After letting it breathe heavily for a few years, I finally decided to kill off the Word Balloon. Most of its links were dead, I hadn’t spent any time on it for years and I didn’t see myself reviving it pretty soon. So there.
If you want a local copy of the files, just click here (rar-file, 500 kB). Or let it rest in peace.
And exactly how much is a Canadian dollar ?
Comics Comics, the “Clearinghouse for all things Comics” Dan Nadel and T Hodler, has just made a digital version of its second issue available for free (so we’re told).
It contains articles on Dave Sim and Michael Kupperman, an hilarious rant by Peter Bagge about Spider-Man and comic art by PShaw (who also did the cute cover pictured above), Matthew Thurber, and Lauren R. Weinstein. In PDF, for zilch - you can’t go wrong.
I received the new Forbidden Planet catalogue today, and found some very nice strips by Richard ‘The Bedsit Journal’ Cowrey. I like it when cartoonists are able to bring an idea across using only one page of story. If they’re able to do this in a graphical manner that’s pleasing to the eye, all the better.
By the way, the rest of the catalogue’s content was also very nice, and painfully far away from my budget’s possibilities…
This beautiful portrait of R. Kikuo Johnson from Theme Magazine proves a point : he’s much to cool to be a geek. You’ll just have to try harder to join our ranks, man !
On his blog coming up for air, Canadian illustrator and cartoonist Matthew Forsythe mentions that he’s done the cover to the most recent issue of the Montreal Mirror with an illustration on internet security. He also gives some insight into the creative process of this illustration, and focuses on some details he’s added.
If I were in the area, I’d be here tonight (but then, I’m only following the DC scene from quite a long way away). Nick Bertozzi made this invitation for the presentation of his new book The Salon and also stands up for the cause. Go Nick !
Incidently, I’m currently reading Bertozzi’s Houdini (which he did with Jason Lutes), which is quite nice - a good mix between Berlin and Kavalier And Clay.
Niem Tran is a man of patience and manual prowess, who has assembled all of Chris Ware’s toy and craft designs and is exhibiting them at the ACME Novelty Toy Gallery. I am officially jealous now. Or maybe not - at least now I know the things actually work…
I was also pleasantly surprised by the very original navigational device Niemworks.com uses, withNiem, Shop, Work and… Else.
(via the all-knowing Fantagraphics blog)
This has probably been blogged to death by now, but I like the gesture so much, that I just couldn’t stop myself promoting it.
Scott McCloud, comics’ homo universalis par excellence, has decided to make his online comic, The Right Number, available free of charge. Before, you had to pay what McCloud insists on calling a micropayment for the right to read it, but now it’s there in all its glory.
It’s an intriguing story about a young man becoming obsessed with the idea that there is a pattern behind the girls he’s known in his life and their telephone numbers, and that somewhere there’s a girl with the perfect number, who would be perfect for him. The story is particularly engaging, though, because McCloud has decided not to put the panels one next to the other, but to embed them in each other, continuously drawing the reader further into the story, and into the main character’s obsession.
Flight is, in my humble opinion, one of the best, or at least most beautiful comics anthologies around today. I first came in contact with it through the Free Comic Book Day special that Image (if I recall correctly) put out a couple of years back. What amazes me is how the amazing people behind this project continuously this level of quality across the board, not only in storytelling, but also in graphics.
And it turns out to be a good carreer move to be in there as well : once you’ve been in Flight, well, at least you start to get noticed. Case in point : Sarah Mensinga’s ‘The Forever Box’ (from the upcoming Flight Four) is presented exclusively in installments on New York Magazine’s Vulture blog. They have started a new feature, the Comics Page, aiming at introducing the casual comics reader to
“brand-new graphic novels by the world’s best artists and writers. Manga, superheroes, indie comix — we’ll cover them all as our editors select the best the exploding comics world has to offer”.
They coulnd’t have found a better place to start…
(via Flight itself, naturally)
