Deconstructing Comics » Podcast: Episodes
Longbox Digital‘s comics reader beta was unveiled at Emerald City Comicon in March. Is it any good? Tim and Mulele review. Also: hilarious Web comic “Axe Cop“!
In a recent interview, Steven King is quoted as saying that a Vertigo editor asked him not to use thought balloons in his work on American Vampire. An article in Comics Comics Mag brought this to our attention, and sparked discussion. Why do some editors now discourage, or even ban, thought balloons ...
Ruben Bolling is a comic strip creator who admits that he’s less interested in drawing than he used to be. Known as the brains behind the hilarious, and sometimes absurd, weekly strip “Tom the Dancing Bug,” Bolling does want to continue the strip, but also concentrate more effort on ...
Tim and Mulele set out to review dharbin.com, but “the gold of the site” is hidden. Mulele explains where to find Dustin Harbin’s best work. Then an interview with (former) Tokyo resident Ed Siemienkowicz and a discussion of how to develop your own style. Tim continues to struggle with ...
Comics are being used increasingly to get messages across visually, even those aimed at the business world. Doug Jackson, a Tokyo-based business consultant, was involved in adapting Patrick Lencioni’s “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” into a “manga version.” He talks to ...
L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published 109 years ago and still inspires attempts to adapt it to other media. While the 1939 MGM movie tends to define the story in the minds of many, subsequent adaptations do stick closer to the original book than ...
A bored, punk-dressing god of death and a genius high school boy are the main characters in Death Note, written by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata. The boy, Light Yagami, receives from the god a notebook with which he can kill people simply by writing their names in it. A plot with many [...]
Comics are increasingly read as bits and bytes, on PCs and handheld devices. Blank creators Brothers of the Silence are publishing the comic in Flash on their site, and as image files on Facebook and several other sites. “Brothers” Ian LeWinter and Don Richmond talk about creating the comic ...
Tim and Mulele review two Web comics that have little in common besides the nationality of their creators! Amya, a recently-started, manga- an fantasy-influenced comic; and Hark, a Vagrant, featuring contemporary, humorous takes on historical events. Then Mulele critiques Tim’s recent artwork, ...
Though Asterios Polyp made the point that comics and (written) music are similar, doing a comic about music is not such an easy task. But Reinhard Kleist beautifully presents the music, and life, of a country music legend in Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness, recently released in English. How does it compare ...
If you think the area where you live is too isolated and lacks a comics scene, consider the Pacific island of Guam: Fewer than 200,000 people, only about half of whom use the Internet. Few comics outlets, and a small selection. And even ordering online can be problematic. Tim visited Guam recently and ...
Reviews of Asterios Polyp blanket the Internet; why need we pile on? Well, for starters, to counteract all the reviewers who think that giving a story synoposis = explaining what the book’s about. That approach falls far short with Polyp, so Tim and Kumar are here to explain what they feel David ...
Is having your work illegally downloaded the worst thing that can happen to a comics artist? If you work for a major, perhaps not, but every download can have a noticeable effect when you’re trying to make a living drawing comics that are less widely purchased. One such freelancer, Jake Ekiss of Dallas, ...
A recent Comics Reporter article by Ng Suat Tong on “Writing, Collaboration, and Superheroes” (and a rebuttal to it from Chris Allen Online) got us to thinking: Do modern writers give sufficient instruction to artists? How much of what you see on the page came from the writer, and how much ...
Animation has always drawn on comics as a source of material. But what is involved in adapting a comic to animation? Our resident animation expert Patrik W joins Tim to talk about the special considerations of animation character design, as well as storyboarding and more. Preston Blair’s classic ...
Australia is not world-renowned for its comics scene. But Perth-based Gestalt Comics is trying to change that. Co-founders Wolf Bylsma and Skye Ogden talk to Tim about the Aussie comics scene and what Gestalt is doing to try to develop it.
Tim and Mulele are joined by Mike Kloran, a Deconstructing Comics listener and artist based in northern Japan. Creating educational comics is discussed, and Mike interviews Tim and Mulele. Also, what are Mike’s thoughts on this podcast itself? Then Tim and Mulele discuss two books by Ken Dahl, ...
Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist combines the “steampunk” aesthetic with well-developed characters and a story that explores themes of war and hope, and highlights how any skill and any belief system can be used for good or ill. Tim and newcomer Hiroyuki (our first-ever Japanese ...
Emily the Strange began life as a character that appeared on merchandise, but lately she’s been fleshed out with a Dark Horse comics series and much more. Tim and Mulele talk about the first two trade paperback collections, and the controversy surrounding her origins. Also, if you’re looking ...
Steph Godfrey, of San Francisco by way of Perth, Australia, recently made a comic called Panorama, based on a dream she had and how it affected her life. Tim talks to Steph about the background of the comic, and then reviews it with Mulele.