First of all, Family Man is finally back from its hiatus! Hurrah! It’s a tale of 18th century German academic life – with werewolves – and it is fantastic.
I have some APE sketches to share here, but first the rest of the roundup of Rad Things:
* My favorite comics are ones that show me the intricacies of parts of life that I, as a relatively hermitish high school teacher and webcomic creator, don’t get to experience generally. Two of the comics at the show really did this for me – Astrid Johannsen’s Absolutely True Tales of Lesbian Drama and Kent and McBrayer’s 6th Circle. Johannsen’s voice is delightfully wry and light, which allows the characters to play with, expand, and enjoy their identities without being utterly consumed by them.
6th Circle is about the world of tattoo / body art parlors, and is at its best when it uses its very slick and sharp visual sense to tell us stories about that world. Looking through the main story arc episodes felt a little like when I saw Clerks for the first time back in high school – like somebody expressing perfectly a microcosm to the point that you feel a kinship to it in spite of how removed it is from your own existence.
* Burger Force! This is a comic done in an interesting way by Australia’s own Jackie Ryan. She actually directs the comic with live actors and then creates the panels from pictures of their performance, meaning that you get this insane fineness of expression which, coupled with the plot that has a whiff of the radness of Morning Glories to it (though I am sure that she predates MG), and you’ve got yourself an experience.
* Two quick things: XmasOnTV is a story about a world of perpetual Christmas lorded over by roving sentient television faced santa creatures. I picked up their preview booklet and the idea is tremendous, and the art is way cool, so I’ll probably be adding this to my roster of things to check out regularly. Then, just starting up is Commando Bear , which is a story about the WWII adventures of Jack Churchill and Voytek, a bear that the Polish army trained to carry artillery shells to the soldiers on the front lines. So, lots of potential there too for all of us history webcomic loving types!
And now, some sketches from the weekend:
A Sparkled Up Joan of Arc Fist Bumping Sailor Moon:
Poe, Being all Mac against a Car:
Nikola Tesla and Joan of Arc Enjoying a Quiet Picnic:
Wizard Duel: Rasputin v Merlin
Karl Marx as a Punk Rocker:
So Much More To Come!
– Count Dolby von Luckner
I’ll just keep pimping the twitters on here until I get bored of it.
You should follow us on twitter here.
–Geoff
Usually Voltaire had to work a bit harder to get himself drummed out of a country than just Being a Lazy If Utterly Brilliant Debauched Chauvinist Pig. And he did. In France he mercilessly lampooned the court. In Prussia he tried to make himself rich by speculating against the state and ham-fistedly tried to act the role of double agent. So, a fair percentage of his life was spent On The Lam.
APE done! We had a tremendous time talking to everybody who came by and requested sketches and bought books. Some of my favorite bits:
* Doctor Mew. You don’t realize how big of a need you have for a series of buttons featuring paintings of cats done up as The Doctors of Doctor Who until you see them arrayed before you, and then you don’t know how you lived life before without them. I sported my David Tennant cat on my lapel throughout the second day and somehow, wearing a tophat, frilly cravat, and full 18th century lace cuffs, it was that button that I got asked the most about.
* I chatted with Kate Beaton for all of two minutes at her book signing, which is the first time we’ve actually ever communicated face to face in the five years that we’ve both been doing historical webcomics. We talked about literary hunks of the 18th vs. 19th centuries and, ironically enough, when I got back to our booth I saw a request for “Young David Bowie Dressed as Colonel Brandon” waiting for me.
* Getting my mitts on the first volume of Lust for Freelance and the second of Prophecy Failed. I’ve talked about my love of PF before, but Lust for Freelance was new to me. I got home with it on Saturday night, totally exhausted from the show, telling myself that I was going to read a couple of pages and then pack it in, and then proceeded to read the entire collection. Madeleine Graham has crafted this very tense dynamic between her two main characters that keeps pushing you forward, craning your neck to see when all the psychological cards will fall on the table.
* Skin Deep. Those of you who have been with us a loooooong time might remember me talking about this comic back in ’07 as an entirely charming and compelling story of secret modern mythology. Somehow I had lost track of it in the interim until Geoff mentioned on the car ride over that “Yeah, Kory Bing is going to be there” and then all of the memories came flooding back. I picked up the first collection from her and devoured it, delighted to find that it was as wonderful, perhaps moreso, than I remembered. And so I tuned into the site as it stands now and it is GORGEOUS.
* Chatting with Elle Skinner. Generally, I read my webcomics in fits and starts, catching up with a couple of months as my tolerance for computer screens comes and goes, and then slinking back into my dark hole for a while. But The Littlest Elle I make a point to stop by every week, because it is so entirely bewitching, and Elle herself is perhaps the nicest person I have ever met in the webcomics world.
* The sketches. I’ll be putting them up here in the chatter as usual in the coming weeks as I finish them. If you are waiting on one, rest assured I’m inking away – there are 16 requests that I didn’t get finished by the end, and I’m hoping to polish off 3 a day and send them to the exotic frontier towns of DAAAAAALY CITY!!! and PLEAAAAAASANTON!
More to come!
– Count Dolby von Luckner
APE was a pretty good time. The Count will have more to say about that.
I started actually using the twitter account I set up a few months ago. During APE, I was mostly using it to post descriptions of the sketch requests The Count received.
You should follow us on twitter here.
–Geoff