comics

I was accused recently of not properly cataloging my various things, so here is an interview the really rad Irina Ivanova conducted with me over at the Indypendent.

I'm blogging from the offices of the Cambodian/French comic-book publisher Our Books, by the way, where we're busy preparing to release Flower of Battambang. Order your English-language version today! Or distros: order some to sell!

Tell John I sent ya.

My best friend Liz has been sending me care packages of zines while I'm in Florida. This saves my life. With the first package I got, I felt this great satisfied joy as my hands held xeroxed newsprint. It was like I was back home.

Tiny Unicorn - A comic with many, many words and one teeny unicorn. Our bitsy pal is a lot like you and me -- it watches TV, gets cranky about LA heat, slaves for minimum wage, smokes, buys stuff at IKEA. But mostly it likes to comment Andy Rooney-style on all sorts of goings on from the political to the hallucinatory.

You Don't Get There From Here #2 -- Hot damn, this comic was dense.

No, he hasn't been locked up, pulled over, or buried under a collapsed bookshelf of "Understanding Comics."

Scott McCloud is giving away parts 1 & 2 of his graphic novel "The Right Number" here, and intends to put part 3 alongside them when it's completed.

Web comics are nothing new (in fact, I also have an unfinished graphic novel online-- as I'm assuming do most people who have ever dipped their feet in that pond) and they're especially not new to McCloud, who was one of the earliest comic artists to seize the internet for his own devices (and, because he's Scott McCloud and has always done things with a bigger picture than himself in mind, the devices of the entire comics community).

But what's really interesting to me is that before giving it away, McCloud tried a micropayments distribution system to get it out there.

"Darkness Calls" has all the trappings of any iconic superhero comic book. The protagonist is the kid someone hurt, abandoned, or bullied, who ultimately finds the inner strength to overcome not just the bad guy, but his or her inner demons. The superhero who is in essence one-half of the protagonist’s tortured psyche is a ripped, sword-wielding, awesomely handsome warrior with long hair, a motorcycle, and bad-ass fighting skills; while the bad-guy is the other half, a creepy, demon-like presence with glowing eyes, flames for hair, a skeletal visage, and claws for feet. The climatic battle scene which occurs in an abandoned warehouse, is a wordless display of power where good ultimately triumphs over evil and we all live to fight another day.