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§ There is only ONE Donna Barr (above), and Tim O’Shea interviews her at Robot 6:

O’Shea: What motivated you to donate your work, dating back to 1963, to San Diego State University –and have you ever visited your collection?

Barr: One of my life goals was to have my work recognized by a university collection. Yes, I’ve visited the collection. One of my readers, Daniel Hager, put the connection between the university and me into motion.

The collection was opened with a talk in the collection during the 2004 San Diego Comicon. The lights went out when we went to tour the collection and we had a lot of fun viewing it with flashlights; it was like touring a funhouse. My name is on a glass plaque in the Love Library entryway as a contributor, and I am a heritage member of the university.

§ Robot 6 and Chris Mautner also strike gold with an interview with Sparkplug’s Dylan Williams on the New World Ordering Order:

How does Diamond’s new policies affect your bottom line? Are there any past, present or future projects that you feel will not make the cut-off?

Good question. In a weird way it won’t because their discount and cost of shipping was basically eating into any profit but there was an increase in interest with all the books that went through Diamond. By their new numbers, even Sparkplug’s most successful books wouldn’t make their cut. Of course, they turned down some of those books five years ago, so I have faith that things will change. I’m hoping that their change in interest will encourage small stores to go to other sources as well. We’ve been distributing other people’s books for about three years and that side of the business is just growing and growing, which is a sign that people are looking for independent and art comics and don’t know where to find them.


§ WEHT Nicholas Gurewitch of PERRY BIBLE FELLOWSHIP fame? Brian Heater is finding out. Gurewitch reveals that turning out a little comic strip that makes you chuckle is a labor-intensive process:

Is the bulk of that time spent coming up with the idea or doing the drawing?

About half of it is idea, though it ranges quite a bit for each comic. I’d say 50 hours a week, because that’s probably average. I should say I did send hundreds of hours drawing, re-drawing, or reconceptualizing an idea. It was very time consuming. I’m one of those guys who, when working on a project, doesn’t really stop working on it until it’s done. From week to week, it was very grueling to get to the point where I could be at peace with a strip.


Event coverage:

§ Rick Marshall presents his Webcomics Weekend Wrap-Up.

§ And TUAW recaps the “comics on handhelds” panel from SXSW:

“What we need to concentrate on is making the comic an enjoyable experience for the reader and not just a compromise that people are willing to make just so they can read comics on the iPhone,” offered Hosley.

Edwards agreed, saying, “The new media transforms the artistic expression. The form is sacred. The longer term experience is that artists will create content specifically for this format.”

“You have to wonder if we’ve actually seen the first comic made for the mobile platform,” added Hoseley.

§ Not Comics: Sometime comics scholar Gene Kannenberg unlaunches the Editor FAIL blog, where we’re sure to end up very, very soon.