Wesley Osam grew up and still lives in Iowa. He’s worked in an office for the last decade and draws comics in his spare time.
His website is http://www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic/. These comics appear according to an irregular schedule, but are often updated at least once a week. However, the comics themselves are irregular. Some are traditional humor strips with continuing characters. Occasionally these are less funny and more meditative. At other times he draws surreal (and sometimes very strange) single-panel gag cartoons, like this one. Enjoy!
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Once my darling ex-cartoonist friend Anders made a Kickstarter page to fund his first album I had to take a second look at this Kickstarter thing. As I write this, his request has been up for one day and already he’s half-way to his goal. That’s $400 just out of the blue, which completely blows my mind. Could it be that Anders is very popular and has many rich friends? Well, not exactly.
Kickstarter is an internet infant, having only been around since April 2009. If its existence is news to you, I suggest that you read this excellent Publisher’s Weekly article from Terri Heard that illuminates some of the service’s history. Most interesting to me was that its origins lay in the effort to keep Arrested Development on the air. Oh, how I wish it had succeeded!
This month’s Wired Magazine also featured Kickstarter in its award-winning Start section. It reminded me of specific Kickstarter success stories like the Calvin & Hobbes documentary Dear Mr. Watterson which is still openly accepting donations and generating mad cash. In fact, it’s almost doubled its goal amount through Kickstarter donations.
I’ve lived a number of impulse purchase success stories, including the time I bought an orange coat I totally didn’t need but always receive compliments for wearing. Basically, I’ve been a big fan of this model even before it existed. The fact that it’s here now is so remarkable and unbelievable, I hardly appreciated it was real until someone I know well got involved.
Then I remembered an old friend from far away, Box Brown, had already made the Kickstarter system work for him. Boxy makes the webcomic Bellen! and self-published minis until he won the Xeric to print his graphic novel Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing. He recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign that earned him $3,279 to print issues one and two of a new comic series Everything Dies. We talked over email regarding his experience as a Kickstarter success story.
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Hive 3: A Somewhat Quarterly Comic Journal
Ed. by J.M. Shiveley
Grimalkin Press
Hive is a theme-less comics anthology that’s edited by J.M. Shiveley and printed by Grimalkin Press — Shiveley’s ambitious DIY publishing company. To wit, the third issue of Hive is being sold through a Barnes & Noble store. See? Ambitious.
Yes, individual B&N stores have a history of carrying books from small-time publishers, but those titles tend to cover local history and still look like “books.” You know, soft- and hard-cover vanity-pressed books.
None of these terms describe Hive 3 which is folded concertina-style and has a double-sided letterpress cover. Hive 3 is certainly a fat 2-in-1 booklet, which is something I thought I’d never see in a big box bookstore. I’m calling that an achievement.
That said, while printing experiments in comics are admirable, there are some clear issues with the publication style of Hive 3. It’s eye-catching, sure, but there’s just too much going on with the printing of this book that doesn’t make sense for the material. I guess if you’re going to charge $10 for a self-published hand-made black-and-white anthology, it should really have something distinctive going on, but I’m afraid this issue has crossed the line from unique to gimmicky.
To be fair though, a book shouldn’t be judged entirely by its cover, and what Hive 3 presents deep down inside is a high-quality selection of short comics and art.
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Tags: Andrew Drilon, Chad R. Woody, Dax Delap, douglas wilson, Eamon Espey, grimalkin press, Hawk Krall, hive, j.m. shiveley, Joe Decie, John Kinhart, Jon Freihofer, Joshua W. Cotter, Karl Kindt, malachi ward, Mark Leicht, Matt Kindt, Mostyn
Reviews | smorean March 4, 2010 | 
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Sad Animals
by Adam Meuse
Self-Published
Depending on your mood, you will either find Sad Animals mildly amusing or totally hilarious. When I bought it a few weeks ago I thought it was clever. Today though, it’s really entertaining me. I don’t know how the gags got funnier, but they did.
Sad Animals has been sitting near the register at Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis for over a year now. I took my sweet time buying it, for sure. I mean, it’s kind of a breezy read. You could easily finish the whole mini just waiting for Michael Drivas to bag your books. When I finally broke down and got it, Drivas was kind enough to tell me the history of Sad Animals and its legacy at his store.
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An engineer by education, Paramjit Singh completed his Bachelors from Manipal Institute of Technology, India, and Masters from the University of Southern California, USA. He worked as a business analyst for 2 years in Chicago before coming back to India to pursue his dreams working as a game designer.
