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Dressed For Success – Page 204

Wanna play a game? Try and count how many times Alex and Walter have been captured during their time together.

C'mon, do we really think this is the end for our guys?

Okay, they might.

Webcomics Walkabout: The Adventures of Superhero Girl

In honour of her new book Friends with Boys arriving last week, I thought we should have a look at one of Faith Erin Hicks’ other comic works. A quickly rising star, Faith cut her comic teeth in the webcomic world, starting with her long running Demonology 101 and followed by a series of other stories and now a number of graphic novels. Her new book was even put up online, page by page as a lead up to the books release. (The first 20 pages are still available as a teaser)Read More

Webcomics Walkabout: Richmond Monuments

Quick read for you this week. We’re going to take a tour of the sculptures ofRichmond Virginia as seen through the eyes of Bizhan Khodabandeh. Wait, I thought this was a webcomic column you say. Well it is, because every Sunday Bizhan takes one of the sculptures in Richmond and lets his mind dream up something fun to do with it, or for it to do. Read More

Webcomics Walkabout: Road Apples Almanac

Don Ahe has created something truly charming. Road Apples Almanac is like a trip to the past. Visually striking chords of Herriman’s Krazy Kat, feeling like something out of a time when comic strips were a selling feature for newspapers, it yet somehow doesn’t feel dated or stodgy. Maybe it’s the surfer lions. Or the candy machine in the pasture. The talking trees are a mystery. Aldous is a farmer. We’re just starting to learn the extent of his former life, but now he leaves a mostly peaceful life with Shep the dog, (Shark Dog?) and Doc, the rooster who plots to kill him. There’s also a pair of sheep who take great pleasure in poo flinging. The strip varies in length and composition, sometimes a three or four panel strip, other times multitiered. There are some one-off gags, but by and large it’s ambling stories like the aforementioned poo flinging or the current story of Aldous’ early years. And there’s the Switch, the story from 5 years earlier when they were the superheroes Dark Ink and Shark Dog. Yeah. The humour is light, although at times sarcastic or wry. There’s a certain contemplative or philosophical tone at times, like the more thoughtful of Calvin and Hobbes strips. Don is aware of his influences, making nods to not only Herriman, but also Windsor McCay and perhaps Escher. The strip is primarily black and white, but he intersperses colour now and then. Don’s art itself is confident. It’s not slick by any means, but it has a rough edge of somebody who doesn’t second guess each mark. And at times, those scratchy little lines, or the watery colours are truly beautiful. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Don at a small local con last year, and he is much like his strip. Welcoming and neighbourly with a humour that sits lightly and delivered with a deft hand. The strip is called Road Apples, but the journey is pleasant.

Webcomics Walkabout: Marlowe the Monster

Last weeks walkabout went somewhere monstrous.   Poor Marlowe. Life can be hard when you’re a clay monster still living with your mother. But for us, it’s a bitter-sweet and often funny comic. And let’s just decide it’s a single panel gag comic right now and not get into any debates about form. (Although Marlowe also works as an ongoing picture book). What it is, is fun and unique. Every week we get a glimpse into the world of Marlowe the monster, as he navigates life. He’s a Charlie brown loser, you want to like him, you want to root for him, but things just never seem truly rosy. He eats too much, and works, well worked at a bakery. He still lives at home with an overbearing mother. He also has love troubles. Each week, Shing Yin Khor crafts her characters, builds and dresses her sets. Lights them and shoots that weeks strip. If nothing else, it’s a great display of sculptural talent. But Shing manages to create characters capable of great pathos. and you gotta love all the little details she builds into hers sets. It’s quite the setup. I mentioned Charlie Brown earlier, and the comic is almost like a twisted version of one of the Happiness is a Warm Puppy books Schulz did. Just, without the happy. I hope to one day see Shing out at something like TCAF to not only grab a copy of her first Marlowe collection, but to also get one of her little sculpted monsters for my very own. I think it would be reassuring to have. And that’s it for this time, I couldn’t begin to think of something similar to recommend. If you know of anything similar, let me know.

Chris answers the question, “do you stick to a book when it has multiple creators or do you cherry pick issues based on your favourites?”

