HEY KIDS

Once again with the news round-up. Some of this stuff may be stale, but that’s never closed my local bakery so what the hell. And when I say ‘Hey Kids’ I don’t actually mean kids, I mean some of this links might take you to places you’d rather not go to read things you might not even want to think about. So, if you are a kid – go read something else!

With that in mind here are two stories that appeared on the BBC new site, one worryingly more prominent than the other. The first might test your opinion on censorship, the second, much more shocking, might test it again, but in a different way. Just who is censoring what? And why?

We return now to the less worrying world of comics and design. Read on for da old new news …

HEY KIDS

Hey kids! Time for another week whiz around the interweb to remind you of all the things you might have missed.

What happens when comic celebrities meet and get all squishy? Find out what happened when David met Valerie. Penthouse has all the gossip girl! And one half of that celebrity squishy also delivers a random opinion I could get behind. More like this please.

Dean Haspiel AND the Skatalites! That’s just plain weird – but good too. See the photographic evidence on the Act-i-vate blog.

Oni Press has a talent search for artists – details on their blog. Maximise your chances of making the big time by illustrating any one of three scripts. I’ll bet they’re really hard ones!

Zuda have gotten a teaser of the latest instant winner (that means it’s really good right?) and it’s called Bottle of Awesome so I reckon it better had be! I’ve seen more than most and it’s looks solidly pro to me – bound to be a hit with the ‘kids’. More to my taste however is Andy Belanger’s ‘other’ strip on Transmission-X Raising Hell. At least you get a choice huh? And while on Zuda it’d be nice to get some more Celadore so start hitting that fedback button and let the powers know you need more of what Caanan Grall has to offer.

Art Patient looks at Robot 13 and the PDF that was also delivered to this reviewer. Delos writes better reviews than me on this kinda thing, so what are you waiting for!

You like free fonts for your comics? Yeah, who doesn’t – grab another one at Blambot today.

Seems like only a coupla months ago everyone was talking about comics and phones, then everything went kinda quiet. If that whole thing is still the future you’d like to see – then here’s some more news from the guys at Broken Frontier.

Drew Geraci talks inking on CBR and highlights some worrying trends for the profession.

Gus Higuera is doing an outstanding job getting interviews from willing Zuda contestants over at Comic Info News with his Wonder of Comics column.

If you thought British comics with spunk were a thing of the past you’ve not been keeping up with Spaceships Away. Number 18 is available now according to Down The Tubes.

You can find lots of people talking about Longbox (possible iTunes of the comic book world) and Forbidden Planet is just one blog that is as good a start as any if you don’t know what they’re on about (like me).

El Santo gives himself a make-over over at the Webcomic Overlook and emphasises the inner wrestler!

Bleeding Cool features the new trailer for Brit horror flick Red Mist, and I wouldn’t mind seeing that … it’s about time someone re-made little known Aussie horror flick Patrick (1978).

Well, thas all I got time for this week – see ya next time.

HEY KIDS!

Doesn’t time fly? I’m a busy man these days so I’ll make this a supermarket dash. Checkout and bookmark Gus Higuera’s new blog/site Original Wonders. There’s a whole heap o’goodness therein to keep you amused for hours. If you’re old and blind like me you might want to bump the text up a point or two, but there’s a coupla interesting interviews for Zuda fans, as well as a piece of fan art from Caanan Grall by way of tribute to Zuda winner Re-evolution by the site author.

Kleefeld on Comics reminds us of the incredible animation of Winsor McCay available to see online.

I enjoyed the press release over on Newsarama for the forthcoming Invincible #63 – sure to be a hit with someone somewhere!

A great two-part profile of Charles Biro is up to read on RKB’s Pigs of the Industry blog. I’m gonna have to set aside some proper quality time for that this weekend. I’m almost jealous!

Stupid Comics answers all the questions you never knew you needed answering.

The Webcomic Overlook (one of those words is stupid) looks over Sin Titulo reminding me I wanted to look over that for an age! Damn! Probably just as well I don’t get paid to do this job!

A post on the sometimes uncomfortable relationship between writer and artist makes interesting reading over at the personal blog of writer Shannon Cronin as do all the comments below!

Fans of Zuda entry Mathema better check out this great interview with creator Amy Pearson from Down the Tubes.

But the best comic news of the week is simply this!

HEY KIDS!

Well everyone else is doing it! So here’s my round-up of what’s happening on all those other sites you should be reading when you’re not reading mine.

First up, shocking revelations about Betty and Veronica’s make-over at Stupid Comics proving if it needed proving that there ain’t nuthin’ new under the sun – or at least in comics anyhow.

