bros Hernandez' "Love and Rockets" became an annual paperback graphic novel with restarted numbering under the title "New Stories" in 2oo8. Finally, Seth's "Palookaville" jumped ship this year: with "Palookaville" issue #20, the series is now 'hardcover graphic novel volume' #20.

"Acme Novelty Library" changed formats like most people change their clothes but "Palookaville" now exists as nineteen comic-books and one graphic novel-ish thing. Seth is to be congratulated in at least one way: "Palookaville" Vol. 20 is a pretty gorgeous book object but doubts linger in the forefront of my mind.

"The expansion into hardcover from pamphlet is a parallel that illustrates Seth's growth ... into a book designer, hobbyist, editor, essayist, and installation artist."
~ "Palookaville" #20 (marketing writing on the book-band)

A slightly different tune from Seth himself (a slog of text yes, but worth it):

"It's not like I wasn't aware that the comic book format was coming to an end. A shift had occurred (this last decade) in the sales of comic books and people simply weren't buying 'alternative' comic books any longer-- they were waiting for the book collections instead. Books were the current 'healthy business model.' ... I was torn. I have a deep and abiding love of the old pamphlet form of comics. I grew up with them, and it is the most simple, austere and unpretentious format you could invent. ...

all the great alternative comics were gone ... Hate, Yummy Fur, Eightball, Yahoo, Dirty Plotte, Peepshow, Jim/Frank... they'd all vanished. Even Love and Rockets had turned into a large squarebound book. Only Optic Nerve seemed to be strongly carrying on. I hadn't truly realized how much of a dying breed we were. Was I leaving now too? It seemed a minor betrayal of something to quit the format. ...

It's difficult to do a long story all at once and putting it out a bit at a time was a method that worked for me. There was an era when the comics reader was more willing to go along with this approach ... Then they'd buy the book collection as well. I appreciated that too. I guess that day is done. ...

In fact, the less constrained page count would actually allow me to present larger chunks of the long story as well. ... I suspect that this format change itself will influence how my next long story is told. ... So, goodbye, comic book format. It was good to know you. I leave you with no regrets."
~ Seth from "Palookaville" #20: Introduction

So where does the 'comic-book' end and the 'graphic novel' begin? Well, somewhere in the middle of the 'graphic novella' I guess? At over 100 pages? Other than that I'll be damned if I know anymore.

Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's "Lost Girls" was an indie comic-book slowly released over several years. The series was canceled and eventually finished when published as a bound book set and then a single volume "graphic novel". If the only way to get the entire story is to buy the trade, does that lend credence to the concept of a serialized graphic novel?

"I suspect that this format change itself will influence how my next long story is told." Of course it will. If I gave anyone alive one page a day to write something, the writing would be different than if I gave them 100 pages at once. Artists, like all humans, are adaptable. They expand or truncate to fit the space they're given. This affects the way these stories are told and if ALL indie creators switch over like this I fear we will begin to see an English-language paper-marketplace with very similar comics. I am working on a review of "Berlin" #17. Will my review of "Berlin" #18 (in 2o13 or whenever) be of a hardcover book? In which case, webcomics-in-print may become the new go-to source for a variety for voices who wish to do something in short formats without a superhero in it (not that there's anything wrong if there is) at a comics shop or box chain bookstore. Truth is: webcomics already rival the indie comics in that regard. Turn on your computer, type "recommended webcomics" into Google and you may be amazed at what you find.

But should not the talented creators of limited financial means be also given credit for surmountting the problem Seth clearly stated: "It's difficult to do a long story all at once"? As a creator of limited financial means (who believes himself to be talented) I myself know that to be true. Time, food, money. These are troubling obstacles to sitting at a computer/typewriter/drawing board/lightbox all day long. I believe those who do so, indie or otherwise, without immediate recompense and publish their hard-fought work all at once, are creators who deserve the term graphic novel.

In the end, I have little doubt that just as digital comics will take off, people will find a use for paper comics; so too, as the ongoing graphic novel series becomes more common, people will find a use (most likely an entirely original and unexpected one) for the comic-book.

