Fabler Spotlight: Jordan Kotzebue (thejmon) of Hominids

November 23, 2011 – 6:31 am

In continuing our theme of featuring artists with comics currently featured on The Fabler, for this week’s interview we caught up with Jordan Kotzebue (aka thejmon) to talk about his webcomic Hominids.

Jordan currently lives in Seattle, where we works with PopCap Games as a studio artist. Despite his lifelong interest in comics, the bulk of his illustrative career has been spent working in the video game industry. (Some of the titles he’s worked on include the Sly Cooper franchise, League of Legends, Zuma, and Bejeweled 3).

That’s right, Jordan has every kid’s dream job – he designs videogame art by day and spends his free time working on comic books.

While he has dabbled in comics in the past, Hominids represents Kotzebue’s first foray into an ongoing series. The comic, which is now two issues in, is set in an era of ancient history in which early humans coexisted with another intelligent prehistoric species – Neanderthals. The world Jordan paints is lush, mysterious, and filled with the potential for adventure. As a neat aside, it was a concept originally dreamed up by his twelve-year-old self that Jordan decided to return to later in life and flesh out more fully.

I talked with Jordan about Hominids, his early interest in comics, and some of his background in doing artistic design for videogames. Read More »

By Kevin | Posted in Comic News and Interviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Free Speech, Justice for a Super-Fan, and The Bard Himself Takes the Stage: A mid-November News Update

November 16, 2011 – 6:33 am

Comic Books have long been at the forefront of battles over censorship and freedom of speech in contemporary literature.

Don’t believe me? Assuming you’re already familiar with Fredric Wertham and his unfortunate influence on comics  in the 50’s, I recommend you further check out some of the controversy that surrounded Omaha the Cat Dancer or Mike Diana’s obscenity charge for cartooning. Or, if you wanted something more recent, you could read up on comic collector Christopher Handley’s sentencing last year to six months in prison for possession of ‘Obscene’ Manga.

This sort of brazen disregard for freedom of speech in artistic expression is what led to the formation of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in 1986 ‘to protect the First Amendment rights of the comic art form and its community of retailers, creators, publishers, librarians, and readers’.

The Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund is a similar fundraising organization, founded in 1987 specifically ‘to raise money for the defense of a Calgary, Alberta comic shop whose owners were charged with selling obscene materials’. The CLLDF, which has been largely inactive for the past two decades, recently reformed to lend their support to an American currently facing criminal charges in Canada on account of manga images found on his laptop that were deemed ‘obscene.’ Read More »

By Kevin | Posted in Comic News and Interviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Fabler Spotlight: Robin Meyer (ImaginaryGirl) of Real Life Fiction

November 9, 2011 – 6:30 am

Robin Meyer, aka ImaginaryGirl, is a character in a wittily absurd comic called Real Life Fiction.

Real Life Fiction

Perpetually accompanied by a squirrel who has taken to nesting on her head, Real Life Fiction arbitrarily segues between Robin’s daily musings and bouts of surreal randomness.  What constitutes ’surreal randomness’, you might ask?

Pink crime fighting unicorn men, gladiatorial figure skating, and polar bear milking for Coca-Cola… to name a few of the many topics featured in RLF.

Robin is also the author, and the concepts she writes and illustrates into Real Life Fiction are drawn from whatever happens to spark her imagination.

Real Life Fiction is just one of the many comics that can be currently found on The Fabler webcomics portal. We here at the Fabler thought it might be neat to showcase some of the talent that has popped up around the site, and ImaginaryGirl (Robin) immediately sprang to mind.

Fortunately for all involved, she was amiable enough to agree to an interview. Read More »

By Kevin | Posted in Comic News and Interviews | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Interview: Ethan Rilly on Pope Hats # 2

October 19, 2011 – 6:30 am

Back in May 2010 when I posted an interview with Ethan Rilly about his 2008 minicomic Pope Hats, I described it as simultaneously surreal and very familiar.

The comic, which saw wider distribution via publisher AdHouse Books in 2009, introduced us to roommates Frances and Vickie. Vickie is an alcoholic party girl, and Frances is ostensibly your average, down-to-earth type just looking to eke out a living in the world. Except of course for her numerous idiosyncratic behaviors – like, for instance, maintaining an ongoing dialogue with a fictional ghost named Sarsgaard.

At the time of my interview with Ethan, he was working on a graphic novel follow up to his well-received debut effort.

Now, nearly a year and a half later, his sophomore effort is available for purchase from select comic retailers as well as directly from AdHouse.

It’s not the graphic novel he had originally planned, but instead a 40 page second issue installment in the Pope Hats series. The book is also far less surreal, even going so far as to abandon the character of Saarsgard entirely.

Both of these changes reflect the new confidence that Rilly has found in his artistic voice. Read More »

By Kevin | Posted in Canadian Comics | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Interview: Andrew Foley on Done to Death

October 5, 2011 – 6:30 am

Do you know Andrew Foley?

You may have heard of him as ‘that guy who co-wrote the Cowboys and Aliens graphic novel, and then subsequently had his name unattached from anything remotely relating to the property and, later, film’.

Which I wouldn’t be miffed about at all if it happened to me.  <cough>

Alternately, you might have been fortunate enough to read one of his less widely distributed original comics, like Parting Ways (drawn by Scott Mooney and Nick Craine) or The Holiday Men in The Massacre Memorial Day Sale Massacre (art by Nick Johnson).

