The New York Comic-Con is coming to the Javitz Center next weekend (April 18-20) where I’ll be signing shiny hardcovers over at Grand Central as well as moderating the following two panels:
Friday, April 18 / 2:00-3:00 pm
Friday, April 18 / 4:00-5:00 pm
Saturday, April 19 / 2:00-3:00 pm
SHOOTING WAR Book Signing, Grand Central Publishing
You can also find me kicking back at Artists Alley Table E-11; I’ll have all manner of things with my artwork on them there, including a malnourished young child whose entire body I’ve tattooed from head to toe with the only existing copy of Act Three of “KELLY.”
Last week I illustrated a feature called “Four Days in Denver” for New York magazine written by Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr. of The West Wing. It posits what the Democratic Convention this year would play out like with two undecided candidates going in; the issue is out today and the feature is online now.
Yesterday I did a podcast interview with writer/director Lance Weiler for his excellent online resource The Workbook Project, an open-source informational hub for creators looking to use the internet in new ways to spread their storytelling regardless of medium. Lance and I met at SXSWi and talked about how his last film HEAD TRAUMA incorporated a cross-media ARG (alternate-reality game) that creates a supplemental story using phone calls, websites, live performances and even a Jack Chick-sized comic that fans can follow clues to additional pieces of the film’s story. A longtime comics fan, Lance was very interested in SHOOTING WAR’s path from web to print to motion picture… so we had a little chat about it:
One result of this conversation is a word I’m going to overuse: micropatron. It’s the model of organizing your fans’ donations to meet your production budget that allows them to go from passive fans to active producers, showing their enthusiasm for your work by helping bring it to life. This bon mot and more are contained within the podcast.
A few months ago, I’d quietly decided to license “KELLY” under a Creative Commons CC-by-NC license after reading a particularly brain-popping article on doujinshi culture in Japan. Applying open-source ideas to comics has always excited me… and my freakadelic “KELLY” has served as my current laboratory for pushing boundaries in all directions, so it felt natural for me to take this step with this particular project.
Imagine the smiles exchanged when I met the folks behind Creative Commons at SWSWi recently and the lovely chats we had… and imagine my smile when they graciously posted “KELLY” to their main page last week:
For those unfamiliar with CC, publishing “KELLY” online under this license effectively allows you to spread and remix “KELLY” however you like… as long as you credit my original work and you’re not making any money off it. I enthusiastically encourage all sorts of “KELLY” sharing/remixing… and I hope to hear from you about what you’re doing with it.
And yes, you can expect new installments of “KELLY” coming soon.
My heartfelt apologies for the delay; I’ve got comics in the oven you don’t even know about yet.
This past weekend I was a speaker at SXSW Interactive, giving a presentation on SHOOTING WAR and other comics in my immediate future as part of the multimedia “Book Readings” series. Any trip to Austin gives me a chance to see friends and family there and eat heaps of barbecue, but my experience at SXSWi was unlike any convention I’ve attended before: full of enthusiastic, intelligent and forward-thinking brains all gathered together to tear down old ways and build up new ones. Everyone had a dream, a project, a company and wanted to figure out a way to pool resources to benefit each other.
Continue reading ‘SXSWi 2008′
SHOOTING WAR gets some nice love from The Brooklyn Rail; here’s a snip:
Smart, topical, and entertaining, Shooting War exemplifies an exciting direction in comic books. It’s understood but not wholly accepted that comic books have reached an adult level of sophistication in the last thirty years… They’re also deeper and more fun than the Hollywood war movies that keep combusting instead of blockbusting.
I’ll be traveling to Austin TX for SXSW Interactive, a gathering of all things shiny, wired and AJAX-powered. As part of their Book Readings series, I’ll be discussing SHOOTING WAR’s genesis and execution as well as casting a fiery eye to the gorgeous future.
I created this piece of art for last week’s Y: THE LAST MAN benefit for the CBLDF; now that the auction is over, I can show it to you adoring people:
In other news, I’m speaking tonight at the NY Public Library at 6:30pm; hope to see you New Yorkers there…
On Tuesday evening (February 12th), I’ll be giving a talk with my SHOOTING WAR co-author Anthony Lappé at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library; the talk will an expansion of the multimedia presentation we gave on tour this past fall, chock full of behind-the-scenes information on the evolution of the book from webcomic to hardcover; 6:30pm:
