THE BLOG: 2009/2010

This is how I started off a year ago and oh how the year has changed the blog! In fact that’s the wonderful thing about the blog, about the nature of blogs, all blogs. They grow. They grow in ways unexpected. And the more you look after them – the more they grow. Like a plant you can encourage it it in one direction or another, but, at the end of the day, it’ll grow where it wants to – searching not for light but for audience. Not being a wonderful gardener it’s true that I sometimes make mistakes. Sometimes ideas are not yet ready to be grown outdoors and I have to bring them back in again to keep them warm for a bit longer.

So looking back – the ‘In the Tub’ interviews seemed to go down well. Sheldon Vella joined in the fun, Daniel Govar gave up some of his process, Steve Steiner, Sam Little and Gabe Ostley of team Hammer expressed themselves fully (I have other plans for Rob Berry),  Canaan Grall of recently completed Celadore and waay back David Gallaher and Steve Ellis offered me a chance to kick the series off in fine style. Still, that’s only seven baths this year and I realise I should have tried harder for more and got a little cleaner too. My last interview of this year is being scrutinised by a crack team of corporate lawyers so it’s unlikely to see your computer screen until next year – but I’m hoping it will be worth the wait!!! Next year I’ll have to put my foot down on the gas and deliver at least twelve – but who to grab for the Tub? Who? Whooooo?

My reviewing of the competition and of all the Zuda entries goes without saying, although I’m not sure you could even describe it as reviewing. I’m not a reviewer and it’s not how I see my purpose. I’m just having a conversation – throwing out ways of thinking – running a highlighter pen over a few passages – I don’t know, but it ain’t reviewing. Nothing like yo mamma’s reviewing anyway!!

The Star Chamber! Ah yes, the Star Chamber! That didn’t go down terribly well did it? I thought it had legs to be honest even though yes, it was a bit of a piss-take. Very difficult to get the balance right. I wanted it to be tough enough for people to be interested in reading it, but not so tough that it was just a bunch of insults. Some of the judges managed better than others. Perhaps I should have controlled it better somehow. Part of me still has a hankering after the old Comic Fencing format and I’d like to set that up, but getting people interested AND getting them to produce the goods is a lot of hard work. I also had another idea (‘pass-it-on’) which withered on the vine!? Nobody’s fault, but ideas do need a lot of energy for take-off and some are destined to fizz-out and fail on the launch pad. Anyhow the blog does need to branch out and not be quite so Zuda-centric in future – as always, time and format are the problems, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

My golden-age comic challenges were a little difficult to keep up and I never quite got my finger on the process there although they were fun. It was an early nod to interactivity, but those kinda things need a big audience to work and a big audience I have not got! It all transformed slowly into Panel Peculiar on blogspot but I’m not convinced that’s working properly either. I think just being occasionally ‘amusing’ in not a big enough draw so I’ll likely bring that feature ‘back indoors’ at some point. It kinda ties in with my Stripper Rippers comic on Drunk Duck, but, as a friend has already opined – I’m not pushing it far enough!! I’ll figure out a new connection in January!

Of course, you know I’ve been reading James Joyce’s Ulysses for Rob Berry’s comic site Ulysses “Seen” and fooling around with their blog. You already know by reputation that this is one of the most difficult books to … blah, blah … and I’ve found it very difficult. It’s sucked up a huge amount of my time, but halfway through I think I can say in all honesty – it’s been worth it. I’ve also done a spot of reviewing there and I update the Hypertext Chapbook too. Early days for that project so still some thinking to do. I’m not sure the audience there appreciates my particular brand of stupidity. Ulysses also means the book reviews have been sidelined, but I still waffle about the movies I watch (for light relief only).

What else. Oh yeah – I’ve an absolute stack of scanning to do still so that I can present some old and forgotten comic gems to a new audience. Although the downloads get few comments I can see how popular they are with collectors and historians. I struggled with the format of delivering them but I think I know what I’m doing now – I just have to do it!

