Solarplate tips

Printmaking Tips
I know this is insane but did my first day back at the bookstore yesterday, and with Artswalk going on we had the back room open and the press running. So there was a lot of talk going on amongst the boys about impending plans to do some small publishing. Well doing similar research for the comic, and like things often do in my brain, the chocolate got in the peanut butter, so now i'm trying to find a way to easily turn black and white line art into a plate for a letterpress. It seems like solarplates (or photopolymer plates) might be good way to do this.
Yes, I realize that it will end up being worth the extra money to just have the comic professionally digitally printed, but it would be fun to do a limited run that was hand-printed, and handbound on handmade paper.
Hey don't knock the dreamers!

Lightning kills 5 children praying at cross - 25 Apr 2006 - World News

Lightning kills 5 children praying at cross
"I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours..."

via Warren Ellis

file under "things that make you go: wha?"

Interactive comic?

the story is too large to be contained by any one medium, and readers of the graphic novel series will discover that Chasing The Wish is far more than just a comic book, as the story once again crosses over to the Internet, the real world, and their own backyards.

via Key 23

Good Print on Demand tips

Good reply on slashdot with some hints on print-on-demand self-publishing.

MangaStudio Tips

just what it says.

Great Warren Ellis Rant

I know this is older, but just felt like posting it for my own reference and edification:
Fuck superheroes, frankly. The notion that these things dominate an entire genre is absurd. It's like every bookstore in the planet having ninety percent of its shelves filled by nurse novels. Imagine that. You want a new novel, but you have to wade through three hundred new books about romances in the wards before you can get at any other genre. A medium where the relationship of fiction about nurses outweighs mainstream literary fiction by a ratio of one hundred to one. Superhero comics are like bloody creeping fungus, and they smother everything else.

It's been the hip and trendy thing to do, recently, to say that superheroes are, you know, all right. And, if they're well done, I agree with you. There's room for any kind of good work, no matter what genre it's in.

But that doesn't excuse you from going out and burning out all the bad work at the fucking root with torches. It doesn't excuse all the nameless toss that DC and Marvel and Image and all the others slop out every month. If you want to read three hundred superhero comics a month then you are sick and you need medical help.

Rip from their steaming corpses the things that led superhero comics to dominate the medium - the mad energy, the astonishing visuals, the fetishism, whatever - and apply them to the telling of other stories in other genres. That's all THE MATRIX did, after all.

Also thought that bit was relevent given the recently resurfaced "spandex-perverts" issue that had the blogosphere up in arms for five minutes recently

The online gallery of Dale Martin: A Foolproof Method of Comic Book Hand Lettering

A Foolproof Method of Comic Book Hand Lettering
Currently debating with myself the lettering scheme for the comic, mainly whether or not to use a "comic book" font, and cut n' paste from my rtf script. (most of my comic writing is done on an old Apple Emate, I of course have access to other writing tools, but I started using this as a portable notetaking machine in college and have found it is the most "transparent" writing tool for how I write.)
There is a little voice in my head that insists that "hand lettering" will allow for more character and emphasis to my text. I wouldn't really be doing it by hand, it would be done just like my "pencils" and "inks", that is to say with my new (to me) 12"X12" Intous in Manga Studio or Photoshop.
I guess the main issue is whether it is worth the extra time it will take for this extra expressiveness.
Anyway this comic format tutorial on hand-lettering is cool on its own merits so I'm posting it.

Apalala - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Apalala
Don't know how I have come across this before.
A dragon (well naga really) who was one of Buddha's disciples. Will have to reread Tea with the Black Dragon again to see if MacAvoy was weaving this folktale into it.
(filed for later reference)

Religion of Comic Book Characters (esp. Super-Heroes)

This page was a lot of fun and very thorough.
Then there is also this
I'm so outta the loop I had no idea that Colossus was gay!
Just read the end of the story arch Dust and Ashes, so I knew Constantine walked both sides of the street, as it were.
After spending an hour or so looking over both of these pages, enheartened that, comics have been so diverse in the spiritual background of their populace, and discouraged that queer characters are for the most part still tokens and novelties.
Oh well, I don't really read much of the "spandex-pervert" stories anymore... Though I am grabbing "Ex Machina" nathologies as they come out, and speaking of The Machine and coming out... it seems that subplot was never really wrapped up... I'm betting he's bi, or if he is het, he's a little more kink than straight.

European dragon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

European dragon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cann't think of a better first post than this.
Just remember the world is encircled by a dragon.
(file for later reference)