Dante Shepherd, of Surviving The World, joins Rosscott and Alex Heberling to look over and comment on the comic and webcomic news of the week! Thanks to Eric Kimball for gathering our news links.
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News
New Documentary About Cartoonists
Dave Kellett and Fred Schoeder have been going around interview cartoonist both web and traditional about their work. They are now working to pull these interviews together into a documentary.
Original Source: Kickstarter – Additional Discussion: Fleen
Discussion about Diversity in Comics
Original Source: Spike’s Google+
Using Feedburner to Let Your Fans Post Your Stuff to Twitter Quickly.
What it sounds like.
Original Source: Sold Out Activist – via: Steven of BJSerious
Comic Publishers Target Asia as a New Market
Original Source: BBC – via: Samantha Kyle
Girl Genus Wins Hugo, Hark a Vagrant! Wins Harvey
Source: Robot 6 (Hugo) (Harvey)
New Webcomic Collective.
Original Source: Open Fire Comics
Kiss Comix Goes Under. Blames Piracy.
Original Source: Bleeding Cool
Article on the Invention of Spiderman From 1977
Original Source: Jack Kirby Musem – via: Bleeding Cool
Children Show a Preference for Websites Over Comic Books
Original Source: The Gaurdian – via: Bleeding Cool
Online Comic Book PDF Store Opens With Backing From Major Publisher
Original Source: My Digital Comics – via: Bleeding Cool
Dean Trippe’s Butterfly Returns
Illustrator Dean Trippe’s parody of superhero comics that is super beautiful has just started back up.
Original Source: Butterfly – via: Dean Trippe’s Tumblr
Kris Straub Starts a Podcast Analyzing What it’s Like to Try and be Funny
Original Source: Human Authority – via: Kris Straub’s Twitter
Mayberry Melonpool Updates Again
Second webcomic Ross ever read updates on Sundays after not updating for a long time.
Original Source: Melon Pool – via: Fleen
Dern’s Scurvy Dogs Kickstarter Makes it to their Goal
Webcomic creator who is using lots of other webcomic artists to make a board game is fully funded on Kickstarter.
Original Source: Kickstarter – via: Dern’s Twitter
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First, I would like to say the Newscast has hit its stride. The broadcasts are really well-done.
As to the Discussion about Diversity in Comics,
“And there are no secret land mines waiting for you if you exercise just as much care in building characters that look, think and behave nothing like you as you do characters that could pass for close relatives…”
I think the only way a writer can intelligently write about another culture is to follow guidelines I found under Gaudior:
Research/Be sure the out-group characters you’re describing have their own agency, motivation, and agendas./Be sure your story isn’t just about in-group people./Have more than one out-group person in the book, with more than one characteristic./Don’t make your characters incomprehensibly Other– especially if they’re the villains./Don’t make your characters in-group people in funny clothes./Don’t make your characters in-group people in funny clothes./Don’t oversimplify.
Ha, speaking of human My Little Pony variants, “diversity” doesn’t just have to be racial. My friend Mayeko got crap from some folks over on tumblr for making her human Pinkie Pie chubby. Later she pointed out that despite the haters, Pinkie Pie was also got a landslide of compliments (and noted that despite being equally underweight as Pinkie was over, no one seemed to raise concern about Fluttershy’s figure)
I made my over versions of human ponies here: http://fesworks.com/llc/human-my-little-ponies (not very good). I also had a big post about why I made each character like they were.
In lue of using race with ponies in general (Ponies are ponies), you can always diversify with cultural backgrounds, etc. But also, the real key here, making sure that each character is not basically just the same as any other character, but just looking different. Some people forget even that bare minimal step.
Thanks Rossmom! I didn’t want The Newscast to become “The Webcomic Beacon 2”, which is why I wanted a host that wasn’t me. I knew Rosscott from our time as segment producers for Infendo Radio, and heard about his interest in podcasting…. so I snatched him up! MWAHAHAHAHA! It’s that self-motivation that is key as well. Plus I’ve gotten better about not talking on the show when I shouldn’t be on 😉