I was asked to review Xylia Tales, but y’know it’s nice but not my thang – but you can always catch a good review or three over at Art Patient where Delos does not skimp on all the ins and outs, all the need-to-knows, as well as his own invaluable opinion. Why didn’t I review it? Well the nice man who asked made the mistake of adding a subtitle-  ‘A Faerie Tale’ – oooh, you know how much I like the Faeries!

Paul Maybury is doing some commissions over on his blog. Wish I had me some money. I’d pay!

I see Digital Strips had a make-over themselves a while back. I’m wondering if this was a step forward or a shuffle back? Still waiting on their next Zuda podcast for June -even though I hardly agree with anything they say, but it is better when they have at least three people on board so WAIT FOR BRIGID guys!!!

Drawer Geeks did Star Trek at some point with a nice Shepard Fairey homage, but seriously that’s enough Obey now, it’s getting kinda ridiculous.

I suspect you’ll all know about Rodney K Brown’s Zuda reviews over at his blog Pigs of the Industry, but I’ll remind you just the same. Worth following through the month to get one more alternative view of the competition. Shame more people don’t join in, so more power to your elbow RKB!

Over at the Floating Lightbulb there’s that Bengo/Kurtz thang endlessly simmering on in the comments. That thing’s been on the stove for so long you can only use it as a paper weight now.  Still, there is Twelve Things That Hurt Your Webcomic with which number 1 is my own favourite pet peeve – clutter! The unspoken thirteenth thing is don’t fuck off the Halfpixel guys!!! And I’d add a fourteenth – don’t call whatever it is you do a webcomic!!!

Looks interesting, but I don’t know a thing about it, so I’ll just bookmark here and come back later – Ellerbisms!

For fans of Zuda’s most successful failure Crooked Man comes news of one Gabriel Hardman – up and coming on Newsarama. That’s the kinda good news I could do with more of.

Shamelessly cribbed from Scott McCloud’s site the following:

Another site undergoing a refurb (and not before time) is Smallzone that bastion of the British Small press. It’s paper and not digital, but then you can’t have everything – and there are some great great creators out there who are just not giving up on the great print ideal. Well, not just yet. I’ve not enough money, but I still like looking around the shop – Ohh that’s looks nice!

The Webcomic Overlook finds El Santo in controversial mode. It’s no good disagreeing with everyone else! They’ll only beat you down in the end. Anyway, the topic is Zuda’s Eight page rule applied to every other model – discuss!

For the Golden Age, Silver Age or just about any other age The Fortress of Fortitude is the place to be most days. Today is no different.

Er, that’s it for now – more next week I should think! Suggestions always welcome (lazy bastards!)

DEAD (Cowboys vs Zombies)

I thought I’d take a punt and risk a few pence on downloading a comic from Lulu the self publishing site. And what I came across first from editing my links was Dead from Starscape, or maybe Spitfire. It’s hard to tell when folks give themselves more names than content!

The actual story is quite entertaining. I’m not a fan of zombies much, but this barrels along with plenty of gore, twists and turns. The obvious Zombies vs Cowboys set-up is entertaining, the writing by Gary Simpson good and the artwork by Lee O’Connor mostly well done as you can see below. Lots of solid blacks and powerful lighting add dramatic effect, but a fair smattering of good line work is on show as well. All-in-all good value for money.

There’s the rub though. Is this the best way to get paid for what you do? Personally I’d be reformatting this and trying to win a genuine contract. The work here is solid enough to compete with most anything else I’ve seen in Zuda’s monthly competition. It’s a shame there’s no colour involved and I also feel cheated out of a cover! When you advertise stuff online and want money for it you’d better deliver the thing you’re using to advertise with – the front cover!!!

I’ve not gone into the ins and outs of Lulu but it would seem to me to be a great way of selling a trade edition of whatever it is you’ve created, but I can’t see the value in single issue comics. This short form stuff should be free on the web somewhere drawing people in to buying the higher value stuff. I think there’s certainly a value to what I can see here in Dead, but I’m not sure it’s the best way of selling yourself online. It’s good enough that I’d pay to read more. I just didn’t want to pay upfront on a chance of it being something I’d be interested in. I did though dear reader, I did!

WASTED AND THE DFC

Just thought I’d ask if anyone out knew what happened to the last great British comic launch? Last year Wasted from Bad Press was launched and seemed to disappear just as quickly. I believe the DFC has also gone the way of the west. That struck me as a possibility for success sold on a subscription only basis and had built up quite a reputation – especially in schools and libraries. Looks like I was wrong. Paper products are just not cutting the mustard it seems. Not with regard to comics anyway. It’s seems odd to me that everyone is predicting the death of newspapers and comics and yet bulky and expensive magazines of other types seem to be doing just fine. I look in my newsagents everyday and there’s always a great choice – as long as it’s not comics you’re looking for. I think there’s a more fundamental problem here. I just can’t put my finger on it right now. It might be content and not form?

Wasted (above) was always going to be a difficult sell with the drug references, but the DFC (below) seemed an easy sell and plenty of great content albeit devoid of mature content. All the same a good solid children’s comic was what we needed to kick start the industry. If you’re not selling to kids first – you’re on a losing trend! Unfortunately the backers of this project Random House lost their nerve.

MUDDLED

Despite calling me Chief here’s another artist and writer determined to hurl themselves against the unforgiving rocks of the three panel gag-a-day strip. Early days as they say. Will they survive? Will we care? Their spam, sorry mail is below.

Hey Chief!

Just dropping a line to let you know that myself and the good Matthew Dunne have decided to plunge into the overcrowded world of webcomics. You can check out our work at www.muddledcomic.com

It’s still in the early days, but we’ll be going for a while, for our own sakes if no-one elses. Might be too early to let us know what you think, but it’d be cool if you kept an eye on us!

Thanks a lot,
Simon Fay.

For myself I like the artistic style, but that’s about all you can say. In the writing a few hits and a few misses, which sounds kinda lame until you think about it. That’s pretty good!

DEAD HEAVEN

Should have posted this ages ago. But here it is a PDF press release for Dead Heaven.* Take a look – it’s lovely, then off you go to the website. I’ll be back to review it at some point but the art looks amazing. Is it the same guy that was in the Zuda comp just ten seconds ago? I think it is, and what a transformation!!!

*[No longer available to download here, but send me an email if you are interested and I'll see if I can sort you out]

THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT

Sometimes I just have to share things with you. This time it’s a link. You might hate me for it or you might love me for it. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. Are you ready? Here it is – “The devil made me do it link o’ the week“. I feel better now!

ODDS & ENDS

Odds and ends day today.

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Really I’m sure you are all aware of these two famous sites. Hidden away in the depths of the Comicraft site is this essential how to selection of HOW TO articles. And as recently linked to by just about everyone the Blambot site has this tasty article on the grammar of comic book lettering as well as some spiffing logo designs to inspire you. With all the free fonts to download you got be checking those sites out regular like!

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I’m taking a look through the comics I link to in the 20 Digital strips section over on your right there (oh I moved them, down a bit then). About time you say, and I reckon about half of them are going to be replaced. Who by? Good question. I’m glad you asked. Why don’t you let me know what strips are a) alive and kicking and b) kicking! Go on pimp yourself – you know you want to.

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There are webcomics out there other than Zuda I believe. This month I’ve had two requests. First up is Vendable a slice of life comic with a difference. The amazing difference is that it’s not boring the pants off me. It’s cleanly drawn even though a rougher look might suit the story more and it’s well written and it’s … intriguing. I like that I’m not sure what’s going on or why. I’ve not read the whole thing yet, but I will. My only gripe is the picture vs word ratio – some of those balloons are a bit heavy. It’s great naturalistic dialogue, but the way it’s broken down is not altogether sympathetic to the layouts. The balloon shapes are not sophisticated enough to cope with that amount of text. Well worth a look despite that and when I’ve read the whole through I wouldn’t be surprised if it wound up as a link in my sidebar. We’ll see.

Next up is a biggie! Galaxion has been going for years, and when I say years, I mean years. It looks like a labour of love – a little bit homage to all the things the author obviously has an interest in, part rambling story with long-considered characters she doesn’t want to let go. It is what it is. It doesn’t seem to have any high minded aspirations and is probably the better for it. Good clean fun – adventuresome (is that a word?) – clearly drawn with a good eye for spacial arrangements, nice lettering, stylised art – all adds up to a good read. Criticisms might include the fan art diversions which I don’t have the time for and a five word synopsis that seems for no good reason to have been stretched out to several hundred! Also not much colour. It would have to be very good colour to match the artwork so perhaps that’s a stretch too far at the moment. Still, so much material on this professional looking site that it’ll take me some time to digest it all, but rest assured I like the look of this (reminding me a little of Act-i-vate’s Sam and Lilah – but in space). I’ll be back for more.

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This selection of super-short filler posts was brought to you by Too Much To Do Too Little Time To Do It In Enterprises PLC. I have a Zuda entry in mind y’know!