Here's looking forward to whatever that may be.

~@JonGorga

About Your Paper Renewal?

I wrote an editorial not a long while ago subtitled "The Death of the Great Prints" about the distinct possibility that within our lifetimes all comics publishing will be mainly digital in nature. Every single last publisher will have either taken a leap of faith into the digital ether or perished gasping in trying to sell a physical object to a market that's no longer there.

BUT...

At least one publisher is making that great leap BACK into print. There were about 150 issues of the original print comic-book since the inaugural issue of "Dark Horse Presents" in 1986. The company made a dramatic change when Dark Horse partnered with website MySpace.com to create "MySpace Dark Horse Presents" and there were 36 issues of the MySpace version of the anthology. The last one hit the web in July 2o1o and now, starting in 2o11, "Dark Horse Presents" will be a print comic-book once again after 3 years online. Editor Scott Allie said: "When we launched "MDHP," MySpace was the world's leading website, at a time that you could actually have a clear-cut world's leading website, and we felt that we had the opportunity to do something exciting and new. MySpace was the perfect place to get tons of attention" and publisher Mike Richardson said: "We were excited about [it] because it took comics to a much larger audience". Comics will be available (still for free!) on Dark Horse's website here.

[via Newsarama and CBR/CBR]

Presumably, the company thinks that without one website reigning supreme they would do better to bring the successful anthology back to its paper roots. Simultaneously, some independent creators have begun to take back the printing press as a means of disseminating underground comics, which is, of course, how they did it back when underground comics were called comix.

About two months ago the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art (@MoCCAnyc) held a panel discussion about the comic-strip as a form and how it stands now in a world of newspapers closing down. The panel was called "The Future of the Traditional Comic Strip in the Era of Dying Newspapers". The solutions as presented were two-fold: become a webcomic or join together in a collective. Or both.

Yes, tremendously cleverly comicsmith Bill Roundy makes a comic called "The Amazing Adventures of Bill" that is posted as a webcomic (available at the previous link) and a newsprint comic-strip in a publication called "Coffee Talk", available in various Brooklyn locations. The newspaper comics-section without the newspaper. Brilliant, really.

"Dark Horse Presents" and "Coffee Talk" aren't the only comics enjoying the old musty smell of paper. Several examples of other comics utilizing newsprint were held up by "Coffee Talk" mastermind Tony Murphy at the MoCCA event: (1) a copy of New York City comic-shop Desert Island's local comic, a large-format newsprint comic called "Smoke Screen" and (2) a copy of Brendan Leach's comic: "Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City" (the subject of one of my recent interviews here on The Long and Shortbox Of It), with a cover mimicking an old-style newspaper front page. Printed on newsprint.

Now I had this editorial all planned out in my head up until this point:

Both comics companies and individual comicsmiths have made a move away from the digital realm and back to newsprint. Plain, simple, interesting. Right?

That was before these double announcements from the day before the recent New York Comic-Con (@NY_Comic_Con):

DC Comics (@DC_NATION) will in January 2011 reduce the baseline prices of their entire line of 22-page comic-books from $3.99 back to $2.99.

and an hour later:

Marvel (@Marvel) will lower SOME of the prices of their comic-books from $3.99. Called a "partial move away" from $3.99, Marvel has stated that they can afford this because of the money they're making from their iPad app's digital comics sales.

[via CBR- DC announcement/Marvel announcement] (I really recommend taking a peek at CBR's DC article as they actually breakdown exactly which DC comics will now be $2.99.)

I was in the room at the "DC Nation" panel at Comic-Con where a huge screen displayed a defiant Wonder Woman in the famous 'Rosie the Riveter pose' with the famous statement "We Can Do It!" replaced with something like: "HOLD THE PRICE LINE!" DC Comics SVP and Executive Editor Dan DiDio also made it clear that although this means the back-up stories DC added to the books last year when the prices were raised are disappearing, the characters and stories in them will not.

