Scott McCloud's Blog, page 58
March 12, 2009
My Favorite Cartoonist
No one has had more influence over my art than my old friend, the legendary Brian Dewan. He’s a songwriter, composer, builder, music historian, and fine artist, but in my world he’s always been, first and foremost, a cartoonist, because he understands better than anybody how ideas and images can be distilled to their essence, a magic trick I’m still trying to learn.
I talk a lot about how Kurt Busiek got me into comics in junior high school, but despite a statistically-improbable cluster of ge
March 11, 2009
Yeah, What’s Up with THAT, America?
Lucy + Erika = Awesome. Hey, and there’s still time to order Erika’s new book and reward one of the many printers out there that aren’t prudes.
March 10, 2009
About “About ‘About Digital Comics’”
It took about 3 minutes in the mid-’90s for comic strips to take to the Web; like those newborn babies dropped in water that instantly know how to swim. If an online comic strip looked like its printed cousins, it was just as readable. If surfers had short attention spans, no problem. The Web was one big refrigerator, covered with magnets, waiting for something short, funny and recognizable to snap on to its audience.
Long form comics (the online equivalent of comic books and graphic novels) have
March 8, 2009
Why Brussels Loves Comics
Clearly it is the presence of the Giant Blue Brain which looks down upon this fair city.
Thank you to my gracious hosts for an exhilarating visit to Belgium’s charming capitol, and to The Mighty Brain to which I now pledge my everlasting obedience.
March 7, 2009
Why I Don’t Drink
The place I ate lunch at yesterday here in Brussels had a gorgeous display of alcohol bottles rising 14 feet on cherry wood shelves. The bottles were lit from above and below and within each shelf. I spent the entire lunch staring at them.
I always loved the traditions of different bottle shapes and label styles. Whisky, vodka, brandy, scotch… There’s nothing stopping them from putting Jim Beam in Apple Juice bottles—it would be the exact same drink—but they never will. When I pass them in the su
March 6, 2009
My Sad, Sad Generation
I don’t get to see it until I’m back in the States, but trust me: I lived through the dark years and no matter how bad it is, it could have been so, so much worse if it had come out when I was in knee pants.
No consolation for Hitler, but some perspective for the rest of us.
March 5, 2009
The Thing About Belgium
Off to Brussels for the Book Fair.
I was in Turnhout for a comics festival in late 2007 and I noticed something odd. It was moist, cool, and windy, and when I caught my own reflection in a shop window, my hair was blowing back into a small tuft directly over my forehead—exactly like Tintin. I mentioned this to cartoonist/genius Kevin Huizenga at dinner that night and he confirmed that he’d noticed his hair doing the same thing whenever he was in Belgium and had even written about it. Was Hergé a
Headshots
Cartoonists are visual artists. We should all have better headshots. Everybody’s been enjoying the great photos of NYC comics artists that Seth Kushner has been taking, but I think my favorite is this one from a recent interview with James Kochalka. If anyone out there has a better headshot than that, I’d love to see it.
March 4, 2009
Music = Comics?
Do comics artists have musical twins? I think some do. For example, I’d say that Craig Thompson is the Sufjan Stevens of comics. Midwestern roots, struggles with faith, gorgeous compositions, a bit weepy… They even look similar (in fact, I was googling to make sure I was spelling both of their names correctly and came across this).
Others I’ve been toying with (or that have been suggested by others):
Will Eisner = Duke Ellington
R. Stevens = Daft Punk
James Kochalka = Flaming Lips
Paul Pope = T-Rex
Ga
March 3, 2009
Testing…
Okay, if this worked, we should now have a fully-functioning blog (comments, archives, etc) thanks to the excellent work of Mr. Tyler Martin who converted my oddball front page into a Wordpress Theme in record time. I’m sure we’ll be tweaking a bit this week, but hopefully everything will work like you wacky kids with your goldarned gadgets expect.
And if any of you budding webmasters/hapless cartoonists need similar work done, Tyler’s definitely The Man (everyone agreed when I was asking around
