Group items tagged

From Lori Lynn Taniguchi: Out of the all american webcomics which are modeled directly off of the Japanese manga influence, Megatokyo has got to be the most famous. Fred Gallegher has accomplished what many of us in our mary-jane ways have always wanted: to accummulate an adoring audience to our art and story which places us and our friends in the world we love so much, we want to be seen INHABITING it. His art was not very good to start, but with persistence, and some kind of viral popularity, his skills have substantially improved, and his patently shoujo-manga storylines became a trademark. I think the main character is probably very sympathetic to many men who feel bewildered and fascinated and ultimately manipulated by women. Add in a little gamer culture and technology, and you're appealing to pretty distinct kind of guy. Personally, I think the storyline's a little harem-style to be really original. But the fact remains that I believe it to really be the culmination of a lot of desires in webcomics at the time.

With cartoonists that have been instrumental in defining the literary comics medium for the past twenty years and a willingness to experiment with formats and concepts, Drawn & Quarterly has become one of the most influential art and literary comics publishers in North America, if not the whole world. Back in 1989, Chris Oliveros humbly went in search of artists to contribute to his yet-to-be-published magazine anthology named Drawn & Quarterly. Armed with a honed aesthetic, he advertised in different venues and approached promising artists. As a result, Oliveros assembled the most esteemed and distinct coterie of cartoonists since the days of Art Spiegelman's RAW. Oliveros's visual acumen and astute production values coupled with the complete editorial and creative freedom offered to the cartoonists enabled D+Q to make an immediate mark in the world of comics. After several anthologies, comic book series and graphic novels, D+Q has established an elite and varied roster of cartoonists that includes Adrian Tomine, Seth, Chester Brown, Joe Matt, Julie Doucet, and James Sturm, who are considered to be some of the medium's best and are synonymous with Drawn & Quarterly. Big Questions, Or Else, Optic Nerve, Berlin and Atlas have joined Peepshow and Palooka-Ville as D+Q's current ongoing comic book series. Exquisitely designed sketchbooks by iconic luminaries R. Crumb and Chris Ware joined sketchbooks by Julie Doucet and Seth. Graphic novels include war comics-journalism from Joe Sacco, travelogues by Guy Delisle, a charming teenage memoir by Michel Rabagliatti and translations of European masters Igort, Baru, and Dupuy & Berberian. The original magazine anthology became a lavish, oversized, coffee table annual. D+Q has also engaged in ambitious reprint projects, including the work of Frank King, Tove Jansson (Moomin), and Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Book lovers, who appreciate exceptional quality in literature and design, laud D+Q for creating elegant objects that transcen

With cartoonists that have been instrumental in defining the literary comics medium for the past twenty years and a willingness to experiment with formats and concepts, Drawn & Quarterly has become one of the most influential art and literary comics publishers in North America, if not the whole world. Back in 1989, Chris Oliveros humbly went in search of artists to contribute to his yet-to-be-published magazine anthology named Drawn & Quarterly. Armed with a honed aesthetic, he advertised in different venues and approached promising artists. As a result, Oliveros assembled the most esteemed and distinct coterie of cartoonists since the days of Art Spiegelman's RAW. Oliveros's visual acumen and astute production values coupled with the complete editorial and creative freedom offered to the cartoonists enabled D+Q to make an immediate mark in the world of comics. After several anthologies, comic book series and graphic novels, D+Q has established an elite and varied roster of cartoonists that includes Adrian Tomine, Seth, Chester Brown, Joe Matt, Julie Doucet, and James Sturm, who are considered to be some of the medium's best and are synonymous with Drawn & Quarterly. Big Questions, Or Else, Optic Nerve, Berlin and Atlas have joined Peepshow and Palooka-Ville as D+Q's current ongoing comic book series. Exquisitely designed sketchbooks by iconic luminaries R. Crumb and Chris Ware joined sketchbooks by Julie Doucet and Seth. Graphic novels include war comics-journalism from Joe Sacco, travelogues by Guy Delisle, a charming teenage memoir by Michel Rabagliatti and translations of European masters Igort, Baru, and Dupuy & Berberian. The original magazine anthology became a lavish, oversized, coffee table annual. D+Q has also engaged in ambitious reprint projects, including the work of Frank King, Tove Jansson (Moomin), and Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Book lovers, who appreciate exceptional quality in literature and design, laud D+Q for creating elegant objects that transcen

Prof discusses a new course on Comics and Graphic Novels. Focus is on history and cultural background.