Lastly, I’ll be bringing my own Zuda entry to the table and bringing a whole heap of design related projects to the blog – so creation will be to the fore in 2010. I’ve got to cut back on the cheap talk and start delivering some actual original content. Stand by your beds!!

Oh, I knew I’d forget something! Forever4 has big plans if my collaborator has the patience! And, as ever, The New Accelerators will launch at some point in some form in 2010!

ZUDA: 2009 – PART THREE

My last note on Zuda this year then picks up on a couple of comments made by readers yesterday. Zuda has been around now for just over two years and its reputation is slowly growing. High Moon did indeed win a Harvey Award. Bayou picked up a few gongs also. The print collections are selling. There is less knocking of the flash player and a few talented creators have gone on to better things. There’s no denying any of that. Zuda grows, a little slowly for impatient people like myself, but it grows.

The awards thing? Well, I’m not a big fan of awards – any kind of awards, and you could easily say it’s because I’ve never won one, but honestly it’s the work that always comes first. It wouldn’t alter my understanding of High Moon if it won ten awards or none. Naturally it means a lot to the recipient. Anyone would be understandably proud, but I’m sure David would agree he’s more proud of his work than of the trophy. I hope the same is true of Jeremy Love. Knocking awards is easy and it always sounds like sour grapes, but I don’t think (and I know a lot of you don’t think) that these awards are terribly significant – yet! It’s a start and I’m glad to see Zuda creators in the mix for sure, but it’s very early days. Webcomix as a medium still has a terrible problem with validity, a problem which is therefore reflected in any awards, a problem more likely to do with the ‘web’ part of the word than the ‘comix’ part of the word (webcomics, webcomix, whatever), but a problem never-the-less. Still, if ANY award has any impact on Zuda creators getting better jobs and bigger paychecks – I’m all for ‘em!!!

As for the print collections we won’t know how well they are doing until we see a second volume. The only proof of success or otherwise we will get is to see something on a shelf. I can’t imagine Zuda being keen to share all the information with us, but like everyone else reading here I hope for the best while expecting the worst. I’d very much like to spend another year reviewing the Zuda competitions and so I’m relying on the print collections to sell reasonably well in the hope that justifies the accountants at DC approving funding for it to continue. From a purely selfish point of view I expect all of you reading this and a million more (by my reckoning that makes precisely one million and one) to rush out and buy all the ‘trades’ this Christmas and well into the new year.

The flash player still has a critical problem for me and that is the inability to link to a specific page. I hear from readers that the loading times are still a problem for some.

The other major point brought to my attention yesterday was that there are a great number of strips that failed to take the checkered flag but yet still live on. Just because creative teams have failed to win on Zuda it doesn’t mean that they’ve curled into balls and given up. Although I’ve not the time to list ‘em here, you will find EVERY single Zuda strip reviewed on this very blog and where possible I’ve included many links to production blogs, personal sites, continuing strips and the like. There is a search widget in the side panel. AND if I’ve missed a link (as I probably have on a lot of the more recent reviews) then just let me know the link and I’ll happily update. You can’t expect me to do it all myself!!!

I can’t keep up with every Zuda creator, so if you’ve any news about what you or anyone else is up to and you think my readers would like to read about it just drop me a line.

I’ll be here throughout 2010 keeping my beady eye on the Zuda competitions. I’ll be generous with my brickbats and miserly with my bouquets – it’ll be tough love – but y’know, deep down, it’ll be love. Zuda-love! (Ew!)

ZUDA: 2009 – PART TWO

Is it tomorrow already? I gotta stop making these unlikely promises! Nice to see that Ron has got in ahead of me with a little round-up on the Zuda blog as to what has happened this year. Yesterday I looked at the current selection of instant wins, so the next thing to look at would be the competition winners. It hasn’t happened yet, but at some point one would hope they’d be some kinda of tipping point where interest in the catalogue would outweigh interest in the competition. It would make for a more pleasing on site experience having that balance. The only problem I can foresee is that the staffers already doing the job can hardly be seen to be keeping up with the updates. Might be nice to see both ways on that visible front page schedule – one week into the past and one week into the future. I’m not saying it isn’t a tough job keeping up with everything, but y’know, it is the job.

