(Image stolen from Wide Awake Press.)
Just because file under other does not currently have a lot of time to talk about all the wonderful things that should be filed under other it does not mean that wonderful things are not happening. Here are some things I found interesting in the world of minicomics, small press, self publishing, zines, webcomics etc. during the week ending 06032012:
- National Mini-Comics day was a thing that happened last week. I did not have time to even think about it but Steve Willis did and he put together a really nice series of posts about it. And here is a video where Willis shows three kids how to make a minicomic. Thank God for people that do these kinds of things.
- (I write the word minicomic as "minicomic" by the way. I think most people write it as "mini-comic". I ain't got no time to hit no hyphen key.)
- I think that around the same time I was typing up last week's update, Brad McGinty was posting pictures of his amazing new Xenomorph t-shirts and some bonus prints he made up. Check out those amazing sketches at the bottom of that t-shirt post. Somebody loan me $25. (I will never pay you back.)
- Drop everything and go look at this mind blowing Adventure Time poster Dave Cooper did for HeroesCon!
- Pick up that stuff you just dropped then smash it on the floor as hard as you can because Wide Awake Press has re-launched its website with a new focus on webcomics. I really can't overstate how excited I am to have new webecomics from Pat Lewis, Rob Ullman, Ben Towle, Josh Latta, Jason Horn and Brad McGinty under one banner. And I'm gonna hope we will see some new J. Chris Campbell stuff as well. (Don't make me beg J. Chris.)
- Zak Sally has a good idea for one small gesture Marvel/Disney could make on behalf of the man that made billions of dollars for them. Specifically: "I think Marvel comics should pay for the Jack Kirby Museum. they should fund the thing in its entirety, right now– and not a temporary, pop-up (which would still be awesome), but a permanent, brick and mortar space. what is that– 10, 20 million bucks to do it right? that’s a drop in the bucket. and all profit from the museum in perpetuity could go to the Kirby estate." I agree. That would be a start.
- That stuff you did not know you were curious about because you never heard of it but if you had heard of it you would be curious about it? Yeah, Rob Clough reads that stuff.
- There was a lot of talk about that article in the Wall Street Journal but I did not read it and I am not going to read it and I am not going to link to it because the Wall Street Journal can suck expletive in hell and Rupert Murdoch is an evil piece of crap. I've heard that the article makes some interesting points. One of them being that Michael Straczynski is a terrible writer. I support that 100%. Straczynski has written most of the worst comics I've ever had the misfortune of reading. But that still won't make me give The Wall Street Journal a click through.
- J.T. Yost of Birdcage Bottom Books is publishing a food themed anthology called Digestate. The BBB books I've seen in the past have been really solid and this one features a who's who of my favorite cartoonists (Kochalka, Darryl Ayo, Box Brown, Sam Henderson, Alex Robinson, Ben Snakepit etc. etc.) There is a Kickstarter in progress.
- I don't understand half of whatever the Don Heck Matt Seneca is talking about but good god man look at those colors! I'm not saying that all comics need to look like that but I think a lot more of them should.
- Oh, and that Rob Clough fellow? He does not just read crazy American comics you've never heard of, he also reads crazy international comics you've never heard of.
- Remember when I told you that Comic Books Are Burning In Hell would probably get better? It did! They cleaned up the audio, added a theme song and the overall tone of the thing feels a lot more relaxed and engaging. Solid.
- Super fast micro comic review: Adventure Time issue #4 is very very good.
- Oh hey look, there is Rashy Rabbit on Amazon.
- Pretty much every day since Al Gore flipped the on switch to teh intronets people have wondered about the future of digital comics and how they should look, feel and taste. People continued to talk about it this week. I did too. As a creator, I work mostly in a square(ish) shape. I can easily format squares to fit laptops, cell pad pod phones and even print. (What the F is print!?) As a reader, I don't like clicking. I like to scroll and I think scrolling reads the best. Here, for example is the very best comic on the web. See, scrolling works fine. And we can all argue about the future until the future gets here but I recently realized we will never catch the future. The future has a head start. So, the one thing I would suggest everyone think about is this- just do what works best for the comic. Do what works best for the story. You really don't have to worry all that much about the reader or the device they are going to read it on. The readers and the devices are much more adaptable than we have been giving them credit for. You won't catch the preferred format because it will always change. It is futile. The second we all get the magical multi-platform user friendly do anything Netflix for comics then Apple will tell us the future of cell pad pod phones is oval. I guess, what I'm trying to say is. Give up. Just give up and make your little comics how you like 'em.
This week was one of the worst of my life. I've been employed in one way or another almost every single second of my life since I was 17 and I put Friday up there in my top three worst days on the job ever. The lesson here is that hard work will always always be punished. I think it was the worst week of a lot of people's lives. Maybe next week will be better and I'll post more stuff. Maybe. I could make a joke about bath salt zombies but instead, here is a picture of Luke Skywalker trying to stick is tongue in his sister's ear.
And that's just a taste of some of the interesting things going out there in the wonderful world of comics and things. I can't keep up with it all but I do keep up with a lot of it on twitter and I try to re-tweet the good stuff. You should probably follow me there. If you did something to make comics better this week then high-five!
Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith
p.s. Say you want a leader but you can't seem to make up your mind. I think you'd better close it and let me guide you to my twitter feed.
p.p.s. Let's pretend we went to high school together on facebook.
p.p.p.s. Google + is another place you can read the same thing I posted here.
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