Comic Book DailyActually, the full question was, “do you stick to a book when it has multiple creators or do you cherry pick issues based on your favourites?  Would you rather see a small publishing delay for creator consistency?” So this question is largely aimed at the recent practices of the big two in dealing with the seeming inability for a single creative team to produce a monthly book. Now right up front  I want to make it clear that Jeff and I sweat the deadline. We have always, since we started back in the 90’s been concerned about getting our story out on a schedule. We’ve had a solid run with the web version for a year and a half until we had to take a break for a few weeks earlier in the fall. And that was hard for us to do, and it was only because of a family crisis. But let’s make one other thing clear. This is our hobby. Jeff and I both have full-time careers. We do DFS in our off hours, and they can be slim some times. When we were doing the black and white mini-comic stories, we were in post secondary school and working at part-time jobs. It’s always been a juggle. What was discussed this week was people who do comics for a living. The people drawing Spider-Man, draw Spider-Man. They are artists whose day job is to be an artist. And they don’t seem to be able to get the job done. While there has always been to occasional fill in issue done, in my day, and yes, I’m doing the old man voice, you’d have a run of years with the same people doing monthly issues of Spider-Man, X-Men, Teen Titans etc. It’s been mostly since the 90’s that artists can’t keep up the monthly pace. And I’m not sure why. My best guess is it’s all the extra rendering that started in the 90’s. As much as I’ve always loved Art Adams, he’s sorta the guy to blame for Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, Rob Leifeld etc. All those guys who need to put 100’s of extra lines everywhere. That’s gotta take time. And the heavily rendered computer colouring as well, it take way longer to do all that shading and special effects than to just colour in flat areas. (I oughta know. I’ve debated doing anything more elaborate with DFS since I started doing the colour on the new story. Jury is still out on whether I’ll do anything different for the next story) I suspect another factor is the rock star effect. Comic artist used to be an unassuming job. Sure there were some famous people, but famous is a relative term. And they didn’t make crazy big money and live the rock star lifestyle. they were craftsmen doing a job for a paycheck. They loved what they did, but it was a job and you had deadlines to meet. But then the 90’s again, and you started getting super stars, and the role of comic artists went from skilled labourer to artiste. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe comics are as legitimate an art form as sculptor, architect or ballerina. But there is a difference between an actor say, who is good at his craft and works hard, performs well and gets deserved applause. Then there’s the celebrity. Famous more for being famous than the actual work they do. Oh, they might now and then make a movie, which may or may not be good. But their real focus is being famous. Some of the blame here goes to Wizard magazine, whose practice of hyping creators and making hot lists drove not only fan support for this mentality, but supported the rock star persona of these top 10 creators. When you look at some of these really hot comic artists, and you see their track record for missing deadlines, or taking forever to finish a project, you see that same sort of divide.  If you sign on to do 20 pages a month, do 20 pages a month. Skip the movie, turn the 360 off and draw the next page. If you can’t do 20 pages a month, don’t take the gig. You can do a limited series or one offs, or join the covers only brigade. (Ugh! The poor starry eyed kids who come to cons with a portfolio of pin-ups who get lectured on having to show samples of actual pages, only to see their heroes do nothing but covers and pin-ups.) Okay, stepping down off the soap box, yes I will follow a creator from one project to the next. I’ve read stuff I might never have bothered with otherwise because of who was working on it. But when they jump ship, and some other random team is assigned, I’m as likely to walk away as well. Nowadays it’s not really a big issue for me, I mostly read stuff that’s driven by it’s creators, so the chance of replacing Terry Moore on a Terry Moore created comic is pretty low. And these creators know what they are capable of deadline wise and plan accordingly. I bought the first trade paperback of the JRJR Avengers, I like JRJR. But it was sort of like fulfilling the chicken wing craving. I’ve had my fill, now I’m good for a while. I might get a craving again.

Jackie Rose

One of the reasons I started doing these weekly walkabouts is to finally make myself sit down and read all these great looking comics I’ve stumbled across online. This week I finally tackled Jackie Rose, a great adventure story that has recently finished it’s first story. Josh Ulrich has shared that he’s already hard at work on the next story and given some idea about what’s in store for the series going forward. But I’m jumping ahead, first we need to be introduced. So Jackie Rose is a treasure hunter. Well, she wants to be. Mostly she works in a diner, but she knows what she WANTS to be doing. Sound familiar? Yeah, she’s a female Indiana Jones type character, but she’s an amateur and green enough that she comes across very real and not too over the top, like say Laura Croft. That’s not to say she’s not talented, resourceful and gutsy. And with a great sense of humour. The rest of the cast is pretty fun as well, her driver/partner/friend Eddie Ripcord, the surprising Dian, Robo Nazis, The Frenchman, it’s all great slightly fantastical stuff, exactly like you’d want in this sort of adventure. The art is really eyecatching, that balance between cartooning withoout being cartoony. Kinda an Atomic Robo feel. The colour palette as well, not to bright, but still very strong/bold colour. Josh does some interesting textural things with his colour and his backgrounds that I’m jealous of. All that being said, when you read Josh’s Bio and learn he took up cartooning six years ago and came up with Jackie only two years ago it’s a pretty impressive piece of work for someone so new. There are however, some little things that show Josh is still new and has room to grow. First is the actual process and progress of Jackie’s first adventure. Josh jumps about with publishing schedules, update lengths and even makes a huge narrative leap at the start of Chapter 4 that feels a bit like he wanted just to skip explaining how we got to the big finale. All of these are part in parcel of someone sharing a work in progress. He’s gone back at times and made changes to existing pages and at the same time he leapt the story forward he also did some character redesigns. Read as a whole, it can be a bit jumpy and jarring at times, but if this is his first real kick at the can, I’m excited to see where he is in another 2 – 6 years. The other gripes I had where minor stuff, again, indicative of someone still learning. His word balloons while nice and organic, can sometimes be a bit off kilter, his text needing more even spacing from the balloons edge. As well, as much as I like his backgrounds, they can sometimes be a little sparse or underdeveloped. Again, not a huge issue and the sort of thing that will come with time. Besides, you are often distracted by a great action moment or character expression. So put on yer adventuring boots and prepare for an adventure with Jackie Rose. You’ll thank me.