So winners this year include; strips yet to begin: Goldilock – In Maps & Legends – Pluck – Absolute Magnitude – Rockstar; and strips begun:  The Hammer – Safe Inside – Deadly – Earthbuilders – Lily of the Valley – Sidewise. You can find all the competition winners here.

My opinion on the quality? I’d say mixed. Slightly less than wildly enthusiastic. But y’know that’s me anyway. It’s possibly unfair to say anything much about strips that haven’t yet rethunk themselves out of competition mode. I might say don’t drop that mode too quickly. Who knows what might happen? If the Timony’s Night Owls can be put to bed and Caanan Grall’s Celadore laid to rest what chance does your strip have when you look hard at it in the mirror? You might look at The Hammer’s numbers and wonder what laid that team off. As an almost daily summer diversion I thought it worked a treat. Yet, it too was passed over. Also seemingly passed over was Re-evolution, which yet again seemed to my eye stronger than many others – strong in the sense of it being a recognisable ‘property’. There may be different reasons for each case, but in my piss-poor opinion these four seemed like players. Of this year’s winners and if I had to hang my colours on a single strip I’d go for Lily of the Valley. It seems to have a strong sense of itself and has a story you can imagine having enough guts to transfer to other media. It also has a particularly strong and individual style to it. If I could swap my lack of skills by some magic I’d likely pick Adam Atherton as a victim – so look out Adam!

Of course, Deadly seems to be doing well, thanks to some detailed work and some rich colours. In Maps & Legends looks promising as does Goldilock. The others all have there plus points but look somehow a little more familiar. I don’t mean that they are derivative in any way, but rather they need, or might need, a sharper cutting edge – something to really stick in the imagination, though that might only be needed to grab my imagination. Others may already be hooked.

Looking past this year, in total there are twenty-five competition winners (soon to be twenty-six). Azure has come to an end though seems likely for a new start in the new year. It looks good enough for three seasons and maybe another strip that sees print. Blood Hunter approaches the end of its contract. Devil’s Wake is not far behind. When these titles, as well as Deadly and Safe Inside come up for renewal (I’m beginning to sound like the crowd in Logan’s Run!!!) it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Other titles move ahead. High Moon. Black Cherry Bombshells. Road. Supertron. Dual. Popular choices, and good looking ones to my mind, so perhaps democracy is working at just under 50% of the time. Better than not at all. Democracy doesn’t get them cut from the line-up though.

Two other titles. Extracurricular Activities probably didn’t get picked up because the Zuda staff didn’t like typing the words as much as I don’t, so pay attention folks – no tongue-twisters please – for your own sake! Melody was another strip, like The Hammer, that completed itself out of existence, but probably to the benefit of the creator who seems to be getting the ‘real’ contracts in. Which is probably a good point at which to say how much I like anthologies. From my own position I’d just like to say there are some folks putting out some great collections and Zuda seems ideal placed to follow-up with a similar format. I don’t hold out a great deal of hope for the individual editions they seem determined to put out. No matter how smart the material is – the opportunity to sell it to the whole of the Zudaverse is lost. If there was a Zuda collection then it would be not only on my Xmas list but I’d have bought copies for other people for sure. Look at the banner Caanan Grall has created for Zuda this week – everybody in – gives you a warm feeling – the kinda warm feeling that has you reaching for your wallet.

ZUDA: 2009 – PART ONE

Just a few days left to confirm the latest winner over at Zudacomics.com which looks set to be a manga styled adventure. The December competition was a bit short but I hardly think anyone noticed. The whole month still seems a little long for what is basically a two-week long competition.