What does this mean?

Well, obviously, it means we all get to save a little money on our monthlies AND more importantly it means when I recommend a monthly comic to YOU the readers, or to a friend in person, there will be a bit less 'sticker-shock' when we all say: 'Damn, comics used to be 10 frickin' cents!' In fact: 10 cents, 12 cents, 15, 20, 30, 35, 40, 75, $1, $1.25, $1.99, $2.99... I believe this is the first time in the history of the American comics industry that the baseline price has gone DOWN.

But, in the long run? What does this mean for paper?

I'm not sure if it's a vote of confidence in the format or a signal of its demise. Since people have been clamoring for the prices to go back down and the Big Two are giving them what they want, it shows that the big companies care about what their paper customers want. Theoretically they can now give it to them because, according to Marvel SVP of Sales David Gabriel, "We found that in a week's time, the download of the day-and-date [digital iPad app] comics were a little bit less than what [New York City's] Midtown [Comics] orders. They're one of the top retailers in the country, so it gives you an idea of where we're at." So are they giving the comic shop-pers what they want as a temporary appeasement as they phase them out? Meanwhile the guys like Brendan Leach and Tony Murphy are printing on the cheapest paper they can find to keep their decidedly not-corporate costs down.

It seems that if anything can be said about the entire comics industry in America from Marvel Entertainment right down to free comics newsletters at this moment, it's that while there is an ongoing serious flirtation with the digital format, paper still has a major, although changing, place in the distribution of sequential art.

~ @JonGorga

This Is A Good News/Bad News Kind Of Situation..

The bad news first: Danny Lewis, friend of the Long and Shortbox of it, has put his wonderful webcomic No One Believes In Monsters on hiatus.

The good news is that, in its place, Danny is posting a preview from a graphic novel he's working on called Raven Steals the Sun. The first page went up early this morning, and I want to be the first to say that it's absolutely gorgeous.

You can check out Danny's work here and if you like it you should check out his etsy store.

Bee in My Bonnet!

"bee in... The Ramble" from MySpace/Dark Horse

There was a unique and unusual pleasure to be had in hearing the comicsmith, Jason Little, read this comic out loud with accompanying music and a projection of the comic panel-by-panel to a small crowd at one of R. Sikoryak's (@RSikoryak) Carousel nights a few months back. Now the masses can be exposed to it as well since it has been published on "MySpace Dark Horse Presents". The experience of hearing this comic read that night (and then having it divorced from that experience on the web) was particularly surreal for reasons that will become clear over the course of this review.

Right from the start "The Ramble" is a hilarious tale of two friends meeting-up in the Big Apple's world-famous Metropolitan Museum of Art for a... uh... unique tour. Oh man. You've really got to click the link at the top of this post and read it yourself to fully appreciate this. THERE ARE NO WORDS.

Speaking of there 'being no words,' one of the most fun elements of the comic is explored after they leave the MET, occasional pictographs in place of words. An element that starts out playful like this:










and this:


And later, after a few sausage jokes, crescendos into something brilliant, painful, awkward, and hilarious:



And that's the tip of the iceberg.

There's a sequence of photographs inter-spliced with drawings during a tour of statues and another one during a film [above], four panels in silhouette during a discussion about burlesque, and there's a panel in '3-D' color-separation style while talking about 3-D. A character attempts to better read the text in another panel by grabbing the panel borders! The piece does take Bee and friends through the part of Central Park called the Ramble and all over New York City, but really it's a ramble through different art mediums and styles Little finds interesting. (On his blog, Little refers to this as the practice of "putting it all in there". Which says everything.)

Actually, as far as Jason Little's career in comics, the whole piece is just the tip of the iceberg.

