RobotSkirts

At RjB’s suggestion, I read Nextwave (that panel reminded me of Ryan). It’s Warren Ellis. Pretty light and fun, not obnoxious. I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of issue 12 when I saw a very familiar panel. Stuart Immonen certainly has an interesting bag of tricks.

The biggest news in the blogosphere last week (or at least the best), is that John Kricfalusi has a blog. John K was the mind behind Ren & Stimpy. Up till now, his most recent work has been featured on Katie Rice’s blog; she worked on the last iteration of Ren & Stimpy. John K has been posting fairly regularly since launch: pitching new shows and demonstrating his unique charicatures.

Sin City opened in theaters today. Frosty and I caught the very first showing at noon today. Fucking awesome! The movie opens with a short scene between Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton. That scene was originally filmed to convince Frank Miller to let Robert Rodriguez make the movie. I was kinda worried “this film noir crap is going to get annoying”, but soon enough they were off and running with “The Hard Goodbye” storyline. The film is black and white with some color highlights. To make this color easier to add in post-production they used blue and green paint and then replaced the colors using the same techniques used to make the digital backdrops. At some points the film is goes to “true” black and white and mimics the original comic book art even using the same shots. Amazon has example pages that you should check out before you see the movie. Sin City is extremely violent, but if you were able to handle Kill Bill this won’t be much worse. I encourage you all to see this great movie even if it is to realize that comics aren’t just about superheros.

Side note: A year ago today it was announced as an April Fools joke that Grand Theft Auto: Sin City would be the next game in the series.

Checkerboard Nightmare is a wonderful little comic by Kristofer Straub. It seems to defy discription though. Reading the first strip will clue you into the character motivations. After that crash course you’ll be able to jump right in.

Radioactive Panda got back off of the ground last Monday so get on board now while the story is just getting started. I discovered it while it was on hiatus and read a large portion of the archive. I enjoy the mad scientist angle and the art is really vibrant and polished. I’m not sure how often it is updated, but the archives vary from once to twice a week. Enjoy!

Quality art isn’t necessary to produce great cartoons. Spamusement actually takes pride in being poorly drawn, wearing its hatemail as a badge of honor. The site is updated almost daily with a cartoons based on actual spam subject lines. Be prepared to spend a lot of time reading the archive.

Where do I get my mad indie cred? Questionable Content is updated every weekday. It is only 319 strips old, but Jeph Jacque’s art has improved by leaps and bounds since its humble beginnings. So, if you like good art, good music, and hate hipsters check it out. He also has a great walkthrough on how the comic is created. Jeph has joined the fight against Comic Sans; that’s reason enough to support him.

I read quite a few webcomics and will be highlighting a few of my favorites in the future. The first one up is rather unique; CulturePulp is a nonfiction biweekly feature in The Oregonian. M.E. Russel has covered a large number of topics: test driving a Segway, riding in critical mass, and even Gallagher. Developing an insatiable appetite for comics journalism? Check out our boy and others in the latest Columbia Journalism Review.

Drawn! is moving faster than anything out there right now. Dedicated to comics and illutstration it has maintained a steady pace since it started earlier this month. I’ve allready got so many webcomics bookmarked that I’m finding it hard to keep up. There is some serious gold in there though. Since it is St. Paddy’s Day here’s their story about lucky charms illustrations. Of course I’m including a picture of what I feel is the creepiest Trix box. Seriously, it looks like “Trix - strong enough to bring inanimate rabbits to life” or maybe having a atomic sub (with nuclear missiles) in my cereal is more scary.