What is it possible to say about Zuda at the end of another year. Looking at the instant winners Bayou trundles along at its own pace; Bottle of Awesome is coming up to its sixtieth screen with a somewhat darker tone to it ; I Rule the Night has stopped – just stopped; Imaginary Boys has started up again; La Morte Sisters was the most recent recipient of the instant win award; Postcard is Postcard; Night Owls have just been cast adrift; and finally, Street Code has started up again with some promising new screens. You can find them all right here on the Instant Winners page.

What to say about the line-up above? Very disappointed to see Night Owls dropped as it seemed to me to have the longest legs – though it might not translate best into a print collection. It would be a terrible shame to think this strip especially might suffer from the indignity of being sold across the counter as it seems a very natural webcomic. The defining factor for me in favour of Night Owls is that it has heart and where many other strips get by on surface texture this has a narrative potential. I’m not saying it has been handled in the best possible way as there seemed a bit of dip in the middle the first and last chapters were particularly strong. The idea that a renewal might depend on print sales leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Street Code, though I wasn’t an instant fan, seems like a no-brainer. Dean Haspiel has a big name and delivers a quality narrative to match so let him get on with it. Can you believe I wasn’t too keen on this because I thought there would be many more similar entries!! Hoo boy, did I predict that one wrong? I really thought they’d be a flood of semi-autobiographical works. No, it’s all fantasy from here on in, but not all of it bad. Bottle of Awesome too looks like a good fit. It wouldn’t look out-of-place anywhere on the web. A good choice by the editors I should say. I should say because I’m not likely to say it again!

I Rule the Night has been on hiatus so long I think most people have figured out why. There is a surface ‘why’ though and an underlying ‘why’! All I wonder is why … are Zuda so bad at communicating anything … sometimes anything at all? If there’s one thing where modern comics and the internet fail to meet it’s here on the internet. Communication and participation have been revolutionised and comics, as usual, are way behind the curve – the corporations waaaaaay behind the curve! You can criticise Zuda for individual strip choices or praise them for the same it matters not one bit and that is down to your reading preferences, but where I think they have made their biggest mistake (perhaps their only mistake) is the way in which they interact with the readership and I Rule the Night demonstrates that lack of understanding perfectly. They say talk is cheap and that’s true, but a ‘voice’ is priceless. Zuda, sort yourself out or give me a job!

Moving onto Imaginary Boys, which is another strip I’ve not read, again I can understand the choice without appreciating the strip itself. I’m wondering if all instant winners get 180 screens to prove themselves? What I mean here is that if an instant winner was cancelled after 60 screens that would look like a bad choice on the editorial side and I guess that would mean an admission of some sort. Can’t imaginary that happening – can you?

I admire a couple of things about Zuda strip Bayou but the most noticeable one so far seems the way in which the story seems never likely to reach any kind of natural end or even breaking point. It’s as if the creator thinks that if he keeps moving the editors will never be able to cancel him! At least it is reaching an audience that appreciates it, though again, everyone is wondering how the book sales are going.

Lastly, ignoring Postcard (which isn’t the worst written strip on site), we come to La Morte Sisters. This is really too early to tell so we’ll give this the benefit of the doubt. It’s another supernatural strip which looks good, but has yet to scream INSTANT WINNER to me.

Hard to believe this is the complete instant winner line-up. Yet the absent strips you imagine should be here are actually competitions winners and NOT editorial picks. I’ll say that again for the hard of hearing – the competition winners are NOT editorial picks. Oh dear, sometimes I make myself laugh.

Tomorrow I’ll cast my eyes over the winners of said competitions, but for now – adios!

ZUDA: AYANNA

Ayanna by Wai Kwong Chan is waay better than it is ranked currently on Zuda. In fact I’m personally insulted on behalf of the creative talent. Criticism of the dialogue due to some language issues are valid of course, but honestly you could say that about half the entries this month or any other month. Also, considering the fact that the English speakers are hardly doing a stand-out job on the word-smithing, I think it’s a bit rich to call him out on some wobbly lines.

