Here’s my attempt to catch up on news which I had meant to report but found myself too stunned by the cookie monster.
Last week Nick Anderson was awarded the 2005 Cartooning Pulitzer. As much as this was a shock to everyone because he wasn’t on the ‘leaked’ list from a few weeks ago it’s not that much of a surprise. He started his career with a bang getting the Charles M. Schulz Award for best college cartoonist in the United States, Canada and Mexico. What would have really been a surprise would be if a web comic artist won. There’s some outstanding work out there going unnoticed.
Another podcast! There may be thousands out there but have you ever come across one for a strip? Scott Stantis, creator of “Prickly City,” has begun a weekly podcast five to ten minutes long where:I’ll talk about either the strip that just appeared or what’s likely to come next and maybe get into why the characters said or reacted how they did.
The 24 Hour Comic Day is a competition that love and hate. Hate because there’s no way I could possibly compete, love because this a great promotion for comics. The whole idea is a result of Scott McCloud’s 24 hour comics challenge and it’s something I would love to see done by someone like the Daily Grind. I’ve looked for something like this but have not found such a competition for web comics. This should be a fairly simple concept to pull off considering the nature of the web. Maybe this could end up being the next method we use for awarding our prize? You can see clips of last year’s 24 hour competition at 24 hours later.
Actual real critical debate has occurred between critics in the web comic community. First we had William G‘s review of PA and PvP and then we had Websnark’s rebuttal. This is what the web comic community needs: intelligent and insightful comments about a medium we love.
Yeesh, the Prickly City podcast was bloody awful. I mean after patting itself on the head for being historically significant as the first podcast to be attached to a particular comic, the guy\’s introduction basically proclaims the redundancy of the whole enterprise: Yeah, this comic is \’four little panels… (paraphrase) Sometimes I can\’t get the complex ideas behind each strip into them. This is a way for me to explain to you exactly what I meant to say and what I wanted to say.\’
…!!!
Isn\’t it a fundamental of the medium (and art in general) that comics should convey themselves? Especially politically specific comics like this one. It\’s not like Prickly City is abstract art or full of elusive dialogue or anything that needs tons of explaining. The tedious level of exposition in this podcast, complete with reading aloud all the comic dialogue, is (a) silly, verging on pointless, (b) just leads into reading aloud and then refuting messages from disgruntled readers of the comic. And (c) it was just boring, gloomy and non-illuminative!
I admit there was some eventual interesting discussion of comics as a venue for politics, but that in no way makes up for the rest of this. And I really don\’t wanna hear anyone else saying that they couldn\’t express their ideas successfully in their comic, so they\’ll make a podcast about it!
I\’m glad you\’re enthusiastic about 24 Hour Comics Day, but it\’s not a contest. There are no real prizes. A few tales gets selected for an anthology, but the selection is based on so many things besides sheer quality that it doesn\’t make much of a contest objective.
So if it\’s not a contest, what is it? It\’s a challenge. It\’s you against the clock, trying to get done the best 24 page comic book you can and still get done in 24 hours.
And it is of course open to the webcomix community. In fact, McCloud had specific guidelines for folks who do non-page-based web work (has to be 100 panels, and has to be online or emailed to him before the end of the 24 hours.)
Last year, Kurtz did 24 PvP strips in 24 hours. Now that\’s a way to get ahead!
–Nat Gertler
founder
24 Hour Comics Day