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§ Robert Venditti, creator of THE SURROGATES, has a blog! Here, he shares some concept art for his next project, THE HOMELAND DIRECTIVE, with art by Mike Huddleston.

§ Scott McCloud has a little bit more on the influence of the silent GI JOE issue, with some interesting comments that cast more light on the impact of this issue. We’ve often heard it said how important the G.I. JOE comic was to readers of its generation in helping them see comics as a storytelling medium. Are there other comics of the ’80s and ’90s that had a similar impact?

§ Even before our post yesterday on Amazon’s odd author policies, David Welsh was looking at current practices for credits, especially where the author is the selling point.

§ An amusing interview with the highly entertaining Steve Lieber & Jeff Parker on the occasion of the release of UNDERGROUND, their new comic:

Jeff: I’m a failed artist. Not entirely, I made a living for quite a while just on drawing- for comics, animation, live action storyboards. But I seem to be much faster and connect better with people by writing. It’s all storytelling, which is my overall forte. I can’t believe I said “forte.”

§ If the talk about the tragic death of Yoshito Usui made you curious to read Crayon Shin-Chan, here’s an online preview, hosted on the cobwebsite known as MySpace.

§ NPR comics blogger Glen Weldon is definitely fun to read. Here he looks at Wednesday Comics:

One of the year’s most interesting comic book experiments comes to an end today. Turns out? It wasn’t particularly experimental.

Flatly awesome and happy-making, yes. But a brave leap forward that stared the uncertain future — with its looming spectre of digital distribution — squarely in its downloadable face-app? No.

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§ You Can Never Get Enough John Stanley Dept: Frosty The Snowman.

§ The death of paper continues as Graphix announces they are discontinuing Duoshade and Unishade, a type of paper that, when chemically treated, would reveal a line pattern for shading. Ted Rall, Sean Phillips and many other cartoonists participate in the comments.

§ Related: The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies. Thanks to Pia Guerra for the link. Rest assured, we will never surrender our Speedball lettering guide!

1 COMMENT

  1. re: McCloud and influential comics
    How about the Alpha Flight issue that took place in a snowstorm? Now, I know the story about Byrne supposedly being late but it made me think. Also, the Simonson issue of Thor fighting Fin Fang Foom I think it was where it was all double page spreads- maybe one could trace the Image generation’s love of splash pages to that?