Category Archives: Comics

August 28 is International Read a Comic in Public Day!

by Cimaxion

Hey, tomorrow, Saturday August 28, 2010, is International Read a Comic in Public Day!

That means that all you unattractive, bedroom-bound, nerdish, geekster, loser, babeless nobodies can actually get up a little nonexistent courage and emerge from your domiciles to take your first tentative steps across the street with a real live honest-to-god paper-printed comic book in your hands!  Woooooo!  Get it on, baby!  Jivesteppin’ along the street with my ink pages!

Flavorwire has a nice little post about what comics to read for certain locations if you want to fit in and look cool.  I don’t happen to suffer from the decease of timidity or humble nerdishness.  I’m a real bastard who likes to walk up and push ballpoints into people’s throats if I think they aren’t showing proper respect.  So whatever your problem with reading comics in public might be I’m probably not going to understand it or be very sympathetic.  In fact, I might just chase your ass through the park to have a good laugh at your expense.

So, go for it.  Read your stupid comic in public tomorrow.  I dare you.

Comics Author Harvey Pekar Has Passed Away

by Editor

American comics genius Harvey Pekar has passed away at the age of 70.  I think Pekar was the greatest writer of comics because he treated the form as literature – for real – not like most of the dimwits writing ‘graphic novels.’ Pekar was serious and nervous and funny and angry, with very little separation between. His observations of everyday life run a full range from fixing a flat tire in a snow storm to surviving cancer to trying to find a file folder at work.  He looked at his life and wrote it all down for his comic books.

His comic books appeared in a series called American Splendor.

Harvey Pekar Comic on Corporatism

by Editor

Smith Magazine has a new Harvey Pekar comic strip about how corporatism influences everything people do and think.

Can one work honestly inside a corporate system?  Can you write a book criticizing corporations and have it published by a corporation?

Are comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert completely owned by corporations?  My own answer is yes.  That’s why they are so boring.

Comic About How Future Will See the Internet

by Editor

I’ve pilfered the vault over at BoingBoing again because Cory Doctorow posted this hilarious comic by Stephen Collins about how a post-apocalyptic future world will view the Internet.  The cartoonist does lots of work for the U.K.’s Prospect Magazine.  I like the inky black outline drawings.  Mr. Collins has an off-the-side kind of humor that takes me quite a while to actually get because I’m not always the brightest bulb.  I’ve always felt that the best cartoonists are never immediately funny.  It’s the slow-burn ones that put a little confusion into the picture that really get me.

A Cartoonist Wonders About the Fuss Over Digital Books

by Editor

OptimismCartoonist Lucy Knisley has a comic online called ‘Downloading Optimism: Pessimism Virus Detected.’ It’s a funny but very direct assault on the tendency in some quarters to fret and worry about the emergence of digital books and online reading as the driving force behind the new world of publishing.  She doesn’t understand why some of our most creative writers and artists are feeling so gloomy about their prospects in a digital publishing world.

She’s been reading enormous amounts of online text since she was a little girl.  Her point of view is dead on the money.  One little thing I know is that I began publishing for kids online back in 1995.  The kids came and were reading lots of stories.  Let’s say a bunch of them were only 5.  Well, they’re 20 now, and they are making it plain that they want their books on screens just as often as they might want them on paper.  You ignore them at your peril.

I found this comic via Boing Boing