Jin Wicked is a young studio artist out of Houston, Texas. She is one of the few talented people able to make a full time living out of her artwork. I get the feeling that the commission work she does leaves a little wanting sometimes, which is probably why she created the excellent web comic ‘Crap I Drew on my Lunch Break‘ (crap.jinwicked.com).
The comic is very much like a journal comic that we’ve discussed before. It’s a four panel, 2 X 2 layout and features Jin, Continue reading
The Guardian Unlimited (guardian.co.uk), the online counterpart to the popular UK newspaper, has been running a retrospective all week on the work of Robert Crumb. Every day they’ve been posting more content from “The R Crumb Handbook” and discussing some sites dedicated to Crumb.
The series of posts will culminate with a live, on stage interview with the famed underground cartoonist on March 18 at 8:20pm, at the National Film Theatre in London, England.
The majority of web comics I come across follow layout patterns reflective of their print predecessors. There’s usually the comic strip with a horizontal series of panels or the typical printed comic book page layout. I’m fine with these conventions, they offer a sense of familiarity and comfort that allows comic art to translate to the new web based medium.
However, these design elements are holdovers from the restrictions of the printed page. Continue reading
A very interesting article discussing the affects of the web in editorial cartoons is up on the Online Journalism Review (www.ojr.org) site. The article, by Mark Glasser, talks about the difficulties in finding an audience for editorial cartooning on the web. On one hand you have the older newspaper reader who is most likely to be interested in editorial cartoons, but may be reluctant to use the internet to read them. Continue reading
Nazara Technologies, a mobile phone content provider based in India, has signed a deal with Archie Comics Inc. (www.archiecomics.com) to provide comic panels and full strips to cell phones. Betty, Veronica, Archie, and the gang will be part of the growing market of mobile phone content. Here is a quote from the official press release:
“As a result of the agreement, Nazara secures an exclusive license to develop content based on the Archie Comics characters Continue reading
The Public Editor for the Chicago Tribune, Don Wycliff, has written a column explaining and defending the paper’s decision to pull the comic strip Boondocks from their pages for two days. The strip, by celebrated cartoonist Aaron McGruder, inferred that the president has engaged in drug use. The justification for the censoring is that since the strip deals with political issues it must be subjected to the same standards of fairness and accuracy in reporting and since President Bush’s Continue reading
The ongoing efforts of 64 web comic artists to prove they can stick to a schedule has been reported on in the ultimate geek source for news, Slashdot.org (www.slashdot.org).
As Daku posted before, the challenge is for all the cartoonists participating to update their strips at least once every 24 hours. If a single update is missed then that artist is out of the competition. The last cartoonist updating on time at the end gets the pot, which is now up to $1,120.00.
The long running syndicated comic strip Foxtrot (www.foxtrot.com) by Bill Amend often incudes humor about the web. In a recent series of strips one of the characters is revealed to be an avid online gamer.
Allakhazam.com (www.allakhazam.com), a news and resource site for several online computer games, caught wind of the comic’s storyline and got a chance to interview Bill about his own gaming habits. The text of their extensive interview and a display of the six strips Continue reading
Comics related podcasts are still pretty rare, but there are a few others out there doing interesting things.
Check out Comicology.net (www.comicology.net) for a cool podcast by Neil Gorman. Neil is a tried and true fan of comic books and each week talks about his most recent trip to his local comic book shop and has some really interesting picks to discuss. He’s also said some very nice things about us, so check him out for more print comics related talk.
I was checking out the comics syndicate site uComics (www.ucomics.com), the online home to such well known print strips as Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Ziggy, and many others. While poking around I came across something that sounded like a great opportunity for aspiring cartoonists. They have a feature called Comics Sherpa whereby aspiring cartoonists and comics artists can submit their own work to be displayed on the uComics.com site alongside their already well established strips.