I first became aware of Jason Little (@Beecomix) several years ago when I suddenly found myself in possession of a copy of "Jack's Luck Runs Out" from Top Shelf Productions, a marvelous/crazy comic that's like a Tarantino action-movie but with a playing-card visual style set in the world capital of entertainment: Las Vegas. I first became aware of his rotund reoccurring character Bee, a little over a year ago when I discovered "bee in... Motel Art Improvement Service" on Act-I-Vate.com [Unfortunately, that link now only goes to a 10-page excerpt. Fortunately, that means that a collected print edition from Dark Horse is in the works!] a webcomic about sexual discovery and... a whole lot of other crazy things.

I had the pleasure of meeting the man himself a few months ago at the Carousel event at which he read "bee in... The Ramble" and his personal style is as warmly whimsical as his comics. The surreality of the story for me is that after a sequence in which Bee and her friend get thrown out of a silent movie for the above antics, they arrive at a Carousel event where a sequential self-portrait of Little himself reads the first half of the comic we were hearing! Reading this later on the web broke the 'this comic could be now' feeling, but added an exotic feeling of cluing you into this weird gathering of comicsmiths. Add to this, the fact that it's the last comic in the last issue of "MySpace Dark Horse Presents" and that's mighty strange right?

THE LONG AND SHORTBOX OF IT?
The humor in the character interactions can be a bit 'precious' at times and the draftsmanship has a few uneven moments, but in the end the jokes are great, the art is smooth, plus it's colored fantastically, and the play with art medium and art-styles more than makes up for any faults anywhere else.

Really, all of Jason Little's work I've encountered so far is worth reading. Look him up at Beekeeper Cartoon Amusements' website.

~ @JonGorga

A "Devil" You Probably Don't Know

"Devil Inside" - ToddStashwick.com

Just this month a new webcomic premiered from two mainstream industry talents. But that's two different industries.

Writer/actor Todd Stashwick and comics artist Dennis Calero have joined forces to create a new webcomic on Stashwick's website.

(Calero himself told me about this new venture at a Midtown Comics signing a few weeks ago.)

Calero's art is professional and surprisingly well inked and colored considering that there is no credit for either, which probably means he's doing it all himself.

Honestly three strips is too early to tell what we have on our hands here, but so far I like it! Reminds me of Neil Gaiman's novel "American Gods" so far. The inventive manner in which the title is worked into each strip [Look at that above!] is worth the price of admission, which is of course... free.

The comic updates weekly.

~ @JonGorga

A "Splendor"ous Memorium

"Me, Harvey, and Everyone We Know" - Tablet Magazine

Far more appropriate than any pure-text encomium (including my own on this blog) of the man who changed autobiographical comics is an actual autobiographical comic.

Vanessa Davis has crafted a personal goodbye to underground comic-book legend Harvey Pekar that gives us a unique and wonderful thing: the opportunity to see the tiniest bit of Pekar's working process with an artist from her point of view. She writes first about her frustrations in college with "the fine art world" and "artsy auto-bio comics" that would lead her to appreciate the work of down-to-earth creative people like Harvey and then her single collaborative encounter with him. Sometime recently Vanessa Davis was contacted to illustrate a Pekar story herself. Considering the timing, it's possible Davis will be the last artist to illustrate a Harvey Pekar story.

"he wanted me to get the joke and get that he was the butt of it."
Sounds like Honest Harvey.

Pekar passed just four days before this comic was posted. Hardly enough time to truly sit down and draft what was probably an unscheduled two-page comics piece. Davis' art is a bit crude, but using a few choice cribbed panel images and dialogue from stories Harvey wrote himself adds immensely here; and seeing a few of the different styles of the various artists who've penciled Harvey's stories on the page and leaving them in the original black and white is a nice effect.

Like this panel, originally drawn by R. Crumb for "The Harvey Pekar Name Story" in "American Splendor" #2.

Or this one, probably originally drawn by Gary Dumm.

Undeniably, we've got Davis' style and not Crumb's or Dumm's or Zabel's or anyone else's on display here, but the slight differences in shading and line-quality shine through if you've read enough "American Splendor".

Most of all, I love the simple and evocative ending of this short piece. It's two pages long. It's not going to take you long.

~ @JonGorga

(Psst- follow the link at the top of the post to read the comic!)