He also worked on a few publications back in college and loves doing cartoons. You can check out his latest comics on his blog The Short Plank.
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The Lady’s Murder
by Eliza Frye
Self-published
Eliza Frye has an overwhelming talent for constructing beautiful images. I sat next to her at APE in 2009 and was totally awestruck by her work. Dumbstruck even. Still, fans kept flocking to her table, chatting her up, and I wondered ‘How does anyone know what to say to someone whose artwork is so goddamn gorgeous?’ Fandom is an art all its own, I tell you.
Her background as an illustrator and character artist comes across strongly in projects like The Lady’s Murder. In it, she takes a rather sexy poem from S. Albert Chatman and uses his idea to build a bony story structure from which her gorgeous art hangs lush and wild.
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Blake Sims has lived his whole life in Southern Kentucky. He currently attends Western Kentucky University and has been known to wear his hair long and reckless.
Sims has self-published his comics since high school. His early books were memorable for their large 8.5″x11″ format. With his latest mini, Rapscallion #5 he’s scaled down the format a bit to the standard, more affordable, quarter fold but hopes to print large again someday.
Expect the next issue of Rapscallion soon, which will be a faux-tabloid style comic. I can’t wait. In the meantime, check out Sims’ blog for more action, adventure and comedy.
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Lauren Barnett is a comic artist, illustrator and graphic designer living and working in Brooklyn NY. She has self-published three mini comics including I’d Sure Like Some Fucking Pancakes, A Story About Fish and Secret Weirdo. She also has a daily comics blog with mostly one-panel gag strips. Her work has been published in the L Magazine’s Comix issue (2008) and she has work on Top Shelf’s Top Shelf 2.0 website. She has an exhibition coming up in October 2010 at Gimme Coffee in Brooklyn, NY, and will soon be interviewed for the web series “Crazy Sexy Geeks.”
Her daily blog can be found at www.melikesyou.blogspot.com. Enjoy!
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Last Wednesday I braved the cold just long enough to drive up to Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and take part in the Twin Cities’ chapter of Indy Comic Book Week. It was well worth the trip.
The event was held at The Source, a local comics and games store. The Source has a large back room that they use to host, among other things, gaming nights and Free Comic Book Day. This was the first time it was used for Indy Comic Book Week. “When I heard about the event, I thought it was a great idea,” said Burl Zorn, a Source employee with a gray ponytail and a long earring dangling from one ear. Zorn has been working at the Source for ten years, and plans to be here for many years to come. Zorn’s job requires him to wear many different hats, and he does it all with a smile. Throughout the night, I watched him interact happily with all the different attendees, restock the free chips and pop, and talk excitedly with the artists about their work.
In all, there were 17 local artists tabling at the event, and over 150 different local comics represented on the racks that usually house the regular sampling of D.C. and Marvel titles. (Some artists submitted multiple titles.) The event lasted from 5:00 to 9:00, with a steady crowd throughout. “Things usually die down an hour earlier in the winter,” said Zorn, “because it gets so cold and dark, and people want to go home.” But the Indy Comics event seemed to keep things bustling longer.
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Tags: athena currier, becky grutzik, bob lipski, brent schoonover, burl zorn, carl borg, danno klonowski, indy comic book week, jennifer menken, matt wendt, michael may, mike bullock, minnesota, mitch gerads, scott dillion, the source
Events | smorean January 6, 2010 | Comments (5)
John McNamee and Ted Raskol get together three times a week to draw jam comics. The comics are always four panels long, but they alternate who starts each one. What goes on from start to finish is completely improvised from panel to panel. Their strips are posted on the website Digestive Comics.
McNamee’s webcomic Pie updates thrice weekly. He has drawn over 660 strips so far and shows no sign of stopping. He has been published in three issues of Pulse Comic Zine and has self-published two compilations of Pie. He recently lent his drawing skills for Duck Tales from the Crypt in Big Planet’s November newsletter.
Raskol authors Raskol Political Cartoons, which updates daily. He has been published in Pulse Comic Zine and finds that it’s not so hard to draw a daily cartoon, as long as you’re willing to cut all the people you care about out of your life. His political drawings lean to the left of the political spectrum, but have a streak of independence when it comes to the economic issues.
McNamee and Raskol met while publishing daily comic strips at The Cavalier Daily, which is an independent and self-sustaining newspaper published by students at the University of Virginia (both were graduates of the class of 2007). McNamee has had a table at the last two Small Pres Expos, while Raskol visited to mill about for awhile. By next year’s SPX, they plan to publish a compilation of Digestive Comics.
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