The comics burrito
That's the end of all of that
Okay, as I said earlier I was planning on ending this blog when I left the country for the summer this June, but I'm jumping the gun and ending it now. I don't have the time to talk about all the comics stuff I want to and it's doubtful I'll get any between now and then. I missed Dave Sim's Onion interview, and the announcement of and the Shelving of
American Power('American Power' consisting of leather bar patrons punching out Osama sounds like the best idea in the world in theory, but I guess it fell apart in practice) and I realized that I just can't keep up with this anymore. I'd like to thank the following people for sending me lots of people to look at my feeble posts, and for having good blogs themselves:
http://thoughtballoons.blogspot.com/http://www.addblog.com/ (also dead?)
http://www.alltooflat.com/about/personal/sean/http://www.tcj.com/journalista/(is it still scheduled to come back someday?)
http://franklinharris.blogspot.com/http://www.neilalien.com/http://www.progressiveruin.com/http://www.comicsworthreading.com/http://www.dahlbergcentral.com/http://www.livejournal.com/users/shogunmcblack/As for the other two people, Chon has some column at
Continuity Pages and Terl is teaching people how to read comics at some university. I'm going to bring back my personal blog,
here, pretty soon if you guys want to keep up with that.
Comictastic: An Open Letter to Web Cartoonists
The creator of the comictastic comic-strip viewing software (which lets you get around all the moneymaking plans those awful greedy web cartoonists throw at you) has posted an open letter to web cartoonists, and as you might expect, he totally come off like an evil Dutch space pirate.
In conclusion, the choice is yours. Either you can spend your time and money fighting people like me and my users, or you can embrace what I believe to be the future of webcomics, and work with me for everyone's benefit. People want this technology; don't deny them that.
You're either with him or against him, cartoonists! Not only does he want to totally ruin RSS by encouraging people to put ads in it (if people wanted ads, no one would use his software) and then tries to pass off a program that automatically downloads strips daily, which is a wee bit damaging to strips that follow the
Modern Tales model of offering today's strip free and charging for archives as just a 'specialized web browser' to boot. And while you can't pester people for money for your comic, he can pester people to register his software! But that's okay!
(link via comixpedia)
ARbiter of Good Taste #1 by Jeff Chon
You see that name over to your side in the 'contact' section? THAT Jeff Chon, the guy who never blogs anything, has some column at continuitypages.I've never read the comic he's talking about here so I can't tell you if he's crazy or not.
Let's all talk about CEREBUS #300
I'm still a bit befuddled by it, so here are some message board discussions to help me and you out. If I find any more good ones, I'll add them in the comments. You can too!
Comic Book Resources, with a great post by Paul McEnery.
The Comics Journal.
Also at TCJ's message boards
Dave Sim's posts to the Cerebus Yahoo! group. Yahoo boards are a nightmare for me personally, so I'm glad someone's putting them up in a readable format. Let me lift one here without permission...
Message 38109 of 38113 | Previous | Next [ Up Thread ] Message Index
Msg # Go
From: "Gerhard"
Date: Thu Mar 11, 2004 4:56 pm
Subject: Re: The Fourth Rail's review of Cerebus 300 (not much in the Wa...
--- In cerebus@yahoogroups.com, ctowner1@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 3/11/2004 5:51:12 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> bigbrownindia@y... writes:
> So, basically, Cerebus #300 is about as good as Emma Frost
> #9, but not quite as good as, say, Gotham Central #17? That's
> what I thought too.
>
> S.
> Yes. Because Gotham Central was *22* pages, it's
obviously "meatier" than
> Cerebus 300! ;^)
>
> e
> l nny
Well, all I can say is, when I read the front page story on the Arts & Life section of the NATIONAL POST with a big colour picture that Superman was going back to his home planet and would be riding a cool motorcycle, I thought, DAMN! Why didn't I think of that? If I'd've just had Cerebus go back to his home planet and ride a cool motorcycle as the ending of issue 300, I COULD'VE BEEN ON THE FRONT PAGE OF CANADA'S OTHER NATIONAL NEWSPAPER! Jeet Heer? Brad McKay?
Sorry I let you guys down.
The group is
here, if you want to dig through everything else.
Pulitzer nominees leaked
Gary Trudeau, Steve Sack and Matt Davies are the nominees in cartooning if this list is reliable.
(link via the Drudge Report)
CHESS (Calvin and Hobbes Extensive Strip Search)
Here's an index to the Calvin and Hobbes' strips that actually includes the comics. It'll probably be shut down soon (and rightfully so) but if you want to read every single Calvin and Hobbes online, you can for a while anyway. (found at
TCJ's message board)
A Tribute to Jack Kirby
Another kirby tribute thing, this one being a bit better than that
comicon one ('capepunk'? punk as in 'gets raped in prison'?) but still, they're kinda depressing. Of course I don't mind anyone saying that Kirby's a genius and that his art's amazing etc., I say that myself. I'm reading that black and white Mr. Miracle collection right now and it's incredible. What bothers me is everyone talking about how we're all in Jack Kirby's industry. How no one can ever be as good as him and we should all just be content to see people spend years rehashing a character he created on a whim. Of course a lot of pros would say that as they earn their checks off of doing that. Kirby wrote comics for kids, and any attempt to make them 'mature' enough for the 30-somethings that read comics today is just going to result in ridiculous material that only a few thousand people in the world are interested in reading. Imagine where children's books would be if nearly all books out there were poor retellings of Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss. That's kind of where Marvel is right now, except they're doing it for adults.
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