If you were really, REALLY lucky you may have even read one of the five issues from a 2006 vampire satire miniseries he did alongside (then-budding) comic star Fiona Staples. The miniseries, titled ‘Done to Death’, told the two distinct yet inexorably linked stories of a serial-killing editor out to rid the world of bad writers and a vampire so antithetical to Anne Rice, it would make Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise choke on their sweet goblets of blood.

Don’t fret too much if you missed this fantastic foray into the de-romanticized modern mythology of vampires. It may have taken five years, but Done to Death has been resurrected as a collected trade paperback available now from IDW Publishing. Read More »

By Kevin | Posted in Canadian Comics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Gender, Canadian History and Vampire Clichés

September 21, 2011 – 6:30 am

Hey Fabler pals. Or, ‘Hey, Fabler pals’ – as in ‘hey look, there are some pals of The Fabler’.

I wanted to bring a couple of blogs to your attention. Because pals share that sort of thing.

Does anyone care about this whole debate about women working in comics? If you’ve been out to a convention in the past few years and caught a Q & A with editor-types from any of the larger publishers, chances are you’ve heard it addressed.

The assertion is that, despite a swelling demographic of female comic book readers, the major label comic book industry remains by and large a ‘boys club’. Granted, you do have your Gail Simones and Pia Guerras blazing trails through the pages of comicbookdom, but is that indicative of any larger shift in the industry’s mindset?

I don’t even know if you’d really call it a debate. More a possible issue that is brought up often, though is rarely addressed as opposed to being merely redirected. Read More »

By Kevin | Posted in Comic News and Interviews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Better Than Eating Sandwiches

September 7, 2011 – 6:30 am

It seems that every time I log on to The Fabler to check out the latest submissions/entries, I find something that impresses me.

And not like, ‘Oh that’s quaint. I’m sort of impressed, but I’d rather just eat my sandwich,’ sort of impressed.  Like, genuinely, truly,  ‘oh man, we have stuff that good on here?!’ impressed.

Which is rad. Because one, it means The Fabler isn’t ostensibly shitty, which as it turns out is good for business. Also because two, more importantly, it means that while the ‘big boy’ publishers continue to slowly creep over the digital landscape (did somebody say same day digital?) – there exists an ambitious horde of indie comic creators lurking in the rafters of the interwebs, just itching to realize their full potential. Read More »

By Kevin | Posted in Comic News and Interviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Boycotts, Womanthology and the New Comic Arts Festival on the Block

August 17, 2011 – 6:31 am

Just another month in the high stakes world of comic books and the people that love them.

There are some genuinely interesting items making headlines on the sequential front this month, and I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on a few of them here. From professional perspectives on a call to boycott one of the two major publishers (hint: not DC) to the wildly successful endeavours of a group of female artists and writers to kickstart their own new anthology, and finally to the birth of a new Canadian Comic Festival. Read More »

By Kevin | Posted in Comic News and Interviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Digital Comics…well basically we’re going to talk about the iPad now

August 3, 2011 – 4:03 pm

Digital Comics

The iPad has gotten everyone excited in the comic publishing industry. This is based on predictions that 20% of households in the U.S. will have one in the next two years. These aren’t being purchased as productivity devices, they are for fun. They aren’t just fun for the person who buys them either, they are becoming pass-around devices that get into the hands of everyone in their family. The idea that 62M people in the U.S. will have one of these devices in their home should make anyone producing creative content very excited. Considering that there are going to be a whole pile of other tablets and e-readers adding to those numbers and you’ve got a huge potential market for anything that can be consumed on a tablet.

These devices aren’t going to just be for watching movies and playing games. Any initial speculation about whether or not people will actually read on these devices is now gone. Currently about 25% of adult fiction is being purchased in the form of digital e-books. People are getting to like the idea of a digital library, more than that, they are starting to see digital as a great way to read for enjoyment.

Several comic publishers are thinking that the iPad will cause the same kind of shift in comic reading…

Finish this article on my Blog, Fictional Narratives.

By Michael Magee | Posted in Fabler News, Industry Insider | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Interview: Cloudscape Comics’ Jeff Ellis on 21 Journeys

August 3, 2011 – 6:30 am

Camilla D’Errico (Sky Pirates of Neo  Terra), Colin Upton (Buddha on the Road), Angela Melick (Wasted Talent), and Steve Rolston (Ghost Projekt).

What do these comic book artists have in common? (Other than that they are all based in Vancouver, BC)

They represent just a handful of the fantastically diverse talents who have contributed to Cloudscape Comics over the years.

Cloudscape is a Vancouver-based comic collective that has published four comic anthologies since their inception in 2008. For more about who they are and what they do, I would direct your attention to this post I wrote profiling the group.

This past year, the folks behind Cloudscape Comics decided to try their luck in the wonderful world of internet crowdfunding. Hey, publishing quality comic anthologies doesn’t come cheap – just ask The Anthology Project.

21 Journeys

For their fourth publishing effort, titled “21 Journeys“, Cloudscape decided they wanted to produce a higher quality of book than their previous anthologies. Read More »

By Kevin | Posted in Canadian Comics | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (3)