The dialogue aside I admit also that the final screen does somewhat pull the rug from under your feet, but the lead up to it I think is wonderful. The jungle chase with the panthers killing the monkey really stands out as an enjoyable and satisfying sequence. It manages a real comic feel to it and I like it a lot. I actually like the quirky swivelling eyeballs too. I can be quite forgiving when I want to be and for some reason I feel quite warmly towards this entry. I appreciate the choice of subject and if anything I’d say this has something a little different at the core.

It’s always hard to say what turns you on about some comic strips. This one just pushes a few of my buttons. I can see the faults in the execution, but somehow I just like it very much anyway. There are better constructions to be found elsewhere this month for sure, but sometimes a comic can transcend the construction and this looks to me something more like a tree than a skyscraper.

It speaks to me – and you can’t buy that!

ZUDA: THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS

The House Always Wins by Josh Hechinger & John Bivens has the best synopsis of the month – short, informative and just well written. Everyone else take note. It also has one of the best single screens of the month in screen four. That’s the good news. All-in-all it seems on the surface to be a very solid entry but I just can’t get very excited by it for some reason. All the elements that I criticise in other entries seem well enough done here, but there’s something missing.

I think in this case it’s that the murder of the plumber wasn’t achieved quickly enough. Though it was well done and necessary for the set-up I feel I wanted to get to grips with the main characters more. One more screen at least of our heroes might have rounded it all off better, but even then they are going about the business of the story and I wanted to know them as characters.

As it is there’s a bit of a fade at the end because it doesn’t round out the eight screens very well. There’s no cliffhanger, which isn’t always necessary, but then there’s no more subtle resolution either – it just kinda stops. The title is not the worst, but again I feel it maybe misses a trick in referring to the ‘villain’ rather than our heroes. Of course, it may be that ‘our heroes’ are just cannon fodder and the house really is the central character, which wouldn’t be a bad idea, but there is a slight confusion there. Both creatives here seem well practised enough to deliver should they get the win. It may be asking a lot to have another supernatural tale in the Zuda line-up, but, y’know, it looks like they could actually do it if required. I’m not mad for it, but it is solid.

ZUDA: MARK WOLFCHILD

Mark Wolfchild by Li Shi Peng and David LeVack made me laugh, which a reaction of sorts. I’m just trying to make my mind up as to whether it was intentional or not! This is a case of the artist coming up with whatever hes wants to draw and the writer just writing over the top of what’s there. It’s probably not the most natural way to make anything work, but if they were to secure the win I’m sure the writer would make a few more demands on the direction. It wouldn’t make a terrible amount of sense otherwise!

So, anything that makes me laugh I warm to, but like I say I think a lot of that might be coming out of the disconnected process between artist and writer. It has a simply stunning opening screen and a few choice design elements, but it also has a few problems. The lettering is ugly and the placement unsympathetic. The writing is obviously trying hard to pull it all into some sense, but it may be trying too hard and against the odds. It might have worked better as a complete comedy though obviously it’s not to be taken too seriously as it is. With all the great design going on it’s hard to fathom why the artist appears to have given up on page four and then got right back into it on the following page, which gives me the impression it has been drawn out of order and perhaps over a long period. You don’t exactly knock out a screen like the opening one over night!

The title doesn’t help! I defy anyone to read the words Mark Wolfchild without a giggle. I feel a competition coming on … stupid manly names on a postcard please. My entry: Lucas Ironhammer! Remember that name – for it will be legend!

ZUDA: JASON & THE ARGONAUTS REDUX

Jason and the Argonauts Redux by Barry Keegan has a couple of niggly problems for me, but it’s the one big problem that has resulted in an unexpected bottom ranking position. The big problem is the exclamation mark that has appeared over the heads of all the readers! Like the one that appears over the deer in the story! It might be that Barry thinks this is a hook or a puzzle that readers want answering and it is true that adding that kind of element should be a good thing – except that here it has backfired completely. The problem is that readers are lazy and they don’t give a shit! Heck I like this strip, but even I don’t give a shit. I imagine that the problem here is that the hook or puzzle is the thing beyond the fact that they are all some robots, not just that they are robots. As it stands these two elements (The classical Greek adventure and the robotic nature of the cast) just seem to sit there. I mean, you want people to be intrigued and you want to engage them, but you don’t want them to be so puzzled they give up and move on.

