Scott McCloud's Blog, page 51

Want to Read a Story?

Since the last couple of posts were about searching for fragments of a cartoonist’s work online, here’s a cartoonist who’s been putting up whole stories for a while: Kris Dresen.

Dresen recently uploaded a brand new story She’s in the Trees, her first in color. It’s a beautiful short, wordless tone poem you could probably squeeze in before the boss comes back from the bathroom.

And if you have a bit more time to spend, I can highly recommend Dresen’s earlier story Grace, also available online (so

Searching for Shawn Cheng

One of the cooler mini-comics I got at TCAF last month was The Would-Be Bridegrooms by Shawn Cheng. Looking at it this morning, I noticed a url on the back page and thought maybe I could link to an online version. But the link was to PartykaUSA.com which redirected to a “Daily Drawings” page which featured a number of artists including Shawn, and which, if I clicked at top could get me to a page where I could order Shawn’s mini-comics and the mini-comics of other interesting artists.

Okay. Partia

Why isn’t Sean Bieri King?

One of the most naturally funny cartoonists I’ve encountered in my travels is Sean Bieri, yet I’m betting most of my readers aren’t familiar with his work. He’s a bit scattered across the Web, here and here and maybe elsewhere, but really deserves a more conspicuous showcase. Here’s my bid to bump him up a notch.

[Note that the illo above is from years ago. I've seen others use the gag since, but I'm pretty sure Sean came up with it on his own. Click on the image for more of Sean's great "Meatbea

I’m a Year Older

So I’m taking the day off.

Scott Glossary:

“Taking the day off” = Only drawing for about 5 hours, and not dealing with any other errands. 

“Vacation” = A nice long walk between drawing.

“Retirement” = Getting to draw all the time.

Have I mentioned that I love my job?

LHS!

So, no sooner does Amanda Palmer (Lexington High School alumn) put together a Neutral Milk Hotel inspired production at my old high school, and no sooner do we see my old pal Brian Dewan (Lexington High School alumn) performing in LA (and also doing stuff with Neutral Milk Hotel lately, oddly enough) when suddenly, our friend Sally is linking to Eugene Merman (Lexington High School alumn) giving this year’s LHS commencement speech a day or two ago.

In fact, Eugene even went to Diamond Junior High

Entire Nation Endorses Cartoonist

It somehow slipped my mind that America has its own website, but if a nation of 300 million wanted to pick a cartoonist to profile, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than Gene.

[Link via Dirk]

Know any Italian?

I saw some great new work in Barcelona that was published in Spanish, but hadn’t been translated into English yet (don’t have those books at hand at the moment, so I’ll save them for another post). 

Meanwhile, though, one small press comic that caught my eye while in Spain was actually from an Italian cartoonist living and studying in Barcelona named Giulia Sagramola. It was called Riunione di Famiglia and if you know any Italian, you can tell me if the story is any good, but I liked the art and

A Freebie from Harper

Barry Deutsch notes that HarperCollins is now offering the first 100 pages of our recent 576 page Zot! Collection for free online. This is a good thing.

There was a time, not that long ago, when publishers were reluctant to offer any significant amount of published works online for free. Clearly though, it can help spread the word about good work. Check out the comments from yesterday’s post regarding Carol Tyler’s 10-page preview for a demonstration. 

I remember when Understanding Comics was firs

Carol Tyler Excerpt

Fantagraphics is offering a 10-Page PDF excerpt and slideshow of Carol Tyler’s first full-length graphic novel You’ll Never Know Book 1: A Good and Decent Man. Tyler’s short comics include some true classics, so this book is generating a lot of well-earned anticipation.

Found via Spurge in the middle of one of those depressing “women in comics” arguments which always seem to bury the headline of the remarkable flood of great new comics by women in favor of rehashed 20th Century grudge-matches and

Notes from Home

Back from Barcelona with just a few minutes before I return to drawing, but wanted to reiterate my thanks for a great visit to my gracious hosts and all the cool artists and writers I hung out with.

Despite seven hours of signing, we never ran out of fans until the very end which was really cool (though my lines move slower in Europe for various reasons). Didn’t run out of reporters either — good news for my excellent Spanish publisher Astiberri.

Will look forward to heading back to Spain in Augus