Scott McCloud's Blog, page 33

Three Down, One to Go

It's been almost a year since I wrote about four upcoming books I was looking forward to after seeing sneak previews.

Two of them, David Mazzuccelli's Asterios Polyp and David Small's Stitches have already dropped to widespread acclaim. Now Hope Larson's Mercury is finally hitting the stands. I highly recommend it; a riveting all-ages, multi-generational mystery.

Just one to go now: Vera Brosgol's delightful Kristyna's Anya's Ghost. Like my own GN, Brosgol's book is still in progress and could ...

Turin, Rome, and Happy 17th, Sky

Back from Italy with a few photos, lots of great memories, and a 17 year-old daughter whose birthday lasted for 36 hours courtesy of a really long plane ride.

Thanks to my Italian publisher Vittorio Pavesio for a great visit, as well as the lovely Gina, and all the great folks at the Pavesio Comics booth. Shout-outs also to Fulvio, Maurizio, Gianfranco, Barbara, Ryo, Massimo, all our fellow guests, and the great teachers and students at Rome's International School of Comics, including...

Italy!

Off to Rome and Turin with the family this week. Back at the beginning of next week.

Don't want to promise anything but we *might* upload some photos while in transit before then, so check in occasionally.

Picmoticon

I first heard about Picmoticon.com from a tweet by Sara Ryan but clearly we were made for each other. Check out some of the great "accidental faces" out there and maybe submit one of your own.

Have a good weekend. We're off to Italy next week!

Mr. Bissette Remembers

Battle-scarred freelance veteran and CCS teacher Steve Bissette has been posting his remembrances of some "Forgotten Comics Wars" over at his blog. It's a fascinating series covering debates that were raging during the years I was just entering the business.

Since the series took the form of scattered blog posts, Mark Evanier has done us all the favor of collecting the links for all 12 parts and offers his own commentary here.

Get ready to start a few tabs:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |

Is it Comics?: An Interesting Fence-Sitter

Got this in the mail last night:

My name is Ira Marcks. I am a cartoonist from NY who recently collaborated with Jake Lodwick (founder of Vimeo) on an experimental illustration/animation project.

It's sort of like a 45 minute music video with one sliding frame. But it's also like a graphic novel told in a single, 50 foot long panel.

I settled on the term 'Illustrative Score' to describe the project and it's method.

Check out Ira and Jake's stimulating results here (and Ira's personal site

Kickstarting E-Sheep

Patrick Farley is a friend, but I can say without hesitation that he's one of the most innovative cartoonists of the last decade and the e-sheep archive (currently under reconstruction) is a treasure trove. Anything that helps him make more comics would be a very very good thing.

Dick Giordano 1932-2010

Tom has a comprehensive report, but I just wanted to add that I liked the man when I was a production peon at DC Comics in 1982-83, and I could tell that many of DC's better moves at the time owed a debt to Dick Giordano's better instincts.

I Don't Know about You, but THIS is the Superhero Movie I'VE been Waiting for

I'm even okay with the '60s Batman-style sound effects! Thanks, everyone I've ever known for telling me about this as soon as I got home.

Oh, and hey, as long as it's Random Friday, I've got a question: I'm dying to find a reeeeeally old music video from the '80s—maybe even pre-MTV. It had a funky, electronic song (possibly no words) with black and white, photocopy-style animation. There was a recurring assembly line motif with hamburgers and hands and that creepy masonic eye/pyramid thing...

Indiana University South Bend

Off to South Bend for my talk at Indiana University on Wednesday (see link at right for tickets). See you there!

As usual blogging may be spotty until I'm back on Friday. Feel free to keep debating the merits of thought balloons until then.