I get not-unreasonably excited whenever there’s a Nedroid/Emmy C. collaboration, and this time’s no different. Thrill as the two get together to write a story about a boy who is half horse (and maybe half eagle) in “Laserpony Studio Presents The Horseman’s Tale.”
Yesterday was a particularly hazy one for me. I had taken a sick day off of work (for actual sick related purposes). I took a lot of bed rest. And next thing I know, I’d hammered out some sort of review and done some sort of site update!
Anyway, I’d been thinking of refreshing the site for a while now. I was OK with the previous theme, but I wasn’t too big on the light blue background and the cramped quarters of the menu buttons. The new WordPress “Duster” theme isn’t too different from the old one I was using (which, I think, was actually was one of the oldest themes). It’s more customizable at least, which means I can play around with the backgrounds should I wish. (I sorta like the light grey, though.) I’ve kept the banner mostly the same with a few touches to eliminate some negative space due to the larger real estate. I’m still mulling over whether to overhaul the banner, but I sorta like it and I haven’t some up with a design concept that I like well enough to replace it just yet.
Plenty of toys for me to play with, though, and supposedly it’s easier to read on smaller screens. So hooray for iPad users.
Some readers have already voiced their opinion on the change with some recommendations. Feel free to post your opinions here!
Comedic science fiction can be a tricky proposition. The folks who enjoy such things are typically total nerds… and I mean that in the best possible way. The humor has to be clever. The creator has to tread the line between bizarre scientific concepts and a winking acknowledgement of the absurdity of it all. After all, the reader doesn’t like to feel like he’s being talked down to. You must never dumb things down.
When done right, you get Futurama, Red Dwarf, and Mike Resnick’s The Three-Legged Hooch Dancer. When done wrong… you get the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Fortunately, Christopher John Baldwin’s Spacetrawler, a star-spanning space opera, falls in the former category. It’s quite likely that this webcomic draws a lot of comparisons to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books. The gratuitous asides on the Uneyetarians and Brograhm’s Teeth, in particular, are highly reminiscent of Adams’ infamous encyclopedia entries.
Meanwhile, over at Comics Beat, Torsten Adair writes a piece on how “Digital Is the New Direct Market.”
Yeah, yeah, I know a piece like this gets written ever four months. The difference now is we sorta know the strategies that the big comic publishers are now implementing to get a foothold in the digital comic industry. Mr. Adair sees a paradigm shift and ties it to trends from years past:
With the widespread influence of the Internet, publishers and retailers salivate at the opportunity to sell to the general public which is unaware of comics shops. Many in the comics industry consider the Internet to be the “new newsstand”, a marketplace which replicates the ubiquity of news agents in postwar America.
Unfortunately, I see a different possibility:
Digital comics are the new Direct Market.1981 was when the Direct Market matured. That year, Marvel Comics released Dazzler #1 only to comics shops, selling an estimated 400,000 copies. Looking at circulation figures, Marvel realized that Ka-Zar, Moon Knight, and Micronauts were not selling well via newsstands, but could be viable if sold exclusively via subscriptions and the Direct Market of comics shops. By the end of the decade, Marvel, DC, and most publishers distributed more titles via the more lucrative Direct Market than to newsstands.
…
Here’s where the Direct Market becomes the Newsstand: digital files can just as easily be sold online by comics shops. Just as a comics fan can order comics from Direct Market mail order comics shops, so too can they order them online. Some comics shops have robust e-commerce sites, offering a warehouse of merchandise, usually at discounted prices.
In the past, fans had to journey miles from newsstand to newsstand to find all of the comics they enjoyed. Later, they could find everything under one roof at a comics shop. Now, instead of driving miles (and sometimes hours) to a comics shop, a fan can sit in front of a computer and purchase a Diamond Digital comic online. They do not have to set foot in a comics shop.
Don’t think that’s likely? Look at the e-book market. Amazon reports that e-books outsell hardcover and trade paperbacks. Amazon is an online retailer. It has no physical storefronts. And yet, of everything their bookstore offers, e-books outsell regular books.
Think a store can still be successful if a customer visits? Consider this scenario, one which happened daily when I worked at the Barnes & Noble near Lincoln Center. (This store had five storeys; expert staff selling books, DVDs, and CDs; a packed cafe; and author events which attracted national press.) A customer comes in with a vague request. (“I saw it on a table a few weeks ago… It had a blue cover, and was about vampires.”) An employee accesses databases and product knowledge, and after five minutes of exhaustive searching, successfully finds the book for the customer! The customer is happy, but finds the book too expensive. “Thanks. I’ll get it online.” The bookseller offers to order the book from the company’s website, charging the online price, even waving the shipping. It just takes a few minutes at a nearby computer. Again, the customer declines, leaving the store without purchasing anything….
So print comics seemed doomed, marginalized like vinyl LPs.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Today is all about love, or as some of you may call it, “lurve.” Ah, you can feel l’amour in the air, mes amis. Such as the love Paul Hornschemeier, they guy in charge of designing the cover for Marvel’s Strange Tales II anthology, has for a certain webcartoonist’s work.
On his blog:
I just completed the cover designs for Marvel’s Strange Tales II collection, due out in April. It was a pleasure to work on the project, with the only difficulty being what to choose out of all the great art in the series. But there was one person whose work I knew I wanted on the cover before I even began sorting through the files: Kate Beaton, who is, in my humble opinion, one of the best, most pitch-perfect cartoonists working today.
Awww.
(h/t to the always lovely Robot 6.)
I’ve been putting off doing a “Know Thy History” for Little Nemo out of fear. I’m afraid that I know so very little about this comic, one of the most revered comics that were published at the turn of the century.
Why feel apprehensive? Partly because Little Nemo was far ahead of its time. I mean, look at these sample images. They’re totally boss! Do they even look like they were made in the 1910′s? And, when you consider that McCay influenced prominent cartoonists from Moebius to Bill Watterson to Maurice Sendak, you can’t help but feel intimidated. It’s like trying to talk about Picasso: you hate to do a disservice to such a milestone work, but unless you’re a student of the man’s work, a much bigger fanboy is going to totally call you out on something you missed.
Most of us remember Shel Silverstein as the author and the illustrator of The Giving Tree. It’s the book that convinced millions of children that the boy was a jerk for using up the whole tree without giving anything in return, only to realize that, when they got older, they were in fact the little boy and the tree represented their parents. His simple little tale was simultaneously rewarding and traumatic, and likely launched more than one graduate level humanities theses.
However, most people don’t remember Shel Silverstein as also being a songwriter. I know it totally blew my mind when I found out that Johnny Cash’s hit song, “A Boy Named Sue,” was written by none other than Shel Silverstein. I mean, seriously, THE Shel Silverstein? Aw, hell naw! But it’s true: ol’ Shel wrote the whimsical lyrics to the song that made the denizens of Folsom Prison squeal in delight.
While we sometimes think that songwriting and the illustrated arts are two different creatures, there is an anthropological link. They are, after all, based on two of the most ancient artistic traditions. Hell, cavemen probably embellished their wall-drawn adventures with some bomb-ass tribal chants. So, when the Let’s Be Friends Again guys say that they’re forming an alliance with nerd rapper Adam War Rock, it sorta makes sense once you overcome the initial skepticism.
In his FAQ, Jason Brubaker mentions that his webcom- … I’m sorry, online graphic novel reMIND started as funny song. It would be interesting to hear that song, especially since it probably had something to do with steampunk inventions, anthropomorphic cats, and a secret race of lizard people. Not something Johnny Cash would sing to win over hardened criminals, but fun nonetheless.