Interesting comment about whether or not superhero comics qualify as literature.

Contains an interesting discussion of what happens when a comic is adapted into a movie. Specifically "300," in 2007.

Internet Movie Database for "300." Contains comments on the adaption of the comic/GN to the big screen.

In the Gateway to Comics feature, Stephen Aryan focuses on reviewing/recapping a "gateway" trade or issue to a genre, series, or character. Meaning you will be able to pick it up without having read any other comic before, and with no prior knowledge of the characters. This is the golden rule. (A lot of these gateway picks will be first volumes of trades, but not always.) He tackles a range of genres, such as western, sci-fi, slice of life, horror, adventure, biography, comedy, history, and many more.

Interesting: changing the name from "manga" to "comics" to reflect the desired scope of submissions. "While this is the fourth time that this competition has been held, it is the first since its name was changed from the Morning International Manga Competition (M.I.M.C.) to the Morning International Comic Competition (M.I.C.C.). Throughout the previous three competitions, we found ourselves keenly noticing something. While in Japan the word "manga" (マンガ) encompasses many broad genres and is still home to innovation and freshness, the term "manga" abroad refers to works of fantasy that are drawn in a specific style, and further confined to a small genre. This time, we saw an immediate change resulting from the contest's revised name, as we received many submissions that could be classified as "seinen manga," the genre that our magazine Morning primarily publishes. Not only that, we also received many highly exciting works with stories and visual designs that we could not imagine ever seeing from creators within the Japanese industry. We value this quality, as seen by the prize-winning works."

SPX 2010 will be held the weekend of September 10 and 11, 2010 at the Marriott Bethesda North Hotel & Conference Center in Bethesda, MD, just one mile outside the nation's capital, Washington DC. In its fifteenth year SPX now serves as the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comic books and the discovery of new creative talent.

Evolving database of comic books. Might be opensource. Registration required. Note the "Browse" criteria and search engine. Find out who's doing it?

From Lori Lynn Taniguchi: I consider Penny Arcade to be a singular phenomenon: not only is it a wildly popular comic on gamer culture with heavy "bromance" language, vulgarity and shock value, but it is also an unparalleled business venture. Not even the very rare self-sufficient webcomics online can boast a huge, yearly gaming expo in Seattle and an immensely successful charity for sick children in St. Jude hospitals. The writer and artist have created not only an entertaining webcomic, but have grown themselves into a culture icon with lasting and far-reaching influence, all with an aw-shucks-gamer-next-door quality.

Home of the work-group building GNARP, based currently in an online Collaboratory of the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. Features posts for discussion on various topics relating to graphic narratives such as graphic novels, manga and comics, as well as tools for interaction between members of the collaboratory. Contact the founder of this Diigo group for more information or to join the effort to pool the exciting scholarship being done on graphic narratives and its explosion in current pop culture.

Free, weekly ongoing comic written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Paul Duffield. British disaster fiction/steampunk webcomic to be published soon as paperback/hardcover graphic novel.

A somewhat incomplete but interesting perspective of the renowned Hayao Miyazaki.  Has Miyazaki squandered is excellence?  Has he gone away from what made him great?  Well, you be the judge.  

Todd Hignite's text for the Abrams' pretty The Art Of Jaime Hernandez is like the best testimonial ever written for a fancy tribute dinner, the kind of speechifying that makes you tear up a little bit in shared love for the subject of its adoration. One reads a lot of writing about cartoonists, but very little of it makes you want to shake the writer's hand, as is the case here. The love that many comics fans have for the work of Jaime Hernandez may be unique in comics because he's an artist that brings out that emotion in people that I would suggest are largely distrustful if not outright contemptuous of how frequently such feelings are expressed on behalf of so many other artists working in the medium. Jaime is a a comics artist people that find it hard to love artists love. Further, I think that people love Jaime for all the usual reasons one may love a comics artist, and then some folks love him a little more for all the reasons they love a great artist working any medium, and then a few folks love him that much more for being the avatar of a certain kind of relationship to comics, growing in seriousness of intent and human scope just as they were ready to read stories like that.

A project led by doctoral students at the Catholic University of Leuven.