The artwork and the dialogue and most everything else seems to stand up pretty well. The artwork reminds me of both John Romita Jr AND Philip Bond, both of whom I like a lot. I’m not keen on the upper and lowercase roman lettering and I positively hate the balloon tails that would have your eye out, but I could even live with those if the concept was firing on all cylinders. I’d place a bet that the idea is there in Barry’s head – he’s just miscalculated how most people are going to read this. I definitely want to see this creator submit to Zuda again though and another one where I think to myself “I’d like to work on something with this guy!” Some terrific art this month, but hoo-boy, the ideas (or the execution thereof) are real stinkers!

I’d like to suggest that there’s another area of creativity. One that is usually given over to the writer. Writers are said to come up with the ideas, but realistically they could just write the damn thing like the artist just draws it. I’m seeing a failure of concept here on Zuda quite a bit. To me, writing is tough, drawing is tough, but coming up with the IP, the idea, the concept, the saleable property, the whatever you want to call it, is a separate task almost as difficult if not more difficult than the more obvious disciplines of writing and drawing.

ZUDA: SUBSUELO

SubSuelo by Alfredo Rodríguez & Gabriel Rodríguez has a lot to commend it, the artwork being the kind of graphical treatment I like with plenty of dynamic shortcuts and strong shapes. It has all the elements of a tribute to the throwaway nineties Image style with all the venom-like aggression and weird poses and decorations, but it’s actually better than that by virtue of being stripped down. I like it – it looks great.

However – it reads very badly indeed. Here the idea is non-existant and the dialogue banal. The synopsis only makes it seem more shallow. If the density of the first couple of screens had been kept up we might have got more out of it, but the overwhelming feeling was, by the end, that there was nothing here to read. It faded before the midpoint. A great shame. I think someone could possibly have written over the top to drag something out of it, because there is enough incident, but there’s just no suggestion even of a story. No real hook – just someone going through the motions. It leaves me feeling the same way as I felt about Villain this month. I’d like to write for this artist, but there’s no way I’m going to read this strip.

It may be that there’s a hesitancy about the language which may explain the lack of dialogue. That’s unfortunate if true, but everyone has to go over the hurdles – it’s a fact – you can’t just not write anything. Cracking art though – I could look at it a long time.

ZUDA: GOOP JR.

Goop Jr. by Mike Robinson is another strip that falls rather on the edge of my area of interest. As I’ve said many a time before I think that writing for a younger audience is actually harder than writing for adults, but y’know I was born forty-two so it’s a little unfair of me to judge what ‘the kids’ might or might not like. I’m not sure the story makes any instant and complete sense and I have the feeling the world view should have been resolved in the eight screens so that at the very least the audience fully understands the rules for the future.

I may be asking too much. The essential booger-ness of the boogers and the idea of them getting  involved in a car smash is hilarious. Although they are walking and talking boogers I suppose we have to take that for granted. Perhaps I’m trying to be too literal-minded about this but even if we accept walking and talking boogers I still think some kind of explanation is due re: the bigfoot and his cold. The relationship that might develop between human father and son and the booger father and son seems like a really great idea and the place where you might get the ‘adult’ story over the juvenile laughs. It has a great many possibilities when I think of it that way. If only the whole thing had a better focus. It really needed a route one intro, but I feel that it has possibly been over-thought.

The art seems a little functional, but good enough to carry it along. The dialogue also may be a little strained. But, for a mild cold it has the opportunity to make the full-blown flu if it were to go in the right direction. It has something about it that escaped me on the first read through, but doesn’t seem like a Zuda crowd pleaser and that may well be the death of it.

Also shouldn’t it be called BOOGER JNR!