This week, the Strong Female Protagonist (SFP) Kickstarter has hit the ground running. An existing webcomic updated twice weekly for the past two years, creators Molly Ostertag and Brennan Lee Mulligan aim to publish the first four chapters as a graphic novel.
Holding You Accountable: Goyer, Mazin, and A Giant Green Porn Star
Earlier this week, during the taping of a live-audience podcast named Scriptnotes, screenwriter David S. Goyer (Man of Steel) sat and talked with a number of other screenwriters (Andrea Berloff, Stephen McFeely, and Christopher Markus, to be exact) and the podcast hosts, John August and Craig Mazin, about writing superhero movies. A major point of…
Those Turtle Guys. Rebekah Issacs, and How it Feels to Sell Your Book to Total Strangers
Achem. Hi. My name is Kristi McDowell. You may remember me from such articles as I Am Captain Marvel, Code Monkey Steal Heart, and 0 Shades of Grey: Female Antiheroes on TV. I sort of fell off the face of the planet over the last few months as I’ve shifted some of my focus from…
Webcomics: balderdash!, Magic, Baking, Elk, and Friendship
balderdash! or, the Baker’s Apprentice is a comic created by Victoria Grace Elliott, whose work you can also find at House of Orr and Goog Friday. balderdash! (little B) follows the young witch Georgie, who leaves her family home to study a human-style, non-magical bakery in a town far away. It’s a story of big, blousy…
News Beat: Friday Round-Up!
It’s Friday! End of the working week, beginning of the weekend, official start date for when Robert Smith is in love (versus other days of the week). All week, we’ve been bringing you news tailored to a couple of individual topics—Marvel (with me!), Indie comics, games, books (without pictures! Can you believe it?), etc. So…
Is it Autobiographical? And Other Questions You Shouldn’t Ask: Gabriel Roth Promotes Through Twitter Spat with Publisher
In a world where stunts are a popular method to attention for and move products, it is unsurprising that one would be used to sell a book. Take yesterday: observers (including me) were trying to figure out if the Q&A disaster between Little, Brown & Co. and author, Gabriel Roth, was in fact a stunt…
Interview with Lindsay Cibos
Lindsay Cibos and her creative partner Jared Hodges are major up-and-comers in the manga world. In 2003 she won the Grand Prize in Tokyopop’s Rising Stars of Manga competition for Peach Fuzz. They published the work in a three volume set and then extended their talents to produce several instructional books based in manga and…
Game of Thrones: The Exhibition
The Toronto leg of the Game of Thrones: The Exhibition wrapped up on May 18, and I was lucky enough to get a look at the best of Westeros, tucked into a corner of the TIFF Bell Lightbox Theatre.
The Thursday Book Beat
Hello, Book Nerds! From now on, Thursdays will be all about book news. Anything that quakes in the book industry in the last week will be featured here, so grab onto your favourite, dog-eared book and enjoy the ride. Tolkein’s Beowulf Translation Finally Published J. R. R. Tolkein’s estate has teamed up with HarperCollins to publish his…
Interview with Jim Anderson
One of my favorite webcomics is by fellow Michiganian, Jim Anderson: the all-age-friendly Ellie on Planet X. The colors are rich, gorgeous, and minimalist all at once. The storyline is unique and funny. The dialogue is perfecto. I was thrilled to be able to interview Jim earlier this week.
Stories from Comics Academe: Visualizing a Story of Cancer’s Culture
What Graphic Novels Tell Us About Cancer Care, Greedy Stories, and the Ethnographic Method On April 30, 2014, I attended a lecture at Soka University in California entitled “What Graphic Novels Tell Us About Cancer Care, Greedy Stories, and the Ethnographic Method” by Juliet McMullin, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Riverside. Among…
Webcomics: In loving memory
I discovered the wonderful world of webcomics over a decade ago thanks to my best friend and internet Big Sis, Selena Ulrich. She introduced me to the likes of Cool Cat Studio and Sinfest. Along with Livejournal, webcomics became an integral part of getting through those slow work days. And webcomics never meant more to…