The News Blog of Comics Culture
You gotta hand it to Archie Comics. They are completely staying on top of current trends and even controversies. If it isn’t gay marriage and interracial dating, it’s now income inequality and the Occupy Movement, as shown by this awesome Jill Thompson variant cover. Not that this comic will necessarily deliver a sharp critique of Keynesian models vs the Austrian School…by now “Occupy anything” is just another buzz word. But it is definitely today’s buzzword.
As comics become more accepted, we see more mainstream awards covering them. The Bram Stoker Awards are from the Horror Writer’s Association. The Stoker’s have added a graphic novel category and the nominees were recently announced:
Have you heard? Sex sells. Specifically a book called Stuff About Sex… For Guys Who Are Not Like, Total Idiots, a digital-only books of sex tips by cartoonist David Mellon that in only a few days has become one of comiXology’s top 20 graphic novels. Published by Top Shelf, here’s a sneak peek at the first two pages—it’s basically a bro-to-bro sex guide for the uninitiated. The author is a self-confessed hippie and it shows….but you know, maybe we need more hippies!
OK, last post about Order of the Stick for awhile. The Kickstarter drive closed at $1,254,120. When Double Fine Adventure (currently at $2M+) closes, Order of the Stick will officially be the #3 drive of all time. Until then it’s holding the place at #2. Rich Burlew lists some of his accomplishments with this:
Webcomics collective Act-i-vate is celebrating its sixth year with a bunch of new comics and returning old favorites, including new work by Daryl Cunningham and Igor Kordey. If you’ve forgotten how impressive Hyeondo Park is or how funny John Kerschbaum is, it might be good to take a look again.
Artist Tommie Kelly sent us a link to his webcomic Ouija: A Panelplay, which uses what he calls “PanelPlay” which is basically clicking for the next panel, along with some subtle, appropriate animation effects. The story is nothing great, but it is a nice demo. I know panel-click advance comics have been around for a while, so in the comments, throw up some links to other recent Future Comics of note.
In Seattle, the Elysian Brewing Company is debutingthe next beer in their 12 Beers of the Apocalypse program, with labels by Charles Burns, for that “craft beer that gives me the creeps” feeling.
If you’re racking your brains to fill our your Harvey Award nomination ballot, several companies put out a list of their eligible comics around this time. So to kick things off, here’s AdHouse Books:
Actually, we were out Sunday night and forget to set the DVR. Oops. Here’s a mostly positive recap from TV Geek Army. It seems the boys went for a spin in the Batmobile and Jason Mewes showed up and stole someone’s credit card. Just another day on the job. By all accounts, this was a better episode than the first.
Gender switched art seems to be very popular these days, as with the gender-swapped JLA and Avengers. Well, over at Escher Girls, webcomic creator Shobana ‘Bob’ Appavu (Demon of the Underground) served up this gender-swapped Avengelyne/Shi cover.
According to the organizers themselves, the key factor in Comic Con’s 2010 decision to spurn suitors from Anaheim and Los Angeles, and to stay in San Diego (at least through 2015) was the stated commitment of local hotels to not gouge future visiting Con-goers with jacked up rates during the Con. It was, however, the promise by local politicians and hoteliers to pursue an ambitious expansion of the San Diego convention center (already bursting at the seams from the 125,000 capacity of the Con) that was expected to lock down Comic Con in San Diego long term.
Jim Shooter is a pretty polarizing figure. Love him or hate him, he was a long-serving Editor-in-Chief at Marvel and he’s one of the few people not currently working at Marvel that’s really qualified to way in on what Marvel’s attitude’s towards artist selling sketches might be.
Kids in India don’t read comics either.
Or so says this story on the just concluded second annual Comic Con India:
The major con season for 2012 kicked off with MegaCon in Orlando. And so did the con news tidbits season.
Recent Comments