Culture

Should comics panels be written about or recorded for all to hear? This panel report from APE of Dan Nadel interviewing Daniel Clowes has been linked everywhere, probably because it's such a thorough write-up. There's lots of dish on other cartoonists, and anecdotes from the history of alt.comix:

Artist John Cebollero is one of our pals, we'll admit, but we'll come right out and say it: he should be way better known than he is. With a style based on the organic, EC-influenced art of 70s undergrounds, Cebollero has a creepy, darkly funny look that's all his own.

Image publisher Eric Stephenson doesn't get quoted too much, but maybe he should. Rich Johnston has a very in-depth interview with Stephenson up and its about time. Image is consistently the #3 or 4 comics publishers and in recent months Image has absolutely stolen the mantle of "buzz book" publisher, starting with Chew, but continuing on with Turf, Skullkickers, Morning Glorys and so on. And of course, with the Walking Dead TV show debuting in a few days, they are set to sell even MORE copies of a book that already has 3 million copies in print. As Stephenson mentions, he doesn't often go around tooting his horn, so the inetrview touches on a lot of point seldom publicly spoken of. Kudos to Johnston and Stephenson for putting something substantive up on the internet for a change. Anyone interested in the state of comics publishing and creators rights should read the whole thing, but a few selected tidbits:

You hardly need us to tell you this, but there is a special Halloween-themed, 45-level bonus Angry Birds game that just went on sale for $.99. Angry Birds is an obsession around Stately Beat Manor, and paired with our other obsession, Halloween, it means that we'll be posting even LESS soon, if that is possible.

Illustrator, toy designer, and sometime cartoonist Travis Lampe has just released some neat Halloween prints. [Via Super Punch]

Animator Kyle Bolton provides a team-up of sorts between his own Smash Comics character and a more familiar one. Smash Comics is a superhero webcomic for kids, written by Chris Bolton, that was recently picked up by Candlewick Press. More info here.

With her How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less soon to come out (and getting solid advance reviews) cartoonist Sarah Glidden is embarking on another journey to the Middle East, with hopes of turning it into another non-fiction comic. And she's funding part of the travel via Kickstarter with a project called "Stumbling Towards Damascus". For the project, she'll be working with the Common Language Project, a Seattle-based group of journalists who travel to under-reported on areas. For this trip they'll be journeying to places affected by the Iraq war, including Syria, Turkey and the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Glidden's larger hope is to follow in the tradition established by Joe Sacco, whose "comics journalism" in the Middle East has won multiple awards.

Gareth Hinds is a very accomplished artist (and former Xeric winner) whose comics adaptations of classic literature have found a home at Candlewick Press. His full color Odyssey adaptation just came out, and there's a nice story about it in today's PW. While we were looking around for some art to illustrate the story, we came on Hinds' own page for the book and were struck by the "embeddable comics preview" on the page, which he said was developed by Candlewick:

Candlewick has released a short preview, using some new "widget" technology which enables it to be easily embedded in any blog or webpage. There are still a few rough spots in the implementation, but it's pretty handy. See below -- and feel free to repost it elsewhere!