I will be appearing in the fantastic Short Run comics show in Seattle on Saturday, Nov. 4th, 2023! Check out details of the show!
Last month I successfully attended SPX in Bethesda and Cartoon Crossroads in Columbus. With Short Run, I guess that makes it a trifecta! I’m looking forward to lots more shows in the years ahead!
Please note that I’m updating my Storefront to include my earlier b&w books. I’ve learned from the comics shows that there is still some demand for them!
Been very busy for the first part of the year! Coming up are some chances for me to sit back and relax… I’m talking about two garbantuan shows of Indy Comics I managed to get tables for–
Small Press Expo, Sept. 9-10, Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center,
5701 Marinelli Road, Rockville, Maryland 20852.
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, Sept 27- Oct 1. This multifaceted event takes place in various parts of the city; I will be exhibiting Sept 30- Oct 1 at Columbus Metropolitan Library – Main Library, 96 S Grant Ave in downtown Columbus.
Look forward to seeing you there!
My first show of 2023 will be the Bound Art Book and Zine Fair, on Jan. 14 in beautiful Ohio City, Cleveland.
This is a very exciting show for me, even though it is not a comics speciality show. Very much interest there in comics, and lots of recognition of Harvey Pekar and fascination with my artwork for him, which will be on display at my table.
Hope to see you there!
OMG, I did not see this coming! D. G. Stewart just wrote the most positive and encouraging review I could possibly imagine of Two Kinds of People!
This past Friday, I had a terrific time at the Webtoons Winter Creator’s Summit. Over 100 creators attended, and it had a dozen first-rate guests! Spirits were high among the attendees, a very young international crowd.
My favorite segment was on the topic of transitioning from Webtoons Canvas to the higher-tiered Webtoons Original, with author Yaruno of Immortal Weakling and one of his Originals editor (sorry, not sure if it was Tyler Beckett or Ethan LeBlanc). The talk featured a number of slides showing the difference between Canvas scenes and their Originals counterparts, showing how the author had expanded and elaborated on major scenes.
Also fascinating were two art demos from Jackson’s Diary‘s Paolo Patalla and 21st Century Knight‘s Plastic Bottru. Lots of creative ideas, a list of various apps I need to investigate, and fantastic energy I’d love to bottle up and parcel out as needed!
Art demo by Paola Batalla for Jackson’s Diary.
Years ago when webcomics were new, I edited a blog called The Webcomics Examiner. It was controversial– it even inspired a parody! But I’m proud of the authors who wrote for it; all of us wanted nothing more than to recognize the amazing and sometimes radical works that were occurring in the medium.
Fast-forward twenty years, and we see that webcomics is a burgeoning artform with thousands of artists dedicated to it. Far more writing and analysis is devoted to the medium, but we are still only scratching the surface.
WebcomicsReview.com was the original URL for the Examiner, but has not been in use for a while. I’m using it to launch a new blog to review and discuss webcomics, and it seems appropriate to name the blog after the URL. Hopefully not controversial, because why should it be?
The most fascinating thing about reformatting comics for Webtoons is the site’s vertical “infinite canvas” format. Chapters are designed for scrolling down through the story on a cell phone, making it necessary to set aside the original 5″ X 8″ page format. There is a risk that reformatting will cause qualities to be lost; but there is also an opportunity that new qualities will be gained. For example, an infinite canvas provides the opportunity of a great expansion of space.
For example, in my latest chapter S. E. T. I., the original comic was a challenge, because the story has a lot of dense, verbose text. For example, this panel is quite a mashup of text and picture:
The infinite canvas provides the opportunity to spread this text out, and frame it with psychedelic effects:
Reformatting horizontal panels for infinite canvas presents a problem, because the panels may appear too small. But sometimes, the panels can simply be turned, so they display larger, and produce a disorienting effect:
Make sure you don’t hit your head when you reach the top of the stairs!
Neil Gaiman and manga comics are probably a big influence on New Zealand artist Rachel Smythe, but she’s taken these influences in radical new directions. Lore Olympus is described as a romance comic, but if so, it is a romance for grown ups, psychologically sophisticated and with a dark edge.
I’m kind of surprised that I’ve only heard of Lore Olympus a short time ago; it’s the most popular series on Webtoons, with over 1 billion views and 6.1 million subscribers. I happened to click on it when I started publishing on Webtoons and was looking for examples of style and technique. What I discovered is one of the most significant works of comix I’ve seen in a long time.
What excites me the most about Lore Olympus is the style. Most comics, regardless of genre, seem to be mired in the tradition of newsprint publication, where everything is defined by heavy black lines. In contrast, Smythe composes almost exclusively with brilliant color, and employs only a minimal amount of elegant lifework to define selective details. Smythe’s compositions have a strong, confident sense of abstraction, but also hint at a skill depicting human anatomy, architecture and nature.
Her writing as well is minimal and effective. Funny, fascinating and deep, it introduces us to a world that is mythical but very much like our own. In an opening scene, a brief cell phone conversation portraying the breakup between Hades and Minthe incisively depict her vanity and vindictiveness. Later, another conversation between Aphrodite and her son Eros suddenly lifts the narrative to a higher moral plain— “Mom, you seem to have such a distorted view of people these days. When did you stop seeing the best in people? When did you forget about kindness? When did you forget about love?”
The weekly series is currently on episode 216. I suggest reading episodes 1 to 6 to see if you get hooked.