§ Tim O’Shea’s excellent interview site, “Talking with Tim,” continues with Frank Santoro:

O’Shea: As a storyteller yourself, do you fear that the potential audience for your work might be alienated (wrongly, I must admit) because they don’t agree with your opinion as a critic?

Santoro: I think most cartoonists are afraid of stating their real opinions of their peers’ work. Why? Because it’s a small community and things get around. And they’re afraid that if they make some critical comments of a colleague they will be “blacklisted” somehow. They are protecting their own “careerist” concerns. Critics on the other hand are free to say whatever they want. No one is going to snark them in the comments section and say “yah, but your comics suck, how can you write that?” It’s an interesting situation to find myself in. I sort of relish it.


Bilde-4§ Attention: Joe Sacco reviews the work of Guy Delisle:

Guy Delisle has entered the comics scene like a breath of fresh air, and may all young autobiographically-minded cartoonists fill their lungs with his example. With endless curiosity but without seeming to try too hard, Delisle lives a life worth documenting. He has travelled to Shenzhen, China and Pyongyang, North Korea to supervise animation projects, and he turned those adventures into two critically- acclaimed works of comics (Shenhzen, A Travelogue From China and Pyongyang, A Journey In North Korea).


§ Laura Hudson points out an inequity in the currently popular book, BAT-MANGA:

Manga-ka Jiro Kuwata wrote and drew the original manga, but you’d need to do a little digging to figure that out. There is no credit whatsoever for him on the cover, instead relegating his name to the interior flap. And within the blogosphere, at least, the authorial slight has not gone unnoticed.


Seriously, that is more than a little lame, Pantheon and Chip Kidd.

§ Unsurprisingly, some folks are remembering things a bit differently than Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada are in their current interviews on CBR. Marc-Oliver Frisch points out an obvious example:

During the course of the interview, oddly, Quesada suggests that Mark Bagley, the artist who ended up drawing the first hundred-and-then-some issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, was not around at Marvel in 2000, and was “brought back” by Jemas.

Erm, no. Bagley had been drawing Marvel’s Thunderbolts since 1997, and continued to do so until well into his tenure on Ultimate Spider-Man, in fact.


§ There’s a new director, Sylvain White, for the long-brewing motion picture version of Diggle/Jock’s LOSERS. White previously made STOMP THE YARD. After a bunch of false starts — both Tim Story and Peter Berg were previously attached — the film is set to go into production in early 2009.

§ Valerie dispenses Twenty Thoughts On Freelancing, which are dead on the money. A few examples:

7. Maintain your relationships with your bosses, business prospects, everyone. You are your own PR agency. Network.

8. Don’t take every job that is offered to you. Some jobs, after some consideration, might be more trouble than they’re worth.

9. Don’t be surprised if you end up working more hours as a freelancer than you ever did when you had a nine-to-five.

10. Take a walk outside every once in a while. Set up activities “after work” where you completely leave your work station. Do this every day.


We also like the advice Dan Slott once gave us on freelancing: Do something every day. Taking out the garbage does not count.

1 COMMENT

  1. Another thought in terms of running your own business is: What do you need to charge for your time in order to show a profit? Yes, we all love working for ourselves and calling the shots. But what are your costs, and what do you need to have as profit above and beyond the rent and the upgraded Mac? As a business owner, you need to show yourself a profit after a certain period of time.

  2. I think it’s funny you gave Laura Hudson credit for noticing the lack of credit instead of the people she credited for uncovering it.

  3. “We also like the advice Dan Slott once gave us on freelancing: Do something every day.”

    Something? Like … ?